Just my Luck

Well, not EVERY vacation can be a winner, right? I'm just the kind of person who waits 3 years to take a vacation, only to have it completely buggered by what has turned out to be an upper respiratory infection. What can I say, I'm badass like that.

Keep an eye on this space as my vacation adventures unfold.

They call her ol' one-shoe

Click Here to see the above comic at full size.

True Story. Just yesterday, I DID, in fact get my shoe wedged in the seam between the door and the step of the work shuttle that brings us back to our cars. I was already 3/4 of the way out of the van and managed to just barely avoid falling flat on my face. That still left me on my knees in the middle of the parking lot with only one shoe, though.

It would have been a lot more embarrassing if I hadn't personally found it so completely hilarious. All that time spent imagining that I could exit the van with the grace and form of an expert gymnast . . . What a waste!

The whole state's just one big (punch)line.

True Story:
I went to the DMV yesterday. I guess when people leave New Jersey, they don't usually come back, so there was a lot of confusion over which forms I needed to fill out and which documents I needed. Was I renewing my registration? Or maybe this would be considered a brand new registration? And by their account, I was missing 3 or 4 documents required to get everything done. Since I've just moved back to Jersey, I needed to redo pretty much EVERYTHING: driver's license, car registration and plates, car inspection. At one point, they also told me I'd have to retake the driver's written test. Which is about when I really lost it.

I decided then that the best way to handle the situation was to simply act like I didn't need any of those documents or special procedures. I figured, if they didn't know the appropriate work flow to give me what I needed, then the only thing standing between me and my fully licensed glory was them. Why not simply pretend that I knew what they were supposed to do and guide them accordingly? Surprisingly, that actually worked.

A quick aside about the NJ DMV. It takes roughly 3 times as long to go through there as it did in California. California was all about those deli-counter number tags. They assigned you a letter and a number and when you were called, they took care of all your stuff at once. In New Jersey, they are ALL about the assembly line approach. First the reception area. Then the document checkers. Then the counter, the waiting room, the counter again. And if you're really lucky, that's when you get to leave. If you came to the DMV for more than one thing, you need to start over again.

If the lines were short, it wouldn't be an issue. But due to budget cuts and the miserable economy, my county (which contains Newark) halved the number of DMVs from 4 to 2. Additionally, one of the remaining DMVs only does licenses, not registrations or inspections. Which means, 800k people are attempting to use this one DMV per year. Tell me that's not an infrastructure problem of the highest magnitude.

Upside-Down World

The thing about working in hospitals, is that you're constantly being exposed to all sorts of nasty things. MRSA, Meningitis, TB, not to mention just about every cold and flu making the yearly rounds. So I guess I shouldn't have been so surprised last April, when I first started working in the hospitals and found myself getting ridiculously sick on a weekly basis.

Things have stabilized since, and for the most part, I'm fairly healthy. I take precautions when working (like washing my hands frequently, not touching patients or really ANYTHING, and keeping away from rooms with warning signs on them). But even the most careful person can't avoid a cold when every one of her coworkers has managed to catch it.

And that's where I find myself today; Sore throat, dry cough, woozy, droopy, blah, and feeling like I'm under 66 feet of water (that's two whole atmospheres of pressure!). I'm not imagining my coworkers are hagfish or hairbrushes yet, but I feel the time is close at hand.

Bending the Rules

Now that we've been at this hospital for over 3 weeks, there is REALLY nothing to do there. I mean, it's ridiculously slow. Naturally, being an intelligent individual, I am endlessly searching for something to keep me occupied. Unfortunately, nothing is allowed by our "managers". damn. Now we're at a really really small hospital in Manteca. There are more of us than there are nurses! So we get thrown off the floor because we're crowding them.

Twist of irony: I drew this at work two weeks ago, and I am posting this update from work now. MUAHAHAHAH! I'm subverting the system!

My Unfortunate Guests

I am extremely sad that my PhotoShop hasn't resurrected itself. It'd been months since I made a comic, but I drew this one today. You'll be disgusted to know that this shoddy workmanship is all I can cobble together using a strange combination of MS Paint, Powerpoint, and ComicLife. I also frittered away $1.80 utilizing the scanner at Fedex-Kinko's to bring this to you, so I hope you guys enjoy it! You'd better!

My work provides me with corporate housing which varies widely in condition. When I lived in Sacramento, the housing was really pretty nice, with access to a pool (necessary. It was damn hot out there) and it was pretty clean. My housing in Modesto is not exactly nice. In fact, it's plain dirty, and when I first moved in, I was not aware of my cirtterly pests. I found one of them galavanting in my sauce pan and I just about had a heart attack. I resolved then and there to take care of it.

DO NOT WANT

This is how my I felt during my Job Search in October. I was so over finding a job. I'm not even going to talk about it anymore. I had just renewed my NJ car insurance (exorbitant!), and I miss some of my east-coast peepz (I'm a tiny white girl... I'm not sure I can use the phrase "peepz" but... eh. what the hell). Really, I was ready to resign myself to hoboism and crawl into my crappy cardboard box on Vine. Making friends? Also apparently overrated.

But hey, look at me, I can be an optimist too!: Plus side - I have some version of all the clothes drawn above, including that super sassy suit in the first frame, although it's got pants, not a skirt. I'm such a fashion plate, I amaze even myself.

EDIT: And as always, events did not occur as shown. This is just a reflection of how I feel.

A Hairy Situation

When finals are over in the spring and it becomes senior week there's just a little longer until seniors become an officially graduated student. I didn't have much planned for that week except packing up nearly all my earthly posessions to move on to the next stage of my life and hanging out downtown. Which brings me to today's topic: fears.



A lot of people have realistic fears. I think it's ok to be afraid of spiders, scorpions, snakes, dogs, even clowns. All those things have a certifiable way to hurt you (you're probably wondering about the clowns. Exhibit A: enormous shoes. they could step on you. Exhibit B: they can fit a lot into a tiny tiny car. They can be hiding anywhere). I have a ridiculous fear. Amongst my normal fears of ants, falling out of tall buildings, and sudden suffocation, I also have an intense fear of facial hair. Thankfully, we live in a time when the majority of men and women roaming the streets don't feel the need to grow a handlebar mustache or whatever. Thank goodness it's not the 1800's. I'd never escape.

But for the 4 years, I've lived in Northampton, home of possibly the largest hippie/hobo population on the east coast. The streets teem with people all claiming to be homeless. I know for a fact that some of those people are faking it. You may take this to be a harsh criticism, but it's true... in NoHo, some people panhandle for fun, just to see if they can.

But it's really difficult to walk down Main Street without seeing someone whose facial hair has gotten entirely out of control and may in fact be plotting to take over the earth. The fear I have of facial hair isn't exactly debilitating, but it affects how I see people. I stay away from folks sporting beards. Long sideburns freak me out. I will cross the street to stay away from someone with a beard down to their stomach. Mustaches will make me run the other way. So you can imagine my chagrin when a few of my friends decided that for the entirety of April, they wouldn't shave. I had hoped that once May rolled around, the nightmare would be over and things would go back to normal. Ha. When my friend decided to only shave part of the growth and turned the mess into muttonchops, I thought I would cry. But I'm getting used to it. I can eat dinner at the same table as him now.

I just can't actually look at him.

I hope the Old Ones eat you AND your bad art

Back in senior year, the spring semester classes had started and I was alternating between disappointed and enthralled at some of the ideas that count as "education" these days. I loved my class that I (unfortunately) had to commute to another campus to get to (also unfortunate was that was at 8am which meant I was waking up on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 6am).

But all my other classes seemed to have just a little too much reading and discussion... as though my professors made lesson plans and realized they only had enough material to last maybe 2 weeks. "How shall we fluff up these dismal lesson plans? A-ha! Reading! Lots of reading! And class discussions! I'm a genius!" Of course, a genius would recognize that a class of 60 students doesn't really yield ideal discussion.

My Art class was 3 hours from 1-4pm and unfortunately it was 2.5 hours of the prof lecturing on our reading (there's only 7 of us) and the final half hour was used for giving examples of things we were supposed to experience through the readings. Very dull. Particularly for a room with no windows (it was in the basement). And poorly planned (considering we had a project due in the middle of the second week and the prof hadn't introduced us to any of the technology we were supposed to use, and had mentioned we were to work on it solely outside of class).

Still, the prof is otherwise a nice guy, just socially awkward and not used to the competitive nature of the folks at my school. But really, today's comic will give you a little taste of how I usually felt in that art class.



The Cthulhu Lolita dress is designed by deviantART's Carnet-atelier. I DID however make a wearable version which I've worn to work on Halloween and to a few conventions.

For those of you who've never even heard of Cthulhu, click here for a link to the Wikipedia article.

I just realized how wordy this post is. I apologize. But it's great if you manage to get through it. Good luck.

The best way to die...

So I had a wonderful dream after finals and during Winter Break. It was a dream above all dreams. In truth, now that I've gotten my special studies grade back, my major advisor doesn't really deserve much of the treatment in the comic... at least... not the flaming arrow. I managed an A-, which meant that fall of senior year was my first college semester that I managed straight A's (of any kind).



She totally deserves to at least be a little harassed by a squid though...

On a more serious note though, the spring semester went a lot smoother, and I no longer feel any sort of antagonism toward her. Advisor love!

Rage... Building,...Vision... Blurring... AAAARGH!

I know more of you are just dying to know what happened after I sent in my special studies. It eventually got there on time. On the other hand, maybe you're NOT dying to know, since you're probably all of the impression that that was the end of it. I know, I certainly did.

Unfortunately, no. It's not the end.



More stress and GRAAAAAAH! was headed my way. Needless to say, I was less than thrilled. I got an email from my advisor which basically said, 'I can't give you a grade until I talk to you face-to-face'. Big uh-oh moment. I marked it as un-read and vowed not to think of it for 2 days. Two days later, I opened it, sent her a reply and suggested a meeting time.

The day after I heard from my advisor, I also got a message from my Mentor who said my advisor had been talking to him and she had said my paper was SO good, she was trying to find out if I'd copied parts of it from somewhere or had had any outside help.

Yikes! Serious accusations there, and totally false! I was filled with worry and stress once again, because I needed to talk to her and make it all right. Tsoris! Anger! Frustration! Like a good soap opera, right? Now all I needed was an evil twin sister to run off and marry some guy named Hernando and they would come back in 2 seasons with a small child/baby and dump him on me. I hate babies.

I should have seen it coming

I'm sure you're all wondering how my special studies project ended up. If not, I'll tell you anyway. I got a minor extension to work until the day after Christmas. I was done by 2am Christmas morning. So I emailed a copy to the dean and prepped to send a hard copy to my major advisor on the 26th. Little did I know what dangers lurk in the US postal service system. The plan was to overnight the damn package and get it to my advisor by the next day. I was to ensure that she wouldn't have to sign for it. "I'm not chasing down your special studies," she informed me, "I'm not going to run around looking for it. Get it to my doorstep or I'm not grading it." Ultimatum Ouch.

At this point I was wondering just what exactly had crawled up her butt and whether she had noticed it yet. My guess was leaning towards something spiny (like some really skinny porcupine) and Yes. Well, arguing wasn't going to solve anything. So I vowed I would do just as she had requested and hope for the best.

Alas, the US Postal Service service leaves a lot to be desired. On the 26th, I went to the post office and for a whopping $14.40, I had all my papers mailed express to Easthampton, with a waiver of signature attached. I leave the story here to give a brief overview of what happened then:



Yes, the comic's style changes as I become more melodramatic. I promise the funnier ones will be back to color and minimalistic expression.

In the meantime, that's exactly what happened. By 3 days later, (according to the USPS online tracking services), my special studies still had not been delivered. As though anything in this entire ordeal could be easy. As if. A series of phone calls later, I was finally told by the post office in Easthampton that my major advisor was on vacation and had requested a hold on her mail so it wouldn't be delivered until the hold was removed the next day. *facepalm. I decided to take no chances. I told the folks there that if she hadn't picked up her mail by noon that day, to deliver the package.

And so now, it is safely at her house. Thank goodness. I'm ready for some real relaxation now. Too much tsoris surrounding this whole thing. And as I have credentials to be a professional worrier, I've been stressed like nobody's business. There's absolutely no reason for all the crap I've had to put up with for this stupid special studies.

But it was done! Hooray!

Line-Art Therapy

Somewhere in my history I fell out of the habit of asking people for help. I think this is a trait my parents encouraged as they saw it as a type of independence and they knew that as an only-child, I was going to need to fend for myself a great deal. Far be it from me to judge my parents' techniques, but this one could have used some addendums. For instance:
You CAN ask for help or support when...
...you've made a total fool of yourself.
...you're about to fail at life.
...you're about to fail at school.
...dealing with annoying relatives.

So what do you do when you ask for help too late?

From Senior Year right before finals:
"I'm in a peculiar situation. I've never (in the whole of my life) asked a teacher for an extension on a paper or project. I'm currently doing a semester-long special studies that's a little outside my realm of experience, and it is battering me. I figured that since I'd basically been totally out of touch for a week (what with a needle in my foot and surgery and Vicodin and all that), it would be reasonable to ask for a 5-7 day extension for medical reasons.

'Course, my class dean is completely on some sort of bizarre power trip. She won't grant extensions for medical reasons (I have a friend who was just diagnosed with esophogeal cancer and is currently on 12 pills a day and the dean won't give her an extension) and says that a note from the hospital and health services isn't enough. She says she'll talk to my major advisor (who is currently in a state of HATE), and see what SHE says. That means, I won't know about an extension until Monday. For a paper that was technically due on Friday (yesterday). The following actions have run through my mind:
- jump in front a car
- have a tree branch drop on me all of a sudden
- use a voodoo doll on the dean (which won't get me an extension but will make me feel better)

Technically, the first two wouldn't get me an extension either... the dean has basically said no medical reason is ever good enough to get an extension. It's your fault for not looking both ways when you started to cross the street..."

Out, out damn line!

Back in my senior year of college, I was unfortunate enough to step on a sewing needle that had been dropped on my carpet. My weight caused it to snap in half. One half was found across the room, the other half, was MIA. It was right around 2 weeks before finals, and I found myself suddenly in an immense amount of pain. From the event:

"Tomorrow's adventure includes attempts to schedule myself for surgery to get the darned thing out. It hurts like crazy. This only confirms to me that waving a magnet around my foot in an attempt to figure out if it was still inside worked. Probably wasn't the smartest thing to do, but there you have it. It's a lot more than I thought it would be as well. I thought there'd be maybe an eighth of an inch in there... but no. It's more like 3/4 of an inch, and pressed up against my bone for super extra fun. I include for your ultimate enjoyment, a fantastic x-ray from radiology.



The school's health services are gonna hear about this one. I guarantee it. (side note: the school's health office told me it was nothing to worry about and since they couldn't see anything, it was unlikely there was anything in my foot. "soak your foot in warm water every day and apply this anti-biotic ointment!" . . .right... right.) On the actual x-ray, you can see the eye of the needle. It's actually pretty darn cool. And if the surgeons let me keep my x-rays, I'm definitely going to build myself a lightbox frame and it'll be the first work of art to grace my grown-up apartment (that is, when I can afford a grown-up apartment).

Oh God! Put that Back!

Here's what I've noticed about surgeries, really. You think you're hurting, until you get something taken out of you. Then, afterwards, the pain is multiplied. By a lot. Let's flash back again to the extraction of my wisdom teeth. You think you're in pain when those teeth are moving everything around in your mouth, right? But when you get those babies taken out, you feel like you're on the way to the grave. Not to mention the swelling and the long list of things you CAN NOT do for about 2 weeks following the surgery! On the plus side, I guess, you no longer have to worry about vestigial teeth. Just stay out of the public eye for 2 weeks or so while you wait for that extra swelling pudge works its way out of your system.



Surgery probably results in a lot of depression. However, as referenced above, all that swelling and inability to go anywhere definitely leads to an interesting kind of weight-loss diet.

Like Pulling Teeth: Grotesque Narration within

Recent experience has taught me that when you least expect or need it, trouble will crop up in your life. 'Course, who needs trouble really? I mean, ever? With finals fast approaching and my social life practically on hold, I find myself shuffling around my room in a tizzy, hoping to uncover some secret door in the world of Asian American Women Writers, which will afford me an A on my next essay. In the midst of this frantic shuffling, a sudden shooting pain plunges through my leg and I'm suddenly on the bed. This is probably a much more dramatic reenactment than what really happened. I've been stabbed! Ok, in the foot. By a pin, or possibly some small clothing t-hang tag that didn't make it to the garbage. An inspection of the rug uncovers 7/8ths of a sewing needle, the rest of which may or may not be embedded in my foot. Ideally, I would very much like to find the rest of the needle and therefore spend the next 20 minutes frantically waving a strong magnet over the carpet. Nothing.

This brings us to now, a full 72+ hours following the incident. I've been to the college health services where they proclaimed they could do nothing, so gave me a tetanus shot and herded me out the door. I cannot walk on my left foot, and the shot is still affecting my left arm. Now, I know I'm a baby about pain. I have NO pain threshold, and all this must be compared with the pain my mother potentially felt during childbirth ("Whatever you're feeling, it can't be as bad as passing a bowling ball through your legs on the hottest day of the year, and the anesthesiologist hasn't made his rounds yet"), because otherwise, I would be a very poor Jewish daughter.

This brings up fond and frightful memories of how I thought I might die from my wisdom teeth coming in. I thought for sure they'd be so big, I wouldn't be able to close my mouth to chew and wouldn't be able to get any nutrients and then die from starvation. What can I say, I'm a worrier. Little bastards were more trouble than they were worth. I assume humans have wisdom teeth because in the dark, dim stone age, if you managed to make it to 20, you probably didn't have any teeth left anyway. So having any new ones come in was probably like a miracle. Anyway, I didn't really appreciate my wisdom teeth coming in.



Really, I don't think anyone does. The nice thing about being human is that, (seemingly) unless pain involves childbirth, we forget all about it. It's a distant memory until we experience it again. And then we have to compare. Is the pain as bad as being bloated while living above a chinese restaurant and having morning sickness during the hottest summer in rememberance (another gem from Mom)? Or is it a fleeting worry, a twinge we'll likely forget as soon as it's gone? Like hiccups: something annoying but momentary.