Oh, it's spring, and love is in the air. On my way to work this morning, I spotted more duck sex on the lawn- but for once, it wasn't a gang rape! It was one male duck on a female duck, not even pinning her down! He was surrounded by three friends, but they seemed to be just there for moral support and voyuerism and were staying bills-off. And after the act, the other ducks didn't even hop on for a ride on her, either! I was impressed.

And speaking of love and air, Jasmine got out of the house Monday night when Heather got home. She wouldn't allow herself to be caught, so Heather gave up. I got up on Tuesday morning and was pleased to be able to leave my room without immediate sexual harassment, until I found out why this hadn't happened. But when I went outside, there she was, mewing at me from the bushes by the apartment across from us. She tried to hide between bikes so I wouldn't catch her, but it took me maybe a whopping three minutes to lure her out with my whopping kitty sex appeal and pitch her back indoors. (What can I say? She's the stalker to my abusive boyfriend.)

Ironically, despite being in heat and outdoors all night, Jasmine has obviously not gotten pregnant. The heat goes on. I am flabbergasted that she didn't manage to get nookie, but between the lack of cats in the area and her usual disinclination to go any farther than our area when she gets out...

Last night, Heather and I started beginning ASL (in my case, for the third time). To be honest, I wasn't too happy about it. The teacher is nice (we suspect she is NOT deaf, interestingly enough, as she made noises from time to time), but I got supremely frustrated when she decided to bring up a complicated scheduling issue in ASL that frankly, I didn't have the vocabulary in ASL to explain the issues about.

The only reason I can explain this situation is that Heather had to tell me after class. The class was scheduled for an hour and a half on Tuesdays and Thursdays, which the teacher had decided she was getting too little pay to commute from wherever she lives to come out here for twice a week. So she wanted to hold class only once a week for longer hours. Speaking as a person who must anally schedule things, being told after I'd already signed up and paid for classes that "Oh, we're going to change when it is" really pisses me off. Had I but known what she was going to do, I might not necessarily have signed up for two things going on Thursday nights, instead of being screwed.

She tried to have us vote on what we wanted (only Tuesdays at the same time? only Thursdays at the same time? Tuesdays only earlier? Thursdays only earlier? Swapping back and forth which day it's on?), which was difficult. Frankly, I didn't give a shit WHAT we did, so long as class wasn't moved up to 6 p.m. on Thursdays. I've already paid for a nonrefundable class going from 5-7 then, thanks. But could I really articulate this in nothing but ASL (she didn't write much down)? Uh, no. So we had to vote on the above stuff, most of which I voted "so-so" on, but I was the only one who had a class on Thursdays till seven, so I got outvoted. She has now decided that after this week, class will alternate between 6-8:30 (or till 9) on a Tuesday or Thursday. She said (this Heather also had to translate to me) that we could come in from 6-8:30 or from 7-9 if we wanted to, but most of the class wanted to leave early. I suppose this is fair, even if it annoys me. At any rate, given the last few altercations I've had with the EC (the "do we HAVE to have class on Easter?" argument that I lost, and the "can I get another class or refund for the class we all missed because you guys buggered up?" argument that I also lost), I am just going to suck it up and deal with it. Not worth the pain and frustration to complain to the flaky guy that runs the joint.

My head hurt. I need to learn some signs in ASL that equate to "Stop trying to explain that to me, I'm not getting it no matter how many times you try," and "My brain is leaking out my ear. See the puddle?" I was so amazingly, obviously the stupid one in class and I wanted to cry. Heather didn't do as badly, though she got really annoyed that she couldn't talk and the one time she tried to, got told not to. (Me: "Frustrating, isn't it?")

Heather has a sociology class before ASL, and she'd finally made it to the class after sleeping way too late last week. Much to her surprise, she found out they had an assignment where they had to ride a bus to Sacramento and back and take scrupulous notes on what the people on the bus did, and then had to write a paper about it. Due Thursday. Unfortunately, Heather's working schedule/class schedule pretty much prevented her from riding the bus during the day like the entire rest of the class had done already, so she was stuck having to ride the last bus out of town at 9-something p.m. I have occasionally ridden this bus before, and while during the day it's fine, at night The Creepy People come out, and I don't think it's safe for girls alone to be on. So I said I'd go along with her- hell, it wasn't like I was planning on doing much last night. Heather figured it'd be boring, there'd be three people sleeping on the bus and that would be it. Boy, was that not true.

The bad news that we found out when we got on the bus was that it wasn't going to do a full round trip back home the way it normally did. Instead, we'd have to get off in Sac and catch a returning bus, so we wouldn't get home till around 11:30. Whee. We got on and tried to park in the back to give her a vantage point, and I pulled out a magazine and tried to blend in. Had I but known I was going to be on the out of town bus at this hour when I'd left the house this morning, I would NOT have worn my fake fur coat or brought my iPod to school, oh no.

When we were on the highway, one of the guys on the bus decided to pick a fight with another guy, who'd been minding his own business. Other guy didn't want to get into it, but presumably freaked when First Gangbanger Guy got on his cell to call his "homies" and told them to meet him at a bus stop on the edge of town so they could go beat Second Guy up. Gangbanger decided to go sit right across from Heather to do this, freaking her out a ton. I looked at her notes from the night and at that point she was writing, "I am never taking this bus at night again!" Second Guy, in return, called the cops from his cell. So we ended up parked on the fringe of town with another bus driver coming on to kick both guys off the bus, Gangbanger Guy's homie showing up and trying to get on the bus, and the cops showing up for everybody. They had us fill out report cards for the police on this! Afterwards, the chicks behind us got into a discussion with Heather about how this was the first time they'd ever seen something like this go on on the bus in a year. Guess we got lucky, eh?

Then we had to get off the bus and wait for a half-hour or so for the next one to come by. I sat there, wondering why six or seven police vehicles had driven by and why they were all checking out the people at the bus stop... Fortunately, the second bus did show up and we eventually got home without major incident, arrests, or any personal theft or destruction.

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