Things I overheard while talking to myself

So something that happened this morning was that my alarm went off at 9, but I decided to be a lazy ass and stay in bed a while longer. The fact that Mari was sleeping on my chest did not help at all. But when my phone went off about an hour later I figured I should answer, so, with cat still on chest, I picked it up.

It was a woman from a firm recruiting people who speak Japanese, and she had seen my resume on Monster.com, since I recently updated it. Right away I knew this was trouble, because while I do list it on my resume, but would not say I am skilled enough to really apply it yet. So she started asking me questions and asked me to speak a little Japanese.

Keep in mind I had pretty much just woken up. I have enough trouble speaking English, but I think I pulled it off reasonably enough. She politely informed me that they didn't have anything at the moment, but would keep me in mind. And again, all this was happening while Mari was still sleeping on my chest. I really hope nothing in my voice gave it away. I also changed my Monster.com profile to more accurately reflect how well I actually speak it since I realized after that I was over representing my skill. It's certainly not good enough for me to relocate, which is not something I want to do anyway, at least at the moment.

Also, next week I'm talking to two separate recruiting people who called me, which is promising. I know one of them because they're right around the block from the school, so I'm still hopeful. I feel a bit two-faced talking to more than one group, though it's probably normal, and it's probably accepted to do that. Still feels weird.

(The subject, by the way, means "this is embarrassing" which is what I was thinking after that phone call)

I'm glad that I technically only have two days of classes next week, since the end of this week has made me want to kill something.

In Japanese we have to do group presentations again, and naturally I got stuck with あまい　ゴキブリ when we were drawing names. Though I can now say that this kid is actually even worse than the kid he was nicknamed after. The other girl in my group and I both made it very clear to the professor after class that we're not at all thrilled that we're going to have to put in more work as a result of this kid, and since he is so clueless we're going to have to hold his hand the entire time, and odds are that he's going to drag down our grade. We don't have a choice, but we both wanted to have our feelings on the matter known. And again, I'm not trying to be an asshole, but this kid has honestly no clue what he's doing and half the time I'm pretty sure he's high. I don't appreciate having to do more work because of this schmuck.

Oh, and as I was walking to my next class I spotted The Ex with her arm around some girl. Lovely. It's even the same time of year she dumped me.

And then in my philosophy class we had some privileged, ignorant idiots who actually tried to use Social Darwinism as a justification for bullying. I hope I don't have to explain what's wrong with that. I also mildly lost my temper and apologized to the professor afterwards, but he said that in that case it was warranted.

So yes, just get me to the end of today and the two days I have next week. Hopefully I won't kick anyone into the next timezone, as sorely tempting as it is.

So this week I was talking to someone about my new cat and this happened after I told them her name:

Them: So, did you name her after yourself?
Me: ... What?
Them: You know, her name is Mari, your name is Rosemary.
Me: What? No! I didn't name her after myself. 0_o

And I was being totally honest when I said that. For one thing, they're not pronounced the same way. The "a" in Mari is said like the "a" in "car" while the "a" in my name is said like the "a" in "may."

There's also the fact that my cat's name in Japanese means "Jasmine", which looks like 茉莉 in kanji, or まり in hiragana since it's a native Japanese word.

My name, on the other hand, is written as ロスメリ in katakana (Ro-su-me-ri if you break down the syllables) since it's a foreign word. It's not only a different sound than the "ma" in Mari, it's not even written in the same alphabet! When I first started taking Japanese my teacher did initially say my name as "Ro-su-ma-ri" until I explained how it was really pronounced.

So yeah, it honestly did not occur to me that it could be seen as me naming my cat after myself. I'm not that much of a narcissist!

Today was pretty good as far as classes go, though it did confirm that mentally I'm past college now, as frightening as what's actually past college is. I can see why upperclassmen get so annoyed by freshmen.

I had three today and on Monday Wednesday and Friday, and I knew the Japanese teacher. Unfortunately あまい　ゴキブリ*, the guy who just doesn't get it, is in the same class and demonstrated that he hasn't changed a bit by barging into class 10 minutes late with his music so loud you could hear it across the room, but I'm on the other side of the room from him.

My fiction writing teacher is also nuts, but in a good way. I think that's kind of given for someone who teaches a course like that. She definitely likes putting people on the spot.

And it turns out I've had my philosophy professor before in the Philosophy of Science & Myth class, but I didn't recognize his name when I signed up, being bad with names but good with faces. He recognized me too. He's also nuts, but I like him. My favorite thing about him is that he looks and dresses like you'd expect a cop to, but he's a philosophy professor. He's also extremely dry and quite hilarious. And now that I think about it he kind of looks like McNulty from The Wire.

Other than that today was kind of a wash, since I had to wake up early but gotten woken up even earlier by something, I suspect a neighbor's alarm clock. Once we're all closing our windows that should decrease. I was also kind of flabbergasted to realize that the potheads that live downstairs from me were already smoking before 8 in the morning. What's even more worrying is that I'm pretty sure one of them works in a hospital. I'm sorry, I don't object to the pot on principle and am all for decriminalizing it, but I don't care how good a doctor you are, if you're baked I don't want you treating me. The reason House can get away with that is because he's fucking House.

It was also fucking miserable out and raining the entire time, and I had to go on foot to and from. I got soaked going and even more soaked coming back, so when I got home I lay down for a few hours since I had an appointment at five. After a bit of that I realized I still didn't feel well, so I rescheduled my appointment for Friday. I just couldn't get back up and drag myself to the Back Bay in this weather, and since my throat is a bit itchy I'm hoping I'm not coming down with something. Although if I am I actually can't blame the school's petri dish of disease, since I actually started feeling this on Tuesday.

*See this post for an explanation as to why he's called that

When I called someone at work today he asked me for my full name, and when I told him he remarked that it sounded like "good Irish stock." His last name was Nolan, which funnily enough is the name of some people I'm related to. I laughed a little and thanked him.

Earlier this week a coworker remarked on fairly prominent a bruise I have on my hand (unrelated to the sink dropping incident), and I joked that it's part of the curse of white people that we bruise easily and it shows pretty clearly. That somehow turned into a conversation about an article they'd read about how there's been research that shows that pigment-wise Irish people are actually the whitest people in the world, and I said that given my experiences in Ireland, mainly how there's no sun because it's almost always raining, I certainly believe it! I know that in some fluorescent lights I wind up looking downright undead, and it's not like I don't get any sun since I walk practically everywhere, and I refuse to get artificially tanned because I'd rather not expose myself to that level of radiation, undead-looking or not.

Randomly, I've been practicing speaking Japanese to the cat, because they understand tone more than anything and it keeps it in my mind. He was having a moment of cat-crazies a moment ago so I asked him あなたは　なにを　しますか (what are you doing), though I'm not sure if he counts as an あなた. He's not really doing anything wrong, just being a crazy cat, so おまえ is a bit extreme, so maybe あんた works best. He seemed to get my tone and gave me the "Who, me?" look, but maybe that's because he knows he's being crazy. Hard to tell with them.

I had the second of two Japanese quizzes this week, and I think I did pretty well. I know I screwed up two similar words, but the rest seemed fine.

I didn't wind up recording my radio show this week because I had to restart the server halfway through due to the people before me being extremely idiotic. Every week since they've gotten a show it's been blatantly obvious that they have no goddamn idea what they're doing, the mics are up to maximum and pointing the wrong way, they let the station go to dead air (a big no no) and I'm pretty sure they were responsible for the server needing to be restarted, since I couldn't submit any program information, and us listing what songs we play are kind of how the artists get the royalties for us playing their music, so it's, y'know, kind of important.

After I got it working again I didn't feel much like talking, since about the same time I did the server restart I went from feeling okay to feeling awful, so I went home immediately after and spent the rest of the day lying around in my pajamas. Luckily it doesn't seem I'm getting sick, which was what I was afraid of since one of Angelo's friends discovered she had a fever yesterday while she was up here. But it looks like I'm fine.

I've also been playing Pokemon Diamond on an emulator for most of today. Also totally worth it. I never actually owned a GameBoy or a DS or anyone of those as a kid or played the games, so I'm making up for lost time. My Shinx evolved into a Luxio! Yes I'm a dork, you don't need to tell me. Also Pokemon names are a really good way to practice katakana. I discovered that when I was looking something up (I have trouble remembering what element is weak to what).

Did I just hear a cannon go off? Wouldn't surprise me, it is Boston and we do have the USS Constitution parked nearby.

Today was a loooong day. I had Popular Culture and America and actually ended up being late to Japanese because we were having a spirited discussion about social development in kids 6-12 years old and comparing it to an economic system where some people are more "marketable" than others (sounds weird but it actually makes sense), and how bullying ties into that and whether it should be allowed (my answer: Hell no, see Phoebe Prince and Carl Joseph Walker-Hoover for why) and what makes that different than not wanting to be friends with someone. I argued that it's the difference between shutting the castle gate to a group of people versus shutting the gate and also pouring a vat of boiling water onto them, in the sense of intentionally causing harm versus just keeping someone out (also invoking the idea of intentional harm from criminal justice but that's neither here nor there). Then we essentially started talking about laissez-faire economic strategy versus regulation as applied to which friends kids have, and we probably could have talked for an hour if I hadn't had to go (for the record I'm for regulation within reason in both economics and kids' social systems).

I then had my long Japanese class of the week, and despite Japanese using nothing that even looks like Roman characters (save Romaji) I still find it easier than Russian. Maybe it's just that once you learn a language that has 8 cases everything else is easy as pie.

On my way up to the station I saw a flyer for the State House Cafe, and was surprised by just how cheap stuff was. Since I'm not getting paid until tomorrow and I figured I'd have a look around I headed up there after I said hi to Steve at the station. He was surprised when I said that you could just walk into the State House (well, okay, there is a metal detector) but it is a public building and the public is entitled to sit in on hearings. I also managed to find the office of our friend Stan, but he wasn't there. If I go again I'll call ahead, but going in there was a last minute decision.

While at the State House I looked for the statue of Anne Hutchinson, an uppity feminist ancestor of mine who got kicked out of Massachusetts in the 1600s for having radical views like women being people. Unfortunately the statue was behind a fence because security doesn't want people getting that close to the building, and the photo I took was really crappy, so here's a better one by someone on Wikipedia. She's certainly someone whose genes I'm glad to have, if ever so distantly. Massachusetts can't get rid of us that easily.

I then headed to the MSPCA, and the E line being the E line they decided to take the train I was on out of service so I had to catch another -- and pay again. That also sapped the money I'd had on there for the trip back. I wasn't happy. Luckily at the MSPCA one of the staff members gave me change for the 5 I had. I was glad to hear that the two ferrets at the MSPCA who I love finally got adopted, since they'd been there since I started, and Zone, one of the sweets greyhounds I've ever met, is going home too. I also had a kitten nearly jump down my shirt, but I'm not big enough in there for it to get in. I'm probably going to have scratches from that. I also got subjected to a "Shiba scream" for a shiba inu, who are as loud as a car alarm going off next to your ear. Yikes.