Okay, so I call over to the degree place before noon today so that I can pick up the finished paperwork and go over to registration. Finally. I walk over to the degree place and tell the lady at the front desk that I'm here to pick up paperwork. She looks in the folder. It's not there. She looks again. It's still not there. The woman I talked to on the phone is at lunch. I go sit down. Forty-five minutes pass. A new lady comes to the front desk. She asks me what's up. I tell her. She calls registration and they tell her that they can just fax the paperwork to them and I can go on my merry way.

Except that my advisor gave me clearance for the wrong classes. We both look at the computer. Yep, he wrote down the wrong section numbers on my registration paper. The woman I talked to on the phone comes back from break. She had filed my paperwork in the "R" folder. I have been at this place for an hour. All I had to do was pick up a single piece of paper. They call my advisor and tell him he screwed up. Except, no he didn't! The degree place was accessing the wrong semester on their computer! Oh ho ho, that's so funny! I take my paperwork and register and walk back. I hate this school.

Oh, I am so mad. This is a fury that is the most frustrating, because it's not directed at a single person, but rather a whole group of persons that I can't even complain about, because they are the people complaints go to.

I had to fill out a petition to take this graduate level course. They finally got done with it today. I went to check to see if there was anything else I had to do, but the person who told me what time to come by was at lunch then. (If you're going to go on lunch, don't tell students to see you then.) I get a phone call from Colin, in the same position as me, at 4:30 telling me I have to turn in paperwork to the Degree place before they close tonight, because it takes 24 hours to process and tomorrow is the last day to register. I run over to Cinema Student Affairs to pick up the paperwork. I go to the front desk, where a work study student is sitting. I tell him I have to pick something up from one of two people. He tells me they're talking with another advisor. Five minutes go by. It's ten till 5:00, and Degree place is clear on the other side of campus. Finally, one of the people who can help me comes out and gives me the paperwork. I book over to DP, and hand the paperwork in. Where I find out that they may not have it done tomorrow at all, and if they do, I have to come back over and pick it up and register in person instead of over the phone. Let's address these one at a time. First of all, it has to be done tomorrow. Tomorrow is the last day to register. I tell the women that's at the desk this simple fact. She smirks and tells me I'm the one who waited till the day before. This is where I lost it, and came very close to shrieking. What came out was a high-pitched "It is not my fault! I filled this stuff out weeks ago! I only now could bring it over!" She didn't say anything, but told me to keep calling and checking on the progress. Now, the whole having to register in person thing? Blows. It's like this school wants people to kill first a lot of staff members, then themselves.

Anyway, now I'm just exhausted, but we're shooting tonight. Yeah, it sucks. Projected wrap time is midnight, so won't get home till late, and I'm doing sound all by myself. Colin gets up really early in the mornings and I agreed that if I helmed tonight solo, he'd take a shoot by himself sometime. I really, really don't want to shoot now. I just want to take a shower, get in my jammies, and watch TV. Man alive.

There are two reasons to watch CNN. And they have nothing to do with staying up to date with current affairs, or being able to sound relatively intelligent in adult conversations. Although I guess those things are cool, too. Whatever, here's why you turn on the James Earl Jones network:


Tucker Carlson


Anderson Cooper

Ooo...pretty. I watch "Crossfire" whenever I'm home at the time it's on just to watch Tucker. I flip on CNN any time I have a few minutes just to see if Anderson is on. Not only are they sexy bags of sex, they're also really smart, which is just...yeah. I like 'em.

Stupid State of the Union address. I want to watch 24 tonight! Ahem...

Roommate issues and the leftover, for lack of a better word, administration stuff from last semester notwithstanding, so far this semester has rocked it, and rocked it hard. We had our first weekend of principal photography and it went really, really well. Everything sounded great, and I'm very much enjoying working on a crew. As interesting as it was to tackle all the major roles and, for all intents and purposes, be the sole author of a film, it's so nerve-wracking to the point of no longer being enjoyable. Being on a crew makes it much simpler; you can just focus on one task while being confident that everyone else will get their job done. This has been a great experience thus far.

I really want to see Chicago, now. Several people whose film opinions I respect and usually agree with have told me it was just fantastic. They even quelled my fears regarding The Gere. Unfortunately, without an automobile and without the necessary amount of drive to face the bus, I don't have much way to get to see the film. So, unless someone has a get-together or decides to do a movie thing, I probably won't get to see it till it comes out on video. Bah.

I left my sponge curlers at home after the break, so my hair's been weird lately, since I've been blow drying it straight yet inevitably it does some odd flippy thing anyway. So last night I had the brilliant idea to twist my hair into little buns and secure them with bobby pins, and then sleep on it. Yeah. I woke up this morning and was actually horrified by my hair. I couldn't look at it. I brushed it in the other room, too frightened to face that image in the mirror again. I was finally able to subdue it enough to brave the outside world, but damn. You'd think I would learn to not do hair experiments anymore.

Happiness! All the sound from the test shoot came back and it works. It's a little low because we used a back up mike, but it's definitely useable. We figured out that the reason the boom microphone wasn't working was an internal switch in the mixer that was toggled incorrectly. So that was cool. This weekend is the first weekend of principal photography; we're shooting at a comedy club and at a birthday party. So far everything's been going well. Except...stupid cinema administration! The class I'm taking is a graduate level course, and I had to fill out a petition to be able to register for it. It's just paperwork that has to go through, and there was never any question of being denied, but in the meantime to secure units and financial aid I'm registered for classes I'm not taking. I turned in the petition the first day of class, January 13. They told us to check back at the end of the week. No, still not finished, check back on Wednesday. So yesterday during the break I go to check. And it's still not done.

Student Affairs: [Faculty Member] still has the petition, we're waiting for her signature.
Me: [Faculty Member] is one of my professors! She knows me!
Student Affairs: Yeah. What's up with that?

So I go to the professor, and ask her about the petition. She's all, right. Let's go get that signed right now. So I follow her up to her office where the many petitions she has are just laying on her desk. Apparently she'd had them since the 13th, and hadn't done anything with them. She signs them, and I accompany her down to Student Affairs again, because I'm thinking that I just need the go-ahead to register. Well, turns out they need signatures of the Provost and the Dean, too. So, very close to having a freakout, I tell everyone in a twenty foot radius, "This has to be done by January 30th! That is the last drop-add day! I am not getting extra fees put on my account because no one can get things done!"

Anyway. I can't believe next week is the end of January. Spring semester always goes by so fast. Although since I'm actually enjoying class this semester (and it's sad the damage to my psyche last semester and the Horror That Was Ashley have done), I'm not really counting down the days yet. I am counting down the days, however, until the next episode of 24. I can't believe it's just been one week without it; this summer hiatus is going to kill me.

Caroline! You're in France. That's so cute. I sent you a little something, so be on the lookout, okay?

Edited to add that I recommended (not linked to, alas) a new song on the left. Check it out, yo.