JPEG GHOST

I got my mortuary law (blah), restorative art (yay!), and funeral management (blah) books. School is beginning, but ... Most of the course work is sort of interesting to me: Restorative Arts, Forensic Pathology, Embalming II... And Mortuary Law and Funeral Merchandising, which I'm not as interested in. 
But PATHOLOGY!
I got to study all about ballistics injuries and burns yesterday. I hate the teacher (she was my microbiology teacher last semester), but I love the subject so I guess we will find out?! Embalming labs will be in September in which I am genuinely very excited about.

Work was boring today, I did errands and stood in Office Depot for 20 minutes trying to find the right pen refills. Have you been in an Office Depot lately? It's barren. It's like the end days of the Roman Empire. I think there was one (1) employee there and he was on a computer. Not that I mind, I don't like talking to associates because I've lost the ability to speak to living people. Despite the pandemic, we had a day of no deaths so we just sort of did whatever at work. One of my coworkers watched the History channel lol.
My lovely upstairs neighbor is an EMT -- He's been telling me how bad it is in our hospitals, so I'm anticipating harsher weeks to come. I'm happy that the GOP convention was at least cancelled here, we can curb the tsunami my area is currently facing. I just spoke with a funeral buddy working in Beaumont, which is about a hour and a half away from us, and she's had 23 calls in 3 days.

In happier news, Alex and I are starting to more seriously look into homes. I'm very excited because we can have a place of our own to do whatever we want in! I already have my own apartment but it's pretty small and I'm tired of fighting people for visitor parking spots, and not having enough space for my rapidly expanding plant collection. Wow, our own little place! Just for us! 2020 is a nightmare year but it feels really nice that me and my boyfriend can rent a home together.

Alex and I ALSO unearthed some ancient artifact from the year 2005, which was a "Seme or Uke" quiz, in regards to yaoi manga I guess? Of course we wanted to know what we were and OF COURSE I ended up being the uke aka the twink...  This is mental duress.

Nothing really interesting has happened lately but I'm also exhausted and running at 40% most of the time. AGH.

I had a nice weekend with Alex that was tragically boring solely from how fucking MISERABLE this heat wave is. It's currently 7:30, with the sun setting, and it's abouuuutt 90 degrees. I need to speak to who is in charge :/

I wrote an essay for my Mortuary Administration class (boo) on alkaline hydrolysis (yay!) and why it is good and the FUTURE of death. Wouldn't you like to be hit with water and acid over the course of several hours until you were brittle bone? Then that brittle bone pounded into powder and placed in a decorative urn? The professor responded:

"Good research and paper. Personally, I am squeamish about hydrolysis for the usual reasons; boiling grandpa in acid and flushing him down the drain? How is that respectful? But I know the new generation of funeral directors will have to come to grips with new demands."

But all that matters is that sweet sweet 100% I got.

Me and Alex then laid on the couch and tossed ideas back and forth on what to do while adhering to social distancing in public. We could go to a store, but people. We could go to the park, but the sun is currently boiling the city.
We ended up watching an Ode To A Most Belov'd Anamalocarus. Yes. All 4 minutes and 14 seconds. We truly lament the loss of such a pivotal ancestral arthropod.

I'm now deep into a rabbit hole of looking at bisected lungs filled with P. jiroveci fungi until the sun sets, then hopefully we can actually go for a walk in the ... Cool, chilly, 87 degree weather. Augh.
( Cut for My Thoughts on Cambrian Arthropods )

The past day has, as I mentioned, been dedicated to schoolwork. We have a terrible microbiology teacher who focuses on the minutiae of details instead of the big picture; I couldn't tell you anything about what we learned, honestly, only trivial facts that have nothing to do with the coursework as a whole. I've done a lot of emailing but I doubt she will do anything as she mostly has gotten defensive at the fact most of the class is failing. As if that is our fault, not hers. I get mad just thinking about it, so I don't even know why I've written about it more here!

I rage cleaned my tiny bathroom after I got an email telling me and the other students to more or less suck it up. Because my hair has gotten so long from quarantine I put a bandanna around my forehead to keep my hair back, in which Alex immediately has begun calling me 'Daniel-San'. I think I'm hitting more of a Jack Dawson a la Titanic hairstyle lately, which I'm enjoying and it's not like I'll be getting a haircut anytime soon.
 

Texas is beginning to reopen for Some Reason, but our mayor has been cool enough to force a mandatory mask policy. Of course, men with too many guns and Punisher stickers on their Jeeps are bawling about "muh freedoms" when that was enacted. Freedom to not wear a mask and catch Covid and die, I guess? The states is quickly winning the Darwin Awards, what with all the stupid protestors and people saying its infringing on their rights to wear PPE in public. I've felt particularly dismal about this pandemic after seeing the South act ... Like the South, but I'm also just cranky today from Microbiology.

Apologies for the cranky post, I'll try to be less bitchy in future iterations of my days.