all these things you didn't need to know

After a most heinous computer crash last night around midnight, I gave up and initiated a shut-down, then decided to go to bed because the system was behaving very slowly. Yes, that worked, because my life always works out that well, right?

Around three, I woke up, the computer was on, and, irrational as only three freaking am can be, was convinced The Ring was being played out in my bedroom.

Even as I *thought* that, I knew how stupid it was. I *knew*. Because I'm not actually crazy, I just play the part with disturbing regularity and varying degrees of skill. I knew, logically, that I was actually probably too drowsy and just-wakened to make any kind of logical deducation on why my monitor was on like that. However, this logic did not go anywhere near my adrenal gland, which woke me right up.

So, let's all hear it for being awake three hours before you have to get up. I am currently pretending to do some of my online training and wondering if I can just *inject* soda straight into my veins to get this stuff going.

One of the handouts on my desk today was cheerfully entitled Burial Insurance: What You Can Exempt and What You Can Count. Because if I'm trying to determine eligibility, yes, I'm going to feel *totally* okay with asking some nice old lady, "So, what are your plans to die again? Show me an itemized list. Are you thinking coffin or urn? You can't exempt both, you know!"

What's really scary is, I got to class and started feeling the need to be funny in that disturbing sleep-deprived, punch-drunk way that never ends well. Oh God. I'm going to offend everyone in the class and probably get strangled during lunch. I'm going to make jokes about urns, niches, and covered funeral expenses and whether they're exempt or countable resources for deciding eligibility, and you know, if fandon has really destroyed my ability to read a book and *not* expect a climactic sex scene, I think this job has made it impossible for me to crack jokes that anyone but someone else who works here could possibly understand. That's all of maybe two hundred or so people in the state.

*buries head in hands*

I'm so doomed.

Me and the coffee I can smell are going to go throw a pity-party of two. *hugs cup close* Coffeee......

Comments

[vickita.livejournal.com]

I think this job has made it impossible for me to crack jokes that anyone but someone else who works here could possibly understand.

Well, you or somebody who's been through the process. I went through the (seemingly endless) task of getting my nursing-home-bound mom on medicaid just this past winter, and you know, you can laugh or you can cry, so I was wacky as hell.

Yup, did the burial policy thing. The nice young man who did the paperwork at the funeral home, upon learning that I maintain websites for a living, proudly showed me his new rack-mounted server that he had purchased for the business, and told me all about his plans to web-broadcast funerals in streaming video for loved ones who were unable to travel.

All in all it was... an experience. I learned a lot. The gentleman at DHS was incredibly helpful as he held my hand and led me through the maze. The up side of it all is that now my friends and colleagues who are a few years behind me in this process are coming to me to ask me how these things work, and I can tell them. So hey.

[deadlychameleon.livejournal.com]

*g* One of my professors is writing his Ph.D thesis on the history of death practices in Japan. Thing is, he's got a bit of a dry wit, which comes through in his work, so it's kind of fun to read.

-Silverkyst