So, yay for not having to pay for internet (they have a special staff-only network set up for us), but boo having stupid site blockers. Basically all of the webcomics I read and several blogs I try to keep up on are blocked for being inappropriate. There isn’t any nudity or graphic depictions of sex or anyone encouraging illegal activities, no hate speech, just people talking openly about interesting topics (which, yes, may occasionally include sex), and it really sort of annoys me. We’re all adults, we should be able to monitor our own internet usage.
At least tumblr isn’t blocked, because I would possibly cry.
Edit: Cracked.com is blocked for “Violence.” I am opposed to this.
T_____T
Made it back to Hot Springs finally, after dealing with the spawn of Satan that is I-30 (Dallas to Rockwall took nearly TWO HOURS)… can’t fall asleep, don’t have the spoons to start unpacking. This blows a bit.
Reasons I am angry tonight:
But at least the service project a) went surprisingly well and b) is over. And our bus drivers were super nice and actually knew where we were going, so that’s a plus over all of my previous TAG service project experiences.
EDIT: Also I am hungry as fuck and this irritates me because I can’t really leave at the moment and even if I could I don’t know what I want and I don’t really need to be spending money.
I’ve been attempting to get approval to have a psychiatric service dog. Psychiatric service dogs are relatively new and not explicitly protected by the Americans with Disabilities Act, though there are several studies out now showing that service dogs can help people with PTSD, major depression, and other mental disorders that can severely limit functionality. I talked to my doctor about how I really don’t think any combination of medications we’ve tried so far is really cutting it for my depression/anxiety, and we talked for a bit about psychiatric service dogs. He agreed to draft a letter of support saying that it was his medical opinion that a psychiatric service dog would be beneficial to me (listing the tasks such a dog could assist me with on a day-to-day basis), and that he’d get a psychiatrist-friend of his to co-sign the letter with him to give it a little more heft. However, when I asked my boss what sort of documentation was required to have a service dog on campus, I was shot the fuck down. Apparently, the University of Arkansas system has some kind of legal precedent (which, conveniently, no one has been able to show me record of) saying they can’t allow any animals on campus due to the liability issues they pose. Which reeks of bullshit to me, as service animals have to pass a battery of tests not only on their trained abilities, but on their attention span, temperament, and behavior, and they don’t get their certificate until/unless they can pass every aspect of every test. Those behavior and temperament tests basically guarantee that a trained/certified service dog will never pose a physical threat to anyone ever (they are often even trained to respond to aggression toward their handler with protective posturing but not returned aggression). When I offered to get my own liability insurance policy for a service dog, I was ignored. I don’t want to fight this too hard, because the idea of fighting it makes me nauseous, and I also don’t have a whole hell of a lot of legal ground here, as mental disabilities are not as protected by ADA than visible physical disabilities. I also don’t want to fight it too hard because I don’t want to go into detail about my personal medical/mental health issues with my superiors. I know they can’t legally fire me just for having mental health concerns, but I feel like since one of the responses I got was “maybe you should take some time off,” and “we’d really hate to lose you, but,” suggesting that maybe I should just quit if the job is too triggering for me, they’d find a reason to fire me if they really wanted to. But I really want to know what the fuck happens when we have some kid applying to be a student here who happens to require the use of a service dog to manage their disability. Will the school deny them admission? (hello, lawsuit). Or maybe just tell them they can’t have their service animal because of the liability issue it presents? (again, if the student has a disability recognized by ADA as benefiting from the use of a service animal, they can probably get their pants sued off for that).
Once again awake in the middle of the night even though I have to be up moderately early for work.
Since I couldn’t sleep, I worked on finishing up the floor rosters. I made a new roster that swapped the males and females sides of the building so that we’d (theoretically) have the right number of rooms on each side, put the guys that Mike had assigned so far to rooms into the rosters, then went ahead and matched up the rest of the guys we have survey results for (I don’t know how much Mike has done since the last time he sent me the guys’ roster, but he said he wasn’t done with it, so I said to myself “fuck it, I’ll do it” [which is probably what I should have said in the first place, since I know Mike’s got other stuff to worry about…]). At the end of doing that, I have room for all of the accepted girls (including the ten girls we don’t have survey results for) except for the two alternates who were given admission packets because the admissions people were never told we lost two rooms, and all but two of the accepted guys (including those we don’t have survey results for). I’m going to assume the two guys we don’t have room for are the alternates, because that makes my life a tiny bit easier. And, if at the end of the day the only ones we don’t have room for are the alternates, I feel bad for the kids who we said “Yep! You’re accepted!” and we’re going to have to turn around and say “Just kidding!” (reminds me of how earlier this year Vassar College [my alma mater] accidentally told 70 people they had been accepted early decision even though they totally hadn’t), but at least I don’t have to take the blame for that, because I’m not the one who forgot to tell the people doing the admitting that we were short two rooms.
Anyway, in a few hours, Mike and I are going to go through the new building and count the rooms on each side to make sure that I have an accurate count, and I’m going to double check which rooms are suited (so I can be sure I have all the suites properly assigned). Then we have a meeting with the Res Life Dean and the head of Admissions to figure out what we’re going to do about the kids we don’t have room for. And then we can maybe be done with this whole nightmare (at least until we do the whole thing where people can switch rooms if they absolutely hate their roommate).
I had a long and detailed post ready just a minute ago, but technical difficulties resulted in it being lost forever, so here’s the short version:
So last night I got super bored and went to the pet stores in town to look at tiny critters I can’t have. At Petco, there was a gigantic grey Great Dane (named Zeus) who sniffed me very gingerly and then rested his face against my hand and stared up at me with soulful eyes. His owner laughed apologetically at the dog’s intrusion into my personal space, but I smiled and scratched Zeus behind his ear. His fur was a really pleasing texture and it made me happy. But then I turned back to the rodents and noticed that one of the male hamsters had a giant bleeding sore on his right hindquarter. He kept sitting down and trying to fuss with it, but he couldn’t quite reach it, and there was blood all over the cage from his struggling, and another of the hamsters kept following him around. I told one of the employees about it, and she said, “Oh, they’ve probably just been fighting,” and did nothing about it. It made me really angry, because even if it’s just a hamster, it’s suffering, and she just brushed it off. Not to mention the trauma that might be done to some little kid who comes in to get their first pet and gets to see hamster blood decorating one of the cages. I feel like our Petco is not really very high quality, because on previous visits there, I’ve seen multiple dead betta fish on display, a mouse with a huge hairless spot on it’s back, and cages that looked/smelled like they hadn’t been cleaned in a week.
Forgot to put a dryer sheet in with my bedding so when I crawled into bed there was so much static I thought I was going to get electrocuted.
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