soc_puppet | Socchan's long day

Wow, you people really liked my ~~lame~~ physics icons o_O ~~I may have to do icon posts more often.~~

Woke up this morning later than I had planned -_- Curse my habit of trying to get too much sleep before class. Didn't realize I had a paper due until I actually got to class, either 9_9 I thought it was due on Monday. Still, I had until five to get it in however possible, including e-mail, so I wasn't too distressed. What distressed me is that, between Psych and work, I actually only had until eleven forty-five to get it in, and Comp got out at ten.

Despite time constraints, I was convinced that I needed to visit the bookstore for some reason. Arrived five minutes before it opened for this, that and the other reason; hung out and worked on Icka's cookie until a little after it opened. Hoping to finish it tonight or tomorrow, knock on wood. Went to Hy-Vee shortly after leaving the bookstore to pick up bread, as we were out and I am fond of sandwiches. Got home by ten-thirty, which gave me about enough time to surf the 'net a little bit, and finish my paper. Managed to mail it in barely on time, copy-pasted since it didn't want to attach in anything less than five minutes. Which is just stupid for two and a half pages of words, 'specially double-spaced.

Got to psych on time. Learned about something called Fatal Familial Insomnia. Name made me think of Gaara, but actual disease made me think of the small amount of One Hundred Years of Solitude that I read before getting too depressed and putting it down. Also learned that staying up for eighteen hours can produce similar affects to a blood alcohol level of .05. Go figure.

Went to work. Spent most of the time folding tissue paper, but met some nice people. Someone from the paper--forget which one--stopped in to ask about Hallowe'en costumes. Mark talked to him for a good twenty minutes or so. Was entertaining to listen to, but I had to help customers and stuff while he did, so I didn't get to hear all of it. Mom came in toward the end of the day--she and Dad usually meet there after work to ride home together--and said hi. Then she did something I didn't expect. She walked to the wall where the beanies and other plush toys were displayed, picked up the beanie Socrates that I had been coveting for quite some time, and bought it.

Brief interlude while I talk about Socrates here. He is something of an idol for me. I borrowed his name to come up with my screen name once upon a time--'socchan', derived from 'socrates-chan', being the least formal form I could think of at the time. (Being somewhere around fifteen at the time probably had something to do with it. I wasn't much for capitalizing anything that wasn't a proper noun then, and even then I skipped over 'i' and my screen name. (Hence why I've made caps optional with my name these days. It's originally non-cap, but it's not easy to tell through just LJ, so I've accepted the caps-version with open arms and kept the non-caps version for nastaglia.)) Socrates is where 'Gadfly Productions' originated. See, the guy called himself a gadfly, whose job it was to bite/sting the lazy horse of society into wakefulness. These days, I try and add the Gadfly Productions tag to at least some of my projects--not the least of which being Small Things (a friends-locked WIP, which will be unlocked when/if I finish it) and Misinformation. I'll probably add it to East Wind too, eventually. Basically, Socrates had taken over a large part of my life.

Anyway, back to me coveting the beanie. I had been staring at it longingly whenever I had to dust around there, and thinking wistfully of shelling out the $15.50 required for its purchase (not including tax or the 20% discount for employees). And then Mom comes in and buys him. My first thought is, 'I wonder who it's for.' My second is, 'I wonder if it's for me.' My third is, 'Don't get your hopes up, it might not be.' With this in mind, I ring her up and watch her peel the sticker off. I smile and we chat--and then Mom sweeps the beanie behind her and implies that I didn't see her purchase it. At this point my hopes start to go way up--I start thinking, maybe it is for me, maybe it's for my birthday; it means I'll have to wait a month and a half to get it, but it'll be worth it. I grin innocently and say, "I didn't see anything." Mom smiles back. When she seems like she's about to leave the store, though, she turns around and presents me with the plush. She winks at me and calls me 'Socrates-chan'.

I am gobsmacked. Well, not quite that far, but I'm happy and I hadn't quite expected it so soon, so I went rejoicing. Er, as much as I could while working, which wasn't really that much. Mom went on to explain that she'd had Mark order it specially (which is probably more like put in a request for him to see about fitting it into his next order, if he could, as it is not exactly easy/possible to order single toys from companies).

It is official. I have the coolest family ever, and you can't have them. Well, Pat can share them some, I guess. But the rest of you are on your own! ~~Unless you are in dire need of a place to stay or other help or something and decide, for whatever reason, to knock on our door. Then you are part of the family, like it or lump it.~~ Even my little brother is wonderful--I'm well on my way to having him corrupted. It's to the point where he can spot slash references almost before I can ♥ Soon enough I'll have him shipping SasuNaru (or vice versa) with me. I'm already this close to getting him to read Naruto--and he is watching the dub (which, yes, isn't perfect, but is pretty decent as far as TV dubs go--having both CCS and Sailor Moon season S taken away from me, and learning well after the fact that I was right in guessing that the version of Escaflowne that Fox aired was rather bastardized, I find it balances the scale to a certain degree).

Anyway, back to the long day. Work lasts another half an hour after that, which includes some rather ...energetic kids (though, thankfully, no crying ones). I get to leave for home shortly before six, and spend enough time there to get the computer working again (as it doesn't like it when I leave it on for six-plus hours without doing anything with it), check my mail, and leave with Dad to go out to eat at a Chinese buffet and go shopping at Hy-Vee afterwords. It took a long time, and left me feeling what I can only assume to be 'drunk at blood alcohol content of .05 but mostly without the pleasant buzz'. Managed to get home in one piece, and surfed for about an hour, which brings us up to the present. And now, I am tired, and, after replying to a few more comments and reading a little bit more fic, I will probably crash in bed with Icka's cookie and see if I can't get out another paragraph or two before I fall asleep.

Plans for tomorrow are "Go to the dojo, practice for test(s), sign up for Winter Program". Plans for Sunday are "Possibly go to Cedar Rapids to see the original American Gothic in all its home-pride glory or possibly take bojutsu test". I'll have to see what happens. Hoping to fit 'type up and post Icka's cookie' somewhere in there too, but there's no guarantee, sadly. That and the fact that doing so would almost guarantee that my ESP-mail would be driving me nuts for the rest of the day after posting, so my best bet would be to finish and post on Saturday evening so I can hopefully get through all the comments I'll be getting by the time we leave for church on Sunday morning. We'll see what happens.