I found my camera cord!

I feel Halloween-y.

I got my leave approved! “They” say that my missing three days might push my qualification date from mid-December to mid-January, but whatever. Even if I thought that were true (which I do not, it’s absurd), Halloween in Las Cruces is worth the pain and horror of catching back up to “let’s get qualified” speed after Christmas break.

It’s been blustery here. Pretty-colored leaves are blowing around, and they even make it as high up as my sixth-floor windows (awesome), and the outsides have that nice soggy-leaves smell, and Seattle has such beautiful fall colors, and they last for SO LONG, and thanks to my wonderful Grandmomma, I have gingerbread cookies that turn my mouth Halloween colors. Yay.

Last night I caught the ferry to go visit my (poor, overworked) boyfriend to order pizza and carve pumpkins. It was just getting dark on the ferry ride, and by the time I was getting close to Bremerton the sky was only a little lighter than the shadowy trees on the islands, and you could just see them going by. In anticipation of going home next week, I’ve been listening to my sun-shiney, happy “New Mexico” playlist, which is a little ELO-heavy, and while I was pondering the creepy skyline outside the ferry, “Strange Magic” very appropriately started playing. The (few) lights on the shore were reflected on the glass, and the ones from the other side of the boat doubled themselves and started bobbing around as the ferry rocked, opposite to the motion of my side of the boat. It was cool.

Then there was this black flying thing… most likely a seagull, but it was dark and silhouetted, so who’s to say it wasn’t a giant vampire bat? Not me. It was flying right near the skyline, so at first you think the creepy trees are flapping, and then you realize that it’s an animal, but you can only see it a little bit, and then not at all–but you know that whether you can see it or not, the vampire seagull is still out there. Then the ferry turns you toward the moon, and it’s all hazy and silvery and slivery and shivery and halloween-y.

Pumpkin-carving was so much fun! I took pictures of course, but I can’t find my camera cord. It’s not in my “computer stuff” drawer, but I DO have like six hundred water balloons in there… weird. We named our pumpkin Fred, and we tried to make him mean-looking, but he still came out a little jolly. His teeth say “BOO.” Oh yeah.

At one point Kevin decided that Fred’s smile wasn’t big enough on the right side (Fred’s right), so he started sawing away, and I BARELY saved the day and talked him out of it. Fred’s teeth almost said “8OO,” which doesn’t make sense.

This morning my (poor, overworked) boyfriend dropped me off at the ferry on his way to work. Almost to Seattle, I was still walking around looking for a warm spot (by the way, what’s up with that, Washington State Ferries? Why do people in the Northwest hate being warm?), and that’s when I saw that Seattle and the bay all the way up to Alki point was covered in really thick gray fog… Seattle only has like twelve buildings tall enough to stick out over the fog, but all the other buildings were completely invisible. The fog, the city, and the light grayish-purple sky overhead looked really cool and creepy, and we were headed straight for the mysterious cloud.

That’s also when “Strange Magic” started playing on my ipod again. I love when that happens.

I will be home in FOUR DAYS!

I want to go home.

Here’s a quick breakdown of how It works:

I work for the shipyard. The shipyard works for the Navy. If I want to be part of the shipyard that works for the Navy, I have to impress the Navy. Before the shipyard will let me try to impress the Navy, I have to REALLY impress the shipyard.

I took the Navy’s test (the NAVSEA test) on Friday. Before the shipyard will let me take the NAVSEA, I have to pass the shipyard final, which is way harder and takes about seven months of studying all day. I only got paid for forty hours a week, but that’s over now. I took that one last Thursday.

The shipyard final was a nightmare. Worst test I’ve ever taken, and I’ve taken some really bad ones. I’ve discussed this with several people now, and we agree that the shipyard final is like the Fundamentals of Engineering Exam, only all the material you learned to prepare for the test (from four years of college) is crammed into seven months, and they don’t give you that appendix with the formulas and tables… you have to memorize it.

After eight straight hours of writing, I finally finished(ish) my test, handed it in, and called my dad and cried. I was so sure I failed. Honestly, I WOULD have failed if they’d graded it as harshly as they usually do. I was really borderline in three (out of five) sections.

The NAVSEA is a little easier, but it’s still a 7.5 hour test, so it wasn’t a piece of cake or anything. The muscles in my arm still feel awful. People keep saying, “It’s all downhill from here,” but downhill from, like, Mt. Fuji still takes a lot of work, and it’s still a big difference from some Pacific beach somewhere…

Here’s the point: I’ve been getting through the past several weeks by thinking, “Only a few more weeks to go, then things will be easy,” but instead, I not only have ANOTHER test on Friday (it should only take like an hour and a half, but still! This is a great example of how “downhill” is still a lot more test taking than the break I was hoping for), but I’m also having trouble getting my leave approved for Halloween next week. Big shocker, because I really thought that all my days of “If you miss a day you’re in big trouble and will fall behind and will have to work super-hard for the same amount of money even though we DID charge you for the days you weren’t here” were behind me.

I haven’t been home since March. That was seven months and two weeks ago. I haven’t seen my dad or my grandparents or my aunt and uncle or my two baby cousins (seven months is a big deal for a baby!) for ages, not to mention my dog or decent food or just the fact that it’s MY HOME. The last time I was away for this long was when I moved here, and that was only four months. When I turned in my leave chit they asked me, “Wait now… WHAT is this for?”

Are you serious? I need a break. I need to see my family. I’ve been working tons of unpaid overtime and I’m exhausted.

NOT TO MENTION that I told them about this in January. It’s Halloween. It’s like Christmas. I go home and paint gravestones and castles for a couple days to make up for the fact that I live on the other side of the country from my family and couldn’t be helping the entire time. It’s so much fun and I feel awful when I miss it. They ask, “So this is important?”

I really feel weird about explaining how important something may or may not be, because bottom line: I haven’t seen my dad in seven and a half months. Because they’ve been making me work too hard.

I just get the feeling that this is a precursor for how the job is going to be the rest of the time I’m there: more important than me or my family. I don’t like this.

Widsom.

I’ve just decided that today is Monday. I had to really think about whether that was true, since working the weekend has me all screwed up calendar-wise. Yes, today is Monday, and Thursday is my first of two big written exams, so that means I “get” two more days to study for it! Cowabunga, awesome math skills!

On the other hand, there is no way I’ll ever, ever, ever know everything I need for this test. When I say “big,” I mean I’ve been learning a ton of new material every week for the last 6.5 months, and this test covers everything. I’d settle for just studying everything on the little schedule I wrote out, but I’m slowly realizing that’s not going to happen either, so now I’ve got to guess the least-important thing and cross it off.

I shouldn’t complain. This morning I wasn’t even sure I was going to take a test this week, and putting it off ANY longer (okay, well, maybe any longer than one day, which I could really use to go over all my fluid system drawings) would just destroy me. The thought of prolonging this horrible process actually motivates me to work harder. For free. Ug.

However, I had a toothache all weekend, which is not normal.

I figured it was from eating popcorn for lunch, so I flossed extra-well Friday night. Saturday it was worse, so I tried again. Sunday someone asked me, “Where does it hurt? Up where your wisdom teeth used to be?”

Oh. Wisdom teeth.

My sister had a bad toothache around Easter. She went to the dentist and they told her, “You’re having surgery on your wisdom teeth, TODAY.” It seems like most wisdom-teeth adventures put people down for three days, and she was definitely dysfunctional (and swollen, and probably heavily medicated) for a while.

Well, I definitely can’t afford to be down for three days. I can’t afford for anyone to tell me, “you’re having surgery today,” for at least two more weeks. So I went to the dentist this morning (and lost five hours of study time that I really could have used to review my electrical diagrams), and the whole way there, I was thinking about what to say if this was actually a surgery-emergency, what the doctor would say if I asked him how long I could wait before my mouth is seriously damaged, and whether it would be worse to take my test in pain and  on soft foods and heavy drugs, or in pain and having my mouth torn apart by my own teeth.

I also wondered at what point my health and comfort slipped under this stupid test on my priority list. I think that was sometime last week. Curses curses curses. I hate my life.

Here is the deal: apparently my lower-left wisdom tooth wisely decided to get its roots into a nerve running down my jaw. Like a jellyfish! Okay, not really, but that’s what the x-ray looks like. Also, when did dentist x-rays get so PAINFUL? I seem to remember that they used to be a snap—what’s up with that? Anyway, I irritated the tooth somehow, THROUGH the gums (maybe by eating popcorn?), and in turn, my tooth irritated my nerve. Brushing and flossing it actually made it a lot worse. Go figure.

The good news is that I don’t need surgery this week (or next week!). The bad news is that my wisdom tooth has a death-grip on a nerve, and I can tell you it’s a painful one. Other bad news: apparently I can’t eat popcorn. Also, the dentist said, “the tooth has not erupted yet, but it will soon erupt.” I wonder if “erupt” is common dentist wisdom-tooth lingo. It’s a very descriptive word.

My directions were to STOP brushing and flossing that area (how often does your dentist tell you that? Ew…) and to find a good oral surgeon.  :(

So I guess me and my test are safe for now.

Almost every time I’ve typed “wisdom” tonight, it comes out “widsom” instead. What is wrong with me?!?

Hello, friends!

I know, I know…. I’m a terrible blagger.

It’s work. It’s work, halfway because I’ve been so busy and exhausted that I never get around to typing things, and halfway because all I have to talk about is work, and that makes a stressful post for me to write and a boring post for you to read. However, something happened at work this week that made today’s post possible.

I had a big test on Friday (I think I passed). On Wednesday, I was sitting up in my room studying, stressing out, and thinking, “Only two and a half more weeks of tests. Just be hardcore for two and a half more weeks, and then this can all be over.” Then my course manager came in, followed by my two other classmates, and he said, “The final exams are getting pushed back a week, because we have more material for you to learn!” My classmates thought this was great news.

But my countdown went from two and a half weeks to three and a half weeks. That’s like a forty percent increase. (I think it’s EXACTLY a forty percent increase, but who works these things out? Not me. I cherish my time that I don’t have to do math in my head.) And I had been pretty stoked last week when I thought I was FINALLY at the end of the new material… and the lectures… I do hate the lectures.

This new schedule also ruins the celebratory nature of my planned trip to the premier of Zombieland next Friday. Now it won’t be an “I’m done with the shipyard final!” party, and I’ll probably have to go to work the next day. Why does work have to mess with my zombie movies? That’s low.

On the other hand, it means I don’t have a test next week (first time in six months!), which means I’m SURE not going in to study this weekend. So here I am, second day off in a row, and I almost don’t know what to do with myself. Hel-lo, blag!

Last week I bought two ornamental pepper plants at the store! One is red and purple, the other is orange and yellow, and both are beautiful. I think maybe they will inspire the tiny tomatoes on my cherry tomato plant to turn red. All my plants are doing really well, especially my enormous basil plant, and my big leafy red-and-green plant, and I have this other shrub-type that’s getting white flowers! And the ivy is going crazy. I think even my poor lavender plant is going to be okay!

I’ve been going fishing with my boyfriend. We haven’t caught anything, which is ridiculous, because there are tons of huge salmon in this steam that are just SO BORED with fishing lures and totally not hungry, but it’s nice being by the river, especially since the weather gods have seemed to favor the weekends lately, which is fine with me. Am I getting used to Seattle weather? No, no, no, that can’t be it.

I’m reading Salem’s Lot. It’s so creepy! I love it. I’m sorry, but Steven King is way awesomer than H.P. Lovecraft.

I’M GOING HOME FOR HALLOWEEN! I could just cry about this. My dear little brother Andy came to visit me this summer, and since he’s such a lovely lad, he brought me a lot of frozen chile rellenos, and well… things that have been fried in fat should just not be frozen. But he’s such a sweetheart to try.

Maybe, in three weeks, when I don’t have any more written exams to take, I’ll be able to write more. But this doesn’t mean I haven’t been thinking about you! I took pictures of my apartment and my view (and my plants!) to post, so you guys can see what I see, and it’ll happen. It will happen! And I’ll be October soon, so I want a trip to the pumpkin patch! And I’m starting a belly dancing class soon, too!

I’ll be better about this.

Aloha everybody.

Well…. I just wrote this great heartfelt post from me in Maui to you in your favorite computer viewing seat, but, like everything else today, that didn’t really work out the way I expected. I know what “you have one minute of paid internet access remaining” means. What I DIDN’T know was that it also meant “this will disable the copy/paste function,” so… now those words are gone forever.

So my last post was kind of negative, and I’m trying to put a positive spin on this one. So, positives (until I run out of time again):

1. I’m in Maui.

2. The airport security officers are very nice and even chatty, especially considering they are only still here at one in the morning because my flight got delayed seven hours.

3. I’ve been reminded once again why, even if you have a pressing reason to stay outside, you should keep re-applying sunscreen every two hours. (Trust me, I SO know this one. The reason was just quite pressing.)

4. I’ve got a great excuse to go shopping for another pair of glasses.

5. I had foresight enough to pack two pairs of glasses, just in case I lost one in the waves just like I did LAST YEAR in O’ahu.

6. Oh neat! It’s raining. Seriously, that’s kinda cool.

I have 49 seconds left. We’ll talk more later.

Eventful Evening

I don’t know about you, but it’s not every day I see my ex-boyfriend grab a pretty girl with red hair down to her waist and REALLY cute clothes and start hugging and smooching her right in front of me. And he got her a chair! And he made her a drink! (!!!) Obviously, that’s his new girlfriend. But instead of introducing her (or, what would have been better, giving me a heads-up that he was dating somebody who I would meet later today), he just let me put the peices together for myself.

Also awesome: I had no idea that I was going to a party this evening; I thought I was just rolling out of bed and going in for some Sunday work (I seriously was THIS CLOSE to wearing track pants today, because who’s going to see me? No one but my trusty ol’ study buddy Kevin, and definitly not all my old friends from the Nevada, including a once-boyfriend AND HIS NEW GIRL!!!), so I looked like a dork. Neon jacket, beatles hat, jeans with holes in the non-cute places (ripped ‘em myself– not as cool as buying them that way).

So, since he and I are supposed to be friends now (and I know what you’re thinking, but it was HIS idea to be friends, and it’s been working out fine until now), I guess I’m happy for him. She seems cool; I can see why he likes her. But as a friend, should I feel obligated to stop him when he’s making a drunken ass of himself?

If your friend were standing out in the yard singing a really BAD version of "don’t stop believin’" at the top of his loud lungs… in the rain… without shoes, hat, or jacket… and he fully believed that he was really entertaining people and that they were hanging on every word, what would you do?

I’ll tell you what I’d do… go out in the rain, WITH my shoes, hat, and jacket, make a pretend microphone out of some cups and sing along with him. Lessen the embarrassment by sharing the burden. That’s what a good friend does in this situation, right?

WRONG! Because what good friend (me) doesn’t know is that her good friend (him) has a new girlfriend at the party, and so he probably shouldn’t be singing in the rain with some other girl. So he left me there (ouch) and ran over and gave miss newby nose-peircing a kiss. WHOA.

Had I known that the new girlfriend was there, probably the right thing to do, as a friend, would be to pay one of the other boys to go tackle him and stop that unfortunate song. After the initial shock wore off, I pondered that "should I stop him" question several times during the night.

(Stop reading if you have a weak stomach. I’m serious. He was really dumb tonight.)

If you think about it, it’s really not that surprising that a bunch of dudes who have been working graveyard shift for 22 days decide to spend their first day off roasting a pig on a spit in the backyard. Okay, maybe you’re surprised, but I’m not. They’ve had a long time to think about this (22 days, in fact), and sailors are very creative when it comes to parties.

What IS surprising is that one of them got SO drunk and obnoxious that he cut the pig’s head off (which took a while), carried it to a nice visible spot, started making out with the charred, severed head (oh my god, right?) before tearing off the snout… and eating it.

Is it okay to let your buddy do this in front of his new girlfriend?

Now that I’m thinking about this, it’s pretty funny (and gross), but at the time it really sucked. I was quite torn between "I should stop him," and "I can’t believe that I ever liked/dated/kissed that drunk dude that is macking a dead pig head that he removed himself."

The other thing that sucked was that I’ve been trying to get in touch with him for the last several weeks, because I’ve been really worried about him, in the way that you worry for people you care about that might be lonely and might have no one to talk to. Graveyard shift is especially lonely, and it makes it hard to stay in touch with people, which I believed was the reason that we hadn’t been talking. It’s just hard to connect to people when you work all night and sleep all day.

OR IS IT? Maybe graveyard shift isn’t lonely at all, and makes it nice and easy to get new girlfriends, which works out well with the timing, because any friends that MIGHT be trying to talk to you just think it’s the work thing.

Coffee is my crack.

I am addicted.

I know, after skipping writing about technically failing my systems comprehensive exam (SUCKED), Dan QUITTING STE school, my subsequent job melt-down, and the entire month of May, THIS is what I choose to write about. But I’ll catch up on that stuff later.

Today I had a test at work. We have five hours to study the material in the morning. One hour in, I still had my head on the desk, doing my best impression of David after the dentist (watch it, 21 million views says it’s hilarious), saying to Kevin, “Is this going to be forever?” He said no. “Why is this happening to me?” Because, he said, you make bad decisions. “I feel funny.” No, you feel hungover. “Do I have stitches?” SHUT UP.

I MAY have had a few too many beers for a school night last night. I know, I know… but I had friends in town, and they kept buying big pitchers of delicious black beer, so what?

About 1.5 hours into my study time, Kevin decided to make some coffee. Let’s stop there.

There are so many great things about coffee… going to Starbucks makes me delay going to work just for a little while, I get a warm, yummy drink that is hazelnut-flavored, the ladies in there are so nice and cheerful, and I go there enough that I actually don’t even have to order anymore! This is cool. It finally happened to me. I walk into a coffee shop and they start making my drink. YES.

However, one latte a day has skyrocketed my caffeine tolerance to the point that it does nothing for me, and I started getting headaches on weekends, when I don’t get coffee, or on weekdays when I didn’t get enough. Plus, I tried to look up caffeine immunity on wikipedia and ended up freaking myself out about intoxication and what it does to your memory and all the bad stuff, so…

I bravely decided to not drink any caffeine for two weeks.

Here is what happened.

After the first few days, the headaches weren’t so bad. After a while, I didn’t really crave it. I did miss the Starbucks girls though (and the yummy Starbucks breakfast muffins), so, even braver, I went in and changed my drink to a caffeine-free red tea thing. At the end of the first week I felt great! I felt like five times healthier and a lot more alert, and I’m sleeping better, and sure, it’s a little hard to stay awake through that second hour of lecture, but no harder than it was WITH the caffeine.

Yesterday marked one week. Yesterday I went out drinking with my buddies. This morning…

About 1.5 hours into my study time, Kevin had been eying my single-serving pack of Kona coffee from Hawaii for about an hour. I told him he could have it.

Just smelling the coffee made my headache feel better. Kevin took two sips and said, I FEEL GREAT! I kept asking, “Can I sniff it again?” and pushing my nose over his mug. Finally I decided I had to have one too. Screw the caffeine fast. I had my test to consider, and my head was a mess. Unfortunately, the pack I gave Kevin was my last.

Are you serious, he asked, when I told him I couldn’t find any more. “Yeah, I’m all out.”

I stared into his coffee mug. “Can I just have a little sip? Just a little bit? Please?” Good ol Kevin took a few more sips and let me have the rest.

Salvation. Seriously. Half a cup of coffee each turned us both into happy, smiley, BRAINY people who would of COURSE kick butt on the test, and cured my hangover… for about thirty minutes.

At 2.5 hours into study time, I had my head back on the desk, saying “Kevin… let’s go to Starbucks… we have time… please.”

We went, and the nice lady saw me at the door and said, “You want a tall or a grande? Sugar-free hazelnut latte, right?” and made me a bacon sandwich (which I am now convinced is my favorite hangover food of all time), and life got a million times better.

I think I slaughtered the test, actually. THANK YOU COFFEE.

Now what am I going to do?

Some songs are heaped with horseradish…

It’s only been six weeks. And I think I hit the wall today. It really hurt.

I don’t want to be in STE school. I don’t want to be an STE. I don’t want to work at the shipyard. I don’t want to work IN WASHINGTON.

And yet, we torture ourselves every day to pass these completely unreasonable tests.

The other day I said to Dan, “Hey, not to be a downer, but do you realize that right now we could be working elsewhere in the shipyard at a much easier job, and they’d pay us the same amount to work only forty hours a week?”

He thought for a second, and then said, “Or they’d pay us a lot more to work 50 hours a week… and we’d STILL be working less than we are now.”

In my head I keep threatening to my teachers that one of these weeks, I’m only going to work 40 weeks, and when I subsequently fail a test, they’ll have ONLY THEMSELVES TO BLAME!

It’s really getting to me. Today in class my mind kept drifting to plane crashes (REALLY… that’s not good), or what kind of sandwich my favorite classic rock songs would be (some seem like they would have bacon, others jalapeños! And others are all mellow… like turkey!), or how much trouble I would ACTUALLY get into if I went into my course manager’s cube, lit my study material on fire, threw it on the floor, dropped my badge on top, and left. I wonder if there’s any returning from that.

Didn’t help that I got all of my favorite sayings today too…

“You’ll be fine.”

“You’ll get it.”

“You should smile more.”

“Why do you live in Seattle? When are you moving to Bremerton?”

“Having fun yet?”

Every time someone asks me if I’m “having fun,” it takes all my willpower NOT to give them a black-belt nostril-flick and yell, “DO YOU THINK PAIN IS FUN?!?!?” I have never played along with that stupid saying. Yet they still ask me.

Dave’s Bike Trip across America

Hi everybody!

I know you guys all need to go and get some nice sleep before your test that covers fifty pages of brute-memorization facts, charts, tables, cross-sectional diagrams and procedures tomorrow (no? Hmm, maybe I’m confusing you with me), but in case you wanted something to read before bed…

My friend Dave is super-cool and riding his bike across the country this summer (Yeah. Jealous? I am), and, like all super-cool people who go on adventures, he’s got a blag to tell us all about it! He left on Wednesday, and he’s already dipped his back tire in the pacific ocean so that he can be a total badass and dip his front tire in the atlantic at the end of his trip. What a stud.

So if you like outdoorsy adventure-y stuff, or if you just like reading about other people’s experiences, his blag is at http://leftd.blogspot.com.

I even got a shout-out. (I’m a stud, too.)