bad news....

i was about to leave my desk when i saw an e-mail with Your application to Information Technology Programs as the subject. i opened it to read the following:

Dear IT Programs Applicant:

I regret to inform you that we will be unable to accommodate any new students into the Information Technology Programs this fall.

the majority of the e-mail is pure bullsh*t, but i couldn't believe what i've gone through for the process and they just get rid of the entire program just like that. i took an entrance exam on tuesday. i spent weeks bugging out about this crap. and they cancel the whole program? WHAT?

i need a cigarette.

oh, that's right, i don't smoke.

what a crock of sh*t. so what now? i told myself if i didn't get in i would head to the west coast in six months. i technically didn't get in. does that mean i should be ready to go? :( maybe i should just apply for school somewhere else, see if i can get the tuition benefit still. grrr....

haiku happiness

last night i couldn't fall asleep until around 3 AM. i ended up writing haikus to my friend, t, who's working on a boat. i wrote gems like the following:

CTA exam
is tuesday at six-thirty
i hope i get in

i pay nine-fifty
for my apartment each month
i am a sucker

although a sucker
my commute on a good day
is fifteen minutes

before i forget
upon return from your cruise
you owe me dinner

haikus are fun!

wow that went fast...

i can't believe it's been a week already since my lovely trip to maryland. that just shows you how busy it's been here... especially with everything that i'm finally putting together. why, do you ask? because

i finally submitted my application for the CTA program!!!

woo hoo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! now all i gotta do is go through the entrance exam on tuesday and get accepted, and then i can stop stressing out. i think that's why i'm knitting so much. need to calm my nerves.

so the test is this tuesday at 6:30 PM. why 6:30? so i can torture myself through work worrying if i'm ready for this test, then sit through dinner with some colleagues (they're also applying to the program) and then fail miserably? lol... my co-worker joked forgoing dinner and just drinking the whole hour before the test. oh yeah. that'll work. :-P

*sigh* must stop stressing. must knit more.

i think one thing i've noticed in the past week is that the city has been making me feel claustrophobic... i don't feel that way often, but this week i've been feeling it morese than usual. in the mornings, i make it a point to run my hands along the tops of the bushes lining the path on the way to my building at work, just to remind myself what nature is like. manhattan is nice, but the buildings and the concrete... i'm wondering more and more if the country is more where i belong. time to get the 5 yr plan out again...

ps - i can't believe people pull the "this person is sick blah blah blah..." story on e-bay all the time! that's quite upsetting.

the great "e-bay negative rating" off

before i go on about my lovely weekend, i've been attacked by someone in the internet world even though i believe it is justified. this, my friends, has happened on that lovely place called ebay.com. normally i love ebay. i worship ebay. it is one of my most favoritest places to shop online, especially to satisfy my yarn cravings. now this one woman has singlehandedly made my visits to ebay miserable.

for all those that don't know (HA!), i'm a knitter. so when i go to ebay i go to buy bags of quality yarn.... about 3 weeks ago, i purchased yarn for this pattern. i won the auction while i was away for my birthday, the weekend of july 24th. FANTASTIC! i come back, pay for my auction. this was on july 30th.

time passes, no yarn. i send an e-mail via e-bay. no response. i send an e-mail via hotmail. no response. i send another e-mail via hotmail. no response. this is now the 12th of august and no response from all of my e-mails. 15 days from when payment was sent. 20 days from end of auction. so, i figure, it's time to file a complaint with paypal. because my money's gone, right? what am i supposed to do?

on august 13th, i finally receive my yarn. the date on the package is august 10th. i leave feedback for my seller:

Item shipped 15 days after auction. ZERO response from seller. NOT RECOMMENDED

today i receive an e-mail from the seller:

The reason for the delay in shipping your item was that my 9 yr. old son was bitten by a spider at his school that resulted in an infection that hospitalized him. We have been home 2 days and he is still having swollen lymph nodes, vomiting and fever. The hospital needed room due to the hurricane that hit us in central Florida. I would trade you delayed yarn for my problem any day.

see, now that i know what the hell is going on, i feel bad for leaving negative feedback. so i hold off on responding to her. until i see this in MY feedback:

Tried to communicate with buyer... very rude.

WHAT? excuse me? i went 2 weeks without my auction winnings with no communication and i'm the one that's rude? *sigh* so i send this:

My apologies for your son being in the hospital. I believe, however, after 15 days of no communication and no delivery of goods that it is justified for my reaction. One week, understandable. Two weeks? I had considered my money gone, with no item delivery and no action taken from you, the seller. I believe I had gone through the proper means of trying to either 1) track down my items or 2) reclaim my money as recommended by the paypal site. How am I supposed to react justly when there is no communication? I do not find that "rude", I find that as defending myself from possible fraud. Again, my apologies. I hope your son feels better.

and then leave this under the bad feedback she gave me:

Reply by me: 1st e-mail from seller received today. E-mailed seller 3x, all with no response.

i'm sorry if i'm heartless, but until this morning at 9:00AM i thought my money was in the pocket of some evil phoney. it's not being RUDE, it's called BUSINESS. *sigh* i can't wait to see what she comes up with next.

i need more weekends like this

well, i could do without the whole "fighting" part at the beginning... but otherwise, it was the most relaxing weekend i've had in a while. more details to come later. need to get food because i'm famished!

edit:ok, now that it's 5 PM i can finally catch up on the goings on... this weekend i went for the first time to baltimore, maryland for the annual veneracion crab-feast! soooo exciting. crabs are my FAVORITE. (sidenote: when i was 10 yrs old i used to finish about 12-14 crabs at a sitting. that's how much i love the stuff!) anywhoo, my friend abby had invited me this year to take part in the festivities so on saturday afternoon we went. the original plan was:

• saturday - go to six flags america
• sunday - check out yarn stores, then eat tons of crab!

unfortunately it looked a whole lot more like this:

• saturday - go meet up with mom, fight with family, pick up abby at 1:30PM, get to maryland at 6, eat dinner
• sunday - knit, shop, knit, shop, eat, drive

not like that wasn't exciting... i just wish it hadn't started with an argument. saturday was a no-go to begin with since the hurricane promised to bring rain to the baltimore county area. so we figured we'd coast the city for their yarn stores and knit while waiting for the crabfeast on sunday.

ok, now rewind to thursday. my mom calls me, requesting i "reconsider" my trip to baltimore because of the hurricane. i "considered" it and still wanted to go. then she requests my coming to the house on saturday morning before i leave to go to the bank to "sign papers." i have no clue what she wants me to sign. she just needs me to be there. okeedokee.

i'm just going to keep all the negative stuff out... *sigh*

so abby and i didn't get to baltimore until around 6 PM on saturday. all the yarn stores would have been closed by that time, so no fun for us really. we went to a chinese buffet with her tito and tita, then knit as we watched the olympics until bedtime. nice and relaxing....

woke up the next morning, realizing i was in the peacful country in baltimore... across the way there were horses! i was shocked! i wish i brought my camera, because it was so pretty out there. *sigh* abby's uncle also has a love for the arts, so when he found out my history as an art student he requested i draw for them. i declined, since he wanted me to draw everyone's portrait in 7 minutes, which is absolutely impossible. it reminded me that i haven't drawn anything seriously in over 4 years. sad. :( then crab-time came... endless crab after crab... so yummy. i think i left with about 10 crabs in my belly. and that's not counting the maryland crabcakes we had for lunch. yum.

before we left, i had left maryland with 2 lbs of lump crabmeat, some old bay seasoning and tita charlotte's maryland crabcake recipe. i must definitely go back there again. thank you abby for inviting me and for the veneracion's for hosting me!

sometimes i think better in bullet-points...

• customer service - what ever happened to good customer service? horrible things that happened to me this month:
  • it's a tape thing - payment not received even though i sent the check on july 29th. so since the payment not received, the book was never sent so i had to cancel today.
  • honeymoon yarn - payment sent via paypal, yarn not received. i e-mailed the girl THREE TIMES and haven't heard a damn thing.
  • nysc - overcharged $374 for 3 months after i had cancelled my membership. getting check cut, but won't receive for 2-4 weeks.
  • tech support on knitrowan.com - contacted them stating there was a problem with their website on netscape and firefox, but not internet explorer and got a response telling me how to apply to the site. HELLO i just wrote you telling you your site is not compatible with browsers so you can better serve your customers. *sigh* then i applied for international membership using internet explorer, added my cc information and hit submit... think it's going through and i log out. i don't receive a response saying my order is completed. then i log in today, and there are no orders in my account. i e-mail rowan, and no response. *sigh* i'm debating applying for the rowan international membership now.
• my life as a techie - looks as if my life will be spent in front of a computer for the next two years...
  • my CTA application - most specifically my personal statement. i hate my personal statement. i loathe my personal statement. i need to write 500 words describing my and my employment history and why i want to apply to this program. what a pain. can't they just see i work for the school and just accept me already?
  • my nomination for KFL webmistress - i was playing around with this idea sometime last week while talking to some of the people on central council. apparently the the "nomination" went through and my name is on the ballot. how strange to see that... if you asked me 5 years ago that i would be as active in the sorority as i am now, i would laugh... now look at me. apparently most of the pages are in ASP, which i don't know at all. *sigh* hopefully the current webmaster will pass the knowledge...
  • programs i need to be learning - in addition to the SQL i'll be learning in school and the ASP i'll be learning for kappa, i'll be going to a coldfusion class in september... will my poor little brain be able to handle all of this knowledge at once?
  • my blogs - addicted i am. especially to the knitting one... getting a new comment from knitting friends is awesome... kinda like crack. not like i know what that's like.
• studying - not like i've done it in a long time, but i think i know how to do it. i was watching this girl on the subway as i was knitting along... i can knit better and faster when i'm not looking... and i noticed her studying from her book and highlighting everything on the page. what's the point of that? zero notes in the margins. just a white page half-filled with yellow. quite curious.
• being the best lacto-ovo-pesco vegetarian i could be - i've been trying to reclaim my l-o-p vegetarianism, but it's quite difficult with the friends and family... especially eating filipino foods... *drool* it's just SO GOOD. but absolutely utterly impossible to be veggie... :-(
• rain - every time i want to go to six flags, god decides it's going to rain. why, god, why?

i'm sure there's more to rant about, but i'm being distracted by real work.... i will get to it another day. before i forget, cool links:

• job predictor - i got:

  joy s*, Your ideal job is a Superhero.

  that is fitting, isn't it?
• drunk guy game - sure it's in another language (german? dutch?), but it's damn fun. :-P

aah, now i remember...

additional ranting is lovely.

ex-bf rant so the other day, guess who calls me... you got it. RYAN. the ex. the idiot. the asshole. the "i'd be a f*cking moron if i ever trust this guy ever again" guy.

so after this e-mail that i foolishly wrote to him earlier in the month basically telling him what i thought about him and how he should basically piss off... well, apparently it made him realize that he did all these horrible things to me and that he should come clean with his current girlfriend about everything. f*cking moron.

anyway.

so guess what? they broke up. and what's even better? they broke up on my birthday. so he calls me to tell me all of this bull, like it matters to me or something. *sigh* what is it about guys and not being able to let things go? i'm expecting him to call me one of these days before he heads out to live with his sister. eh. i'm done with all of that.

future rant so i'm beginning to give up on the whole staying here for school thing. i mean, i'll apply to appease my mom. i told her yesterday that i think i'm going to apply and if i don't get in i'm off to the west coast. i think that's reasonable, don't you think? so take the test at the end of the month. if fail - go to west coast either in san fran or in canada (hey kim, i'm looking at jobs in vancouver! get me out of this frikkin country!). if not, stay here for an additional two years and go to school and then move to the west coast. definitely reasonable. :)

politics rant i HATE politics. hate hate HATE with a passion. but this year, everyone seems to be involved. why? because the leader of the united states is a douchebag. his ratings are down and suddenly major cities are on elevated alert. huh? and this is all based on old reports? huh? what? one thing that does bother me is the split vote. i was watching the news the other day and a woman stated she was unhappy with the president but didn't think kerry was the man for the job either. HELLO. let's live the 2000 election over again, shall we? if we don't vote bush out of office, we might as well start WWIII. because it seems as if he has no problem declaring war on a country that has no evidence of weapons of mass destruction or ties to al queda. let's just start bombing any other country that doesn't agree with us! *sigh*

and, no offense to FL residents, but if your state decides to go through with the computerized voting booths, which i'm sure a 10 year old whiz kid could hack into, i will automatically blame your state if bush wins FL in 2004. sorry.

i love my mom, but...

she's an assh*le. i know i just said what i said. as i said first, i love my mom. i love her to death. i'd take a bullet for her. but the things that come out of her mouth, i swear.

so i'm sitting there at the dinner table, and my mom and i are having a great time. my mother and i tend to have a love-hate relationship, and we haven't had a great "love" moment since before my birthday so it was nice to be able to sit down with her and just talk about everything. she was telling me about how she came to america 30 years ago with just 2 suitcases and the drive to be successful... and how proud she was of her children and how she would be so happy when (*ahem*) g and i get married and she has a baby to take care of. *sigh*

for all those that don't know, g (my older bro) is faaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaar from getting married and i'm pretty much in the same boat. maybe closer since i do have a lovely bf, but still far nonetheless.

anyway.

and, by the way, the last time my mom had a "grandchild fit," it was thanksgiving 2002 and she said to me, "joy don't get married. just have babies." i think the laci peterson murder was about that time.

my mom had one more fit before that. we were coming back from the dentist with my ex at the time, and we're in the elevator next to this 3-4 yr old chinese boy. she starts talking to him and as we leave she waves goodbye. she turns to me and my ex and immediately says "i want one." just as quickly i call my brother and say "we need to get mom a dog. NOW." that plan kind of backfired though, since we already had one dog and the new dog gave the old dog a bad skin disease. :( oh well. speaking of which, mom mention clyde last night and how she calls karma "clyde" sometimes. just so you can see the difference:

clyde - big ol' bull mastiff/german shepard mix(RIP march 2002)

karma - lil b/w domestic shorthair mutt

yeah, they're really the same. :-P anyway.

so the baby thing isn't what pissed me off. the fact we had such a great time and then she drives me to the subway and says this pissed me off:

i have a gorgeous daughter. she just happens to be taba.

for all the non-filipinos out there, taba means fat. i immediately got upset and asked her not to call me that. she then replied:

why? am i supposed to lie to you?

to which i told her i know i gained a little weight, but she doesn't need to remind me that i have. and then she says:

well, it's not like you didn't know about it. you said so yourself that you did. i'm just being honest.

*sigh* go back to my first entry if you need to know what i've been through regarding this issue.

on the way back to my bf's i almost broke down in tears. she doesn't realize that overall, she's just a mean person. *sigh*

i had more to rant about, but that took all the energy out of me. here's a picture of one of my new shoes from my outlet escapade last weekend.

so cute.

still slothy...

*sigh* what happened? i was doing so well. i think it's the lack of vitamins. and the meat i've been eating. and the overall just not caring. :-P

random rant - some kid spilled soda on my new pants this morning. i was sitting on the train, happy as a clam, and the kid next to me pulls out a sprite and it spills all over my pant leg. annoyance #1 - he didn't even apologize. kids have NO MANNERS. but moreso annoyance #2 - wtf is this kid doing drinking soda at 8:30 in the morning??? why do people not realize that they should be paying attention to their diets? maybe that's why american children are obese? maybe??? *sigh* /rant

this weekend was tons of fun. friday night i hung out with my girls, kat and jess. after a yummy bulgogi dinner (thanks kat!), they decided to tell me their vacation story. note: three girls + 2 bottles of wine + 4 beers = 3 hrs of vacation story. much fun, though. got tons of knitting done. :-P afterwards jess and i went over to pianos and get her a man. instead we got a texan finance dude and a barback named boomba following us most of the night. oh well. we walked to the vig, where this drunken picture was taken:

if you look really closely i think that's my reflection on the right side of the photo. i don't recall that column being reflective, though... hmm...

saturday was a nice late wake-up. i think the alcohol helped. i sat in bed for a little while and watched queer eye for the first time in ages. i couldn't stop watching, though, because they featured a filipino couple from canada! it was so nice, i almost wanted to cry. go here to see clips of the episode.

other news - check-ch-check-ch-check check it out!

woo hoo!!!! i lifted it out of the garage and realized how weak i am. time to work out again. oh yeah, and learn to ride a bike. lol...