Marooned
"Hey Brittany, want to go out and get some lunch?"
"Not if you want rent."

I am sitting in the apartment, waiting for my TV dinner to cool, cut off from the outside world. I have no phone, no e-mail, no money, and thus effectively no car. Apparently I dropped my phone one too many times, and it started crashing on me last week. It would just simply reboot itself, or stop working and start flashing endlessly until I pulled out the battery to make it stop. With patience and coaxing, I could eventually get it to start up again, up until Friday, when it wiped its memory on reboot. I took the phone to the Verizon store to have it reprogrammed, but they say there's nothing they can do, I simply need a new phone. I'm not eligible for an upgrade until April, so I'd have to pay retail price, which is generally ridiculous. Obviously I can't be without my phone for nine months, so something shall have to be done. I just don't know what.

The e-mail thing is another fun thorny problem. It just stopped working a little while ago without warning. I asked Jeff to check if perhaps my password had expired without me being aware of it. Oh no, my password's just fine, but my account has been disabled. Yup, apparently because I'm on leave, I don't get to have a Pomona account anymore. I'm a frakking supervisor and I wasn't aware of this policy (which apparently isn't a Pomona policy but a 5-C one), and I wasn't made aware of this policy when I was suspended. Needless to say, I'm uber-pissed. Since I work for the department, I have a bit more recourse than a random student, but that doesn't appear to be doing much for me. I have a couple of other e-mail accounts, but I never use them, and no one really knows about them, since I didn't get a chance to warn people that they'd need to contact me at another account. Apparently my e-mail isn't bouncing, thankfully, but it will when my inbox fills up, which will probably be soon.

Then there's my car. It's a much more reliable car than my old Buick, it definitely gets points for that. But it's been doing this weird squeaky thing with the brakes since my dad brought it out here, which last night was promoted to a weird grindy thing that has made me resolve not to drive it any further until I get it checked out. Plus it badly needs an oil change, and it could really stand to be washed, while I'm at it. So, though I had intended to run a few errands today (including a trip north to potentially deal with both phone and e-mail) I also don't want to permanently damage my car or, you know, die, so I must keep my car parked until I can afford to pay to get it checked out. That won't happen until at least Thursday, and we'll see what sort of state my expenses are in at that point. I've started in on the whole 60-hour week thing, which should pad out my bank account nicely if it doesn't kill me first. (A 12-hour day at the Jungle Cruise during the summer is a whole different beast than a 12-hour day at the Opera House over the holidays.) So hopefully more money is in my future, I just don't know when.

So I'm stuck here until it's time to head to work (walking or taking the bus, thanks to my car), which at the moment isn't until 8:45 tonight. I'm hoping my efforts to start earlier will be successful, but even then, the earliest they'd probably start me is 4:15, giving me several hours to sit alone and rot.

At least not having access to my phone means I can't check it every thirty seconds to see if WDI has finally called me back because MY HEAD ASPLODE FROM WAITING OMFG. I'm not even going to go into all the work bullshit here, but I'm even more desperately hoping to get this job so I can get away from all the politics and insane guests for a while. We'll see. Think good thoughts. Pray for Bobo.