General updateyness

I have been meaning to get to the office supply store for a few weeks, but hadn't actually gone until last night. Woohoo! Did I score a deal! I've had my eye on a 2 drawer lateral file cabinet. Last time I was in the store and looked at 'em, the ones I want were priced between $300 and $400. Last night I wandered back to the file cabinets just for fun and lo and behold, there was a nice one on clearance sale for $198! I got some assistance from a couple of the sales folks, who verified the price and looked up the availability. That display model was the last in stock, and it has a couple of scuff marks on it here and there, so the one guy said he'd knock 10% off the price. Way cool. Even cooler is that I had a coupon for $10 off of my purchase of $50 or more. That certainly qualified.

I also got 5 reams of copy paper, two different pads of graph paper (engineer's computation paper and buff-colored quad paper) and my favorite brand of mechanical pencils (Paper Mate Clear Point, 0.5mm.). Oh, and more ink for my printer. Ink is expensive! I spent over $50 on ink alone.

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I'm mad at rice. You see, I never really liked rice very much until a couple of years ago when I discovered Jasmine rice. That stuff actually tastes good! So recently I've been enjoying Jasmine rice. Silly me, I assumed rice had something going for it, like nutrients and stuff. I know it's a starch, but I thought it had a bit of protein, maybe some vitamins and/or minerals. I looked it up. Nuthin'. Not even dietary fiber! Just carbohydrate calories. Well shit!

I have also reduced my meat consumption. I now try to steer clear of mammals. Poultry, fish, eggs and dairy are still part of the diet. Along with chocolate, sugar, grains, etc. It would be nice if I actually liked vegetables. There are a few veggies I'll eat, but I really need to figure out how to eat more vegetables, and in a more healthy form than the carrots in that carrot cake I had for my birthday a couple of weeks ago.

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Sproing comes home on a weekend pass this weekend. I'll drive up to get him in a few hours. We take him back and have a family session with his therapist at 1:00 Sunday afternoon. He is doing very well. He'll probably come home to stay maybe next month or the month after.

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Diva had her first session with a new therapist Monday. We switched her to a new office, one that is part of the state mental health system. This will make it easier to coordinate her treatment. But what I came to tell you is that she and Superman met the therapist. Diva told the therapist that sometimes Herman tells her what to do. Sometimes Herman tells her to do things that she knows aren't right, but she does them because Herman says they are fun. She also said that not everyone can see Herman.

Superman was surprised. This is the first he's heard of Herman. I heard her refer to Herman a couple of weeks ago, but assumed he's some kind of imaginary friend. Which he probably is. I mentioned it to my therapist and she said the child is jerking everyone's chain. Whatever, and good for her. If this new therapist thinks the child has visual and auditory hallucinations, that will speed the process of placing her in an alternative environment. The child, though not schizophrenic, is crazy.

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I'm supposed to go to my Friday class in an hour, but I'm staying home. It's rainy, cold, and nasty out there. The class is supposed to hear reports from a few of its members about the places where they are volunteering. It's a "field placement" class, and I'm supposed to be spending 2-3 hours a week volunteering in some service organization. I haven't started yet. Though I talked to my therapist yesterday and she suggested a place that would be perfect for me. She's supposed to call there with a recommendation or something. I need to follow up on that, 'cause time's a wastin'.

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Took the first test in Death and Dying yesterday. I feel very good about it. I actually studied! Studied like I didn't for the Social Psych exam from last week. Oh, my therapist says I should drop the Social Psych class because Social Psychology is a bunch of made-up bullshit. I have challenged myself to bring up the grade, though. And the rest of the book looks more interesting than the first two chapters (intro and history), so maybe I can actually do this shit.

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My new lateral file cabinet is sitting in the middle of the foyer waiting for me to make room for it in my office. I have been meaning to rearrange this office for a couple of months, but now that I have the new file cabinet (and it locks!) I'm very motivated to do that. Which is why I'm ending this missive here, so I can do that very thing.

Quickly now

Off all the things I've lost, I miss blogging the most. 

Well, perhaps not. And I've not really lost it. I'm just so damned busy now! There is so much to read and remember. I'm having a blast, really. I enjoy the challenge of new ideas. We're two weeks into the semester and I don't think I have the time management figured out. Time management has been a weakness of mine forever. I always got poor marks in grade school on the category "Uses Time Wisely." Oy. 

But I miss spewing my guts here on this bloggie thing. And I'm visiting the odd blog here and there, now and again when I can sneak one in, but it isn't the same. Perhaps I can get my life organized a bit better and have more time to read the blogs. I miss each one of you, even the ones who won't see this post because they don't read my blog. 

So let me tell you what I did today. Well, there was that nap. It was lovely. I had to nap in order to have the energy to shop. There is lots of homework to do, some of which I have finished. But I have lots of reading yet to do. But I'm not telling you about that now. I'm telling you about what all I got today.

My student loan money came through and I finally got my share. The lender sends the money to the school. The school takes what it needs for tuition and fees and such then cuts a check to the student (me, in this case) for the remaining balance. I picked up my check late last week, and deposited it in the bank Friday. I've been waiting for it 'cause I need some stuff. 

This afternoon I went out to get some stuff. I got a new printer, an HP Photosmart printer-scanner-copier. I paid less than the price posted in that link there, too. We've had an HP printer for a while. It's at least 11 years old. It was a gift from my step-mother when Sproing joined our family. He had his 11th birthday yesterday. Happy Birthday Sproing! The old printer we have is slow and sometimes doesn't like to talk to the computer, but it still works. This new one is superfancy. Of course I'm comparing it to an 11 year old model, so it looks great by comparison. It's a wireless printer. Superman got it all set up for me, and now I can click the print icon on my documents and ta-da! The printer spits our my page. This is gonna make my life so much easier. I can't connect to the old printer from my laptop. My laptop has MS Word 2007, while our old desktop has Word '03. In order to print anything I had to convert my documents into the '03 compatibility mode, copy them to my flash drive, upload them onto the old desktop, then print from there. This is SO much easier. 

I got a new portable hard drive to use for backing up my laptop. I haven't been able to back up my laptop since we got it. I tried using the CDs but I couldn't get that to work any time I tried. Now I've got a 250 GB portable hard drive. It wasn't nearly as simple to install as the printer. But whatever. I hope I did it right. I'm gonna start a back up here in a few minutes. 

Speaking of gigabytes, I finally bought myself one of those micro mini chip card thingies that go in phones. There's a port for that micro card in my little MP3 player. The store had those things on sale. I got 4 Gigs of storage on this teenie tinie little card no bigger than my thumbnail, and I paid $13 for it. I tell ya', they're giving away gigs these days. It boggles this old lady's mind. It's more samer than magic, y'all. 

I got myself a nice desk chair, too. I've been sitting in a hard wooden straight chair, the kind you find with dining tables. It's a nice chair as far as that goes, but it isn't good to sit in for long periods of time. It's also too high for my desk, and I've been very uncomfortable sitting at my desk to do my homework. Today I got a comfy chair with a mesh back so my back can breathe and won't overheat in the summer. It has adjustable height arm rests, swivels all the way around, and the seat height is adjustable too. You know, like a real office chair. That hopefully will make it a bit more comfortable to sit and do my homework. 

I bought 4 pairs of scissors. Scissors disappear from this house almost as fast as pens and pencils do. It's very frustrating. I got a cheap 3 pack of red handled all purpose scissors. I got these out of the package and walked around the house showing them to everyone. "See these scissors? They have a red handle. Watch as I put them in this drawer. These are scissors you may use, and please put them back when you are finished with them." (they won't put the scissors back, I promise you) 

The other scissors I got are much nicer. They're titanium coated and have the comfort grip plastic handles. The handles are gray. I paraded those scissors around the house, showing them to all and sundry. "See these scissors? Notice that the handle is NOT red. That means you may NOT use these scissors. Does anyone have any questions about this? These are MOMMY'S scissors. Very bad things will happen to you if you use Mommy's scissors." It may or may not help, but it certainly can't hurt. 

Ok, I've got a short story to read, and at least one chapter in my developmental psych book that I should skim if not read, and it's getting late. So cheers to one and all; I'm going to study.