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This week continues to be less than totally auspicious: I missed my unmissable class today, because somehow I thought it was at 2, not 11. On the bright side, I got sleep?
I'm about to brave the rain to make a trip to uni, where I'll hand in my first work for Field Linguistics, and pick up my new glasses (thereafter dropping off the ones I'm wearing right now to get new lenses). So, yay, better vision, at least. And yesterday I stopped my bank and opened a web account that actually gets interest, in which to store most of my money, as well as ordering a Visa debit card on my existing account so I don't have to borrow others' credit cards any more. (Had to borrow Chas's last night to put credit on my phone and order some books.)
Things to do: study for my exam on Friday morning
- do a couple of linguistics assignments due by then (which also qualify as studying for the exam)
Which is why the following things are on a backburner right now:
- write posts about Half-Life 2, Dolly Parton, Barack Obama, free speech
- sort better/fold somewhat my clothes (not too problematic because they're in a box, at least, not just in a pile)
- go through and post recent photos
- arrange to talk to my mother and explain the whole thing where I've changed the name she and my father gave me
*takes deep breaths* Time to finish getting dressed, take my meds, and plan to head out as soon as the rain gets a little less heavy.Current Music: Dolly Parton - Jesus & Gravity
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So, in accedance to circumstances, comfort, and all of that... today I got around to buying a wireless ergonomic keyboard and mouse, the better for working for extended periods on Serious Things while sitting on my bed with my laptop on a chair without wrecking my back muscles all the time.
I also got a large pinboard, because I want to be able to lay out my notes/data for Sharchopka without having to take over the kitchen table, and also without having to pack them up when I want the space I was using back even if I do it in my room. If I can stick stuff to a pinboard, I can just prop it against the wall behind my bedroom door when I'm not using it.
Annoyingly, my laptop's almost-never-used CD drive is getting flaky and unreliable about the very concept of recognising CDs are in it, so I had to download the software from the Microsoft website. On the bright side, they do in fact work, and this is a much, much more comfortable way to use my computer in my bedroom..
*blinks at discovery* So, uh, if I use the fifth mouse button on the mouse, it produces a magnifying glass thing I can use to make a portion of my screen hooge. Weird. (I just rebound the settings in the control panel so all five buttons do what I expect them to do.)
Something I'm finding very distracting: I collected my new glasses today. I've got past the period where everything looks all wrong, like it should look blurry, but it doesn't, so everything looks *too* clear, or something - my eyes have adjusted to the new prescription and seem to approve. (I'd test whether I could read the really-quite small text on my screen at this non-trivial distance with my old glasses, but I left them at the shop, to get new lenses put in with this prescription on those.
Now the distraction is that my new glasses - though still very light - are slightly heavier than my old ones, with ever-so-slightly thicker arms, and I have this perennial feeling like I've left my sunglasses on, even though I haven't. (I wear sunglasses that fit over my regular glasses.)
Technically my vision, uncorrected, is still 20/20, apparently. (Or 6/6, as they're now calling it. Hooray for metric.) However, my prescription for optimal vision has still increased a bit, and the pretty-much-entire reason I wear glasses is that I'm very, very aware of even subtle differences in clarity - as in, I get eyestrain headaches from not wearing my glasses despite my nominally 20/20 vision.
My eyes are drama queens, basically.
I must to work, so you can have an exerpt of the abstract for a New Yorker article I was reading on the bus, a piece on celebrity-wannabe sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County, Arizona, who bills himself as "America's toughest sheriff", and is a monstrous dicksplash par excellence. In 1993, vowing that no troublemakers would be released on his watch because of overcrowding, he created the Tent City jail. His popularity grew. He banned cigarettes from his jails. Skin magazines. Movies. Coffee. Salt and pepper. He put inmates in black-and-white striped uniforms and created chain gangs. Later, he decreed that all his inmates must wear pink underwear, socks, and flip-flops. Tells about the thousands of lawsuits and legal claims of abuse filed against Arpaio’s department. Last year, the National Commission on Correction Health Care withdrew the health accreditation of Maricopa County’s jails. In March, the U.S. Department of Justice, at the request of members of Congress, launched an investigation into charges of discriminatory conduct by Arpaio’s office. Some politicians, including Phil Gordon, the mayor of Phoenix, have begun to speak out against Arpaio, denouncing him for abuses of power. Describes how Arpaio has transformed the sheriff’s office into a sort of freelance immigration-enforcement agency. A federal program known as 287(g) allows state and local officers to be cross-trained by Homeland Security and work in immigration enforcement. Arpaio’s deputies have conducted extensive raids on Latino towns and neighborhoods. It's worth noting that his chain gangs include women and children, and temperatures in the tents of his tent jail can be upwards of 135 degrees Fahrenheit; officers have been promoted after involvement in prisoner abuse cases that cost millions of dollars in settlement when the victims or their families sued (because some have resulted in prisoners dying as a direct result of abuse); and, just for that extra touch of class, he put a neon Vacancy sign put on a guard tower at the Tent City prison.
Reading about his work seems like it should be something from the eighteenth century, at best, and the most brutal, sadistic dictatorship in the world, at worst.
Something is very, very wrong there.Current Mood:  depressed Current Music: Dolly Parton - Somebody's Everything
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