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[28 Feb 2008|01:51pm] |
It's 58 degrees in my house right now. I'm in sweatpants and a sweatshirt shaking. The cats have burrorwed themselves in a pile of fur coats and anything they can find to stay warm. Mango hasn't moved from her perch in an entire day. She's beyond shaking. I've placed the personal heater up to her and she's finally trying to move around for the first time in a bit. But Scott's on the way over to fix it in 20 minutes. The problem? It's going to cost 500$ to fix!
Anyway - I got in a fight today. I don't know if I'm ashamed of myself for actually raising my voice to this girl or proud for standing up for myself. I guess if possible, a little of both?
We have a presentation due next week that's worth a large portion of our grade. We received the assignment on the second day of class and it's all we've been working on since the start - if you can't figure out by that alone, our teacher is expecting it to look nice.
Our theme is Harlem Renaissance. We each research about two artists from that time period. I originally came up with the concept of having one person open with a history explanation of what Harlem Renaissance is since most people don't know. Well this girl, I don't even know her name, decided thats what she wanted to do. I was a little bummed out because I'd come up with the idea but didn't care too much because my artists seemed really cool.
So this past Tuesday we made the group decision to type up what we individually wanted to go on our slides with what picture. Treeka and I focused on the theme of the slideshow since it's going to a cumulation of all our projects. Treeka wanted to have an afro-centric edge on it because it dealt with an African-American culture and I thought we should include some jazz images because alot of our artists focused on themes within night clubs, jazz clubs, and the streets of Harlem.
We decided that for the slides we'd have interchanging fading colors for the slides. The first red, then yellow, green, black... etc. It seemed perfect. Today was supposed to be our day of combining everyones work. I did the tweeking of fonts and size to make everything like united.
Well... this girl (I don't know her name because she never comes to class) in my group wound up not coming to class Tuesday. Atleast, I never saw her but now she's claiming she was there. When I asked for her slides she said she hadn't even look at her artists biography. She slipped her Ipod back on and I leaned over and asked her what she was planning to do all of class. "Nothing" she shrugged.
I was frustrated by this point because everyone had done all their work and she hadn't even looked at her artists biographies. "Well, maybe you could just chicken scratch some info down, at this point anything is helpful". She got pissed off and started making her slideshow and when I asked her to e-mail it to me so I could combine it she flipped out.
"You're not editing my slideshow"
"I know, but we have to combine them and we decided on an afro-centric theme so I have to change the font styles and background colors to make it all flow" (she had like huge droopy letters, it looked really immature).
"I didn't decide on a theme"
"You weren't there and we had to come up with a theme - we told you you had to be there Tuesday"
"Well I want mine how it is"
"But it's a group project?"
"Just let me do it my way I'll have it done by 9 on Tuesday morning to give to you"
--Note: the project is due at 9:30 on Tuesday--
"What? we're supposed to get it done today"
"I don't have to follow your guidelines"
"Yeah but now I have to come in Tuesday morning because you don't feel like doing your project?"
From there it just escalated into full fledged yelling. I was soooo angry I couldn't even contain myself. She was the only person making things difficult and I'd spent hours tweeking the presentation so that it would look formal. Who the fuck is so ignorant that they fight about making their part of a slide show original?
I was so frustrated and all I could think about was how a Macon student would have been dyingggg. I spent my entire freshman year at Macon learning how to make formal, business like presentations and this girl had like bright colors, huge fonts, long paragraphs of words... it looked terrible and was going to stand out like an eyesore in our presentation.
Finally as I left class I let it out:
"Quite honestly I don't think you even have a say in the matter anymore - you're the only person in this entire group who hasn't started their work when it was supposed to be finished today, you don't come to class, and at this point you've missed out on every group discussion - do it your own way I don't care if it looks like shit, it's your grade not mine"
How mean I was didn't even compare to the way she talked. You could tell she was someone who got in a lot of fights, to her this was nothing, causing a scene and getting in a cat fight. I, on the other hand, was doing everything in me to keep my composure. The only thing that kept me from outright shaking was knowing that I was right.
As I left I heard her bitching about me... it followed me all the way out the door but within 2 minutes I was over it - I never fight with people, it's just not me and when I do it makes me nauseaus. I talked with Ryan the whole way about school, life, and jobs and it calmed me down. The rest of the day I've had this feeling like I'm going to throw up.
I don't care about our presentation anymore. I know my part looks really really good so I'm just going to let the other girl do her thing. It's not worth my energy anymore.
I'm going to go make lunchhh
Hasta Luegooo
-- ♥
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[28 Feb 2008|03:32pm] |
Apparently this day was meant to test me. My heat is broken and has been since last night. Scott said he'd come over as soon as I was off work and sure enough he was. But 500 dollars is a lot to fix heat. So I remembered my insurance. 24/7, 365 days a year they'll come out to fix whatever is wrong - guaranteed.
So I call the insurance company. They tell me that Atlantic Mechanics will call me later this evening to set up an appointment. Later this evening? they'll call? I was expecting an Atlantic Mechanics will be out later. So, I hang up and call Atlantic because I figure that even if I can talk to them a few minutes earlier it will help. So Atlantic says the earliest they can come out is tomorrow night.
Now just to run this by everybody my heat broke yesterday. When I went to bed it was 62 in my house. I woke up and it was 58. and since this morning it has dropped to 54. Outside with wind chill it is 9 degrees. It is really fucking cold.
So I hang up with Atlantic and call back my Insurance. 'Can you put me through to another heating company? I have a tropical macaw and I cannot wait until tomorrow night, my house is is going to be 40 degrees by tomorrow and there is no way I can transport my bird'. 'Let me see if I can pass this as an emergency fix' - an emergency fix? at this Racquel freaks out: What the fuck do you call an emergency if not broken heat in 9 degree weather!?!?
After another half an hour of being on hold they tell me that even being recognized as an emergency they can't come out until tomorrow night. So I call my mother, who tells me to call Mrs Jo Ann who sold me the house and the insurance. Mrs. Jo Ann then freaks out and calls them on my behalf. Apparently I am now waiting for the head of Caldwell and the Insurance company to call me back... but after all of this it is almost 4 in the afternoon and there is not going to BE anybody who can come out.
So. That leaves me where? I can go back to my parents house, that would be fine, but WHAT do I do with my parrot who requires tropical weather to survive. Trust me, my 50$ 4x6 personal ceramic heater is not going to work. I
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