Angry Plunging

Here's the thing; my house is old. Like really old. It creaks and groans with every gust of wind and it tilts a little to one side. That's okay. I'm told it's called "character."

So, my house is a 60 year old geriatric woman with plumbing just as old and finicky. We have one bathtub that we're not allowed to take baths in. Showers are okay but a full bathtub will cause serious structural damage somehow (like the floor might collapse). I'd rather not test that out.

Regardless, four girls using one bathtub quickly equals to the tiny drain clogging up. No problemo. Hair catcher, draino, plunger. We gots it. 

Living with girls is oft times disgusting. You think I would have learnt my lesson after living with about 40 other women in college but noooooooooo, I'm just a (well prepared) glutton for punishment.      

With the new housemates, it's taking a little longer to work house things out. Chore rotation, fridge space, cabinet space, etc. What is really driving me nuts is the girl who only believes in using natural products (aka expensive LUSH products) which is fine; it's her money. What is not fine is when she clogs the drain daily with all her crap. Between the very large hairballs in the hair catcher and the oats she leaves behind on the bathtub floor like some very industrious bird decided to go to town on a poop spree, I have to plunge the bathtub (draino at this point doesn't even work anymore) every time I take a shower. Angrily. Vigorously. For minutes on end. I actually have to switch arms; I'm angrily plunging that hard. The alternative is to take a shower standing in her waste water. Ewww. Not happening. I'd rather be stinky for days instead. Or plunge angrily.

The only solution is to talk to her. A general note about cleaning out the shower after every shower is not working at all as I've just discovered. It's time for an intervention. Otherwise, I'll have big muscular man arms, no neck, and my face set in that permanent concentrated scowl of angry plunging.

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why does it even surprise me....

So, I called Citibank to let them know I may be using my credit card outside the states and guess what? Apparently, they made the decision to cancel my card in Jan this year because I hadn't used it in 4 months. Really? WTF Citibank. I didn't even get any notification. Plus, I haven't used it in 4 months because they kept upping the APR on me without telling me. Bloody shady is what that is.

I wonder if they'll close my bank account too cos I haven't been using it since they are terrible in general and their customer service sucks for both bank accounts and credit cards...why no, I do not want to talk to you, Meh-tew, because you're obviously answering my call from a call center in India since you can't even pronounce your English name right and you keep telling me that the server is down for updates when I want to make any type of changes to my account.

The lady I spoke to today was like, if you want, I can transfer you and you can sign up for a new credit card. Are you kidding me? I was on the fence with Citibank but this is the last straw - never again Citibank, never again. They've lost all my business (I think I'll go close my account this week and just stick with Bank of America) and I will never recommend them to anyone. Absolutely horrible!

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panic at the disco.... give me five minutes to spaz out!

i've got a couple posts just waiting to be published....the LA trip from last weekend, some angsty self-reflective type posts that I'm still debating on whether to unleash on ppl (my emo-ness is fleeting but can be kinda intense and is usually a very very private deal for me), the travel series that is sitting, novel sized, in msword and being added to daily and etc. Mostly, I'm waiting for the pics before I post anything travel related. Where's the fun in talking about a place when there's no way to see it? Descriptive prose is great and all but I totally do not want to be like Tolkien.

I do have an update on school stuff tho. Illinois-Chicago said no. Not surprising. I expected it and it sounds rather spoilt of me to say that I wouldn't have wanted to go there anyway if they had said yes but that was my pov halfway thru the admissions process especially since the prof I was looking to work under did not respond to any inquiries whatsoever. What kind of message does that give prospective students? That and the fact that the anthro dept ppl there were total asses on the phone (I called to clarify some things about the admissions process way back when and was totally put off by the lady who talked to me like I was a particularly stupid child) meant that I was not looking to get in there but went through with the process anyway since I had already paid for it and paid for my transcripts to be sent there. If no money was involved, I would not have bothered. I still get huffy when I think about how bitchy that lady was on the phone. meh.

Hawaii....I don't even know anymore. They managed to not receive any of my transcripts and claimed they were missing a recommendation more than a month after apps were due. I've done everything I can on my side but I think I'm pretty much screwed. However, hope springs eternal, right?

Anyway, what's got me in a snit is that the prof in charge of the Angkor project sent out an email to me and some of the other participants to obtain more info from us for apps and passes and all that. That's great.....except she did it by forwarding the entire conversation I had with her prior to the email going out. So everyone on the email list read the convo and I'm really not happy about that at all. It had stuff like my GPA, who I've worked with so far, my resume attached, where I've applied, etc.

Yeah. I think it's really not done to do that.

Guess what happens after? I get this random email from one of the dudes on the email list saying he read the convo (ooh, big surprise there....but he did apologise for being nosy so, eh) and wanted to say hi because we're both Malaysian and he's going to Angkor and he applied to UW too. Urm. yeah. So what is the unintended side effect of this guy's casual email?? The loss of hope, that's what.  With one simple email, he totally crushes my hopes of getting into UW because apparently, he's a MA student at USM and is on the waitlist with me for a spot at UW. What's the problem, you ask? Well, I was banking on the fact that I was South East Asian/ Malaysian and the possibility of the uni doing work in Malaysia to give me an edge and the fact that I had visited and met the profs. Now, I find out that one of the ppl I'm up against is also Malaysian, has more experience in the area than I do along with definite contacts in Malaysia (my contacts are...urm....pending....), is more qualified (once he finishes his MA thesis this year), is going to work with UW at the fieldschool in the Philippines starting this week and has gone to all the regional conferences where he's met all the profs and even presented.

...........

Talk about being blindsided. So now, I have no edge whatsoever over the competition and overall, I'm less qualified. They should just send me the rejection already and be done with it.

I'm DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMED!!

Well, that was part of my little spazzy panic attack when I got that email from him. Talk about a downer. But all is not lost, otherwise, I wouldn't be on the list up against super qualified ppl like that. Still crossing my fingers and toes. Maybe they'll be like....oh, this one has less experience = more trainable... and pick me. lol. who knows? could happen. here's to hoping but i ain't gonna spend anymore time spazzing out about it. It's times like this when I'm really grateful for my whatever attitude and total faith in well....fate and in karma and all that good stuff. If it was meant to be, it'll happen.....if not, something else just as great will creep up and boink me when I least expect it :) now, i gotta go look for cookies to console myself with. I love how my (sorta) angsty moments are wonderful excuses to ply myself with food :D

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St patty's day + alcohol = stupidity in other people

Of all the sane people living on our street, how/why did we get stuck with the crazy losers?

Should have known that St Patty's day would draw out our obnoxious neighbours (they had been on a much appreciated down-low in terms of public disturbances). They had some friends over in the afternoon and started partying...and really, whatever. I get it's THE Irish drinking holiday in the states and I can deal with that. What I can't deal with is the fact that the neighbour and one of his/his gf's friends got into a fight at 2am in the morning and the most godawful racket resulted. It sounded like a Jackie Chan movie where the fight was going from room to room, furniture was breaking, holes were being punched into the walls, and there was the expected macho posturing bullshit and female screeching in the background. For a moment we contemplated calling the cops...but decided that it wasn't our problem. I'm sure at least one person had a phone they could use when they took a break from sounding like a dying muskrat. no way in hell were we going over to break that shit up; we've got some sense of preservation.

Anyway, it only stopped cos the neighbour left his place and was ranting outside the house while his equally crazy gf worked herself up into a frenzy and started heaving (dry or not, I couldn't tell....but if she puked on anything of ours, I'm gonna kick their asses). So I was graciously given the opportunity to listen to him rant on the phone and her making pukey sounds for about an hour or so. yeah, this is the soundtrack I want to hear at 3 in the morning. So, they wait for the cops but nothing happens so they go back into their place and once again, mortal kombat 2 starts up (but a less cool version). As before, it dies down when they leave their place.

The cops come at around 5am. I'm totally pissed and haven't slept because of racket (them, not the cops). The cop does his job and all is well. Yay. Except, not quite. We're really angry with them and the lousy neighbours being who they are, we know they're not even going to apologise for the crap last night.

The silver lining on this damn cloud?

I thought it was amusing that they got chased out of their own place TWICE by the guest they were fighting with. LAME. Even chimps do a better job of defending their territory than these two. *shakes head sadly* It's times like this when I wish technology didn't interfere with Darwin's evolutionary theory....life would be much quieter....and less filled with crazies.

In totally unrelated news, the ice cream trucks of my neighbourhood have stated using birdcalls instead of the usual circus music....I really wonder about that tactic.....

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and the neighbour saga continues.....

First of all, sorry about all the ranting and raving about the neighbours but they are kinda sucky and if I don't rant now, I'm gonna keep thinking about it til I drive myself crazy. Feel free to skip this post but if you read it, do we really sound unreasonable?

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The continuous rant about the neighbours...

I'm really pissed off with the neighbours right now. We totally thought (prayed, wished, hoped) that they had moved out since we hadn't been hearing very much from them the last few weeks (although my sis says she's heard them) but alas, it is not so. The dude is playing really loud clubbing/heavy metal music that I can hear from the living room (so through two walls and a door). It's so loud that I can hear it from inside the car which is parked on the street. We've talked to them before when it got too loud for too long in the middle of the week (til 4 am on a tuesday night/wed morning) and they said they understood and were ....fairly apologetic at the time.
 

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