I am a certified interpreter as well as being a Gallaudet student. In 2009, the RID conference will be in Philadelphia, which is inexpensive for me to visit, so I figured I’d go. There were two registration levels – member ($350) and student ($200). Now, RID has a membership level called student; the dues are less and you must prove you’re currently enrolled in an interpreter training program. But student members at still members, so I thought maybe, just maybe, the student rate for the conference might apply to non-student members of RID. After all, I only work during breaks, so my budget is really tight. I emailed them to ask and I was told that only student members get to pay the student rate for the conference. I wrote back and said thanks, guess I won’t be coming to the conference then.

I guess I see it as kind of unfair. A student rate is discounted because students don’t have as much money, not because students derive less benefit from whatever they’re buying with the discount. It’s dumb to insist someone pay more in this situation. But what can I do? Nothing really. I’ll miss the conference and the opportunity to network with other interpreters. Life goes on, I guess…I’ll just try to forget that it’s so close to home. Pretend it’s in Hawaii or something.

So I was awake all night, right? Working at the hospital? I go to the garage, pay my ticket, have 15 mins to leave. Get to car, can’t find keys in backpack. Oh jeez – forgot I left them in shopping bag upstairs. Trek all the way back, 7-10 mins, with backpack still on back. Look in shopping bag. No keys. What? Look in backpack again, harder. Oh there they are. Walking back to garage now. Nice cashier lady said she would print me another ticket because I have long used up my 15 ninutes. But wow, do I feel stupid. I just had to share.

Okay, in car now. Getting gas so I can make it home. Only $3.59. Fabulous headache that I’ve had since 6pm is still there. At least I have cinnamon gum. Cinnamon gum is good. I go through phases of liking it.

I started my new job today, but it is only sort of a new job. I’m still doing VRS for the same company, but instead of working solely in the downtown DC center, I’m now working in the Fairfax center. It’s only 10 minutes from my house which makes for an absolutely wonderful commute – only those of you who have lived in Northern Virginia will know what the I-66 commute is like every morning and evening! So I am thrilled to be working so close to home. I’ll be there for the rest of this week, and then I’m switching off between Fairfax and DC for the rest of the summer. I don’t know yet what my plans are for during the semester. Lunch options at the new place are not too bad; on days when my wife doesn’t make lunch, there’s a Subway across the street, along with La Choza Grill and a Chinese takeout. Further up the road – not really walking distance, but a very short drive – is a Chipotle and a Noodles & Company.

I have a totally awesome friend, and her name is Colleen. She is nice, sweet, funny, crazy, intelligent, mature, and delightful. I met her back in August when school started, but today she became my official co-worker in the VRS center. She’s staying on campus over the summer, so we will get to hang out a lot! She’s going away for 10 days, though – she flew out tonight. She was very kind and gave me her Wii to play with meanwhile! I had bought her Endless Ocean as a gift, but partly because I knew she’d let me play it! So I expect to make great leaps and advances in the game. And for that reason, I will keep this entry short, and bid the computer good night so I can turn on the Wii.

Oh hai! Here I am. Does anybody notice when I don’t post for four days in a row? Anyway, I’m done with school for the semester!! Only two of my grades are in, but they are both A’s – Deaf Studies, and Sex & Gender. kawaiibishounen already got his linguistics grade, so I am frantically checking the online system for mine, but it’s still not there! I only just had the history final exam today, so I don’t expect that grade tonight. Grades are due by Monday at noon, though, so hopefully I’ll have them by then!

Not a whole lot has been going on. I’m hoping to organize my workdays so that I’ll be working 10-1 and 2-5, though I’m not sure they’ll go for that…it’s basically because a 30-minute lunch break isn’t enough for me, emotionally or physically. We only get an hour paid lunch if we work 8+ hours, and I don’t work more than a 6-hr day, so I shouldn’t be getting an hour lunch…but I’m giving up my 30-min paid lunch in order to have a 60-min unpaid lunch, so they ought to go for it, I would think…we’ll see. The scheduler approved it for this coming Monday, but I think he’s going to talk it over with the boss because he didn’t say it was approved for the whole week as I had requested.

I’m finally playing The Sims again! My Sims blog is called My Sims Stories, and it’s just fun to keep a log of what’s happened. I started a new character using the romance aspiration to see if I could play it, but then I just used the InSIMinator cheats so I’m not sure it really counts. Oh look, this person instantly loves me! Now I can woo-hoo with them! Yeah, not very challenging.

I really want to travel this summer, it seems like everybody I know is traveling in some way or another. I want $1500 to burn on travel, I could have such a fabulous time with that, but I spent $5700 on hearing aids so that’s not very likely. I get to go to New Orleans in July anyway…I just have to be patient and wait for that to come around rather than lusting over trips for June or August. Anyway, I can’t afford to take so much time off, I need to work the whole summer!

The final word of wisdom I would like to impart right now is: Ben & Jerry’s Cheesecake Brownie ice cream is simply astonishingly wonderful. NOM NOM NOM.

I am stressed out right now because I have no money. I mailed $2600 worth of checks to my bank a couple of weeks ago, and they still haven’t shown up. They were mailed to an old address, but they still should have gotten there by now. There was a return address label on the envelope, so if they couldn’t be delivered they should have come back. They all had “For Deposit Only” on the back, along with my bank name and account number. I just don’t understand where they are. I’ve borrowed $2500 from :A: over the past couple of weeks because I have no money. I’ve overdrawn my account twice ($18 fee each time) which is something I’ve never done before. Maybe this school thing isn’t all it’s cracked up to be if I have no money. I’m trying not to touch my other account, because it’s for school tuition, but I owe :A: so much and it’s going to take a while to make it up. I worked last week, my office is closed next week, and I’m going to work the first week of January but then we are going to Los Angeles and then I go back to school. It’s just not enough. I could cry.

The calls kept coming in nonstop today so I am pretty much exhausted. I was chatting with another interpreter while we were both on break, and she agreed that we usually had less than 60 seconds between calls which is not enough! And of course at the end of the day I had technical difficulties – even the manager wasn’t sure what to do, but our center closes at 5:00 on Fridays so we ended up just transferring the call into oblivion and not knowing if it got picked up. (Normally when we need to transfer to another interpreter, we connect with the receiving terp first and let them know what the call content is, but it was the “connect with the receiving terp” part that wasn’t working!)

I am so tired. VRS turns out to be a really intense job, and working 8 hours yesterday and 7 hours today has left me exhausted. :A: is suggesting I cut back on my hours, because she doesn’t want me to be overtired, but it feels like it would be weird to work less than 32-40 hours. Maybe I will cut back a little bit while I get used to it, I don’t know. I just feel like I have been exhausted forever, I feel like I’ve been neglecting stuff, I feel like everything is a mess and I’m too tired to deal with it! It doesn’t help that I am dealing with really bad hives…5mg of prednisone per day is keeping life bearable but it’s still not any fun. Plus the prednisone is making me so hungry…I feel like I might as well pause my NutriSystem because otherwise I’m just wasting the food if I don’t stick to the diet. I haven’t broken down and gobbled food yet, but I am hungry all the time.

In other news, my PS2 is broken. It is officially dead. It was giving me problems loading The Urbz a while back, and now that I’ve been playing Guitar Hero 2 it’s been acting up again. I finally looked up the repair people and contact them through their chat service, where the guy honestly admitted that it would be better to just get another for $90 at GameStop. That was nice of him, considering he could have just said “sure, send it in” and taken my $60. But it still leaves me without a working Playstation, and I am only partway through GH2 on medium! I placed an ad on Craigslist in case anybody is in love with their Wii, Xbox, or PS3 and doesn’t want their working PS2 anymore, but I am not optimistic in that department.