recent happenings
- Klinton had to install Windows on my computer. It was a sad night, and I needed some time with my pretty Ubuntu linux desktop to say goodbye. I would have kept it for as long as I could have, but I had to make my iPod work, so it had to go. :( Luckily Klinton was able to customize it so that it didn't have a nice ugly XP taskbar and enormous window borders, so I can pretend that it isn't actually Windows. But I still get some fun error messages and slooooooowww startups.
- I got new glasses! I had to get new ones and then got the run-around from my insurance company so I had to go home to see my old optometrist and pay out of pocket. (However, he gave me professional advice for free!) We had no idea when Kaiser would decide to give me back my health insurance, so we decided to suck it up and just go to Lens Crafters, which is my new favorite place. They made me a pretty new pair of glasses in 30 minutes (not their usual hour!) and they're Armani! I'm very happy with them.
- I almost cried when I watched #1 Single with Lisa Loeb. I feel like I'm on hormonal replacement therapy.
pray that I don't get mangled by squirrels
I hate health insurance companies! I realize that when they do work for you, they have very awesome powers, like paying 80% of expensive medications and surgeries, which is so amazing and fun to me. But getting them to just DO anything is like pulling teeth! I don't know why needing to speak to specialists consists of so many illogical steps, why you have to have to talk to the claims department every 6 months to continue getting your benefits, even though you are already entitled to them by being a plan member...I just found out that my mother's insurance company cut me off when I was 19 even though they are supposed to cover students until they are 25, and even though multiple letters proving that I was a student have been sent to them on multiple occasions. And I've been going for the last two years thinking that I was covered under her insurance! Thank God nothing terrible happened to me in that time. Recently I've needed to make various checkup appointments and my mother's company assures us that I am covered, but the insurance company doesn't recognize my account at all. I'll just have to pray that I don't get mangled while they figure their shit out. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
oh, and a strange dream
Geoffrey will appreciate this. I had a pretty strange dream this morning, in between smackings of the snooze alarm. I don't really remember how it started, but somehow I became aware that Julia Roberts was in a lot of trouble, and I was related to her closely enough that I would become aware of this soon after it happened. There was a flurry of people around her, and I was trying to ascertain the details of the situation. Finally I found out that she had killed someone, and that she entered her plea as guilty, but then changed it back later, and that caused a big stir because people thought better of her when she was admitting her own guilt. Everyone decided to hate her when she claimed her innocence. Somehow I went back in time in the dream to find out what actually happened. It turned out that she thought that she was being stalked by an Elvis impersonator (which, I was told in the dream, had just happened to her). When driving home late at night, she thought she saw someone walking towards her house and thought it was another stalker, got really scared, lost control of the car, and accidentally hit him. I talked to her and asked, did he really look like an Elvis impersonator? And she said, actually, no, he looked like that guy [pointing to Elvis Costello, who happened to be standing nearby]. It turned out also that after the body landed in her yard and had been lying there, the investigators were so disgusted with her actions that they dumped the dead body on her doorstep. I don't know what the resolution was in her trial, but they did let her out of confinement to go to her son's college graduation. The son kind of looked like the mean guy in That Thing You Do!. When she saw him and went up to hug him, I was standing behind her, but then assumed her body while she hugged him, for some reason. Then it was over.
???
i don't have three arms
So because of the lack of response to my millions of emails, I could not find any Hindi speakers for the experiment, and when I told this to my professor, he got all jazzed about a new project and now wants me to do that. He threw out the old project before I could finish telling him my troubles. But like half an hour ago, one of the people I emailed about participating in the Hindi experiment said he would be available to record tomorrow....so I asked my professsor about it and he told me to record him. Nevermind my own assignments to turn in before Spring Break or anything like that. Unlike Prathna, I am not Superman.
BUT I get to see the Klinton on Sunday!!! I miss him so much when I have so much stuff to do in my life.
By the way, my yoga teacher said that the recitation of "om" (or more traditionally, "aum") and its frequencies gave us all of the sounds and all of the languages of the world. I suppose you could stretch it to be partly true, that the primordial aum created all of the energy that is used and reused in speech, and it is supposed to have a low/back, middle, and front sound...but what about the fricatives and implosives? Another ling student friend of mine is the class with me and when the teacher said this I glanced over at my ling friend, knowingly.
I <3 phonetics!
Ugh
I have to take an online training course from the National Cancer Institute showing that I know how to conduct research ethically on subjects that I don't even have!!! My former phonetics professor and I have been trying to do a speech perception study on Hindi stops but that first requires Hindi speakers, which I cannot find. But at least I have this awesome training course to entertain me in the meantime...ooo...syphilis...
scent deja-vu
It always fascinates me how a simple scent can not only bring back memories connected to that scent, but almost transport my consciousness to a different time. I just used this fragrance that I received from my roommate in sophomore year, and the very second it reached my nose I was in my old house, looking at my old walls, hearing music that I played so often then, and I felt like my mind was a different one, for a few seconds...I felt like I had reassumed my brain from two years ago. For a few fleeting moments I was my younger self, in a calmer time, in her strange, disconnected world.
hy-po-chon-dria *bangs head*
Dear friends,
Please, all of you, comment and tell me that I am being a hypochondriac worrywart. Bird flu is starting to freak me out. I started reading the CDC website and I saw the word "pandemic" !!! and I thought, Oh dear God, it is like 1905, or whatever.
*going to wash hands now*
