The Land of Squee

Hello there!

Gosh, I feel like I've been so busy since I got home. First off the plane portion of my journey took all day Monday and the train portion all day Tuesday, then Wednesday my mom let me spend $100 on some new clothes (I had NO pants after donating most of my clothes in order to get my luggage down to three suitcases), Thursday I did grocery and pharmacy errands and dismantled my broken laptop, Friday I had two interviews for season jobs (I got a job at Target, starting next Sunday!!), and today I'm going to finally finish going through my stuff and arranging everything in my room. I get to put my belongings in DRAWERS for the first time since early August! Still on my to-do list are VOTING FOR BARACK OBAMA and calling my doctor to find out what we're gonna do about m blood thinners and stuff.

I am so happy to be back in the US, and back in a rural town. The trees are so beautiful here (just google "Blue Ridge mountains fall" and you can imagine what NC looks like this time of year--I'm not in the mountains, but those are the trees I'm seeing) and it's been so sunny I haven't had to put on a jacket since I got off the train. People are friendly and easy to chat with, Subway has mushrooms and banana peppers, and I can watch new episodes of Top Model with my mom on our big enormous four foot screen. My mom's dog is adorable, the cat is a thousand times less shed-y and obnoxious than Vincent's, and I've been reunited with things like my extensive nail polish collection and $2 yarn at Walmart!

I filled out two job applications online while I was in France, and when I got to the house I saw two job interviews on the calendar for me. I interviewed at Target in the morning and Ulta in the afternoon, and Target hired me on the spot. The Ulta people were a little bit snottier (I was gossiping with my Target supervisor about people she knew in college for fifteen minutes before she got around to the actual interview) so I don't give a crap if they don't hire me. Plus the Target people want to put me on the clothes floor! I need a red shirt and khaki pants now.

My biggest triumph is that my darling laptop Listolier, who had been getting startlingly hot lately, finally gave up and told me there was a fan error, refusing to boot up at all. I refused to let him die on me after all we've shared, so I used the family desktop to find instructions on dismantling a thinkpad and, with the help of my sonic screwdriver screwdriver I gutted my poor friend, clearing out all the dust bunnies and cat hair (thanks, Vincent's stinky apartment) and finally had the computer fan in my hand, which I sprayed with compressed air. I reassembled everything (losing one tiny screw in the process unfortunately), and, fully expecting the computer to refuse to boot up or to give me another fan error (or be broken from me touching the wrong thing) I tried to restart it and... success! Not only does it no longer have a fan error, it no longer gets super hot! Right now it's on my lap, which before would have turned it into a scorching oven, but when I put my hand on the edge where the fan is it's cold as ice! I'm so excited!

Emboldened by that success, I went ahead and ordered a new keyboard for $20 off ebay, because my number three key sticks and my backspace and shift have been broken and see-sawing for months. Plus I know the compressed air didn't get all the gunk out from under these keys, so it'll be nice to just replace it myself like the badass I secretly am.

Can you tell how happy I am from the tone of this? If not, I AM A HAPPY PERSON. I know what phone plan and phone I'm going to get from Verizon (everyone's recommended network) once I move to New York, but I unfortunately am without a phone for the time being. My parents give me an old flip phone of theirs so I'm trying to find some cheap pay-as-you-go type plan for that. It would be nice.

Question: if I plan to use my future smartphone's wifi VERY sparingly, like only to check maps or directions or whatever when I get lost, is 250MB of internet enough or should I spring for 1G? I've never had a smartphone before--I've been using a flip phone for two years that didn't even have a camera in it--and my parents have become Apple zombies and keep trying to convince me to get an iPhone with unlimited wifi like their plan, but I don't want to always have access to tumblr or I'll retreat from the physical world and never use my mouth to communicate again. But I *do* want access to the internet if I get lost or confused in New York, where I'll be living come January. Anyway I'm figuring all this out from recommendations from friends and stuff.

Well, I've managed to keep the Great Afghan hidden from my parents all day, but if tomorrow's a snow day they'll both be home and I won't get a chance to work on it unless I hole myself up in my room.

I'm only posting right now because I'm procrastinating from finishing my take-home exam for that awful film class (and I literally did take the exam home, by the way).

My new cord came in for my laptop. Why have I shorted out two cords since freshman year? The second one only lasted about six months. What am I doing wrong here?

It may snow tomorrow, which is good, but there are holes all in my rubber boots so I'll certainly have wet feet. Sad.

My brain has been very Doctor Who this week. Probably from marathoning series two with Tara. I miss Rose. The show was much cuter and very, very different when she was around. I still adore the show, obviously, but I was just in love with it then.

I've managed to completely avoid all spoilers for The End of Time except that one picture of Ten in that funny hat and a few clips with the sound turned off that played under an interview he did. I survived all the squee of watching him on Never Mind the Buzzcocks (poor Catherine Tate) but the regeneration is still worrying me. Not as much as RTD leaving worries me, though. I mean, he's done his stupid things, but he also made me weep for three days simply because two characters would never see each other again. Tara had a similar reaction. No matter what anybody says about Rusty, he definitely knows what he's doing. I adore him, evil overlord that he is, and always will. The Moff has done some good episodes, of course (Blink and The Empty Child are some of the best that have come out of this show so far) but then there's always Silence in the Library, which was a giant ball of wibbly fail. The Moff has no regard for the over-arching stories, have you noticed? Girl In The Fireplace, for example (which I like to refer to as GITFace thanks to the tags at ihasatardis) completely ruined the snippy jealousy that had been going on between Mickey and Rose while undermining (and I know there are those who like this aspect, but they can stfu) the Doctor and Rose's growing relationship. Like it or not, this show started off as the story of a girl whose life was changed by a man in a blue box, and it wasn't until The Runaway Bride that the Doctor was the real main character. Even that Absorbaloff moron knew that it was all about the chavvy blonde. But Moffat just ignored that. And wasn't there some frustration between him and Rusty regarding having angels as the bad guys? You know, between Blink and Voyage of the Danged? I don't know, I just don't trust Moffatt for the long run. But we'll see. Nothing I can do.

I really hope Matt Smith is wonderful. Heck, I hope that in about six months' time you'll see posts from me about how much I adore the man. I hope he gets an even bigger fanbase than Tennant and I hope the show gets even better and runs for a million years. And I hope that someday there's a companion who is not a female from the early 21st century.

How awesome would it be to have someone from the eighteenth century as a companion? Or someone like Chantho? Or a guy? Or more than one person? Two people who then fall in love with each other and not the Doctor but are from different times or planets and are convinced that it will never work?

I should do my homework.

I GOT MY CALCULATOR TO WORK.

YA-FREAKING-TTA.

http://www.unc.edu/lmloony/repo_man.html

Malheureusement, the on/off still isn't doing anything.