Life, why must you torment me so?
Jul. 20th, 2011 08:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lunasariel*crawls out, gasping, from under Pile o' Life* I'M ALIIIIIIVE!!!
Yes, dear reader(s?), contrary to popular belief, I have not entered a monastery, nor have I been abducted by aliens (as far as I know), I've just been busy. Incredibly busy. Staggeringly busy. Oh-my-god-if-one-more-person-asks-for-a-favor-I'm-going-to-scream busy. A combination of fandom stuff (A Dance with Dragons! Deathly Hallows Part 2!) and real life stuff (wedding! college! birthday!) have conspired to make this the most hellishly packed summer I've ever had. My apologies for not keeping up with my flist the way a good LJer should! I'll get to it when I can.
First, and most importantly, The Wedding looms large. For those of you just joining us, or have forgotten what's going on in the *checks* month since I last posted, my best friend H and her fiance and my regular friend C are getting married on the 30th, and as you might expect, everybody is getting a little freaked-out right about now. As Deputy Maid of Honor, planning the bachelorette parties has fallen to me. Yes, parties. We're going to have an overnight campout on the beach with more or less every female (and two males) that H is acquainted with, but before that, we're having a surprise scavenger hunt for both H and C in and around Sebastopol, our hometown. The basic idea is that one bridesmaid pairs up with one groomsman (although things have worked out so that we have two threesomes, both with two bridesmaids and one groomsman) and hide somewhere in or around town. The first pair is meeting them, ostensibly just to hang out, and they'll be carrying a clue to the next pair, who will have another clue leading to the next pair, etc. DEAR GOD IS THIS COMPLICATED. I know I've complained before about how complicated weddings are in general, but planning *two* events, which together involve a grand total of 15 attendees from all across the state and five locations, is driving me a little bit nuts.
Everybody knows that weddings are a time when emotions run high and flare-ups are pretty much a given, but even knowing that, this is a drama-filled wedding. The bride's and groom's families hate each other, each member of the wedding party has dated at least one other member, and now the bride is feuding with two of the bridesmaids! (Well, technically one and a half, because she's been feuding with one of them for years, so it's settled down into a slow simmer of mutual distrust, but they're about to become sisters-in-law, so she kind of had to be invited, but still.) And in the middle of all that, I seem to have become the person to come and pour your troubles out to, at least for the wedding party. K, the Best Man, is nervous because his ex is one of the bridesmaids, his other ex will be at the wedding with their son (who is the ringbearer), and his current girlfriend will also be at the wedding! One of the bridesmaid's dresses was ordered four sizes too big and will cost $150 to alter! The sister of the bride (and official Maid of Honor) is terrified of the groom's sister (who is one of the bridesmaids)! We have nowhere to host the 21-and-over bachelor/bachelorette party (which it somehow also became my job to plan) except at my house, and no time to have it except on my birthday! All of the bridesmaids (plus the bride) are hardcore geeks, except for one, who wants to have a shaving/eyebrow party instead of a Firefly marathon (I am being completely serious) the night before the wedding! And somehow, it's my job to fix all this. GAAAAHHHH!!!
The second-biggest thing going on, after the wedding, is my transfer to UC Berkeley. I'd heard stories about the impersonal, draconian bureaucracy, but I'm only now starting to feel it. Because I forgot to check one little box on my official transcript request form, the school has placed a Registration Block on me, so now I can't access my housing or financial aid information. So now that I re-filled out the form and checked the damn box, I have to wait a week for it to process and hope to hell that it goes through before the day I have to register for classes (which is also my birthday! and the over-21 bachelor/bachelorette party! Yipee!). But even if it does go through, everything is so impacted that there's no guarantee that I'll get the classes I need, much less the classes I want (c'mon, Celtic Mythology!). Also, even though I sent in my AP scores two weeks ago, they have still mysteriously failed to appear, so I have to figure out what happened to *them*, and I'm still waiting to hear if I got into the housing unit I wanted. So all in all, "school" is only slightly behind "wedding" on the Scale of Stress.
The last of the Really Important Real Life things going on right now is planning for my 21st birthday, which will be next Monday. The thing is, I don't like to drink. I had more than ample opportunity to see what it was like when I was in London, where the age is 18, not 21, and all the glamour has kind of worn off for me. I'm not a teetotaler or anything; I enjoy a drink now and again. It's just that the massive binge that seems to be par for the course for 21st birthdays around here sounds massively unappealing to me. I don't like the taste of most alcohol, I don't like the feeling of being drunk, I don't like throwing up, and I definitely don't like hangovers. But some of my friends like drinking. I mean *really* like drinking, although only one of them has a serious problem. Given my druthers (as a Hobbit would say) I'd like my birthday to be a couple of close friends getting together, having dinner somewhere nice, and then maybe playing D&D or something else geeky and amazing. But instead, I'm going to end up playing hostess to a bunch of drunk and progressively crazier people. *sigh*
Those are definitely the big things, but there are still a million little things that are trying to nibble me to death. My driver's license is up for renewal, I need to go in for an eye exam, and my hair has started falling out in earnest now, so not only do I look like I have mange, I have to fight my way to a doctor's appointment and a haircut, which will be made worse by the fact that my hairdresser had a baby three weeks ago and is insisting on returning to work next Monday. To top it all off, I'm getting a new laptop for my birthday, since Lila, the one I'm typing on right now, is getting a bit elderly and I don't want to take any chances, so I have to hope that I not only avoid a total system crash, but manage to transfer all my data onto my new laptop without ruining or losing anything.
I don't really have the energy to touch on fandom stuff, even though long-prophesied A Dance With Dragons came out last week (I'm only about 3/4 due to aforementioned business. I like it so far, especially the Monty Python reference! I miss King's Landing, though) and I went to the premiere night of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2 (made me remember what I missed so much about cons and other large gatherings of fans. Also, I've never seen so many people weeping openly as at Fred Weasley's death). And that's not even mentioning Comic-Con and all the news that comes out of *there* (I miss it like crazy sometimes), Ghost Story (the new Dresden Files which comes out the day after my birthday, and which I probably won't have time to read, since that will be only four days before the wedding), or the new Torchwood (which I steadfastly refuse to watch until the writers make up for bringing Jack back to Earth to deal with "his unstated love for Gwen Cooper").
Yes, dear reader(s?), contrary to popular belief, I have not entered a monastery, nor have I been abducted by aliens (as far as I know), I've just been busy. Incredibly busy. Staggeringly busy. Oh-my-god-if-one-more-person-asks-for-a-favor-I'm-going-to-scream busy. A combination of fandom stuff (A Dance with Dragons! Deathly Hallows Part 2!) and real life stuff (wedding! college! birthday!) have conspired to make this the most hellishly packed summer I've ever had. My apologies for not keeping up with my flist the way a good LJer should! I'll get to it when I can.
First, and most importantly, The Wedding looms large. For those of you just joining us, or have forgotten what's going on in the *checks* month since I last posted, my best friend H and her fiance and my regular friend C are getting married on the 30th, and as you might expect, everybody is getting a little freaked-out right about now. As Deputy Maid of Honor, planning the bachelorette parties has fallen to me. Yes, parties. We're going to have an overnight campout on the beach with more or less every female (and two males) that H is acquainted with, but before that, we're having a surprise scavenger hunt for both H and C in and around Sebastopol, our hometown. The basic idea is that one bridesmaid pairs up with one groomsman (although things have worked out so that we have two threesomes, both with two bridesmaids and one groomsman) and hide somewhere in or around town. The first pair is meeting them, ostensibly just to hang out, and they'll be carrying a clue to the next pair, who will have another clue leading to the next pair, etc. DEAR GOD IS THIS COMPLICATED. I know I've complained before about how complicated weddings are in general, but planning *two* events, which together involve a grand total of 15 attendees from all across the state and five locations, is driving me a little bit nuts.
Everybody knows that weddings are a time when emotions run high and flare-ups are pretty much a given, but even knowing that, this is a drama-filled wedding. The bride's and groom's families hate each other, each member of the wedding party has dated at least one other member, and now the bride is feuding with two of the bridesmaids! (Well, technically one and a half, because she's been feuding with one of them for years, so it's settled down into a slow simmer of mutual distrust, but they're about to become sisters-in-law, so she kind of had to be invited, but still.) And in the middle of all that, I seem to have become the person to come and pour your troubles out to, at least for the wedding party. K, the Best Man, is nervous because his ex is one of the bridesmaids, his other ex will be at the wedding with their son (who is the ringbearer), and his current girlfriend will also be at the wedding! One of the bridesmaid's dresses was ordered four sizes too big and will cost $150 to alter! The sister of the bride (and official Maid of Honor) is terrified of the groom's sister (who is one of the bridesmaids)! We have nowhere to host the 21-and-over bachelor/bachelorette party (which it somehow also became my job to plan) except at my house, and no time to have it except on my birthday! All of the bridesmaids (plus the bride) are hardcore geeks, except for one, who wants to have a shaving/eyebrow party instead of a Firefly marathon (I am being completely serious) the night before the wedding! And somehow, it's my job to fix all this. GAAAAHHHH!!!
The second-biggest thing going on, after the wedding, is my transfer to UC Berkeley. I'd heard stories about the impersonal, draconian bureaucracy, but I'm only now starting to feel it. Because I forgot to check one little box on my official transcript request form, the school has placed a Registration Block on me, so now I can't access my housing or financial aid information. So now that I re-filled out the form and checked the damn box, I have to wait a week for it to process and hope to hell that it goes through before the day I have to register for classes (which is also my birthday! and the over-21 bachelor/bachelorette party! Yipee!). But even if it does go through, everything is so impacted that there's no guarantee that I'll get the classes I need, much less the classes I want (c'mon, Celtic Mythology!). Also, even though I sent in my AP scores two weeks ago, they have still mysteriously failed to appear, so I have to figure out what happened to *them*, and I'm still waiting to hear if I got into the housing unit I wanted. So all in all, "school" is only slightly behind "wedding" on the Scale of Stress.
The last of the Really Important Real Life things going on right now is planning for my 21st birthday, which will be next Monday. The thing is, I don't like to drink. I had more than ample opportunity to see what it was like when I was in London, where the age is 18, not 21, and all the glamour has kind of worn off for me. I'm not a teetotaler or anything; I enjoy a drink now and again. It's just that the massive binge that seems to be par for the course for 21st birthdays around here sounds massively unappealing to me. I don't like the taste of most alcohol, I don't like the feeling of being drunk, I don't like throwing up, and I definitely don't like hangovers. But some of my friends like drinking. I mean *really* like drinking, although only one of them has a serious problem. Given my druthers (as a Hobbit would say) I'd like my birthday to be a couple of close friends getting together, having dinner somewhere nice, and then maybe playing D&D or something else geeky and amazing. But instead, I'm going to end up playing hostess to a bunch of drunk and progressively crazier people. *sigh*
Those are definitely the big things, but there are still a million little things that are trying to nibble me to death. My driver's license is up for renewal, I need to go in for an eye exam, and my hair has started falling out in earnest now, so not only do I look like I have mange, I have to fight my way to a doctor's appointment and a haircut, which will be made worse by the fact that my hairdresser had a baby three weeks ago and is insisting on returning to work next Monday. To top it all off, I'm getting a new laptop for my birthday, since Lila, the one I'm typing on right now, is getting a bit elderly and I don't want to take any chances, so I have to hope that I not only avoid a total system crash, but manage to transfer all my data onto my new laptop without ruining or losing anything.
I don't really have the energy to touch on fandom stuff, even though long-prophesied A Dance With Dragons came out last week (I'm only about 3/4 due to aforementioned business. I like it so far, especially the Monty Python reference! I miss King's Landing, though) and I went to the premiere night of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2 (made me remember what I missed so much about cons and other large gatherings of fans. Also, I've never seen so many people weeping openly as at Fred Weasley's death). And that's not even mentioning Comic-Con and all the news that comes out of *there* (I miss it like crazy sometimes), Ghost Story (the new Dresden Files which comes out the day after my birthday, and which I probably won't have time to read, since that will be only four days before the wedding), or the new Torchwood (which I steadfastly refuse to watch until the writers make up for bringing Jack back to Earth to deal with "his unstated love for Gwen Cooper").
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no subject
Date: 2011-07-29 01:41 am (UTC)So, how did you 21st birthday party go? Did you get a quiet dinner or was it a pub-crawl 'til dawn kind of night?
Did your hairdresser fit you in?
Did you get the housing unit you wanted?
Were you able to register for your classes?
It's possible you answered some of these questions in your next post, but since you put a spoiler warning there, I kind of hesitate to click.
no subject
Date: 2011-07-29 04:28 pm (UTC)Actually, my 21st was awesome! It was a combination birthday/bachelor/bachelorette/going-away party, but my friends surprised me with a cake (well, actually a tart with candles stuck in it, which is even yummier)! And while it wasn't a pub crawl per se, there was definitely a fair amount of alcohol involved ^.^
Nope, my hairdresser didn't fit me in, so I'm going to look...interesting in the wedding photos.
And it turns out that the housing I wanted doesn't come with a meal plan and is considered off-campus, which would make me ineligible for a couple of scholarships I'm already recieving, so I guess I'm stuck with the plebs for a little while longer.
And yes, I was able to register for my classes! I now have Shakespeare, History of English (Beowulf - Milton), Intro to Linguistics, Celtic Mythology, and Social Anthropology, so this semester is going to ROCK (provided that the Registration block gets cleared, of course)!
My next post is entirely RL-free, so nothing there! I'm glad you avoided it; it has some MAJOR spoilers for the entire Song of Ice and Fire series.