I did it. I enrolled as a full-time student at Baker College in scenic Auburn Hills. “Full-time” at Baker (for me) means three 4-hour classes per week. I’m taking them at night so I can get still get a full-time job if I can find one. If this week, with its HP “Colossal Waste of Many Applicants’ Time” Job Fair, is any indication, I’ll be having lots of time to study…
Had a little surprise at class registration this morning. I had believed that the certification program I wanted, being slightly over half the credit hours of completing an Associates degree, would be completed in one year. Nope. You’re expected to take two classes at a time over the course of two years, because the core classes are only offered during one quarter per year. I signed up for an additional standard course, Composition I, because 12 credit hours = full time, and my suggested classes for the Fall quarter only totaled eight credit hours. This is about the time I discovered I had gotten myself into a 2-year program. I went stomping down to the Admissions office, and went around in various circles, getting more aggravated by the minute. One “advisor” suggested I may as well complete a full Associates degree, since I’d be hanging around for two years anyway. Finally, I lost it. “You mean I’m going to have to TORTURE MYSELF for two years instead of one???” This did not go over very well with the advisor. She didn’t threaten to call security or anything, but she did sort of say that she hoped I wouldn’t think of the coursework as torture. Okay, so maybe it won’t be torture (unless I manage to find a concurrent full-time job, in which case it’ll be right up there with waterboarding.) However, what it WILL be is TWICE AS EXPENSIVE as I’d planned-even if the tuition rate doesn’t increase, which isn’t likely. That’s not good from any angle. Especially from my husband’s, who’s thinking I ought to just demand a refund and forget about the whole thing. And I most likely would, except for my mother. She’s been after me to take college classes for eons, and she’s tremendously happy about the whole idea. And I’d like to make her happy. Someone around here ought to be happy, one would think – it may as well be her.
It appears that I’ve reached another seedy crossroads in the land of fear and loathing. A rusty, pitted stoplight hangs twisted at a cockeyed angle; the light shines red. Actually, it’s been stuck on red since I got laid off over a year ago, and maybe even before that. After all, it wasn’t a surprise when it happened. …
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Why does this site exist? Well, because I am… a frustrated writer a frustrated webgeek recently laid-off a chronic crocheter and gatherer of wool a World of Warcraft addict happily married (yay!) a culture vulture a cancer survivor a lover of funny things middle-aged and far too sedentary such a hermit by nature, how’d I …
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I read a bit of news on the health risks of excessive CT scans this week that produced a shock of recognition. In my late teens or early twenties, I had discovered a book recommendation in some magazine or another, and decided to follow up and read it. The novel wasn’t a new one. It …
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Unfortunately, due to financial restraints, I’ve mothballed my Topics of Cancer website, topicsofcancer.com. I did, however, save the posts from that site and will be adding them to Reality from Here as time permits, under the category “Cancer Survival and How to Survive it”. The first one, “Oncological Hypochondria,” just went up a half hour …
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I’m swiftly approaching my 48th birthday, which also is the four-year anniversary of my mastectomy. It should have been performed three days sooner, but the surgeon (who had missed my diagnosis fourteen months earlier) had unexpectedly abandoned my PPO and I refused to allow her to do the surgery out-of-network. There was no way of knowing …
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Strangely enough, with all my wretched cynicism of anything humankind has created in the name of, well, a “higher authority”, I find some of the associated writings and works of art oddly appealing at times. And so it was, overfed, well-rested and sated with my usual internet amusements, I visited a favorite web site, www.gutenberg.org, which …
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oddly my dreams have aged to elderly where potential and possibility have withered autumn brittle into the surfaces I’ve collected the faces reaching into me are all familiar, even the strangers that fill each scenario, handing me objects of forgotten purpose pulled from an archive of life time we populate an impressionist pastiche of when …
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Okay. I was in the chemo “twilight zone” again, after my 4th treatment, early February 2004. My leukopenia (low white blood cell count) had subsided according to my latest blood work. However, my gums had become so swollen and inflamed that I couldn’t fully close my mouth without chomping down painfully upon the bloated, pulsating …
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Okay, here’s the news, after a brief hiatus. After turning over every rock in town looking for a doctor and/or procedure to explain why I’ve passed blood in my urine periodically, the general consensus is that I’m appallingly healthy and may never know just what caused this mildly alarming symptom. I was cystoscoped (?), ultrasounded, palpated, …
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