Yeah, for some reason when I first got here fanfiction.net was blocked by SVU's web content blocker (for pornography and "other") but fictionpress.com was not blocked. Now, for some bizarre reason, it's been flipped to the other way around... fanfiction.net is allowed, fictionpress.com is blocked for pornography and/or nudity. Yes, a site with no pictures, which actually kicks people off if they have X-rated avatars, is blocked for nudity... makes no sense. So now I not only have no way of directing people I know to read the Pugh story, I also have no way of editing my page on the site to add more chapters or remove what's already there (not much point in having it hosted on a site I can't even access, is there?) The strangest thing is how when I try to access fictionpress.com from the library computers it gives a "website blocked" message, but on my laptop I get a "Internet Explorer cannot open the webpage" error instead. I wonder what's going on there?
It's pretty messed up, and really makes no sense to me. Hopefully they'll get the "which sites to block and not block" thing worked out a little better in the future, because at the moment they've made some kind of odd decisions about those and seem to change at the drop of a hat. Maybe it's an automatic thing that's programmed a little screwy, I don't know.
Today was mostly good overall, though it had its "off" moments (either due to boredom or just feeling out of place/freaking out at moments.) Classes were pretty good as usual, bumped into some people during meals and talked a bit, I'm getting a bit less frustrated with watercolors (painted a tree today! ...and need to paint another tree and two sky/clouds scenes before Wednesday), and my jogging wounds are starting to heal up a bit (they're scabbing over now, and hopefully not doing much more bleeding, if any.)
Spent a lot of time today talking to various people, some I knew and some I sorta-knew and even a couple I had just met. Mostly girls, of course (I generally just get along better with girls) but a couple of guys, also... one of which said he should set me up on a date with a girl, after I mentioned I'd never been on a date in my life. Heh... not sure if I'd really want that or not, I'd kinda rather go on a date with someone I actually know rather than just some random person someone else picked out for me, though of course either way would be an improvement over the usual "no dating ever." Actually sat outside in the grass and talked to a couple of girls for close to two hours (well, only one for about half of that, since the other left after a while) between Spanish class and dinner, since I just didn't have much else to do and I generally like talking to people. Introduced her to the idea of cuddly spiders (...she didn't quite agree with me on that one XD), found out a bit more about the Star Trek movie with the whales in it (she was really into Star Trek, we actually talked for a pretty long time about that! and also comparisons between Star Trek and Star Wars, and all sorts of other stuff), and for the first time I actually managed to bring up the topic of dating despite being around a (presumably) single girl. And I didn't feel weird mentioning it, she actually explained a bit about how Mormons as a whole are sort of obsessed with dating and marriage, which is why you have things like the orientation speech guy actually encouraging people to go on dates and stuff like that.
Also, I actually met an atheist for the first time today, and she didn't appear to be the loud, obnoxious kind you usually run into on the Internet. Funnily enough she was actually a visitor on the campus considering coming to school there sometime soon--yeah, an atheist going to a religiously-affiliated school! That's almost even more odd than my situation, though I think she'd probably get along with people pretty well since she seemed nice (though she'd have to take out her lip piercing, the guys who make the rules don't seem to like those much here. XD)
Went to this thing called "family home evening" that the Mormons have every Monday. I had no idea where to actually go since I missed the part where they split the wards into even smaller groups, so I ended up tagging along with a few people I knew... they were going to go to one meeting where they were playing video games and eating ice cream, but at the last minute (after luring me in with offers of video games and ice cream) they decided they weren't going to that one and instead they were going with some guy to his group's event instead. It was some weird card game that involved spoons, with everyone sitting in a circle and passing the cards trying to get 4 of a kind, and whenever someone got it they'd go for one of the spoons and then everyone else had to get a spoon or they'd be out. I actually tried to lose the first two times (because nobody had explained the rules and I was feeling a little lost and confused, as usually happens when someone is just thrown into something without any explanation) but even when I didn't make an attempt to get one of the spoons, I ended up with one anyway--first time I tried to slide my spoon over to someone else but they already had one and slid it back to me, so instead of me being out (what I wanted) one of the only people I actually knew was out. I would've just passed the spoon over to her if I had realized she didn't already have one. Next time, I completely ignored the spoons and at the end one girl who had two just handed one to me. I couldn't lose when I was trying to lose... bleh. And of course, as soon as I sort of got the hang of it and stopped intentionally trying to lose, I was the one who was out. It didn't help that I couldn't really move much to get the spoons thanks to the condition my knees were in.
But, after that point it got a lot better, as instead of wasting my time with cards and spoons and games that are too fast and make no sense, I got to talk a little bit and kind of look through a girl's random notes (I'm... not entirely sure why she handed them to me to look through, they seemed like the kind of thing that I wouldn't show people if it was me... nothing really personal or embarrassing, just not anything I'd show other people, either. Well, except the silly sketches, silly sketches are always good. Apparently she likes to represent herself as a floating chibi head with arms but no torso or legs, heh.)
Later in the day things kinda slowed down a bit, and I ended up just wandering around campus bored with nothing much to do. Normally I'd got for a walk or even jog, but with my knees still all smashed up that would probably be extremely uncomfortable even if I went easy on it. So I ended up talking to random people in and around the library, a couple of which I'd met before and a bunch I hadn't. One of them happened to be someone I knew from Art History class, who had their book with them (so I managed to get in a good-sized chunk of my reading assignment for that class done, in addition to my Spanish homework.) Oh, and I also kinda agreed to help out a girl in my Spanish class since she's having a hard time getting the hang of certain things and just going to the regular tutoring session didn't help much... so I guess I'm an unofficial Spanish tutor now, heh. She wanted to meet up in the library on Wednesday after class, which works out well for me since I never have much of anything to do after Spanish on Wednesdays.
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