I hate bad weather. Moreover, I hate multiple days of the same miserable, bad weather. It has been raining here since Sunday, and I&#039m about to start heavily sedating myself on far-too-many painkillers just so I can block it out for a little while. Fucking rain. Non-stop, pouring, horribly grey rain. I hate it. It makes my head hurt, it makes my joints hurt, and it fucks with my SAD. Today&#039s really the first day that I&#039ve had to spend any amount of time in the rain, and boy was today a bad day for that to happen.

Today was my first day back at the Student Academic Services Center. I couldn&#039t get into my new office area because I, of course, was earlier than the people who had keys to open it. I talked to Brad a while before finally getting to my new desk. I spent the better part of the morning just cleaning out the drawers. Between the pile of bent staples, Equal packets, paper clips and rubber bands, I finally managed to sort most of the drawers out to where at least I know what&#039s what. The desk innards were grody, let me tell you. The next irritation was that being new, I don&#039t have a user name or password for the computer, so I couldn&#039t log in, just stare at the black flat panel monitor which was so useless to me. So no e-mail, no learning the software, no typing up a syllabus for the Univ 101 class I&#039ll be teaching…nothing. Dippy. So now what?

Well, I figured that now would be a good time to figure out what&#039s wrong with the bill that ISU sent me to pay for last semester&#039s classes. The bill was for about $2500, about $1800 more than my first two semesters which were $700 after the fee waiver. While I knew that it&#039d cost more because I took two extra credit hours, there is NO WAY a credit hour costs $900. I checked: it&#039s actually about $200 a credit hour. So I had someone more knowledgeable than me check it and sure enough, they didn&#039t have my graduate assistant fee waiver on there. @#$%^&*! So I got the ball rolling after a half dozen phone calls and driving our poor office assitant nuts. Hopefully it gets fixed by the end of this week, taking about $1700 off the bill.

Next on the list of things to do: get the rest of the money I&#039ll need to pay for last semester. I already pestered Financial Aid about it, but they said that it would take until the end of January for anything to go through even though I got the ball rolling back in December. So fuck them for right now. That&#039s just irritating in and of itself. So I went back to pestering SMWC. I had called earlier this week to ask about the paycheck, asking the person who hired me, and he seemed surprised I hadn&#039t been getting my paychecks all semester. I was under the impression that I would get paid at the end of the semester, and that&#039s why I hadn&#039t been banging down the doors before now. So this afternoon after lunch at a Chinese buffet with half the office, I got on the horn to SMWC and started asking around. Much like my phone calls from this morning bouncing from person to person, I got passed from one lady to the next like the flu. Finally, someone realized that I hadn&#039t signed a contract saying, &#034Sure, I&#039ll work here for this many hours and then you can pay me.&#034 Contract? What contract?! I filled out a pile of paperwork but no one had me sign a contract! She told me that she&#039d mail me one, I&#039d sign it and mail it back, then they&#039d get me paid in the next pay period. Dippy. When the hell is that? This was my answer for not having to borrow money from anyone to afford last semester so I can register for this semester! GODFUCKINGDAMMIT! RRRR!!!

Add to this massive mess the terrible car trip I spent going two miles in the wrong fucking direction to get told that I was at the wrong post office and that I needed to go even further in the opposite direction to get my package! The driver-side tires are both low, my key won&#039t unlock the driver-side door, and the trash can tipped over when I pulled into the parking lot. I … could … just … spit. Today has sucked the bengay from the tube and then coughed it up with cat hairballs and warm, cheap whiskey. Today sucked. This is why I feel like finishing the bottle of NyQuil (3/4 full) just to end the day faster and speed me into tomorrow. Or oblivion. Whichever. They&#039re starting to look about the same.

Posted: January 5, 2005 at half past six.