Second week o' classes out of the way. Been busy.
The financial aid gods did say I can have in-state tuition, so I send less of my loan towards my classes, but then we did the math and found out that I still couldn't keep that fourth class. We could afford food, rent, and utiliies as long as we didn't want gas or insurance too. Imagine if we hadn't learnt I could get in-state tuition. I shudder at the thought of being just that po'. Poor doesn't even begin to cover it. My family's been poor (it's like being middle class only you have fewer cars and you get to be really greatful to get "nonessentials" like dessert and family vacations), but we ain't never done been po'.
Er, anyway, dropped that class today. I have awful educational guilt at doing this, because for some reason I think my professors will feel bad about me leaving, or take it personally, or something but there's nothing else I could do, because this is the last last day to drop and get the money back.
The best part, I have this class devoted to helping me learn how to be a grad student. It's a department course, so it's not an utter waste of time, but most of the process is devoted to learning how to analyse a play for the qualifier. The qualifier is the project you do before your thesis, kind of a mini-thesis. In the case of directors, designers, and technicians, they're all going to be handed a show and told to do whatever they do for it. As that's three of the four areas they offer masters' in, that's what the project is geared towards.
Playwrights write their own plays, so they have a completely different process that the class isn't helpful with (not that it's hard, you write the play and justify it), but it's a little silly trying to do all this research about another play from "my area's point of view". I don't have one because when I do my version of the project, I don't get handed a play, I have to create one. But, I don't do that for the class, so I'm playing a dramaturg for the purposes of class.
What's a dramaturg? Oh dear. Look it up yourself if you really want to know, because the definition depends entirely on what theatre you're in at any given time. It generally has something to do with research, but whether it's research for the director, the marketing director, the playwright, or the cast, seems to change from place to place. Whatever it is, I've always been told I might make a good one. (I don't think so, I do research based on my own curiosity, I don't think I'd want to do it because I had to.)
In other news, our phone is shite. We're calling MediaCom about it... whenever the phone starts working again. We went with the phone and the Internet because the Internet is much more vital than cable and because we don't have mobiles down here yet. A land line is still infinitely cheaper, and this would at least have free nation-wide calling. The phone worked fine for the first week but is now constantly on the blink. Literally, as I'm sitting here the lights on the modem are blinking on and off at me, but their website doesn't say anything about that being a problem. In addition to this, it's one of those systems where the phone may not work if the power goes out, which is incredibly stupid, but whatever.
I'm thinking we might want to just get mobiles and screw the land-line if they tell us that there's nothing they can do about it, problem with that is that then the Internet all by itself will cost more than the phone and the net do together, and cable and Internet is more expensive than either other option (and, frankly, I don't want cable).
Because we haven't got cable, we did buy some seven dollar bunny ears to try to pick up some local stations for the weather. Well, that's what The Boy said. I told him we have Weatherbug, what do we need the television for? He reminded me that the Weatherbug tends to pick the crappiest weather forecasters in the area, FOX did back in CF.
So, we turned on the television and started flipping through. We get fuzzy ABC, which I'm not too impressed about because they're owned by Disney- I've never liked the idea of watching DisneyNews (on the flip side, they also own the Charlie Brown specials, so I could watch fuzzy Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown in a couple months), but it's not like there's a plethora of marvellous broadcasting on ABC. Turns out they're the channel in league with the Weatherbug.
The only other channel we get is fuzzy PBS. Down here that means it's children's programming and pretty much nothing else. IPTV was great, wonderful, totally worth it. There's not much on down here.
But wait, I forgot, we do get one other channel. It's not even fuzzy, because it's not trying to come all the way from Missouri. Nope, it's the Trinity Broadcasting Network, or, as I like to call it, The Benny Hinn Channel. That comes to us out of the next town over, clear as day.
Ooooh goody. But, The Boy says any television at all is worth seven bucks in the event that the Internet is down and there's a blizzard on the way (or what have you). I suppose he's right, but I didn't know The Benny Hinn Channel did weather reports. I guess they'll be letting us know when it's the Rapture. (I hear that's scheduled for the eleventh this month?)