And Technology Continues to Hate Me

I'm slightly annoyed by a pattern I see developing in my life. In this pattern, everything around me falls apart at the same time, and always at the worst possible timing. Last time this happened someone I loved was raped while I was separated from them for summer classes, my car would literally break down almost every time I drove it, and my brother was shipped out for Iraq, all within a few months of each other. And, in the case of my brother, right before holidays, making that year the shittiest, most numbing yet horribly depressing Christmas of my life.

This time is not nearly as bad; not emotionally devastating at all. Just really freaking stressful and with crappy timing to boot. A couple of weeks ago my cell phone finally decided to die. Apparently 2 1/2 years is the average lifespan of cell phones now, which I find depressing. Shouldn't they last longer than that? Anyways, that was mechanical failure number one. Within two weeks, I drove my car to its final demise. After years of never having air conditioning (not in the last decade at least), a slowly deteriorating sound system, soft brakes and transmission that has been failing for the last year, my van overheated. I didn't even notice, but apparently it overheated so badly that antifreeze, which is very corrosive, went into the motor and was coming out with the oil. I don't know much about cars, but I know words like "corrosive" and "motor" should never go together. At the shop, I had to start my car 5 times before it would actually turn on, and then, thank God, it made it the half mile back to my apt. It's so old and beat up that there's nothing salvagable about it, so I"m going to donate it to charity so my dad can at least get a tax write off. That is, once I get the time to clean all my stuff out of it.

Of course, I saw the van coming. I was really just hoping it would last through grad school, and it couldn't quite make it. That's alright, the van's been good to us. I think everyone in my family has driven it at one point. It lasted 15 years and made many trips from Alabama to Nebraska or New York. It also helped most of us move at some point. I really only drove it so that I wouldn't have to buy my own car til I was out of grad school. Of course, now I am in love with my new car, because it is shiny and has air conditioning, and I can fill up the tank for $25!

But I digress. Here's the latest mechanical failure. I've been using a departmental laptop for the last year, since I don't own a laptop. When I got it, the screen would occasionally turn itself off, but it was never a problem. The last couple of weeks however, the screen will not turn on for hours at a time, or it will turn on, but then turn itself off after 15 seconds. After two weeks of phone calls I finally got an appt with the computer help people and apparently the connection to the screen is fine, so the laptop needs a physical part replaced. It's a dept. laptop, so I'm not even sure what to do with that, I"m gonna talk to people tomorrow. But it's just one more problem that will probably take longer than it should to fix.

And no, I cannot buy my own laptop. I live below the poverty line (apparently we actually qualify for food stamps), and I just bought a new cell phone and slightly used car and car insurance, which pretty much depleted half of my savings, and will double my monthly expenses from now on. Oh, and one of my roommates moved out last month, so I"m essentially paying double rent, too, since no one wants to move into a room for 2 or 3 months. And I'm trying to write the discussion for my thesis so I can finish up and be out of here. So I'm not actually freaking out (I think I've just gotten used to everything around me constantly going to shit, esp when we consider all the problems with my thesis), I'm more in a constant state of stress. It's been at least 2 weeks since I actually slept through the night, I mostly wake up every two hours or less.

So....yeah. I feel like I just vomited all my problems onto the computer screen, and now I don't know how to end this post. I also just noticed how long it is. Man, when I complain I go to town. Let's hope that in a couple of weeks I have a long post about how everything is coming together so nicely.......