Clever Manka is dressed and undressed

The last email I sent from my KU address was to the former-college-dean-now-interim-provost. ( Loud and angry to the bitter end. )

This morning I went to chat with the woman who trained me for my job at KU. She's still here and is basically just counting the days (and dollars) until she can retire. It's likely that was the last trip I'll make to the main campus administrative building as a KU employee!

One of my students gifted me with a gorgeous pen that her dad made. It's heavy and shiny and writes So Fuckin' Smooth. I told her I'm going to use it in my Notebook Of Fanfic Ideas because apparently that's a thing I'm doing, now. Guardian, y'all. This fucking show.

This was my last full week of work at this job, and I work only two days next week. Surreal. Some of the still-in-town grad students are meeting me at a bar downtown late Monday afternoon and Tuesday afternoon is the office staff drinks date that we've done every year for a while. I hope things don't get emotional because ugh.

Still annoyed at the lack of Lizzo CD. What the fuck.

ETA: had the last nap I'll ever take in my beautiful office. I was able to fall asleep in here one last time!

I am to the point of writing salty messages at work. Not salty at people, just about the situation. I also ceased my friendly salutations with persons in certain offices that I've worked with for ten years who haven't even whispered condolences to me about my job loss. I just don't care anymore. There's no fucking way I'd apply for a job at this university now so they can all suck my left tit. I would say I have progressed to the anger stage of grief, but let's face it, I've been angry my whole damn life. I just don't mask it here now. Not for these assholes.

This rant brought to you by "I just got a sympathetic email from someone I worked with once on a pilot project five years ago who I wouldn't have even thought remembered my name but the assholes I've worked with on a daily basis for a decade haven't said boo despite numerous other work-related emails."


Update 14:53CST The person at the office I was feeling particularly bruised about just came over in person to talk with me. She said she'd been trying for weeks to figure out how to write an email about the situation and then today she decided to just come over in person. We had a really good conversation. I admitted that I was feeling betrayed and hurt and she apologized. What a relief. That's one irritant I can take out of the mix at least. Oh, it's so nice to be pleasantly surprised.

My obsession with Certain Young Chinese Actors has reached the point where I gotta be okay with it because I don't think these pants feels are going anywhere for a while. I was hoping it was a quick little spike in my continuing love of them in the show, but no. Now I'm scrolling through Tumblr blogs for photoshoots of them and I just....fuuuuuuck. Guess this is what happens when I find a fandom obsession the same time my libido comes back online. Doesn't help that someone in an AO3 comment (on this lovely piece of fanart) informed me that they both smoke? Which is...an embarrassingly big turn-on for me? Ugh. It came on so fast! I am already at 2015-Hiddleston-levels of infatuation. Let's hope it doesn't crash and burn like that one did.

This fucking show. I'm actually considering writing fic for it? As in, I started taking notes and writing ideas? I mean I guess I'll have time on my hands for it. No promises, but the idea is definitely there (a remix of naye 's A constellation of two from Shen Wei's POV I mean GO BIG OR GO HOME right?).

I wasn't even going to watch this stupid show but here we are I guess. *shoots looks of angry love and appreciation at mekare *

Two mornings in a row I've been awake at 4am and unable to fall back asleep soooooo I'm not sure if party-crashing the grad student cook-out tonight is gonna happen. Maybe my afternoon nap will help.

Yesterday I skipped the lunch nap to continue going through the 镇魂 (Guardian) tag on Tumblr. Hundreds of pages later, I have a hair under 200 posts queued for the 5/20 Guardian Fandom Exchange day. I didn't feel safe signing up for an exchange but boy can I spam Tumblr! I also made a YouTube playlist which is mostly overwrought or anthemic (or both) angst (my fave!) and a couple lighter pieces so it's not too terribly grim. I'll post the link to that along with a Tumblr link on the Monday of the exchange.

I've started hearing lovely things from faculty as well as students as my exit date approaches. Yesterday was the department event for recognizing faculty promotions, retirees, graduating grad students, and...me. Since I am made deeply uncomfortable by public thanks, I skipped it. But my graduate director sent me a transcript of what she said:( clicky-click )

The news of my forced departure has spread to the whole department, now, so there's a steady stream of people coming to my office to offer condolences and outrage. Yesterday one of my students won the First To Bring Me To An Actual Tear Award for presenting me with this: ( Click for pic. )

Welp! This morning I spent a couple hours in conference with KU's HR rep because my position has been eliminated (yay state budget cuts!). So now I'm home on administrative leave to supposedly start work updating my resume but instead I just got  fucked up and had my partner drive me to the grocery store.

I'm fine, seriously, I'm fine. It might be the shock talking, but right now I'm just like:

But anyway, yeah, as of May 25th I won't be working IN MY FABULOUS OFFICE ANYMORE.

On cm.net Wednesdays are (supposedly) more for updates on How We Are Dealing With Our Shit, and Fridays are an Open Thread for Shooting the Shit. Different days, different shit. Since I don't expect people here to follow me there (although I appreciate those who do both!) I'm gonna combine the general info in my comments on those posts here on Fridays. I hope it'll make me more disciplined/inclined to post Actual Content here on a regular basis. ( More under the clicky-click )

This is me, enjoying my second year of not gearing up for KCRF. Feels good, y'all.

What doesn't feel all that great is the sneaking suspicion that my ongoing headache might be caused by that tooth that needs fixing. Even though the tooth doesn't feel sore at all, the pressure/pain is definitely on that side of my face and most of what I thought was sinus pressure is located right around that area. Soooooo I decided not to wait for a combo filling/impression for bite guard appointment (I have to wait a month for insurance to come through on the bite guard business) and made an appointment to fix the tooth on Thursday of next week. Yay. That's henna day, too, so my henna partners will have a lovely time avoiding my drool and the random henna spill.

I am thinking really hard about taking a vacation day tomorrow for a four-day weekend. My reasons for not just going ahead and doing it are weird and complicated and I'm honestly not sure I understand what's going on in my head, so if someone wants to chime in with thoughts, they're welcome. Basically, I feel like I'll be seen as slacking because I already took off so much time in July. This happened before, where I took off a lot of time in single-day increments and was reprimanded for it and it was complete BS (I mean, it's my vacation time to use as I see fit, right?) but it still bothers me. The other reason is utterly ridiculous. Basically I'm below 175 hours of vacation (172 to be exact) and for some reason that makes me...miserly of my vacation time. One hundred and seventy two hours, though. Come on, Manka. Jesus.

I would like to get some sewing done this weekend, but my dance card for the weekend is filling up in unexpected ways. Not all bad, just unexpected.

I dunno. I dunno. Blah. But at least I'm not sewing last-minute costume stuff for Renaissance Festival. That is a good thing.

Ah ha ha ha ha ha WELL the grad director just stopped in my office on her way out the door and there's something we need to work on together and since she can't stay to do it today she wants to do it tomorrow so I guess that's that decided.

Something I forgot to mention in my earlier posts about Con*Strict was the vid show. I la-la-la-love fanvids, and this was my first con with a vid show. It's not surprising how group watching escalated the feels--just like watching a movie or a concert with a large, receptive audience intensifies the experience.

Here's one of the vids from the Con*Strict vid show, done by one of the attending members. It was my favorite for two reasons which are not difficult to determine.



( More of my fave vids from the show )

***
Yesterday I wore one of my re-fashioned outfits (a dress made from pieces of four tee shirts) with a pair of bloomers underneath (just long enough for the lace to peek out from under the dress). I felt like I was in my PJs all day. I'm looking forward to having more of those in my closet. Also looking forward to the practice (from making my own) so I can start making them to sell. I'm going to need to invest in a small mannequin for that, so if anyone local sees one for cheap, let me know. This is not as outrageous of a request as it seems--Lawrence has some unlikely thrift and dumpster finds.

Speaking of style, I avoid wearing gloves as a fashion statement because I think they're a little fussy (it's hard to actually do anything while wearing them). Fingerless gloves would solve a lot of the problem, but they've always seemed so...pretentious. These might change my mind. Fuck pretentious. Those are JEWELRY. I mean, Christ, just look at those things.



***
One of the reasons I've never considered becoming a yoga instructor is that the market is so glutted here in Lawrence. A conversation with ms_danson made me wonder about the possibility of doing a yoga podcast, though. I picture a website that has a basic dictionary of poses as well as individual pages on the site. Each page would have a list of images of the particular poses for whatever the focus of that page's series, and a link to listen or download a voice narration for the series. People could request a theme, goal, or focus for a series once a month or something. Doesn't that sound great? Now there's motivation to do a teacher training course. Someday. In my copious spare time with all my excess energy.

***
Energy levels are still shit, and the ridges in my fingernails are back. The index and middle fingernails have them now, too. The thumbnails look and feel like washboards. Ugh. So demoralizing. I see Dr. Jonah on Thursday and I'm going to talk about re-upping my mineral supplements that we started decreasing two months ago. I feel like earlier this summer my energy levels were better. I'm done with waking up tired. This regressing business is for the birds.

***
We shopped for phones last night. It was hellish. I think I'm going to wind up with a Galaxy S6. mckitterick is price shopping because for what we want, it's cheaper to buy our own unlocked phones and get a month-to-month plan through T-Mobile (which is what some local friends did who are very happy with their service). I have to admit, these newfangled phones are awful pretty. And it will be nice to have a phone that doesn't randomly turn itself back on. Or refuse to disable the Mute function. But oh my goodness they're so difficult for me to use. Touch screens do not react well to my skin, and there's something about my electrical charge that makes things go a little nutty. When someone asks me to take a picture with their phone, it always turns off or goes to a different screen or something. Beyond that, though, there's my concern about having internet access 24/7. I'm honestly relieved that the Tumblr phone app is so bad because I see myself easily becoming That Person.

***
Tomorrow I am a panelist for the Kansas Women’s Leadership Institute conference. Last year I served as a panelist on a university-wide presentation for graduate-level support staff and was in the pilot group for KU's new online catalog software (a nine-month project). I need to remember to put this shit in my end-of-year review. I don't think anyone (including myself) realizes how much I actually do around here.

Which...I guess I should do something now to prepare for tomorrow's presentation.

Thanks to those who offered insight and experiences on yesterday's question about my menstrual stuff. I'm so glad to be at a point in my life where I am comfortable talking about a normal body function without being embarrassed. Sincere appreciation to those friends who are in the same place with me. I think I'm going to mention these issues to my doctor next time I see her, but I'm not going to worry about it too much for now.

This Breaking Muscle article about how we perceive our daily activity affects our health is fascinating.

If you're a Kindle owner and want a new cookbook (and aren't vegetarian), consider picking up Melissa Joulwan's two amazing contributions to the Paleo Eating community. They're on sale for $1.99 each on Kindle right now.

There is talk of a few crafting panels at Con*Strict, including origami and a make-a-purse-from-a-book. Y'all, I might have found my people.

Today's my last day at the office this week.