Haven't been doing much lately. Really, I've spent my days lying around, and my nights drinking and lying around. I haven't been working on any of the projects I've started for myself. I haven't even been slacking with any particular fervor. I've merely been lying around. Frankly, I'm getting bored of myself, so I decided to make today (well, yesterday; Thursday, I mean) a Helena Does Stuff Day.
9.00 AM
Wake up. Refuse to allow myself the privilege of getting out of bed until I've read fifty pages of the book I'm working on, which is dreadfully long. I read fifty-one, for good measure.
11.00
Gather my shit together for the day. Take out recycling, garbage, paper, and bag of clothing I'm never going to wear again.
12.30
Realize I've reserved the Mixing Bench Room for 5.00 PM, so as to teach myself how the hell it works by recording four of my favorite tapes onto CDs. Realize I haven't bought blank CDs yet, and take the bus to the mall, where a nice goofy FYE kid tries to sell me some CD wipes for 99 cents. I tell him that I used to work for his company (which I did, circa 1999-2000), and that I know the damned CD wipes aren't anything but glorified Kleenexes. He grins a goofy grin and starts bitching about how "it pays the bills." He amends that to say, "well... almost, but not really."
1.30
Spent a little while in the computer lab, backing up old entries of Wet Cleanup. And by backing up, I mean in hard copy, because I don't trust disks any further than I can throw them. And [in a completely non-misogynistic way] I throw like a girl.
2.00
Buy a new black binder, a package of filler paper for my notebook, and a large piece of thick construction-type paper at the campus bookstore.
2.15
Buy a Cherry Coke, so as not to run out of fuel... Stuff all the newly-printed archives into the black binder, and tape a hand-calligraphied sheet to the front which reads "Wet Cleanup in the Produce Section, by Helena Thomas."
2.25
Check mail [none today; insert sad face here] and deposit tax refund check into the ATM.
2.30
Bring large piece of paper over to the Print-making Lab and rip it neatly into nice little squares. I have some book-making supplies left over from last quarter, and they were damned expensive, so I may as well use them to make another little blank book, instead of just chucking them.
3.00
Realize I've forgotten my Cherry Coke someplace and buy a Pepsi. Also realize I haven't eaten in gahd knows how long, and treat myself to half a bag of microwave popcorn. Yum. Health food.
3.30
Write short essay for my Tutoring class that was due last Monday. Oh well. Go to Writing Center to do my homework for this coming Monday. [My homework consists of observing a tutoring session, and then writing a short essay about it.] There was nobody to observe in the Writing Center, so they made me out an appointment card for Sunday, and sent me away.
3.40
Collect a handful of little itty-bitty slips of paper advertising apartments for rent. I'll call them tomorrow.
4.00
Sit down on the steps of the library building and read another 20 pages of my book. Rock on, Helena. Way to do your homework, even though it's not going to get collected.
4.40
Run into this kid Lloyd, with whom I have a brief conversation about crazy writers living in cabins, crazy hippies living in forests, and Jack Kerouac, who isn't alive anymore anyway.
5.00
Pick up the key to the Mixer Room or whatever the hell they call it. The first kid is really, really, REALLY rude to me [as in, if I was more of a bitch than I am, I'd write a letter to his boss to try to get him fired; dude is a real asshole...], but he passed me off on this girl who was nice. She gave me the key and sent me on my way.
5.10
Teach myself two computer programs I've never seen in my life, learn a thing or two [okay, it was only one thing, not two] about those big grey mixing-board thingers, and remind myself how to use a Mac computer after having barely touched one since 4th grade [ah... recall the days of learning to type on PFS-Write? and then playing hours and hours of Oregon Trail? Those were the days......] It took me five hours altogether, but I converted my four cassettes into two CDs. The CDs don't sound great, but they'll do. They're at least more permanent than the cassettes, which don't sound great either. Oddly, a couple of the songs came out REALLY well, and the rest of them sound like they're coming at you from behind three or four huge draperies. Whatever. It was my first try. Considering the help I got from the nice media people ["It's easy! Plug the red cords into A-1 and A-2, and then into B-15 and B-16, and then press this switch, click on File, open up something that looks completely useless, push all the little levers up to the grey areas, except the last two levers which don't matter, and then this lever, which you have to adjust based on extensive training and audio experience, then click some stuff in a certain order, and you're done!"], it's fucking amazing I knew how to turn the damned computer on by myself. It's even more amazing that I don't think I broke anything. Even MORE amazing, I actually managed to mix up the songs a little bit, AND not run out of room on the CDs. Hurray for math skills! [...uh, no, I swear I wasn't counting on my fingers... Okay, I was...] AND, while recording the cassettes, I finished crocheting nineteen rows of the afghan I've been working on [okay, so I've been staring at it and NOT working on it, but whatever...], which is a buttload.
10.50
Treat myself to ice cream.
11.00
Begin this entry.
Coming soon
Collapse.............
~Helena*