Well, finally some good news from my side of the fence. I'm feeling better and things are going a little better. I am still majorly stressed about a lot of stuff, especially money, but I am just pushing through.

I survived my first menstrual cycle at work (I suffer from dysmenorrhea) and this weekend, I worked through my first migraine. I'm feeling good about my job, and am not stressing so much about it, at least, and they seem to be happy with me.

I was talking about cutting back to four days a week so that I can tak a Monday class that is only offered every few years, but it doesn't look like it is going to happen. Actually, I am not sure what is going to happen on the school front at all. I have two courses left that are year long (two semesters), my anatomy course and my physics course. Physics is offered all of the time, but the anatomy course is only first class fall, second class spring, because as an upper-level biology course a lot less people take it. I was told by my advisor that if I only took one course that should be it. Other than calculus and physics, neither of which I am prepared to tackle this semester, all I have left are my senior hours. The thing is I don't know what I am going to be able to afford. I really need an infusion of cash (as usual). I may have just take my immunology lab or phys ed course, because I am determined to enroll. (It is frustrating to have my first degree so close, and possibly attainable, after all this time, but not quite close enough.)

It might make sense time-wise, too. As much as I hate to admit it, I am swamped working full-time and trying to take care of everything right now. Second shift kind of eats away at your schedule. I am barely finding time to wite or answer e-mails, which is complicated by the fact that I haven't been able to afford to get internet (or phone) installed at my new place yet. //I am also currently extremely irritated/frustrated by the fact that I just paid a rental payment on an 18-month contract and Circuit City has a practically identical laptop on sale this week for less than 2 1/2 of my monthly payments and I can't afford it.// However, I am keeping up with the feedback for Heliopolis and am happy to say that it is starting to come together and be finctional. I am looking forward to having cable internet at home so that I can work intensively on upgrading/debugging the code.

Thanks to everyone who has kept me in your thoughts and prayers, things are starting to turn around, and I am doing better for it.

shamelessly imitating arrietty, my personal icon colorbar:

Who else is love?

pseudomonas me scripsit anno 2005

It's pretty, and it suits me. I like it.

I'm a bit bored at the moment. I'm at the college right now, while my husband works his three-hour shift. I brought my laptop, because I really need to do some downloads (such as copies of my personal website, etc. but the I can't connect to the network, so I am killing time on one of the little slave models they have here. I amy go write instead. I don't have anything else to do, if I can't work.

The ebay stuff is going ok. My hermit crab supplies are selling much better than I thought they would. Comic books are a bust with 0 bids and less than 10 hours to go. No one is even looking at them. I can't find the big box of fannish stuff (Xena Comics, Buffy Comics, Angel Action figure, other stuff) that I put aside especially for ebay, so that sucks. I need to sort through my various thousands of CCG/TCG cards and put a few boxes of them up. (If anyone plays Buffy, X-Files, Hercules/Xena, or Harry Potter Collectible (Trading) Card Games (or wants to, because I have enough to set up multiple players) let me know.)

I am contemplating trying to see if I can make a good enough go at the ebay stuff to equivolate a part time job. I have the inventory of a small Hermit Crab Supply shop, and tons of new/used baby stuff (not a big seller so far), fannish stuff (even worse). Wish me luck. If it works out, it is something that I can do while working around my disability, without the stress of trying to hold down an actual job, and still bring in the extra money needed to find somewhere decent to live.

On an unrelated note: Does anyone know a good treatment for heat rash? My extremely sensitive skin is even more problematic than usual with my diabetes, and the lack of air conditioning (and an Arkansas summer) has led to patches of heat rash all over my body, including the backs of my hands. It's probably not very noticible, but it is very uncomfortable.

Well, I sort of have a new computer. I ended up doing something I very much didn't want to and couldn't afford to do. I went to the local Rent to Own place and got a new Dell laptop from them. The good news is that it seems to be working pretty well, and they are good about fixing or replacing it while it is under contract. The very bad news is that it wasn't cheap to begin with and by the end of the contract (over a year), I will end up paying twice that amount, as is the nature of these places. The weekly payments aren't cheap either and we're already about $500 or so behind on our bills with my husband not working much. He has picked up a few hours, since he mentioned to his boss that he was applying for factory work for the summer, she has managed to find him just enough part time work to keep him from going elsewhere, but not enough to be much more than his unemployment after transportation and taxes.

I couldn't be without a computer though. This thing is vitally important to me. Probably too much so, but I do bring in a little extra money using ebay or by designing websites for other people. By the way, if anyone is looking to have a fan website or domain hosted or designed, I do rehosting for other people, and if you pay by the end of the month, I'll give you a discount on a year's worth of hosting, or on a design quote.

If I can get them all together in the next few days, I'll put a list of ebay auctions for fan items up here to let you know where to find them, if you are interested.

As soon as I download some screencaps and visit some of the journals listed in my resource post to replace my textures and such, I'll be making some Torchwood and some Supernatural icons. I'm thinking about doing some quote/text ones after that, and was wondering if anyone was interested.

Poll #1007263 Text Quote Icons Requests
Open to: All, results viewable to: All

Which Fandom Would You Like Quote Icons For?

I've been hard at work on Heliopolis and suddenly my harddrive died. Not the enclosure or the power source, the harddrive itself crashed, all 250 GB worth.

Everything was on there - All of my websites, my writings, 4200+ mp3 files, every image and screencap and texture and icon. I can't even begin to describe how bad it is and how sick I feel because of it.

Luckily, I didn't erase all of the story files from the Helio server, so I can redownload them and start that part of the process over, but it's days, weeks, worth of work gone. I am more worked up about everything else - everything gone.

I used it as my back up - literally, I had a folder named backup with a section for programs, e-mail, graphics settings, etc. My relatively new computer has no capacity for writing cds or dvds. The newest cd backup that I have are from 04 Jan 06 - 18 months ago.

Oh, God. I am so very, very, very, very screwed.

My computer is messing up and I don't know why. It's acting like it has a virus. It's moving very, very slow, and CPU usage is at 100%, even when I shut most of my programs down. McAfee says the computer is clean, and I've run AdAware 4 times. Help?

(After I used Adaware last night, it was running fine when I first got on-line this am. I think it's e-mail related. Yesterday and today, I had a large e-mail which wouldn't download, timing out the server. I went to my webmail and deleted it from there, unread. Both days, my problems seem to occur just after. I think the attachment is getting caught up in McAfee, and not downloading, but something is onviously getting through that McAfee doesn't recognize.)