Only in Oregon

My Macintosh Computer is faster, easier to use, more intuitive, better-organized, has fewer bugs, is harder to screw up by mistake, never had a blue screen of death, has cleaner graphics, windows is based off the operating system of a mac, and on and on. I love my mac. Wouldn't trade it for the world, and I am very familiar with IBM computers. Currently, it's also my sound system, my education system, my social system (via the internet), and a piece of art.

And yet, for my schooling, I have had to switch between three THREE browsers in order to be able to access the buttons on the blackboard program over the last three semesters... because I use a Mac. And now? The only browser that currently works can't find its server. At all.

Folks, this is FINALS WEEK. In fact, I have today to write a major final paper, and tomorrow to write the last one of the semester. And I have an all-day class through my local community college on Saturday, visit my folks Sunday, and have my first day at my new internship for library world on Monday. This is a BAD TIME for my browser connection not to work.

(Update: It's not the browser-- it's the TWU server. No server. No TWU access. No library link. No paper. NOOOOOooooo....)

Not only that, but the LJ blog I'm contributing to just went live today-- YAY-- and I can't type in my own blog entries... because I have a Mac. Not the fault of LJ at all-- in fact, they've been working tirelessly to get a patch to this problem because I'm not their only mac-using contributor. And today? I can't even login to the blog tool for LJ. Great. I was going to use that money to finally get new contacts and maybe a long-overdue dental cleaning. I need my teeth.

I'm just getting fed up.

Beyond that-- this week I nannied Tuesday AND Wednesday-- two 10-hour days in a row, with a total of 4 hours of driving between work and home. And know what? Little 6 month old E. is sick with the same head cold that 2-year-old N. gave me last week. I'm not quite over it yet, and starting to wonder about things like "how expensive is ear infection medicine if you don't have health care?"

And N.? He's two. And the tantrums have started. Oh, yes. Let me tell you, he has LUNGS. On Tuesday the one that sticks out in my mind (over all the other ones) is the one where I gave him a special treat of 3 craisins (forbidden after breakfast)-- which he happily mixed into his yogurt (also a special treat-- because he finished his veggies at lunch). Then he ate the three bites of yogurt with craisins in it, and demanded more craisins. No dice. Sorry. Lucky you to get yogurt, though! ...

AAAAAAAHHHHHHHH (with a little whining at the start and end, and a lot of big tears). "Yogurt is a special treat, N. So you can stop whining and enjoy the rest of your yogurt, or you can go have a time out to calm down." He picked time out. PICKED IT OVER YOGURT. So he got to sit in his "time out chair" until he calmed down. Which was a loud process, and took a while. I spent the time cleaning up lunch. With a six-month old, that can take a while, too. N. came back to the table. Where was the yogurt?? Oh- well, you didn't want it anymore, so I put the rest of it in the garbage. That's what happens when you don't want something-- it goes away.

.... AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH..... It was a long day. That was Tuesday.

Wednesday? Yeah. Wednesday, he was really REALLY jealous of "all the attention" his little sister was getting-- the sick 6-month-old. Who just crawled for the first time, getting a black eye in the process, and has really not complained much at all about the nasty head cold she has and only gets held when we feed her a bottle now because of N.'s jealousy issues. And she just deals with it, with a smile for any attention she does get. He spent most of the day trying to act like a baby and taking toys away from E. and taking great joy in telling her NO WHINING, E.! over and over again. She was very confused. She hadn't been whining.

Luckily, this was also Wednesday. I love cats.

This is John Henry. He's the one who is bigger than the soccer ball. His brother, Scooter, is the one whose butt was the same height as the dining chairs. My hands did eventually get washed, by the way. (I have time to tell you all this and download these great photos because the TWU server is still down. I checked.)

So now I need to get online-- into the TWU online library databases and find myself 15-20 citations of recent Library Literature-- scholarly articles about library stuff, usually written by librarians, and published in library magazines-- that support my project proposal for my local public library-- which proposal was unknowingly dictated by a series of weekly projects about different facets of a professional project proposal over the course of the semester. We couldn't rewrite one of the facets for the proposal we've now decided on-- no. We had to pick five of the existing short papers we already wrote (out of about twelve), and explain why each was relevant to the project we were doing. So I'm not doing the project I'd like to do today-- one that would be easy to find Library Lit about. No. I'm doing the only topic I actually wrote a full five short papers about (or almost about).

And I can't access the online TWU library databases because the only internet access thingy that currently works with TWU's system (yeah- they don't tell you when they switch which program they are supporting, either-- that was a fun two weeks earlier this semester!-- HELP MY BUTTONS ARE DISAPPEARING... what? Use Safari? Last semester you told me to throw Safari out because you only supported Firefox for mac-users. The semester before that, all I could use was IE. You're sure? And you say it's ALWAYS been Safari?...right...) CAN'T FIND ITS SERVER.

...sigh...

Well, I feel better. There is something about just COMPLAINING without having someone try to tell you how to fix your problem that really helps it be a problem you can go back and deal with for a bit longer. I mean, really. Just getting acknowledgment that the situation sux-- it DOES suck. But that doesn't mean I don't know how to make it work anyway. And with that in mind, I'm going back online (safari doesn't support google, so I can't enter my blogs in that program...) to see if Safari is back on line yet. So I can finish my paper. So I can pass the class. And start writing the next paper.

Did I tell you about driving home from work last night? (a much happier topic than my final papers, so let's ruminate here for a bit) It was classic Oregon weather. I mean-- yeah, the Northwest is known for it's Rain etc... but each State (I've lived in them all, including some quality time in the State of Insanity) has its own flavor. And you dress a little differently for each one. In California, you bring a sweater just in case it gets cold, or if you are in a really air conditioned building. In Washington, you have an umbrella, and you bring your close-toed shoes to cross the parking lot to your car after work.

But in Oregon... so there I was, driving home from 10 hours of screaming high maintenance with about five different colors of body fluid and baby food on my shirt... The sun was out, but the wind was up. I got blown around on the road a bit. Then it started to rain. Then I had to switch the wipers to DOUBLE-HEAVY-DUTY so I could sorta see the tail lights of the car in front of me through the groundswell and the rain. Then the sun came out, and there was a gorgeous double rainbow. Which I took pictures of through my windshield. As I drove, the end of the rainbow came to rest on the hood of my car. It was magickal. Then it started hailing. Not quite the size of marbles. The sound inside my car was deafening. There in rush-hour traffic on a main highway... and the rain mixed in with the hail, and some of it hit the windshield more like snow... and then it was the HEAVY RAIN again, and then the sun came out for a while longer. After that, it was mostly wind and drizzle. Wow. I felt like I'd gone through a thorough cleansing and rebirth. The whole thing was beautiful. Happy May! And really... what good would an umbrella have done in THAT?

So, yeah. In Oregon, you layer. This is what we do every day, because who KNOWS what the weather will bring. A t-shirt in case it warms up or your car sits in the sun all day and gets HOT. A sweatshirt because it's going to be cold in the morning and cold once the sun goes back down, and cold if some fool has switched on the A/C already this year in some of the buildings. You bring a change of socks because it doesn't matter what kind of shoes you are wearing, your feet will get soaked. You bring an umbrella if you are trying to preserve makeup and a delicate hair-do. You bring a gortex raincoat if you're a real Oregonian, and you forget to put the hood up unless it's REALLY RAINING. Those zip-off pants were made for Oregonians. They save us having to find a bush to change our pants behind when it gets HOT, or COLD-- as it does frequently throughout the day here, most of the time. Of course, if you go that way, you might have to shave off that warm winter layer of leg hair... at least below the knee...

Have I ever told you about the two weeks my senior year of high school-- and all the things that kept us going home early and getting days off? Two weeks-- I kid you not-- we got out of school for high winds, flooding, snow, someone set fire to the school- twice- AND there were a couple of days where temperatures hit 80* in those weeks, too. Only in Oregon.

Okay. Time to stop procrastinating and go write papers and things. Maybe my new Legally Blonde CD will help... Nothing like a little Girl Power to get your mojo going. Especially when what I really want is a nice nap to the sound of the rain... or in the warm sun from my window... or most probably- both. Photos of said double rainbow through windshield will be forthcoming. Not sure how the ones I tried to take of the hail turned out, though...

Here's the double rainbow-- the "shadow" one is to the left of the primary. They are both amazing works of art. No, the TWU website is not up yet. So I'm playing with pictures. I might even get a shower in today if this keeps up! Wow.

The other half of the rainbow, on the way past.

Self-entertainment, thy name is "Librarian."

By the way, my mystery plant-- the one from this winter that Abbigale didn't manage to eat before I transplanted it outside (in the middle of winter)-- it is definitely a sweet pea vine. The evidence was delicious.