Random and Only Vaguely Topical
I quit my job at the Census (it was only going to last another week anyway). I got sick of being reminded on a daily basis how easily replaceable I was, and constant threats that everyone would be fired. Bah - so replace me then. ::shrug::

Then I started obsessing over Ancestry.com. It has now become like a new game for me. I must fill out every box on that pedigree chart. It's like my professions... I must know EVERY RECIPE. I called my mom to get some information about relatives, and she wanted to tell me stories. I had to resist the insane urge to tell her that I don't give a damn about the stories! Just give me birth dates and death dates so that i can COMPLETE EVERY TICKIE BOX. There better be an achievement at the end. Wait... this is ancestry pedigree... there IS no end. My obsessive-compulsive completionist tendencies will be the death of me.

After my Real ID/Real Names post a week or so ago, I finally decided to come clean to my advisor. She's more than just my advisor, she's something of a mother figure. So I told her that I blog about WoW. There was utter silence for a moment, and then her response was something along the lines of "Well... at least you're writing and keeping your writing skills up... but don't you think you ought to direct some of that towards, you know, your thesis?"

Remember how the worst thing your mother could ever do to you was to sound disappointed? "I'm not angry, I'm disappointed." After that conversation I felt horribly guilty, and decided to start working on my thesis again.

My thesis is about sex offenders. The past few days I have been assembling all my data... which means mapping where sex offenders live, looking at all these pictures of sex offenders, reading about their crimes, state laws, etc. I'm sure all my friends on twitter think I'm insane, since it's pretty much all I've been talking about, and sex crimes aren't generally considered polite conversation, even for twitter.

The thing is, when you're writing something like your thesis or your dissertation, you have to completely dive in and focus and invest yourself. Normally that would be fine - but I confess that spending so much time thinking about and looking at and researching people who have committed such horrible crimes has really worn me down. I honestly thought it wouldn't be a problem for me - I don't have kids, for one. But man. You live and breathe your thesis. It's not particularly pleasant to live and breathe sex offenders.

So, I took a break from thesising to try a battleground. I'm notoriously horrible at BGs, but I figured everyone is happy to see a healer, right? You expect the healer to get killed off pretty quickly, so maybe no one would notice how horrible I was if they were getting their bubbles. So I put on my lolpvp gear (200 resilience baby! YEAH!) and dove in to a Warsong Gulch. And then, for some completely unknown reason, and purely on a panicked whim (I'm always panicked in BGs) I picked up the flag. I had no idea what the hell I was doing. In my complete panic, I mounted up. Dropped the flag. Picked it back up. Ran around in a circle for a minute. Saw 6 red hordies come running at me... so I freaked out and deserted the battleground, and logged off.

I would have been a truly horrible soldier.

Also, this week I was looking at wedding rings, and found this particular gem. It's ribbed for her comfort. It's the perfect wedding ring for those who want a reminder of that item they should have used in order to prevent the situation requiring their marriage in the first place.
7 Responses
  1. Ashley Says:

    Ancestry.com is EVIL. I have over 3000 people in my tree because I HAVE to find every kid, cousin, wife that I can. Y'know how the family tree is supposed to go up? I'm pretty sure mine is four football fields wide at this point.

    I still can't give it up. I've had a subscription for five years now and I cancel it for 3-4 months every year trying to quit. I wish I could quit you, Ancestry!


  2. Grimmtooth Says:

    :: Donaldson fan scuttles out ::

    Oh, that's WHITE GOLD! I missed that first time around. Even better.

    :: Donaldson fan returns to his barrow ::

    I'm sad that you're no longer employed since that's a stress point of its own, but boy howdy that sounded like a horrid job. You should probably have reminded him that HE was replaceable, too. :)


  3. Cassandri Says:

    "There better be an achievement at the end."

    I laughed.

    Your post reminded me how much I love my family and my mum - they're quite happy to listen to me go on about WoW and the blog and I think if they understood it a bit more they'd go over to their neighbors and boast about me.

    At least this Ancestry.com thing got you talking to your mum - even if she only wanted to tell you uninteresting stories about people you've never met!


  4. Len Says:

    I know what you mean about your work, I work with offenders and sometimes when I've been doing assessments of sex offenders for a couple of weeks I just LONG for a nice violent guy to work with... it's really important to take a break and do something relaxing. Probably not a battleground :)


  5. Hinenuitepo Says:

    Ugh, I know about how horrible it is to have that project hanging over your head. I was ABD for 3.5 years before I finally finished my degree.
    More power, and more writing, to you Missy!


  6. Zelmaru Says:

    I find it interesting that you're "coming clean" about blogging. I tend to lump blogging into the category of "none of their damn business" right along with any other hobbies I have.


  7. Sohei Says:

    Ancestry is certainly a virus that is almost impossible to get out of your system :) tho I can really only do one side of my family as there are ... a number of skeletons in my Dad's side of the tree :D

    3000 members? wow, I am barely at 1000. hehe


Creative Commons License
Miss Medicina by Miss Medicina is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at missmedicina.blogspot.com.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at missmedicina.blogspot.com.