Dear Life:

Plz to not be making me feel like a stupid, naive little girl anymore. I don't like it. So stop it!

No love,
Kat

ps., 1pm-11pm shifts in an understaffed bookstore suck.

Does anyone on my flist have a Dreamwidth account that can send out invites? I'd really, really, really like one if you do.

My email is phoenix.kiss@gmail.com. Thanks much! ♥

Louisiana Protective Order Registry (LPOR)

Today the neighbor [who will be referred to as Hellbitch in this journal] is gone. She's been gone all day, so I'm assuming she's gone to visit family for the Easter holiday. Yesterday nobody seemed willing to come out of their house while she was screaming, so the street was quiet. Today, with her gone, people have been working in their yards or walking their dogs.

Last night around 7pm she was sitting in her house with her windows shut, blinds drawn, and her door shut, and she was still screaming at my mother. She said something about getting a "free pass," which I can only assume is because she has a son in law who works in law enforcement. Which is a little scary, but thankfully I have friends and relatives in law enforcement, the Louisiana judiciary system, Border Patrol, and a cousin who's a criminal defense attorney, so. Good will always triumph over evil, because evil is dumb.

Thankfully there's no court costs or bonds needed to file for a Protective Order. My google-fu is strong.

I no longer feel safe in my own home.

It's killing me to try and make sense out of this mess. I want so desperately for my mother not to be as frightened as she is, and to not feel like she's trapped and to be able to go outside when she wants without fear of repercussion. And some part of me just rages against this woman calling my mother a whore a slut and a cunt.

Today while speaking with Ms. Rihner [my Bible Lit teacher] in the Liberal Arts offices, amid some general conversation, another teacher came up behind me (well, us, I was with Cary) and asked, "I'm sorry, but did one of you say you were Kathryn Johnson?"

Normally this is a question that implies the named has done something wrong, so it was with some trepidation that I answered -- especially because I hadn't ever seen this lady before. But when I told her who I was, she shook my hand and was like, "I'm Missy Diaz, I was final say in the BHM contest, and your entries for Images are amazing! Both of them got put in, along with your BHM poem!"

So now I am all but cornered by two enthusiastic teachers -- Ms. Rihner's slightly wicked style of enthusiasm and Ms. Diaz telling me all about Images, when who should walk by but Dr. Brumfield. Dr. B is the most impossibly eloquent man I've ever met, and he was my teacher for English 101. He asked me "Did you write an Antigone paper at all, ever?" And when I replied, "yes, why?" he replies, "Well, I happened into the faculty offices today, and Dr. Choudhury had left a paper in the copier -- he was copying it for his class -- and I wondered if it was written by the same Kathryn Johnson. It only took me two paragraphs to tell it was."

This Antigone paper was one I wrote waaaaaaay back in Structure of Western Thought and which that professor still uses as a teaching aid about two years later. I will never be able to get away from this paper [or the fact that I got a 12 on my 101 Exit Exam, which was graded holistically and was the first 12 Dr. B had seen in about five years]. The infamy of this Antigone paper is such that when Dr. Choudhury discovered that perfectcherry is a friend of mine, he made her read it out loud to her class [which I'm still sorry for, Jackie].

My literature-fu is strong. *yawn*

ps.
Hopelessly addicted to Klondike, which is the solitaire game on my iPod. if I don't come back, send help.

My iPod is now sitting in my backpack! (!!!)

I made it to the Office of Student Life just as the woman in charge of the contest was walking out the door -- I squeaked in just under the wire! I now have my fancy-schmancy iPod Classic, which will be filled up with all the music I have on my compy when I go home. I am SO excited about it! The best part of the entire contest process was hearing the congratulations from Dr. McArthur and Ms. Rihner when they saw me -- after having kind of a shitty start to the week this was DEFINITELY something to pick me up and make me feel that this, too, shall pass.

I spent a very nice Monday evening with my friends setting up characters [and, in one case, npcs] for a few games we're going to be running. With the help of Jackie and Dave, I/we helped Germaine set up an Abyssal character for the Exalted game I'm running, and I looked over Dave's 4e DnD book to decide what race I'm going to be playing for his campaign -- I chose to play a tiefling. And no, the name is not because they have big "teef." (Thanks, Cary.)

It was nice to see my friends, the cats, the dog, and especially Miranda. I don't know what I'd do without our Monday night RPing sessions. Cary will soon be joining us, too, so that should be fun. I'm always all for inducting newbies into the ways of the nerd. After all, I did get her to come back to WoW.

(The rest of this week has, in a word, sucked, but it's nothing that can't be overcome. It's embarassing, yes, but something that can be fixed. And I've decided not to dwell on it any more than I absolutely have to, because it won't do anything but slog me down and prevent me from helping things move forward. That is all.)

Some things in the life of Kat the Dargonslayer, practicioner of Literature-Fu:

• At work we have a huge table set up with all of the Watchmen stuff, including a pretty true-to-life-size cardboard cutout of Rorschach. I watched a guy brush past Rorschach, tell him "Excuse me," and keep walking.



• Urban fiction -- especially the urban erotica that's mixed in -- is always funny. It's good for midday lolz when they're few and far between. Especially when passages of said books contain things like "Aw hell na, let me see them big ass titties!" and then, in another one I reshelved later, something the male character said sent "a tremor straight up her vagina." Not pussy. Not cunt. Vagina. I didn't know you had to get technical.



• I fell halfway down the first flight of stairs (about six steps) and was caught by the homeless lady who tends to live in the store by day. She smelled kind of musty, but she made sure I was okay.



• At various points in my work so far I've encountered people reading Forgotten Realms books, or at one point someone asked about the WoW atlas, and I almost asked them what server they played on, or what they thought of FR/DnD, but I stopped myself. I've decided I'm just not going to bother, especially since both customers were wearing wolf shirts. Is this a trend I don't know about? As a nerd, do I need to get a wolf shirt?



• Asking me for "the book about that bus crash" probably won't get you the book you want, despite the completely overwhelming number of books about bus crashes. At least know the title or the author. Also, asking me about "the sixty-dollar Shakespeare book," when searching the inventory for "Shakespeare" brings up THIRTY TWO PAGES of inventory (and six or eight books around the sixty-dollar price range), won't get you very far.

Since I get to go work the Twilight DVD release party at work today, I present to you

( Another reason why Twilight sucks (please do not throw acid in my face). )