MILES to GO || before I sleep

My geology midterm wasn't nearly as hard as the teacher made it out to be. She gave us this big long comprehensive study guide and only some of it was actually on the 25-question, multiple-choice test. She had us freaking out at the beginning of the period with mentions of needing a calculator, and there wasn't a single math problem on the test (that I saw; I didn't skip any, and I don't think she had different "versions" of the test). There were no questions about the movement of hot spots or locating a point within a quadrangle using given longitude, latitude, as well as township and range. I only hesitated on two questions, and only one on the extra credit sheet.

It's Friday and I still haven't committed to a class ring (yet). It's probably a good thing, but what sucks is that even if I do make up my mind, the ordering at this point is either online or over the phone. If I want encrusting --and TBH, it doesn't look as good IRL as it does online; I thought it would be more like "dimensional" embossing, but it's really just like painted-on the stone (which has to be of a certain cut or they can't do it at all)-- I have to order over the phone. I have narrowed down the stone choices to either garnet or blue fire spinel, and I'm probably going to get an "antique" finish in some form of silver or platinum or palladium or whatever's available.

The hard part is the BAND size-- originally I wanted this one with these neat sides that had your major and/or other interest on them, plus wording around the stone that says the school name. I can also get these "ribbons" that say something like the year I'm graduating or custom characters...

I whittled it down to wanting:
* Journalism
* Sigma Alpha Pi (Greek name of NSLS)
* CSUN or Cal State Northridge or some variation of the school's name

I can do without 2009 or 2010, but those ones above are MUSTS. Problem is, the ring I wanted that can have all that is so THICK on my fingers, it looks weird. My fingers are pretty short and stubby, with no shape to them. They look like sticks. The one with a thinner, curvier band can't have customized sides, which takes half the fun out of the ring altogether. I like CSUN, but I don't want a Matador on my ring. I looked at some more elegant rings, where there are no side pictures, but I can still get writing on them, but the band looked too thin. It was like my finger was sprouting out of this pretty little delicate-looking thing.

I asked the Jostens folks, but they were basically like "Yeah, there's no middle ground." HELP!

Also, I feel lousy. I think I ate my breakfast too fast again this morning; I was running a bit late for a dentist's appointment. My appointment ended up getting cancelled anyway, so the five minutes that turned into eleven minutes ended up being meaningless. I've rescheduled for the 27th. But in the meantime, this wibbly, constipated feeling has stuck with me all day. I had Campbell's Tomato Soup and Ritz for lunch; the sodium content was just off the charts! I don't usually care too much about sodium --I like my eggs and potatoes salted, thank you very much-- but 790 mg per serving, with a single bowl being 2 servings!? WTF!? It was so salty I was smacking my lips the whole while (and not in the good way). I tried to water the soup down and drink tea to make the saltiness go away, but it didn't help much. I couldn't finish the bowl. I had rice pudding for "dessert," but I'm not sure if that was the best idea, either. On the one hand: rice, which is nice and benign, but on the other hand, PUDDING, which is cream and fat and more stomach pain.

I wonder if all this is caused by the new medicine I've been taking off and on for my dermographia or whatever-- basically all the itchy redness I tend to get all over. I wonder if it's working in conjunction with one of my many other allergy/asthma/heartburn/etc. meds and is making me fill ILL more often than not. Is there some sort of "input meds, see side effects and interactions" generator out there somewhere?

Also: weekend? What weekend? Tomorrow I'm going shopping with Baba and Grandpa in Porter Ranch, and on Sunday I'm planting trees in Granada Hills. Next week is the first meeting of NSLS this semester and I have to make sure to have all the materials and BE ready. Eek, I hope I can do this!

No, not really.

But I could be an apprentice for drug cocktail waitressing... er, that is, I went to the doc's today and walked away with not one, not two, but three medicines! One's for the weird super-dryness of my skin that just started a few days ago (and has started to fade ever since), one is another dosing of Prilosec, because this morning I had another heartburn-attack-from-Hell and no amount of Maalox or Gas-X helped (well, not THAT much, anyway) and the doc recommended I up the dosage to one before breakfast and one before dinner. The pain from this morning still hasn't gone away completely. Oh, and then there's a muscle relaxant for my "around-the-head" headaches, which the doc said are probably caused by muscle tension. Hm, sounds like me-- always tense.

And I had a blood test on top of all that, because my "cold feet" might be caused by a thyroid problem. Stupid thyroid-- causes so many problems in the body! On the one hand, it'd be nice to know there's a cause behind my problem and that I'm a) not imagining it and b) can do something about it, but if it means MORE meds or something... ugh. So, two days from now and we'll see.

Oh yes, we got the new Airport Extreme Base Station today, and I set it up. So we've still got Earthlink DSL, but thanks to an APPLE product, we have wireless (no thanks to Earthlink) that is reliable (same), secure (same), and easy to configure (same). Problems? Well, for some lame reason, Gary's wireless printer doesn't seem to see the new network or accept the password. Technically the name is only two letters off of the old network name-- all I did was change the capitalization of two letters. The password's nearly the same too, but I made sure to retype it in perfectly and the printer still won't connect. I don't know why. When I tried to print using the printer already configured in my preferences, it only got as far as 62% (spooling), with nothing actually coming out of Gary's printer. In any case, I'm sure that bit will eventually work when we get Comcast this weekend.

We connected Mom's HP PSC 1210 All-In-One to the Base Station, but my install of OS X 10.5 doesn't have the drivers for it, and the HP website and assorted Mac websites don't have them either (because they're supposed to be on the OS X 10.5 install disc, which I stupidly didn't bring with me). The 10.4 driver doesn't work, as the HP Setup Assistant doesn't even see the printer via Bonjour when I try to set it up. So when I have to select a driver, the one for our model doesn't come up, even though I set it up via USB before. What doesn't make sense is, I probably set it up using the disc, which is only SUPPOSED to work with 10.4 and below, but because it was USB and not Network, it DID work. Or something like that. So I picked another HP PSC driver, but who knows if it'll work.... (the printer queue seems to think it finished sending a test page, but I haven't seen/heard the printer respond!)

So, on the bright side, I'm back in the 'Net game... for now. I have some late papers and such to turn in, school work to catch up on, personal projects I'd like to make headway on, etc., but no shortage of things to do, places to go.... Like LJ. Must catch up on LJ. Way behind. But also-- way tired, because I was up way early for me considering when I got to sleep last night (new bad habit: not finding a good place to stop in my books, so staying up until 3am to finish reading them) and the pain was not a fun thing to try and sleep through. So I might just take a nap before CSI: now.

Speaking of CSI, the writers damn well better use this episode with the return of the Miniature Killer as a reason why Grissom finally up and leaves Vegas and goes to find Sara. The idea of him hooking up with Heather again --when both of them know better!-- is patently absurd, and I can't stand how Grissom can go through so much and be willing to throw it all away because of inaction. So, I hope Grissom gets a happy ending (with Sara, dagnabbit!) within the next few episodes, if not this one.