So. My Italian visa. Which I've been griping and moaning about and probably making a lot of you roll your eyes at me from all the melodrama.

But once more, with feeling: I HATE VISAS!!!!!!!!!!!

However, I recognize that had I been more informed and if I'd been made more aware of what all the components were and when they were all due, I would be less angry with the visa (yes, I'm speaking of it like it's a human being, roll with it!).

So, really, my anger is aimed mostly entirely at the IPE office. *fumes with the thought*

In order to obtain an Italian visa, I need to prove "financial security." The only way I manage to attend and live at UW is through financial aid. So, I submitted the document saying I'd show I have financial aid so the people at IPE could write a letter saying, "She has money. Let her go to Rome."

Admittedly, I dropped the ball a tiny bit on this part. I didn't realize I needed to have already applied for summer aid by the time I submitted my visa application so the woman working with us Creative Writers (we shall henceforth call her YoSaffBridge because I don't like either woman) could send the collective visa apps sometime in the last week, so that's my fault. But the financial aid office doesn't decide financial awards until May-ish.

Can we see the issue here?

I submitted my visa application the 10th of April. YoSaffBridge only emailed me about the problem on the 29th. I'm not even going to try and speculate what all she was doing in those TWO WEEKS she had it.

And now, comes the true source of my anger (because up until that point I was merely frustrated). YoSaffBridge's office hours are from about 8-11ish and then from 2-closing. I got there at 2PM, almost exactly.

She walks in about 2:15 from her break. Then proceeds to take about 15 minutes to do...something. I have no idea what. We talk, she says I need a visa even though the program directors said all we have to do is sign an indemnity form if we didn't get a visa and pretend we're tourists instead of students. I go down to the Financial Aid office, I burden a very nice woman (Lisa, her name was, who was MUCH nicer than the last person I went to about financing Rome) with estimating how much financial aid I would receive for summer, I go back up to IPE about 10 minutes later with the estimate....and YoSaffBridge is "out."

I get that sometimes "when you gotta go, you gotta go." However, YoSaffBridge was only available for....10 minutes out of the 45 minutes I was at IPE.

Mayhaps I'm at the wrong university. When your hours are said to be from 2-closing, you're supposed to be at your office at 2 o'clock NOT leaving wherever you took your lunch at 2 in order to get to your office whenever you get there. Isn't that how it works? Or am I just strange?

I'd heard that IPE was horrible, and you have to watch 'em like a hawk to make sure they don't screw you over, but from the few, brief instances I dealt with them before it didn't seem bad. The secretary/person in charge (she seemed to have more knowledge than all the advisors put together, but she was only greeting people and answering the phone...) was very nice and helpful. But after YoSaffBridge....yeah. *takes out her hawk eyes*

Blah. I don't even know how coherent some of that is. I just got onto the elevator to escape IPE and thought, "She is so going into my livejournal." Grrrr.

I went grocery shopping yesterday, and I now have some yummy French bread, pepperjack cheese, lunch meat, and apples. Oh, and Pepsi, too. *drinks Pepsi to make up for the bad, bad IPE woman* Also went to B&N to pick up a copy of issue 13 of BtVS for Freddie and the 2nd issue of Better Days, since B&N takes about 2-3 weeks to stock the new issues. But they didn't have Better Days, sadly. I'll probably go to Pike Place and see if a comic store there has it. *hopes*

And there'll be Korean food tomorrow! The KSA at UW is hosting a "Korean Food Market" on the HUB lawn. Thankfully the food is bought through tickets purchased at the Ticket Office, so I can use my Husky Card to buy food. *cheers* Since I don't have cash and I demand Korean food. I just hope it's good food, and not fast-food quality Korean food (though I will still buy it).

The Korean test I took yesterday was difficult. Thankfully, though, it wasn't difficult because I didn't know my stuff (though it was still a factor). There was one section where it says, "fill in the blanks to reflect the translation given." Problem? There was no translation. Just a sentence in Korean, a blank, and whatever the heck our brains could come up with. Kim-sunsengnim wasn't there for the test, too, because she had to survey her TAs or some such, so we had no one to ask. Then there was a part where we had to use a certain sentence connector and come up with a sentence based on cues given in English. I knew how to use the connector just fine, but the cues weren't working harmoniously.

Kim-sunsengnim noticed no one finished the test, though, so we get tomorrow to work on it after taking a glance at it today to refresh our memories what we had trouble with. We informed her about the lack of a translation to "reflect" from, so she'll fix that. I don't know what I'm going to do about the connector thing, but at least I'll have more time to B.S. it and get partial credit.

Had my Planets midterm today, too. I know I didn't get 100%, but I didn't utterly fail either! I'm predicting perhaps about a 3.0, maybe a little less if the TAs didn't get their coffee/chocolate/whatever. The labs are weighted more than the tests, though, and I've been getting an average of 9/10, so I'm not worried about my Planets grade (unless something changes for the worst in the class).

I'm feeling a little calmer now. Probably #11 on "You Know You're a Writer When" shirt: You write out everything that makes you frustrated/angry and you feel better afterwards. Heh.

And I gave Nikki her bday present, so now I can show the x-stitching project I did for her.
( David Tennant in sepia )


Buffy: You're right. Ooh! She's even affecting my work, now. She's the Titanic. She's a crawling black cancer!
[She brings her foot up, around and down onto a bench, breaking it in two.]
Buffy: She's... other really bad things.
Oz: On the plus side you've killed the bench, which was looking shifty.
....
Willow: [on the phone with Rupert Giles] Giles, I just talked to Buffy and, yeah, I think she's feeling a little... insane. [pause] No, not bitchy crazy, more like... homicidal maniac crazy. So I told her to come see you, OK? --S.4, Living Conditions

[takes place in the musical episode, so everyone's singing]
Anya: I've got a theory, it could be bunnies. [uncomfortable pause]
Willow: I've got a theor-
Anya [accompanied by rock music]:
Bunnies aren't just cute like everybody supposes!
They got them hoppy legs and twitchy little noses!
And what's with all the carrots?
What do they need such good eyesight for, anyway?
Bunnies! Bunnies! It must be bunnies!
[Long silence. rock music stops]
Or maybe midgets? --S.6, Once More With Feeling, Buffy

Happy Easter (almost 22 hours into it...)!!

Spring break is great so far; making progress on my Looney Tunes cross stitching (which I've been working on for, I believe, 2 summers...) and a lot of other stuff. And I've discovered that, no matter what I try, I will never have enough space for all my books and DVDs. Just the few books I brought home filled up my bookshelf. *headdesk*

Oh! I believe it was on my birthday when my sister and I went to IHOP and I saw a car with a Doctor Who bumper sticker, but I discovered I didn't remember what the sticker read when I got around to posting. I was very disappointed in myself, to be sure, but then yesterday.....THE SAME CAR DROVE PAST MY MOTHER AND I!!! ^.^ And her bumper sticker read: "So many species, so little time." ^______^ I am now satisfied. Hurray for small towns, bwahahahahahaha.

And I noticed something today about one of the gifts a friend of mine gave me from one of her trips in Europe. She gave me a mug, and this was way back before I was even aware there was a Rome program, but the mug has "Italy" on it. ^___^ I was highly amused when I finally realized it.

My mother is watching a Korean variety show, and for a few seconds they were playing music from FFX. .......Yes, I recognized it. .........Yeah, okay, I'm a little bit pathetic and lots geeky.

Gideon: Plato once said that for everything that exists, there is a perfect form of it somewhere. A perfect Human being, a perfect chair, a perfect stick; so that everything is a Shadow of that one perfect form. Now, if we follow that train of thought, that means that somewhere in the universe there exists the perfect form of an absolute and perfect idiot. And he left here an hour ago. --Crusade