I have spent most of tonight downloading movies to put on my iPod for the trip to Los Angeles next week. So far I have Gayniggers from Outer Space, Freaks, Sex Madness, I Am Legend, The ABC’s of Sex Education for Trainable Persons, Rashomon (which may not be watchable on the iPod, depends how the subtitles come out), and Death of a President. I did most of my packing today, so I am reasonably close to ready; we have to be ready by Tuesday night because our flight is at some horrible hour like 7:30am - but hey, we’ll get in at 9:30am, and head straight to Disneyland!

The reason we are house-sitting is because my in-laws are on the Grand Voyage cruise with Holland America. They are doing the “Grand South America and Antarctica” section, and they set sail from Fort Lauderdale about six hours ago. Yes, that’s a two-month cruise! They booked the least expensive room they could stand (not sure if it’s inside or oceanview, but definitely no balcony) and they packed as frugally as possible…which is not very frugally, if I know my mother-in-law. They are going to go to all kinds of places that are mythical to most people I know. They are not going to set foot on Antarctica, I think, but they are at least cruising by it. Even though I will be spending 11 days in southern California next week and 11 days on a cruise next month, I am still jealous. Who wouldn’t be?! Damn, two months off work…my father-in-law works for the government, I guess that’s how he can manage it. Unfortunately they started the trip by leaving their $2500 camera in a hotel in Georgia…I’m pretty sure my mother-in-law killed my father-in-law over that, but they arranged to have it shipped back to us before they set sail tonight, so I think their minds are at ease for now.

In other news, I lost a game of Scrabble tonight, damn!

Wow. I managed not to drunk blog last night, but I did drunk text. Or is that drunk Twitter? Here’s the updates I sent last night:

Totally drunk at my in laws house before they come over. Whee! I’m soooo drunk. about 9 hours ago from txt

I have off tomorrow, so pretty much anything is good for me! about 9 hours ago from txt - this was actually meant for neuro42, but I sent it to Twitter

I am SO drunk. Like seriously. I love you all.nj okay noiw I am dru nk on the pbatheoprom. Wow. about 9 hours ago from txt

As near as I can figure out, that last one meant “bathroom.” See, kawaiibishounen, it’s entirely possible to know your limits and still drink too much. I don’t think I’ve ever actually blacked out before, but I woke up about an hour ago in my own bed, with virtually no memory of having left my in-laws’ house. The only memory I might have is maybe being bundled into the car to come home, but then vomiting outside it. This is backed up by the fact that there was a trash can next to the bed when I woke up, raised up on an empty box so it would be at bed height rather than on the floor. Now I see why “…had sex with someone whose name you did not know?” is a common question on purity tests…you really can forget an entire night and everything you did, and wake up next to a stranger. Fortunately I woke up next to my wife, but damn…that could be scary.

Added: Oh dear, it’s worse than I thought. I went to let the cat out and I saw my coat was outside, covered with a towel, and there was a washcloth there too. And the side of my wife’s car is not pretty. What’s funny is that I can usually hold my liquor much better than that - I didn’t have much more than I normally do. Maybe it was on an empty stomach because of the diet? Good grief, how embarrassing.

We went to a holiday party tonight. I had a lot of rum and coke - we brought our own dark Bacardi and used diet coke - and a glass of white wine from the My Dog Blue winery. I did karaoke, and got the highest score of the night on Celine Dion’s “My Heart Will Go On” from Titanic. Subsequent attempts at singing were tainted by a worn-out head voice and perhaps too much alcohol. The host, my wife’s co-worker, has a freaking awesome basement with a real jukebox, a real pinball machine, real Pac-Man arcade cabinet, foosball, magnetic darts, billiards, and more. I had a great time, though I fell twice trying to get into the car. It was more because it was dark and rainy and slippery than because I was drunk, because although I am still fuzzy, I haven’t been falling-down drunk at all tonight. So I fell once in the wet grass (I’m wearing heels) and then fell again while trying to get up from the first fall. Anyway, I had a good night, just what a holiday party should be.

As those of you who follow me on Twitter know, I used to have a 1GB SD card, a 256MB SD card, and a 1GB mini SD card with an adapter. The first two were broken (I think by the CatCam, though don’t ask me how) and they won’t take pictures or format or anything. The mini got lost, I have no idea where it is. My Dell Inspiron 1501 has an SD card slot built in, and it accepted all three of these cards before they broke/got lost.

So I went to Microcenter the other day, and they only had a 2GB mini which was more than I wanted, but I bought a 4GB Kingston SDHC card for $30. It works in my camera just fine - the camera says right on it that it handles SDHC - but I’ve just discovered that it doesn’t work in my computer’s card slot. It’s supposed to, other people have gotten other SDHC cards working in their Inspiron 1501 laptops, but this one doesn’t work in mine. I can get pictures off using the good ol’ cable, but that SD slot was awfully handy.

Well, hopefully when I get a 1GB mini card again, it will still work in my laptop. Otherwise I have an SD slot that I can’t do anything with, unless it works with the 1GB card I got as part of my new gBlog job…I bought the 4GB because I wanted more capacity, and A was going to put the 1GB card into her camera, and the 4GB works fine in the camera so I don’t plan to return it, but…

Yeah, hi. I’m a geek.

ASL Final: Done.
English Final: Done.

Still pending: 2 more pages of research paper, math final.

And then: DONE!

I put on my calendar to have lunch with A on Wednesday. My best friends will all be gone by then, so I will head out to have lunch with her. I hope vegetarian pho is on my diet, because there is an awesome place near her work, they make it really well!

Today I finished my final exam for history. It came to 13 pages and about 3600 words, which is 100 over the suggested maximum but I don’t think it’s going to make that much of a difference. I also got 3/5 of the way through my ASL final exam. The last two questions are about how all the different types of deaf people unite and work together at Gallaudet, and about the Fertilization and Embryology Bill from the UK House of Lords.

Today I picked a fight with A about a very sensitive topic, right before she left for lunch with a friend. When she came back 7 hours later, she was still mopey. I feel awful but I am trying to pretend everything is normal in the hopes that she’ll pick up on it. I don’t know why I picked the fight, it’s something that we really did need to talk about, but I did it in a completely inappropriate way at a really bad time. Ugh.

Mischa keeps having bad dreams. He woke up hissing a little while ago, and just now he was growling in his sleep.

Today we went to the outlets at Leesburg; it was more crowded than I would have liked, but less crowded than I expected. I needed to go to Lane Bryant to exchange some jeans I’d gotten in Rehoboth Beach - you can only return them to another outlet store, and I hadn’t felt like hauling ass to Leesburg before today. But I got the jeans in my size, and bought two sweaters and a long-sleeve fitted t-shirt. I almost bought a cute semi-formal minidress, but it just didn’t do anything for me. I also got a bunch of underwear - I tend to wear mine until they literally fall apart, and A had deemed that I only had about-to-fall-apart underwear, so she made me buy lots more.

Also, she put me on a strict diet. She introduced it in a kind of toppish way - or maybe that’s just how I read it, being a sub type - and so I’m following orders. It is like having my own personal diet coach who goes out to eat with me and everything, which is pretty cool. Right now I’m appalled by how little I get to eat, but I know it’ll get easier with time. It’s just frustrating right now. I think we started on Thursday morning? It feels like forever!

Oh, and my lolrus shirt arrived today. Woo!

Okay, let’s see what I have to over the next two weeks.

• Finish reading From Pity to Pride and write a report on it
• City project - final draft, presentation (with cheese!)
• Enormous research paper about accreditation - my own topic choice - that I am probably putting too much thought into already
• ASL vlogs for this week and next week
• Three more math classes
• Two more history classes
• Three more FYS/English classes
• Two more ASL lectures and seminars

Final exams aren’t really on my radar yet, though I know the English one will be easy (but it’s AT NIGHT?!?!), the history one has already been given to us as a take-home, and the ASL one will be a vlog, also done at home. My math teacher didn’t give us a midterm, so who knows if he’ll give us a final. My math teacher is a little unorthodox.

This is just another gripe about my in-laws being so noisy at night. My brother-in-law is really noisy by default, he grew up in a loud household and he doesn’t know how to close cabinets quietly, close doors quietly, etc. He also thinks it’s okay to talk to himself and sing to himself all the time, so he’ll blurt out all kinds of stuff to himself just walking around the house at night. He apparently never learned that doing the dishes makes noise, because he does them at 11pm sometimes. Bang clatter crash! And him and my sister-in-law have a habit of singing to each other…really loud…as if nobody else lived here. It just drives me crazy. They’re good kids, I like them fine, I think they’re great…but why do they hafta be so loud?!

I am working on my research project about accreditation. I think my thesis is going to be along the lines of “Despite the need for improvement in K-12 deaf education and despite the cultural differences between Gallaudet and other universities, we can retain our accreditation with MSCHE” etc. Something like that.