Jacquelyn's Space

1000 word bad day…

Ugh! As it often happens good is balanced by bad, ying and yang and all that jazz.

Today was a bad day. OK, perhaps I exaggerate. It was not necessarily a bad day but OH so frustrating and also a technologically challenged day… and I am up too damn late!!

I didn’t get good sleep – kept tossing and turning. I couldn’t get comfortable I guess – my damn hips hurt. Too heavy I think.

I get up in the morning and have to get started on homework, all the shite I didn’t get done yesterday. I have administrative stuff to get done for my Research class that was getting in the way of what I really needed to do which is write an essay draft (of at least 1000 words) for my Advanced Composition class, which in turn was getting in the way of what I really wanted to which is eat, drink, blog and basically just fool around and relax. So UGH!

Needless to say I had a frustrating morning struggling with tedious details and not finding the right research articles for my research projects. Damn research article! Damn researchers can’t write a simple one to save their lives, always have to be junking it up with too many concepts. I was looking for some simple sex addiction articles but no, couldn’t find any simple, free ones.

I did not have time to even get to my essay draft so I decided to ‘re-gift’ one I had started last semester but never finished. Well I had that in the back of mind since I found out about this assignment, “I wonder if I can retool my essay ‘What Every Stepmom Wishes Every Biomom Knew’ for this assignment?” I got that essay out, which is way over 1000 words, packed dense with ideas (7 points I want to make, 2 of which I haven’t even had a chance to write on yet let alone an opening and closing statement) and not even finished yet and took that into class with me.

Went to class – it was annoying because it was peer review. The prof wanted to talk all about how to do a proper peer review and place unnatural restrictions on us, like we can’t talk to the author as we review their piece. Why not just have peer review online then? I think I’ll suggest that on her (prof’s) evaluation.

Did I mention I hate peer reviews? I was feeling cantankerous earlier today due to my frustrations and just writing about it is bringing it all back but yes, I hate peer reviews, and yes I am being overly cantankerous about the whole thing. For one thing, many of my classmates cannot understand where I am writing from and aren’t mature enough, or open enough, to comment on MY material. Ha (I don’t take myself too seriously). Then I get stuck (we were grouped in fours) with 2 guys (I hate reading my stuff or writing for men/boys/whatever, and some off the cuff observations – one seemed  ‘alternative’ in a trendy loner sense and the other seemed inflexibly Star Trekkie nerdy) and a skinny young too tan miss and I am like “UGH” yet again. ‘You mean I gotta’ read my long ass paper to these MFers?’ But I take a deep breath and resolve to abide.

I needn’t have worried about having to read my paper much. I was the last to read, and because the prof talked for so long at the start of class, I was only able to read like one page (but it was single spaced as opposed to double) and it was time to go. On a positive note, my group seemed to like my paper and value what I had to say and their suggestions were right along with what I was thinking – I could cut my draft up into several essays and still have enough material for the assignment.

I really like their stuff too. They weren’t so bad after all but I will have at least 3 more chances to make my final determination on that.

I had to hurry and leave school to go pick up my stepson. Truthfully I really didn’t want to today because he is sick and I don’t want to get sick. I would have loved it if he would have kept that shite at his mom’s house – I don’t need to be sick. I hope he gets his ass to the doctor’s soon. If not for the current illness, for another reason I will expound on in another blog entry I intend to title “Lackadaisical and Nonchalant Parenting” in the near future.

So I picked him up, drive home and begin work on more administrative stuff for my Research class, emails and discussion board postings. I also begin installing software on my computers, in an effort to make my life easier. Well the computers had other ideas. That is where the technologically challenging part of my day comes in. My laptop didn’t have enough room for the new software – too much music on it. My desktop kept giving me an error code because of Windows. My husband is bitchin’ about his laptop being slow. Finally I got the new software installed on something. Whew!

I bought the software by Dragon, Naturally Speaking. I just speak and it types what I say. I am hoping that it will help me be more productive. I want to write more, haha. Makes no sense because I will be speaking, but I suppose it will come in handy for note taking, especially when I an trying to breakdown complicated research articles. I also suspect it will come in handy when I just want to free flow vent-a-blog, or journal the events of the day. Maybe I can actually work on 2 papers at once (haha, I must be manic to be thinking this) I tried it out, it really works and is way cool.

HA, so that was my day. Another long day. Stayed up too late, hell to pay tomorrow (today actually) when I am dragging ass.

Well look at that, this blog is a smyte over 1000 words.