Into the Mind of a Schizophrenic

Check out this multimedia slide show at NPR's website about a virtual reality simulation of what it's like to have schizophrenia. You'll need RealPlayer to view it.

More Stuff

There still isn't too much interesting going on in my life. I got my results for the civil service exam and I applied to 4 different counties, but there are really only 2 where I would want to work. For York, 11 people did better than I did, 1 did the same, and 200-some did worse; in the other county 21 people did better and 645 did worse. So basically, I'm tied at 12th for the York list and I'm 22nd for the other list. But, like I said, it probably wouldn't be the right move for me to take this job right now. For one thing, I'd lose all my time off, and we do get massive amount of time off to make up for our lousy pay. For another, there would be a lapse in my insurance, and I have a dentist appointment and a couple doctor's appointments coming up, not to mention that I'm on a couple different meds, one of which is a psychotropic, and you generally don't want to randomly stop taking those.

School has officially started, and I am not in school mode yet. I had my school e-mail rerouted to my Gmail because my school e-mail is a pain to access and some e-mails from my professor ended up going to my spam. Luckily they weren't sent that long ago and I didn't miss any deadlines because of it, but I could have gotten an early start. I like to stay ahead of the game, because if I don't, I feel like I'm drowning. My professor is making podcasts for our online course, which is very nice. I used to have to sit at the computer listening to hour-long lectures and now I can put them on my MP3 player and listen to them while I watch dishes or do other inane things.

I'm definitely leaning toward starting a private blog. I have a bunch of things going on right now that I need to vent about, and I have a crew of awesome, supportive blog buddies. And it's cheaper than therapy! By the way, for those of you who have private blogs, I just did some catching up over the weekend. Bloglines refuses to show when private blogs update, so I had assumed people just stopped blogging.

Stuff

Two good things came out of having our door kicked in: our landlord had a screen door and a deadbolt installed. I have wanted a screen door since we moved in here about 3 1/2 years ago. The weather has been so beautiful here that we haven't needed the AC and I've been able to keep the door open. It might sound like a little thing, but I love fresh air. He didn't have a deadbolt put on the back door, but I got the carpenter's card and he only charges $20 an hour, so I'm going to ask if I can have one put on if I pay for it. It's futile because our doors have windows in them, so all someone would have to do is punch the window out and reach in to unlock the door, but at least you can't kick in a door that's deadbolted.

The kid and his mom were moving out on Saturday (he's actually not a little bastard--he's 19 and has no job and lives with his mom) and I REALLY wanted to go over there, but it's not fair to rip him a new asshole when I have no proof that he did it.

I took one of the civil service exams for a state job on Monday. It was an interesting experience; talk about a motley crew. We were all herded around like cattle and had orders barked at us. One woman didn't know how to use a mouse. Oy vey. The test was pretty easy. It's for an income maintenance case manager at the Department of Public Welfare. The first part was reading over part of the handbook and answering questions that described a household where you had to say whom was eligible for certain benefits based on the text. One of the questions was something like, "Everyone has a right to apply for benefits regardless of eligibility. In this case, 'right' means..." Three of the answers had to do with correctness and one was about something that is guaranteed to you. Are there people who would get that wrong?! There was a math part that was basically calculating benefits and gross income, there was a hilariously cheesy part about interpersonal skills where you had to watch horribly-acted vignettes and say what the person should have done, and then there was a part about grammar. I'm sure I did well, but there's a pretty long wait for these jobs. If I were planning to work for the state and retire I would probably accept it, but my future is so up in the air right now, that I don't know if it would be worth it.

I'm thinking of starting a private blog, but I don't even post on this one so I don't know what makes me think I'd post on a private one. I do feel a little stifled here though, for reasons I don't want to say here. School starts on Monday though, so I should probably hold off.

I hope everyone's enjoying the last few weeks of summer. I'm more of a fall person myself. That's pretty much all that's going on right now unless you want to read more detail about my exciting life of waking up, going to work, coming home, doing inane things in the evening, going to bed, and then starting all over the next day.

A Tale of Two Days

While Rusty was meeting Jason Castro (I knew I should have gone to D.C.!), I was having the front door of my house kicked in. Luckily nothing was stolen. My landlord thinks it was a kid who lives in another one of his apartments who is mad because he and his mother are being evicted. So because some white trash piece of shit can't pay her fucking rent, I get my house vandalized.