Christmas

Auughhh. Stuffed.

Also, in the Christmas gift exchange my family does (this is the third year already!) I got a Gingerdead Man! Actually it's just a non-evil Gingerbread Man decoration, but a paint job will fix that ;) It's hanging on the tree now, but after we take it down, it's got a spot on my wall with its name on it.

I bought the movie like a year ago in the supermarket. It cost thirty pesos! A rat's ass costs more than that!

Just imagine him holding a knife. Cute.

It's prompted me to seek out B movies and watch them as a holiday project. I probably won't manage very many, because they are funny, but they're also bad, so it gets a bit tiring if you try to watch more than a few at a time. Also, they can be a bit hard to find, although luckily, once you find them, they're usually dirt cheap.

I don't really ever publish these things...

...but I'll make a vague-ish exception here.

Making me wish I'd never been born won't make me respect you, and will certainly not make me want to do what you want me to. Nor will it make me feel bad that I didn't.

Duh.

Ho-hum

You know, I've only written once this month. Well, I've written three posts, but only published one of them. The other two are meant to be seen only by two eyes, and they're both firmly lodged in my head (and will hopefully remain so for much time to come).

Sometimes I get obsessed with one type of food for weeks –my sister does it, too– and eat it like sixty times a day. At one point it was jocoque, a really tasty spread derived from milk. We'd spread it on everything (well, toast and rice cakes. With jam, or honey, or tomato, or by itself, or with carrots... oh, carrots! That's another one). And now, for me, it's oatmeal. I have a big jar of ground-up oats, and use them to make porridge and eat it like twice a day. Yum.

Feet

Backstory: Last night I went to a Christmas party with my old classmates from secondary school (well, about 40% of them, anyway). Several of us slept over. It was a very cold night, and there was a blanket shortage.

So I've been lying on a carpet for about an hour, hitting up the Internetz, thinking about how the carpet smells like feet. Odd, actually, because when I duck my head and take a sniff it just smells like carpet. Just now, though, I realized that what smells weird is my jacket, which I tossed at an ex-classmate last night when he was complaining about how cold it with the intention that he'd shut up and let me sleep.

Apparently it was his feet that were cold. Damn dude.

Get it? It's a wishbone, or whatever the correct anatomical term is (Google says furcula, "little fork"...um, yeah...). When you unzip it, you're snapping it in half! HA! It's totally appropriate for turkey-laden festivities, but you know what other animals have had wishbones? Dinosaurs! Specifically, theropods. And you know what that means... T-REXES!!!!!

Elephants, The Lord of the Rings

For my Physics final, I'm doing a project with my team (I'm using "team" loosely here. There four of us, of whom only two are doing actual work and stuff) about elephantine seismic communication (it's pretty cool. In a nutshell, the idea is that elephants thump the ground so that other elephants can hear them and thump back, and they can chat about things). There's this one woman, Caitlin O'Connell, who's THE elephant communication researcher. She pretty much discovered this method of communication the year I was born and has been working on it ever since.

So anyway, I was reading a preview of her book about elephants on Google Books, and she's making an analogy between seismic communication in elephants and the way people put their ears on the ground to hear things (awkward position, by the way, and what if an ant gets in your ear? That almost happend to me today as I lay on the grass at school), and then she adds,

Or, for Lord of the Rings fans, Aragorn putting his head to the rock to listen for the distant thumping feet of the fearsome Urukai as they bore Merry and Pippin away to Isengard.

Wow! How did she know?? That totally struck home; that's exactly what I've been envisioning for the past month whenever I think about this elephant project. And then the bit where Aragorn (or was it Gimli?) says, "Legolas, what do your elf-eyes see?" and then Legolas stands on a boulder or something in his leggings and looks sexily across the plains.

I love Legolas.

The book is The elephant's secret sense: the hidden life of the wild herds of Africa

By Caitlin O'Connell

Ritter

It's the end of semester, so I don't have time to write much of a blog post (I do, however, have ample National Geographic browsing time. Such is life).

There's a woman at the Science Faculty who sells candy (well, there's two candy ladies, but I only like one of them, even if her bubble gum is more expensive). But it's not just ordinary candy! I mean, some of it is ordinary, but she always has cool imported candy, which is why I've dubbed her Exotic Candy Lady. ECL has supplied me throughout the semester with cool stuff like a Giant Reese's Cup and a Reese's Crispy Crunch Bar, and also has things like Wonka Jelly Donutz*, Pop Rocks Chocolate Bars, SweeTarts, Ritter Sport chocolate bars (!), etc.

I never bought a Ritter Sport because I'm not exactly rolling in money over here, but today she had some mini Ritter Sports. I was really happy, because:

a) CHOC OLATE!

b) mini candy!

c) CHOCOLATE!

d) it's cheap!

e) CHOCOLATE!

f) ...chocolate!

So I bought two, and I worked it out just now: they were a better deal than a bigger bar; 22% cheaper, in fact (no, I'm not a dork for having worked that out. *Shoves glasses up nose*). Did Exotic Candy Lady steal a shipment of these or something? And if so, does she have a son I can marry?

Whatever, I'm stocking up tomorrow. If I buy them by sending my friends to fetch 'em, she'll HAVE to restock, right? Otherwise she'll know it's just me buying them all. Because as it is, she already knows that I get all excited over her candy, mainly Reese's products and chocolate (she gives me little discounts sometimes on clearance chocolate. Just another reason to like her). And I've only had the valor to eat one of my little chocs, because what if they're all gone by tomorrow?! NOOOOOOO!

*Which never appealed to me, but I've just found out via googling that they're CHOCOLATE! Drat. I passed on those for like 2 months and now she'll probably never re-stock them, because they were slow sellers.

Life in images

The Prokaryotes lab at school has a fridge where we toss all the cultures we won't use anymore, and they'll dunked in chlorine or something at the end of the semester. I like this fridge because, even though it reeks (badly, and you kind of don't want to inhale all the stuff that's been sitting there for months), it has these totally awesome red bags that have the biohazard symbol on them and say "Danger, biological waste" or something to that effect. Those bags are freaking cool.

Last week I found a little family of threads hanging out in my lab coat pocket, so I cut them off and wrapped them around my finger. They looked like a little old guy, so I drew a face on my finger. See? He has a little beard and cute, tufty old-guy hair.

I went to the Geology museum on Sunday with my Philosophy and History of Biology (mouthful) class. Our museum guide was totally cool. Firstly, he had a really long ponytail. Also, on top of his blue museum T-shirt, he had one of those green vests with all the pockets on it, and they were full of rocks which he kept pulling out to show us. On top of that he was wearing this big, black overcoat and a matching black fedora hat (he looked a bit lumpy from the rocks, at certain angles). While he spoke, he kept on taking his hat off, twirling it around, and putting it on all the rocks. And then he'd pick them up and sort of cradle them. The coolest thing of all, though, was his velociraptor necklace.

It's pictured on a bit of a boring-shaped rock here, but it stood atop amorphous ones, too.

Christmas list so far

1. A lab coat with the Science Department logo embroidered on it. My current lab coat is all cheap and fits gross.

2. A stapler.

Delirious

Today my friend told me that she stayed up really late last night doing homework. She was at that stage where you keep nodding off in front of the screen, and then you wake up and try to read what you just wrote and then nod off again, and do that several times until you've read the same eight words about twelve times.

But, she says, at one point she managed to write through the sleep-wake-sleep cycle, and when she found herself properly awake, she discovered that she had typed up some nonsense about Gram-negative bacteria... for her Philosophy homework.

Something similar happened to me a few nights ago. I had stayed up really late (as usual), and when my mom tried to get me out of bed I remember mumbling, "I can't get up, I'm thinkiiiiing...!". Because I was convinced that I had reached some sort of deeper understanding about cell walls, that this would change our perception of them forever.

Mom didn't buy it, though, and told me I could think standing up. Supportive.

Swat

My Prokaryotes lab prof has this habit of looking mostly at me when he adresses the group or my team, because I'm the only one that consistently pays attention.

So today he was talking and, as usual, he was standing at the front of the room and talking to me 90% of the time (no joke. I mean, only like 3 other people were listening). He had picked up this flannel square to open the autoclave, and then kept flicking it around absentmindedly to swat the stair railing, the table, the air... when he noticed me trying not to laugh he swatted me and set it down.

But I still think it's funny.

Guess what!

...these feet are old enough to tread the cold, hard floors of jail. Only not in these socks (are there special jail-uniform socks? Are they orange? That'd be cool!).

Also, upon entering jail, they'd have to bring along anything organic and living attached to them, which just SUCKS if you're a torso. Oh, except if the organic, living thing were a snail or a leech. They could probably jump ship and nobody would notice. Toenail fungus would have to lump it, though. And of course bacteria. And, well, a whole lotta stuff.

Actually, never mind about the organic, feet-dwelling organisms.

The gist of it is, these feet are 18 years old now. They're adult feet!

Also, I feel about as mature as I did when I was 11. Shit, I'm never gonna grow up, am I??

Disadvantage of living in Mexico City

It took me 30 minutes to get to school this morning, and 3 hours to get back. Most of them I spent on the bus, sandwiched between fat ladies who thought they could squeeze into spaces where they clearly couldn't.

Midnight conversations

My sister pops out of her studio. It's a few minutes past midnight and we're both going to be pulling all-nighters. Or mostly-all-nighters, perhaps.

Sister: Come see what I'm doing. I want to complain about it to someone.

Me: I'll complain about Darwin! His writing is dense.

Sister: See? It's for the same teacher I had to draw those 80 plates for... [plates as in pictures, not dinner plates]

She shows me a circle, covered in tiny lines that are close together in the center and progressively grow farther apart towards the outside. They're criss-crossed, and then triple-criss-crossed, and tiny, and tedious-looking.

Me: How long have you been doing this??

Sister: Uh, three, about four hours. And then I still have to do it in a line, like, extended out...

Me: WHY?? Can't you just look at it in a book?

She laughed and said "that was a good one!". But I still don't know why the teacher can't just hand out photocopies. $0.5 for two pages, one with the bar and one with the circle. Easy-peasy. They can learn to control their pulse by playing the wire loop game.

Sterile, shmerile

Today we were in Prokaryotes lab, spreading bacteria on agar plates. These agar plates, they're finicky bastards: we'd prepared 10 of them, but four got contaminated with fungus and another two didn't congeal properly (instead of beng firm and springy, they just sort of flopped around in a jell-oey mess and looked sorry for themselves). Team 1, bunch of ninnies**, had no contaminated plates. Teams 2 and 4 had six and seven usable plates each, respectively.

So we were being totally careful with our measly four surviving agar plates. We had our aseptic technique down pat. Two Bunsen burners at full throttle, latex gloves, surgical masks, dipping our plate spreaders in alcohol and then flaming them (very fun), keeping the lids close to the agar plates, making sure the micropipette tips minded their own business and didn't touch the table or anything...

This is a micropipette, by the way.

&%$*!! Someone pressed the wrong button on the micropipette and dropped its tip in the poop solution. Everyone spoke at the same time:

"Fish it out!"

"Here, if you use the agitator...!"

"Oh, crap!"

"Don't put anything in it, we can't contaminate it!!"

"Ah. Fish it out with a pencil or something."

We all stopped and stared at Oscar, who said the last bit. Then we all cracked up and kept snorting sporadically for about an hour. Also he and another teammate labelled the MacConkey agar "MacDonkey", which was funny until the teacher picked it up and went, completely seriously, "Oh, yeah, MacDonkey agar, whose is this?". Then it was hilarious.

Well, perhaps you had to be there.

There's this awesome machine that you use to shake up a solution before pipetting it onto a plate, so that you get a uniform distribution of bacteria and not the three that were floating on top while the rest partied it down with the sediment. Seen here is a vortex mixer, mixing up poopy solution number one, which is one part poop, nine parts saline solution, twenty parts stinky. Also you can see I wasn't lying about the gloves and surgical masks.

** They're not ninnies, I just wanted to use that word. Sa-tis-faction.

I lost my sense of taste.

The strangest thing just happened to me. I've been sick since Friday, with a cough and recently my nose getting all stuffed up. Today I got home, had lunch and then had a nap. Or rather, I tried to nap. I lay on the bed for about 40 minutes listening to music, my nose getting stuffier because I was horizontal, until finally I decided to get up and have dessert.

My mom made orange chiffon cake. I cut two thin slices, sandwiched them with some cherry jam in the middle, made a little bit of hot chocolate, sat down at the table and took a bite.

Nothing.

It didn't taste like anything. The texture of the cake was very fluffy, it felt nice and moist and was great against the cold, slightly-lumpy jam. The hot chocolate was warm, and sort of thick. Quite creamy. But I couldn't taste anything. NOOOO!!! My dessert! Damn.

Partly curious, partly disappointed and partly annoyed at the fact that my dessert was ruined beyond repair, I turned my attention to the salt shaker on the table, right in front of me. I put a bit of salt in the palm of my hand. Okay, I can taste that. It tastes like salt. Back to the cake. Nothing. Salt? Still salty. Salt on cake? Nothing. How about some Swiss chocolate? Oh, great, now this I can tas– no. Wait. It feels creamy and rich, and melty and lovely, but it doesn't taste like anything. NOOOO! NOT THE CHOCOLATE!!

I finished up my food (I'd already spread it with jam, after all), went upstairs and whined to my mother (I can't taste anything swee-eeet...!). She told me to go to bed. I was about to, too, when something occurred to me: this could be a learning experience.

I went back into the kitchen. The verdict on the cake was the same. Tasteless. Broccoli? Nope, but a very nice crunch. Peanut butter was very interesting; it felt like peanut butter, but it tasted like nothing except it was a tiny, tiny, tiny bit salty. A peek at the ingredients: the last one is salt.

It was very eye-opening. I realized that taste isn't as prominent as I thought it was. I went around sampling different foods, and each one felt like it was at 80%. Like I was eating in black and white. I could almost taste these foods, almost, but it's like they were faceless. I had to pause while I was chewing and try to find the taste, only I couldn't. I tried:

A pecan: a bit chewy, kind of buttery. Melty, almost. Very nice.

Salted cashew: tasted like salt. Lots of salt. Ick.

Pita chip: I thought that these would taste like salt the way the cashews did, but they just got mushy as I chewed and didn't feel very appetizing.

Cocoa powder: It doesn't feel like dust or anything. It's okay. Not great, definitely. But maybe that's because I'm trying to remember how it tastes while I try it.

Applesauce: This was my favourite texture. It was cold, and not completely smooth. Not creamy, but not watery either. Not too congealed.

At this point it occurred to me that even salty foods didn't taste like themselves. I could only taste the salt.What if salt isn't a flavour? What if it's a feeling? I decided to try other food with strong "feelings". Starting with alcohol.

Midori liqueur: It doesn't smell like anything, just like the others; I thought I'd be able to smell the alcohol. I poured a bit into the lid and tasted it. EW. This was the most revolting thing I had while my taste buds were knocked out (and I tried vinegar next, mind you). It was horrible.

Vinegar: The next obvious step. Again, no smell. It feels strong, but doesn't taste bad. Very curious, I poured about a teaspoonful into a little mug and drank it. Okay, that was stupid. It's acid and burned my throat. Funny, it almost does taste vinegary. In fact, I'm pretty sure this is as close as I've come to flavour sor far.

After I burnt my throat, I decided to go the safe route and had a frozen blueberry. That's funny. Besides the texture, it did kind taste faintly of blueberry. Is blueberry a feeling? No way. I ate another. Blueberry!

The vinegar somehow jolted my system into perceiving tastes again. Who would've thought? I only regret that I didn't get to try anything spicy.

But seriously, this was amazing. It wasn't the way I would have imagined, and nothing was bland. Separating taste from texture made me realize –and this is weird– that a lot of the characteristics of food that I attributed to taste actually belong to texture.

Milk still felt like milk and peanut butter still felt like peanut butter, but some things were more appetizing than others, such as the applesauce being about 100 times better than the alcohol. The pecan was better than the pita chip. The cocoa powder was better than the broccoli. And these are all things that I enjoy normally, but I didn't compare before because they were so different. Yet now they're all sort of on the same level. There's nothing different between the applesauce and the pita chip, except for my memories of their tastes.

One interesting thing that I noticed was that fatty foods (the pecan, the nut butter, the milk, the chocolate) felt a lot better than everything else, except the applesauce, which was only because the latter was cold.

The most surreal thing of all, however, was knowing that the taste was there. I just couldn't perceive it. Also not being able to say that such-and-such food was "tasty" or "yummy". It was just "nice" or "not nice".

Such childish things as these

You know, it's sad, but I guess I'm getting old. I mean, I'm turning 18 in less than a month, and a few weeks ago I sat down to think of what I wanted my birthday. All I could come up with was a mastodontal scented candle and a music stand. Lame.

At one point or another you just have to admit that you're growing up... and birthdays aren't fun like they used to be. I simply couldn't enjoy, say, a cake depicting a prehistoric scene with little plastic dinosaur figures stuck in it, which by the way I saw today at Lumen and you can get like ten dinosaurs for 30 pesos. COOL.

Ah, yes, I feel the age setting in already. The spring is gone from my step...

Oooh! Or a Godzilla cake!! Now THAT. IS. COOL.

Fernando

Today I went to Starbucks with my sister. We ordered separately, partly because I was taking ages to decide, and partly because I wanted to use my Starbucks name.

Starbucks is cool. You know how they ask your name and write it on the side of your cup? My sister told me about some friends of hers that realized that they don't have to give their actual names, and instead make up new ones every time they drink something there. I've been doing it, too, ever since she told me. Today:

Barista-dude, writing on cup: ... whipped cream, no lid. Right. So what was your name again?

Me: Victoria!

B-dude, scribbling furiously on cup: Okay! So we'll call you, Victoria, when your order is ready.

I stood with my sister watching a girl prepare the drinks (conversation: "Ooh, don't lose count of how many scoops you've put in!" as she puts in the third measure of matcha powder. "Yeah! You're on the second!" "HAHAHA!") so we were already there to pick them up when they were done.

But when we sat down we noticed that my cup was wrong. It was my order and all, as there was zero chance of it getting mixed up with anyone else's (we were the only ones ordering). But the side said....

Fernando?? The dude wrote his own name while saying mine?!? HA! Even better than Victoria.

**I don't buy coffee there because, pffft, expensive! Coffee! Can make at home! But I do get Frappuccinos, because theirs are tasty and hard to replicate.

Daltonism

One of my (new! Uni!) friends is daltonic (he's also dyslexic, and very astigmatic). Today I'm wearing some really cute brown jeans, and he told me they looked green to him>

"I was going to tell you you looked like an elf, but then I thought they might not actually be green."

It gave me two thoughts.

Firstly, how many times have I walked around in a perfectly nice outfit, while daltonic people look on and my color combination seems terrible? I mean, what I was wearing today would look revolting with green pants.

Secondly, and closely related, if some aliens that can see stuff but perceive colors differently from us showed up one day, would they think we suck at combining colors?

To Do

a) Find someone to go to the Sonata Arctica concert with me (urgent because I bought my ticket weeks ago. Call radio, obtain tickets, invite someone?)

b) Do Chemistry homework

c) Move my bed next to the window to make space for sexy new bookshelf

d) Bury the last hermit crab, who died

e) Get new hermit crabs

f) Get some pyjama pants (at that store where they have those Miffy ones...)

g) Pack a school lunch for tomorrow?

h) Do Physics homework

i) Do Philosophy homework

j) Well, do all my homework and study for my exams

h) Return books to school library (give to Dad to drive them there separately because they're so huge)

i) OWWW MY THROAT HURTS, get some medicine or something for that.

It's hard to tell when a hermit crab dies. I mean, yesterday (or the day before) Last Crab Alive moved a bit when we poked it, but was never seen to do so again. For all I know, that shudder could have been his last movement ever.

It was especially hard with this crab to tell when he ceased to function. I didn't exactly hear a raspy, exhausted chirp as he let go his dying breath, nor did I tearfully look on as the light slowly left his eyes. They're still glossy, his eyes, just dead-glossy. It looks the same as live-glossy.

I mean, I usually notice my crabs are dead when they get moldy. That sound horrible, and I have no excuse for this, really. I mean, I do have excuses, but none of them... uh, excuse my behaviour. So I guess they're not actual excuses then.

Sigh.

**** you, classmate!

Bit**ing (biting!) ahead.

There's this one dude who's in most of my classes (all but one, I think). He smokes about 26502982 cigarettes a day, which is one of the least annoying facts about him (which tells you how much he irritates me, given that I'm not exactly a fan of the whole smoking concept).

Anyway, he apparently went to some crappy high school where he never had to work much, and consequently is finding University pretty tough. Like, he barely knows any Math, he'd never (never!) used a library before –and barely uses it now–, he won't ask questions when he doesn't understand something, complains about easy assignments (or any assignment...), and somehow manages to hand in homework that's less than a page long every single time. On both sides of the page, which is really not redemptive, though.

I mean, I know that's basically not his fault, because he told me about his high school's modus operandi and it seems like they just let them copy & paste things off the 'net and hand them in without reading them. But he shows basically NO INTEREST IN TRYING to better himself vis-à-vis school. I wouldn't really care about this except he:

a) Latched onto me in the first few weeks because I wore metal band T-shirts and was nice to him. And he hates everyone who isn't me or a man. Or who doesn't smoke a lot.

b) Since he latched onto me, he's in my Prokaryotes and Physics lab team.

Which brings me to yesterday in Physics lab, where we had two capillary tubes to put in water and then it ethanol to... observe capillarity.

Yes, I know, totally sophisticated. Moving on!

One of the tubes had a bit of anticoagulant in it, but we never found out what was supposed to happen with it because he used the capillary tube as a straw, sucking water out of a Petri dish. The reasoning behind this being that he didn't want to spill any water when he picked up the dish. Spill water on the table which was already wet, that is.

I don't usually get mad at people, but that really pissed me off. It was partly due to lack of sleep, I think, because in the past it's happened that when I don't sleep enough for several days in a row I roll out of bed one morning and start acting all shrew-y. So I calmly (not) asked him what in the name of hell he was doing, that had anticoagulant in it. Which we need. For the experiment. And you drank it.

To give him his due, once he realized the error of his ways he did express concern. "Oh, that had anticoagulant? Awww, no! That's why it tasted funny!"

If I weren't such a wuss, he'd be walking around with half his teeth knocked out. As it was, I realized I was being shrew-y and permitted myself to be in a bad mood for about 10 minutes and give him the stink-eye.

That's the good thing about not really getting mad at other people much. I can get over it relatively easily most of the time. :/

Just a thought

This morning (well, yesterday morning by now, as it's nearly four a.m.) I was riding the bus to school, and there was SO MUCH traffic. It took absolute ages to get to the University. But it was okay, because the school buses are specially designed for students who don't sleep enough or something: each one seats 41 and has great big comfy chairs you can adjust back and sleep in.

So ANYWAYZ, I was sleeping in my seat but awoke with a jolt about two minutes before my stop. (Which rocks, because I've seen people do that on, say, the metro. They'll be snoozing away, and suddenly wake up and get off at their stop. I share the sixth sense! Dang, I'll bet I've jinxed it now) When I woke up I made this surprised, sleepy noise. Not a grunt or anything, but "HUUNH???" and I guess it was a bit loud because the girl in front of me turned around and stared at me for about ten awkward seconds.

If I don't write down these little anecdotes, dumb/monotonous/boring as they may be, I'm afraid one day I'll wake up and I'll be 64 years old and won't remember anything about my youth.

Although I hope that If I'm ever 64 and read this, I won't feel bad because present me thinks 64 is old. Hello, me of the future! Don't worry, you still have some fight in you. Possibly.

Hey, Future Me, are you rich? You could probably afford some nice stuff now. Oooh, if you have money you can go out and buy some nice scented candles. Yum. Oh, wait! What if I lose my sense of smell?? Better buy the candles now.

Oh, future me, is my sexy bookshelf still around? Doing strong? GOD, it's going to be almost a half-century old. If it survived, that is. I can't imagine it giving in to anything. That thing is SOLID.

Documenting

Documenting conversations in the library.

Today two girls who are in my Prokaryotes lab and work at the table across from mine were complaining about a girl on their team. She apparently was using the microscope too much and didn't leave a lot of time for the rest of the team to look. They were getting pretty worked up.

I pointed out the humor in it: "Ugh!! She was, like, hogging the microscope! We had to prepare all the slides!! It's so exasperating!!" and although they laughed, I don't think they thought it was as funny as I did.

Organizing my room

On Sunday my sister Irene invited some man-friends over to help her move some desks up and down the stairs, because she needs a big surface to draw on now that she studies Design. I came home and hey! Golden opportunity here. But first a little backstory.

When I was about eleven, I really wanted a bunk bed. It was just the coolest thing: Two beds! On top of each other! WOW! So after much nagging, my parents finally conceded to getting me a bunk bed. I was ecstatic, especially considering that up until then I'd been sleeping on my mattress. On the floor.

So we got to the furniture part of a department store, aI picked out a bed, my Mom bought it, and I went home with my new best friend. No, I'm kidding. But I loved my bed. It totally rocked, up until a year ago when I suddenly started to kind of hate it. It takes up so much space! It blocks the light from the window! I have to host people when they sleep over (I mean my cousins here, not my Dad's colleagues)! Also, the design isn't exactly pretty. Actually, it's kind of ugly, although it doesn't stand out much because it's in neutral tones (brown blotted with black).

And here are some great strong guys who we know through the gym, moving stuff around in exchange for pizza. SCORE!

Long story short, I took my bed apart (except for the last four screws, which someone else did, and one part where my Mom helped me lower the top bunk onto the floor) and they moved it to another room. And then they moved in the bed I have now, which is Irene's old bed. It groans, creeks and squawks like a champion, but I don't care. It's nice and small and goes with my room, plus it has a little bookshelf as a headboard, so now I have a place to properly display my Godzilla figurines.

Oh, and I can put books there, too!

The one downside is that the first time I lay down on my bed and looked up, I FREAKED out. The ceiling was soooo far away! For almost half my life, my ceiling has been less than a meter and a half away when I go to sleep. Now it hovers way above me. It's like looking down and realizing that the floor has moved down several meters, and you're hovering in the air about to fall. Except I feel like I'm going to fall up.

One upside to this bed is that it gave me a kick to start organizing my room. I'm taking a good look around and noticing things that had just sort of become part of it, and had never considered getting rid of: I don't need a drawer exclusively for my Harry Potter magazines anymore, for example. Or the french pronouns I taped on my wall three years ago. Or my cheap samurai sword (what do I do with that?). Or my Darth Vader helmet.

PSYCHE! Vader stays. He'll always have a special place in my heart.

Sexy furniture, shoplifter hair

I've been pestering asking my parents nicely for a desk and a new bookshelf for my room. The desk I have is puny (I'd mentioned it before) and my bookshelfwon't really hold heavy books. Which is all fine and dandy for my sisters, since they studied Math and Physics**: relatively small books and lots of thinking. But since I'm in Biology I need MANLY books. A book that can crush your skull if you lob it the right way. So my white bookshelf from Ikea (I love Ikea even though I've never actually been there) isn't well-suited to the task.

On Saturday I walked around some furniture stores near the University (I feel so old saying that). Success vis-à-vis the desk hunt, OR SO I THOUGHT, except I went back today with my Mom and the furniture-selling dude was all, "Oh, yeah, we're out of that desk, you could order it now and get it at the end of November". This was the same guy who was trying really hard to get me to buy it yesterday, although he'd apparently forgotten that wee detail. Um, I need it for this semester. Soon. Pronto. Sheez.

Luckily, the day was not a complete waste. See, yesterday I popped into another furniture store, just to look around. It was real fancy, everything was great quality, bla bla. It was also pretty expensive (the only real desk they had was worth about half a car, no thank you), so I was just wandering around looking at couches when I found the sexiest bookshelf ever.

But Andrea, you say, how can a bookshelf be sexy? Oh, you poor people. You have no idea. This is a beautiful piece of solid furniture. It'll still be around in the year 2567. Also it had a small discount and didn't cost nearly as much as the desk.

This picture doesn't even do it justice, it's just the most amazing bookshelf ever. And while I am aware that blogging excitedly about furniture consolidates my status as a loser, I don't care. Because I now own the bookshelf.

I don't have it physically, but my Mom bought it today because it's just a fucking awesome bookshelf. It even merits curse words, which I'd usually leave off here because... well, because my Mom reads this. And it'll be delivered in less than three weeks, thanks to the two awesome sales ladies that assured us they'd do everything possible to speed up the process.

I don't know exactly what they intend to do (phone calls? whips?). But they seemed determined to make it happen.

**** I will shut up about furniture now. ****

Which brings me to another phenomenon I observed yesterday. I have two basic dressing styles:

a) Roll out of bed, put on a metal band T-shirt and whatever jeans happen to be on hand. Put on some shoes, leave house.

b) Roll out of bed, put on a-- HEY! My hair looks gooood today! Put on a nice top, something with straps maybe, some clean pants, some makeup. Slip on shoes, leave house.

Depending on how I'm dressed, there's a significant difference in how I'm treated, most notably in stores. When I'm looking all messy everyone ignores me, but yesterday I was dressed like I care, and I got perfume samples was approached by store attendants. Har.

I mean, it makes sense: when I dress nice it gives the impression that I have money on me, whereas when I show up in a dirty old T-shirt and sporting hair that rivals a tramp's in messiness I can't expect anyone to bother much about me (except to check if I'm shoplifting).

Which reminds me of another thing. I hate how when I'm in a shop with a knapsack, attendants casually float over beside me and pretend like they're supervising the wall next to me, but we all know they're watching to make sure I don't steal anything. It happened to me yesterday (despite my nice hair). But really, why would I break the law to get a fugly silver picture frame incrusted with rhinestones? Or some erasers shaped like milk cartons and scented like fruits? Well actually I did want the erasers and was about to buy them, but I got pissed off that they were watching me so I just left.

SEE WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU DON'T TRUST PEOPLE? ERASER SALES GO DOWN.

I mean, yeah, obviously I get that they would watch me 'cause I'm young and have a backpack (horror of horrors) and you never know. But I still hate it.

Shoplifter hair. That's right, I'm not paying for these sticky notes shaped like speech bubbles.

No, I'm kidding, I don't steal stuff. It's just the hair talking.

Also I'm covering my face in case someone recognizes me and accuses me of attempting to lift a shop (they're so heavy).

**Studied, indeed, since one has now graduated (and got shipped off to Canada to do her Master's degree), and the other one decided after three years of Physics that she'd rather study Design. SHE CAVED UNDER THE PRESSURE.

Lessons from University

I've been learning all sorts of stuff at university. Some key lessons so far:

1. You can fall asleep anywhere. Anytime. If you're sitting down, you're game for a nap. I'm especially susceptible in the mornings, for two or three hours after waking up. For instance, this morning I nodded off for a moment when I was in the middle of writing a sentence. Then I woke up, finished writing it, and fell back asleep.

2. Group homework is finally worthwhile. Before, team meetings were never very useful, forget trying to get more than a few pages of something done. But everyone is smart and focused now! They all want to work, it's great.

3. Don't leave the reading assignment last. It goes like this:

10:39 pm Ah, finished! Now I just have to read for my Philosophy and History of Biology class. Easy-peasy, it's like 50 pages. Right!

10:43 pm Whoah, I'm getting a bit sleepy. A power nap will help. I'll just set my alarm for three minutes here... Aahhh...

10:46 pm What?? That was so not three minutes. Four more!

10:50 pm Okay, I'll just buckle up and read, or I'll fall asleep for good. Read read read read.

10:54 pm Whoah. I just read a whole paragraph and didn't assimilate anything. If I nap again I'll fall asleep for good, I'll just have to concentrate harder.

11:39 pm MMNUH??!?! When did I fall asleep? And what's this paper doing– oh. My homework. Right. Okay, I think I left off here. Read read read read.

2:24 am Past Me only read another two paragraphs before shutdown. Go, me. Okay, I'll just skim. Skim skim skim skim.

5:02 am Agh, I did it again. I'll just finish skimming this and then get to sleep... for half an hour, before I have to get up. AAAH!!

As you can see, this is neither restful nor productive.

I keep telling my parents that I need a desk, but they ignore me. So I end up working on my bed, and that up there happens.

4. I'm not a dork anymore. I mean, I am, but everyone else is dorky to some degree, too. And so many of them are dorkier than I am!

5. My homework is actually kinda fun. The homework that's related to Biology, at any rate. Since I'm in lowly first semester, I have to take Physics and Math and stuff, which is okay but not very fun.

6. Above all, have fun! No, I'm kidding. All work and no play make Jack graduate.

Crabbies, I'm so proud ;)

Today I checked on my hermit crabs. One of them was sitting on a wall, just chillin', and the other, bigger one was in his little nest under a fallen coconut wall. It looked pretty cosy so I hadn't moved the wall. But now, as I lifted it, I was met with the ugly sight of a hermit crab head, whiskers askew, eyes staring blankly at the sky (ceiling), sitting on top of a jumbled pile of legs and claws.

DEAD!!

Thought process: Great, now I have to pick out more bits of hermit crab. And you, you... crab, sitting on the wall, looking all innocent!! Crabs are supposed to be social creatures! Why did you kill your last tankmate? You guys were buddies, too. Anyway, you're so much smaller than he was. Freak.

I put on my latex dead-crab-removal gloves which I keep next to the tank at all times (you just never know) and set to work. At least this time all the body parts were in a neat little pile, instead of being scattered around the entire tank.

Which should have been my first clue.

The legs and stuff felt really light, so I peered inside them, and would you believe it? The little crab somehow sucked all the meat out of the big crab after killing them. Wow, maybe I should give them more food.

Nope, that was the second clue.

Then I noticed– wait, there's anther crab taking a nap in the corner of the tank. Hold on. There's two live crabs in the tank, and a dead crab in parts on a kleenex. WTF? Last crab census, there were only two crabs left. Did someone sneak a crab into the tank and think I wouldn't notice or something? Wow, I am pissed.

Clue #3.

It took me another two minutes of inspecting the hollow corpse to realize what should have been obvious to me all along.

My crab had been burrowing for days. The body didn't look like it had been attacked. There was only an exoskeleton. I still had two crabs.

My crab molted!!

OHMYGODOHMYGODOHMYGOD, I'm sorry I got mad at you, Little Crab!!

Wheeeeeee! I'm not a failure!! My crab molted!!

To celebrate they got a fancy guava & carrot salad and I tossed their substrate around and got it extra moist and lovely, plus I rearranged the rocks and filled a corner with substrate so that they could frolic around in it.

Conversation w/mosquito

About an hour ago I found myself forced to go mosquito-hunting after a oneo flew right past me while I was lying on my bed. Bastard! I grabbed my pillow and spent like ten minutes trying to find her. Finally I looked at the wall right next to me, and found her sitting there laughing her ass off at me.

I swung my pillow at her, but she must have felt the air current before the pillow could hit her and she sped off. Ten more minutes passed, and I saw her lying on the ceiling. PILLOW ATTACK! I thought I'd gotten her, although I didn't see her actually get hit nor did I find a corpse. Still, I definitely didn't see her fly away either, so I assumed the best, closed my door, and went to visit my sister.

Just now I was lying on my bed again and when I looked up she was sitting on the wall right in front of me. When she saw me looking at her (I swear I didn't move anything but my head) she made a speedy getaway. The following conversation ensued (well, Moz wasn't speaking, but her body language said it all):

Me: No! Wait, come back!**

Moz: HA! You idiot. I'm just going to land on your bedpost here and taunt you. You suck.

Me: fetches T-shirt to swat Moz

Moz: Pfft. You're slow. BUZZ AWAY!

Dammit. I had two more goes just now with a rolled-up towel, and although it looked like I got her both times the posterior searches for a body begged to differ.

I have to go to sleep now (or two hours ago), and that little bug better not bite me.

**I actually did say it out loud. And expected her to obey.

University

I'm officially a Biology student. Today was my second day of classes. I say say "classes", but really I haven't done that much yet. Mostly it's "Hi, I'm your teacher, here's my e-mail address, I'll be grading you like this... um, we'll start next class, see you then". A bit disappointing, but by Friday I hope I'll be working really hard to keep up. And cursing myself for wishing it so.

One big perk to having a dad that works at the Uni is that he has an office there, where I can hang out after classes and do my homework/nap/chew on coffee beans that never made it into the coffee grinder but instead fell on the table (yum). While reading about Epistemology (as I am wont to do) I saw the reflection in the computer screen of one of my Dad's students discreetly asking another student who I was, and heard the whispered response: "daughter". I felt a wee bit guilty, because it's like I was eavesdropping. Oh well. They could have stood at a different angle to me and I wouldn't have known a thing.

So anyway, this Epistemology stuff is pretty interesting. I've almost finished the Wikipedia article so soon I can look for a book or podcast or something about it. I know it's kind of pathetic that it took me more than an hour to read the article, but I'm not too great with Philosophy, and my mind kept drifting off in the middle of paragraphs. Actually that happened to me all day.

I took a multivitamin, so let's see if that helps.

Changing the subject slightly, the buildings of the Faculty are still kind of confusing to me. I mean, there's this one building that has four floors: basement, groung floor, first floor, second floor. EXCEPT of course it's not that simple, because the "basement" is actually the ground floor, so the "ground floor" is actually one story up and so on. So I spent twenty minutes walking around like a noob before I figured out that I was on the wrong floor.

But some people never actually found their classrooms, so I guess I'm not so bad. HA!

Well, off I hop to bed.

...

Now that I've written that, I feel obligated to actually hop. Drat.

Hermit crabs

A few months ago I bought some hermit crabs. I got all excited because I've wanted hermit crabs since I was about 10 years old. I got them a big tank, some fancy coconut substrate and extra shells, water and food dishes, some rocks and –most recently– a compressed coconut fiber wall for them to climb and get some privacy. Also they enjoy eating it.

But hermit crabs are vicious creatures.

You wouldn't think, looking at them, that these adorable little guys & gals will tear each other apart every time they get bored (or PMS or something) but as I type this, there's only two-and-a-half hermit crabs left from the original family of five. That is, two live ones and one that got savaged and ripped in half, and is in the process of dying.

I googled how to put a hermit crab out of its misery, but the only helpful suggestion was "shoot it".

So I'm just letting him stay in his corner of the tank until he kicks the bucket. I feel crappy because I can't help him, neither by sewing his lower body and missing legs back on, nor by putting him in an upside-down jar with a cotton ball soaked in that stuff we used to kill Mousey the Dissected Lab Mouse at school... (was it formaldehyde? I don't remember).

Anyway, I figured that if I take him out of the tank and put him in an old cottage cheese container it'll just be even more stressful, plus he wont have his shell to hide in.

I just have to intervene and scoop out his dead body before he gets ripped in even smaller pieces, the way it happened to Bobby last week when he got "voted off the island".**

**my Mom said that and it cracked me up at the time.

I can't sleep

I've been having some episodes of insomnia recently. One night, I went to bed at 10 pm, and fell asleep seven hours later.

Major suckage.

It had also happened to me a few months ago, when I was still in school. I'd get very little sleep, have a lot of trouble getting up in the morning because I just felt sooo heavy, and generally have a crappy time. Of course I couldn't just take it lying down (ha!), so I conducted what passes for research these days** and then tried any combination of the below:

1. Not look at anything bright/be in an illuminated place for about an hour before bed
2. Listen to soothing/classical music
3. Not listen to anything
4. Stimulate my brain (or something) by reading, doing puzzles, etc. before bed
5. Not do any strenuous thinking before bed
6. Read something very boring (The Silmarillion)
7. Warm milk before bed
8. Tea before bed
9. No caffeine
10. Not eating anything a few hours before bed
11. Eating a lot before bed
12. Meditating
13. Counting sheep
14. Exercise before bed to tire myself out
15. Shower before bed

The above is a load of crap. I came up with some of them, and found most of them, but it's all still crap. I'd drink warm tea with milk, spend an hour in the dark before going to bed and meditate and then I'd just stare at the ceiling for hours.

Agggh!!

But no more!! These days, or at least yesterday and the day before, I've been falling asleep within half an hour of going to bed. Do you want to know what it is that just sends me off, that is as effective as hitting me over the head with a ukulele, what's the stupidest yet most effective cure for insomnia?

DEATH METAL!!!!

Seriously. Three tracks into the Dethalbum and I'm knocked out***. And probably snoring.

**Research these days = several hours on the Internet, with Google majorly involved

***Some might argue that I'm falling asleep to a cartoon soundtrack. To them, I say ptooie! It's still death metal.

Wasting away the summer

I always seem to waste my summers (I mean, I can't remember anything terribly worthwhile I've done with them in the past), and this is the longest summer holiday I'll ever have, between high school and university. But for the record, I'm not lying on my laurels all day here. Well, today I did just sleep, read and peruse websites that sell plugs for stretched ears. But not all days.

EDIT: I made this into a list. As in, I added numbers.

1. Let's see, I went to the movies that time, by myself and in the morning to watch Oceans. I was feeling totally awesome because it was like I had the whole theatre to myself, but then this couple walked in. Not that that was bad or anything–the more people see that film, the better. But it did annoy me when the girl laughed at the bit where a huge shrimpy thing snaps off a crab's claw and then leaves it to die on the ocean floor, whereas I was nearly ready to shed a manly tear (having hermit crab pets must have made me more sensitive to the crab's plight or something).

2. I've also been to Starbucks a whole bunch of times with my sister to have frappuccinos. I don't really care for their prices, other beverages (like their coffee, actually) or the type of people they normally attract around here, but they do have really tasty frapps and comfy couches.

3. I went with my friend to see that movie, some romantic comedy that he wanted to watch... and also go some frozen yogurt with him a few times...

Okay, I'm stretching it here, but if I don't write down coffee outings and frozen yogurt consumption it'll fade out of my memory because it's not significant and I'll feel like I just lay on my couch all summer and watched Law & Order.

4. Oh, yeah, I watched some Law & Order. On the couch.

5. And I got my ears stretched some more. The dude who did it the first time actually remembered me and we chatted a bit. Not chatting as in talking about the weather or how Mexico's doing in the world of soccer, but chatting as in talking about scalpeling bits of ear off while he was doing my ears. Also I got to observe dudes with bunches of tattoos and other body mods hanging out and doing stuff and they were kind of fun to watch. They seem to be more in touch with their inner children than most people are. And nicer people.

6. Oh, that time I was with my sister and I was craving a chocolate donut so we went to a bakery, and on the way there (and back) we saw this totally smokin' hot dude sitting on the base of a pillar of the bridge in front of the nearest mall. It was magical because I was a) with my totally cool sister, b) holding a donut, c) on the way to get a frappuccino, d) in possession of $2 I had just found on the street, and e) looking at a smokin' hot dude. It has all the makings of a magical moment. Which is probably why it has inexplicably stuck in my mind.

7. I bought some red jeans! They were on discount and lovely. :D And the shop assistant looked like Lady Gaga.

8. I made cookies with Bailey's Irish Cream in them. I based it on a recipe I found on several websites (apparently there's one Bailey's cookie recipe out there. Weak), except I doubled the booze and they came out TWICE AS GOOD!!!! YAY!!! I put some other stuff in there, too, but mainly I owe it to the alcohol.

9. I'm going to my cousin's house to play Wii and sleep over. ...yep.

I'm writing this at 2 AM because I couldn't sleep. My sister is crashing in my room because she wants to sleep in, but her room has a window facing east so the morning light always bugs her awake. My room, however, is always dark and gloomy and sad because my only window faces north. The point of telling you all that is so I can also inform you that she just made a snore-ish noise, said "Nyarhusum!" and rolled over.

Bell pepper loses

I just gave my hermit crabs a piece of rice cracker lightly sprinkled with cheese powder and they went NUTS. The bit of bell pepper I put in at the same time was nibbled on for about ten seconds before a big fight over the cracker ensued. Ultimately the winner dragged it off to a corner of the tank, while I ran downstairs to get more cracker pieces so that nobody would lose a leg if they fought again.

Lesson learned: crabs might kill for cheesy rice crackers.

They really are quite tasty!

Mad accordion skillz

I haz them.

Well, not really, but I haz accordion, at least.

Yes indeed, a new accordion was purchased today! When I saw it before, I'd thought it was pretty ugly, not to mention crappy quality. But once it was mine, it was suddenly absolutely beautiful. I wonder if that's what it's like when you have babies. All babies are uuuugly, but if it's yours you're apparently supposed to think it's really cute.

Ha! I bet not.

Since it's a pretty bad accordion, if I do say so myself (and I do), upon arriving home it was discovered that it has a broken reed (or stuck or fallen off or something. Anyway, that reed is f***ed up), and it makes this weird kind of... well, farting/stuttering noise when it plays this certain note. The shop was called and an appointment has been set up for tomorrow, so let's see when I can get it back.

Please enjoy a short video I made. It's called I love my accordion but after a few hours I made next to no progress and I think it's pretty hard but not as hard as I'd thought it might be, so I'm going to keep at it and hopefully I can play something really cool in not too much time.





Mother: After You're done fooling around** with your accordion, you should try to learn some actual songs.
Me: I am!! I'm learning The Chicken Dance!


**She didn't say "fooling around", I think, but it was something to the effect of getting acquainted with it and not playing real music.

Accordion chronicles

EDIT: This post is pretty long. I won't erase it because I spent ages writing it, and I may want to read it someday, but you can just not read it. The gist of it is, I'm going to get an accordion. Knowing this and watching the video below is all you really need.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

For a few months I'd been thinking it would be cool to play the accordion. Yes, I think the accordion is cool, as opposed to the guitar, bass, drums, recorder, trumpet, tuba, clarinet, oboe**, violin, cello, harmonica, kazoo, sitar, banjo and the oh-so-popular ukulele***.

No, I'm kidding. Kazoos are cool.

But anyway, back to the accordion. A few weeks ago I started to think seriously of learning to play, so I conducted a little Internet research, established a budget, picked a type of accordion, and set out to find one to buy. I'll have an Italian one, I thought. A piano accordion, and I'll spend about 3000 pesos.

HA!!! HA HA HA!!

Here, let me give you a brief lesson in accordions. This will be boring and maybe a bit unnecessary fun.

This here, children, is called a piano accordion (it says "Hohner" because that's the brand; 'tis a good brand). There are other accordions, which have buttons on this side, but since I already play some piano this is easier for me.

Now, on the side that doesn't have the piano keys, you will notice a series of white dots. Those are buttons, and they are the bass buttons. If you press them (and move your accordion around), this allows you to create harmonies that will come out of the accordion! Just like magic!

See, the more bass buttons you have, the more stuff you can play. There are some with as little as 12 buttons, which are really useless. You can play basically anything with 72 bass buttons, and any extra ones after that are repeated so that your hand doesn't have to jump around so much to reach distant buttons. 12o buttons is the most there can be.

120 is very expensive. I settled for 60 or 72 bass buttons.

I suppose I was even lucky to find accordions at all. Fortunately, here in Mexico accordions are widely used by homeless people who play them on the street to earn money, and by bandas, the likes of Los Tigres del Norte:

Lovely.

THIS IS WHY I WANT TO PLAY ACCORDION!! NO NOT REALLY!! Hell, no.

But anyway, since people that play in bandas are apparently the ones who buy most of the accordions around here, what they sell is mostly 12-bass accordions. This is because in banda music, the accordion player only uses the keyboard side of the instrument, since there's no point in using the bass buttons because there's already 15 more members of the band that are playing bass instruments (really, those groups are huge).

Come to think of it, they could just use a keyboard with a patch. But whatever.

Add the bass lackage to the fact that nearly all the accordions available for sale were Chinese. The Chinese have accordion factories, so their product lacks a special ingredient: love. The Germans and Italians don't just slap them together with machines and enslaved children, but rather with wise old accordion experts that work 20-hour days, so their instruments are way better quality. Also they cost a lot more.****

So I'm going to buy a Chinese accordion with 60 bass buttons for more than double of what I was originally hoping to spend. Although I'll only be paying two-thirds of the price, since my Dad hopped in to save the day. Well, not really, it's because I caught him in a good mood one day when he was listening to a podcast that said we should all take time to enjoy the little things of life! Like playing childrens' games, and learning an instrument! He went, "Oh, this is true! You should listen to this podcast!"

I seized the opportunity, and sidled over to him, and was all, "Well, actually, Dad...". So he offered to pay for a part of it. Whee!

But it's okay that my accordion won't be a good one, because it's not like I've ever played before. I won't be needing anything very good, you know? It would be a bit of a waste, I suppose, to buy a complete beginner something along the lines of a 25,000+ peso Hohner accordion with the 120 bass buttons. Which was the only non-Chinese accordion I found.

WHEE!!

** actually, I think the oboe is cool. It sounds like it should make a low, tuba-ey sound, but it's all high and melodic and sweet.

*** I do have a ukulele. I can play one song on it. Well, not really-- I can play half of one song and half of another.

**** It is a widely known fact that accordion experts can eat only caviar and truffles, the expensive kind. Their employers are obligated to provide lunch and dinner, so it costs them a lot. I mean, this is the only way I can explain the price tags on their accordions! Oh, it might have something to do with all the work it takes to assemble a good instrument, too, but I'm not too sure.

Discovery of the day

Hermit crabs like honeydew melon.

Or perhaps I should feed them more often.

Anyway, today I went over to the crabby-tank to give the little decapods (deca...paw-feet-claws?) some fresh water. Someone was sitting in the food dish, and it made me realize that I haven't actually given them fresh food for a while, about two weeks. I don't need to do it that often, because a) they eat their coconut substrate, and b) in the wild, they eat rotting fruit that falls from trees, so as long as the food stays in the dish and doesn't get mouldy or something, I let them keep it.

But anyway, this afternoon we'd bought 2 kilos of mangoes and 2 honeydew melons for the grand sum of 4o pesos**, so I soared to the kitchen, fast as a speeding bullet, and hacked up some melon to put in the crabs' food dish. Then I went and got them a little piece of mango –variety is important– and came back to find two crabs already gorging themselves on the melon. Which was very quick of them.


**With 40 pesos you can buy any of the following:

1. Four ice cream sandwiches

2. Not quite two toothbrushes

3. Twenty pens

4. Four (kinda small) hermit crabs

5. Five glasses of orange juice (or enough oranges to make more than that)

6. Five mililtres of chocolate praline fragrance from Sephora

7. One fifth of a hamburger-shaped pillow that I really want

8. Six point six six six six six six cans of diet Dr Pepper from OXXO

9. One fifteenth of my shoes (some lovely Converse)

10. NOT MY DOG BECAUSE SHE DIDN'T COST ANYTHING, HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

Tuesday's photo (devil horns!)

Not much happened today (went to school, hung out a bit, ate a burrito, came home). In Physics class someone brought a model of a hand that could extend its fingers via pressure from some syringes attached to a board and each finger.

Obviously everyone was having fun extending only the model's middle finger and then laughing like baboons, but I nabbed it and make it do the sign of the horns long enough to take a photo. I took it with my cell phone, so its crappy.

Featuring also my classmate's face. Hi, Alf!

Something that annoys me sooo much is when people start talking about the sign of the horns and assure you that it has an evil, satanic meaning, when they in fact have no effing clue where it came from or what it means. I remember once one of my teachers started getting side-tracked during a lesson, and it turned into one of those class-discussions, and she** said:

"But that all has a meaning, you know! And the people that do it just think it looks cool, but they don't know--"

SHUT UP. You don't know! The original meaning ("original" as in when it was introduced to heavy metal; obviously it was around before in different times and places, and had a variety of meanings) wasn't Hail Satan!, or F*ck you! or anything. It was something one of the dudes from Black Sabbath saw his granny do, and thought it looked cool***. So he did it while he played.

That is all.

It's nothing evil, and even if it had been originally (again, metal-wise), it wouldn't matter anymore. Meanings change, in language both spoken and sign, and in the present, musical contest, it means:

"AYE! ME LIKES THE MUSICS! I FEELS ITS!"

I mean, it could totally mean something else in other places, maybe convey something rude. I have no idea. Maybe in Elbonia they use it as an easy way to describe what you enjoy doing to someone's mother****, but, you know, that doesn't apply here.

Elbonians are weird, anyway.

Here's my burrito:

This isn't actually from today, but it's just like the one I ate.
It cost a whooping 20 pesos.

It's not a flattering photo, and you can't really tell from this, but that thing was HUGE AND DELICIOUS. I love burritos.

**I don't remember who it was, but I'm pretty sure it was a woman.
***The granny did it to ward off ill intentions from other people. Not even Satan, just regular peeps. Like the next-door neighbor or something.
****I enjoy chatting with mine, for instance. \m/

Monday's photo (ears!)

You must recall this because I know you remember every word I write (har har**), but for you slowpokes here it goes again: yesterday I promised*** that I'd post a picture every day this week. So here's today's:

Still quite puffy and reddish.

Today I got my earlobes stretched. I actually got them re-pierced first, 'cause the dude I talked to said it was better if I did (he seemed a veteran in ear expansions, judging by his own, which were about 10 or 12cm in diameter). Apparently the holes from my previous piercings might stretch wrong because they were a bit low, so if I eventually got a bigger gauge the tissue could be too thin.

Anyways. It's an itty bitty gauge, but in about two months it'll have healed up and I can go bigger. Which I will, but perhaps not immediately, 'cause I bought some jewelry spiral-thingies that are cute, but I can't wear them until I can take these plugs out (duh). Not terribly expensive, but since I could have gotten some T-shirts or something instead, I'll wear them so I don't feel my money's going to waste, ha.

The odd thing about this camera is it's very hard to look ugly in the photos it takes, especially when my sister is the one taking them. Although it helps that you can't actually see my face, lol.

** I love the way "har" sounds, if you pronounce the RRRR! If a pirate were to laugh, he'd say "harrr!".

***No, I didn't actually promise. Promises are for losers. Harrrrr!

Balance

This blog is terribly unbalanced. There's a bunch of loooong, boooring posts and then lots of really short ones with a photo as crappy compensation.

Now, to remedy this I could (and because I love making lists, here's one for you... or for me, rather):

a) Write medium-length, interesting posts.
b) Write interesting, long posts with photos
c) Do whatever, nobody cares
d) Oh, I could write more personal stuff here. That might be interesting

Now, upon analysis of this list, I can conclude the following: a) is too much work. Oh the agony of typing. b)... doesn't actually help. c) is very true. Might go with that. d) is also true, but then you're not supposed to, right? I mean, someone I hate could throw it in my face (or rather, someone who hates me).

So I thought, hey!! I can take the easy way out, and post a picture of every day of my last week of high school. That is, take a photo next Monday, Tuesday, (...), Friday. And post those with a minimal explanation. That might be okay for the time being.

And for now, I'll post something personal. My innermost thoughts and emotions, things I would never want anyone to know, things I would say to only my pillow at night! You know, to switch it up a bit from the usual "Blaaa, I have homework, blaaaa, hissy fit hissy fit hissy". I love the word "hissy".

Anyway, innermost thoughts and emotions. Inner...most... thoughts...

I kinda have to pee.

No! Thoughts! Emotions!

Um, I hope that when I start uni (in about four months, yay) I meet a really cute and hot metalhead that's fun/ny and nice and single. Because then I can nab him. I mean, there's always the possibility that I meet some dude and get a crush on him and so on, but he doesn't like me back. But that's never happened to me before, and hopefully never will.

Oh, wait, did I just jinx myself? Knock on wood! And... throw salt over shoulder! And... break mirror, kill black cat, I don't know what else you're supposed to do.

But anyway, since there's nothing inner-moster (heh, "moster") than talking about relationships, and how you're sooo lonely, etc etc, I can do that.

Actually, I'm not lonely. I'm pretty happy I'm single. In the last few months, come to think about it, I've turned down two people. Three if you count... well, anyways, I'm happy being single. Why get tied down when you can just make out with your friends?

I mean, unless it was a hot metalhead. Then, yeah, tie down tie down TIE DOWN. Just in case.

You know what, this is pretty boring. Personal thoughts and emotions don't seem to be very interesting to me. Not my own, at any rate.

So here's a photo for you.

From when I went to Paris in December. I also pretended to be a hunchback in front of Notre Dame. You know, in case you're interested.

Hey, the sunrise makes it so the sky is coloured like the French flag. Cool!

Metalocalypse, dressed up.

I feel like I haven't slept in ages. My eyes hurt. I feel heavy. I just want to curl up in my bed and drift off. But I'm not going to.

Instead, I'm going to watch the second season of Metalocalypse, which arrived yesteday in the mail. WHEE!

Also, last night was my graduation party. 'Twas very fun, and nearly everyone at school in my grade was ambling around all puffy-eyed and tired. The ones that showed up were, anyway.

Lots of people seemed surprised that I looked dainty. I mean, I always do! What's classier than what I'm wearing right now (a baggy grey "TIE Fighter Squadron" shirt)? Definitely not this skirt. Pfft.
I do love those shoes, though. I mean, really love.

So, Calculus actually works.

Tip: Scroll down, I drew a pretty picture.

For my Physics exam soon we're going to have to draw a little pictographical representation of a triangle being reflected off of a concave mirror, and draw in the image. But to do this, we have to draw tangent lines. Tangent to a curve, the curve representing the concave mirror. Nobody could do it right, because the stupid tangent lines are hard to do and you can't really tell when they're crooked, and even a slight shift from their proper position messes up the result.

Everybody is pretty worried about the exam, and the homework we have to hand in. But I've just had a stroke of brilliance. I won't use the crappy tangent-line-drawing method our Physics teacher offered, which is to measure out a millimeter from the point where we want the line to touch the graph to either side of the graph. That sucks, it's super imprecise.

I'll use Calculus instead.

Tape a cuadriculated sheet of paper to the back of my exam (have to use blank sheets), find the slope, draw the line, easy-peasy. I can't believe I'm the only one that's figured this out. I mean, HELLO. WE SPENT MONTHS DOING THIS IN MATH CLASS. The fact that nobody understood what was going on and just blindly filled in numbers and solved equations is no excuse.

HA! I'm not sure if I should keep tell my friends and classmates about this or pretend that I just had a stroke of genius while actually writing the exam. I know it's selfish of me, but I want to keep this to myself.

Because I love you all so much, I spent twenty minutes drawing this in Skitch.

Distractions while doing homework

Only the very first bit of this is in Spanish. I decided to type everything I thought while I did my homework. This prevented me from doing my homework, though.


Papel del hombre & de la mujer en Las Paredes Oyen

Diferencias entree Don Juan y Doña Ana:

D.Juan es feo & pobre, Doña Ana está toda buenota y bonita y ps no es pobre

Don Juan tiene baja autoestima, parece q nadie lo quiere, pero Doña Ana ya era casada (ahora viuda) y tiene pretendiente (Don Mendo)

Don Juan idealiza a Doña Ana, la defiende, la admira al tiempo que se desprecia a sí mismo. Sin embargo

FOR THE KING, FOR THE LAND, FOR THE MOUNTAINS, FOR THE GREEN VALLEYS WHERE DRAGONS FLYYYY.... FOR THE GLORY, THE POWER TO WIN! THE DARK LORD, I WILL SEARCH FOR THE EMERALD SWOOOOORD!!!!

Hmm, I want a laptop. The one I'm working on now seems pretty good. Dad said he'd get me one when I got into University.

Gosh, University!! That's going to be so soon. In a few months I'll be a Biologist-in-training! Let's see, that will be in August, so that's only... five months. No way, that's not enough time to... well, get used to the idea. Or is it?? Aaaagh!!

Oh, my song's over. Hm. I'll listen to it one more time and then put on something different. Oh, wait, I haven't heard this song before. Hmm, let's see. *click* Oh, I see, It's "Erians Mystical Rhymes" with a different title. Good song, though. I hope Rhapsody comes here when they tour for their new album. Actually, I hope the new album's better than the last one. Not that it was bad, not by a long shot, but there's some room for improvement there.

Hm, speaking of metal, I wonder what Caesar the Conqueror has planned for Wednesday. He said we should meet up and do something, but we started playing Tetris Attack before deciding what. And he beat me, bloody dude. I must practice Tetris Attack. What was I saying? Oh, yeah, I wonder what we'll do. Continuation of the Zombie Movie Marathon? Over time that's kinda degraded into "Horror Movie Marathon" and then "Let's all three do something and then probably watch a movie with guts in it". Oh, I wonder if he'll bring his girlfriend this time. Then they'll be four of us, that should be fun. When did Caesar, Junior and I start hanging out? We went for pizza one time, and it was just the three of us because their other friends didn't show, and I was only there because they invited me on a whim and they needed more people or something. But we started talking about stuff and planned the first Zombie Movie Marathon. Hm, I could track down the date via text messages on my phone, but it's out of battery right now.

That's right, I have to charge my phone.

I feel like I'm forgetting something. it's not letting me enjoy the week-long holidays, which are measly from the start because I have all my exams right after-- Oh, yeah! I bet what I'm forgetting is my exams. Oh, shit, my exams. I haven't started to study yet... and it's Monday already. Dang. And from Friday to Sunday it's camping weekend at Monte Sur... I'm pretty sure we're doing that. Gagh.

But I don't think it was my exams I was thinking of. It feels more like a report or something. An exposition? I've already done it in Derecho and Biology, written my French exam (oh, I still have to look up "energy" in French and see if the word I made up for it on the test isn't too far from the truth... I'm kind of afraid that when my teacher wits dow to grade the exams she'll reach my made-up words and laugh at my sad attempts at re-inventing the French language, or worse, think I'm crappy). What else? I still have to write my exams for Math, Chemistry and Special Bio...

I've totally forgotten what other subjects I take. Oh, Physics, and my teacher's wife's class, Literature. Oh. Ooooooh. The Literature report. that's right, I have to send my part in tomorrow, preferably... I've barely even started.

It took me about five hours to sit down and start the report, and about five minutes to get sidetracked and jot down my thoughts. Ah well. in the future I'll appreciate this more than a boring report. Hopefully.

Hey, it says here that Eluveite is from Switzeland. Did I go there? Oh, yeah, I did. For a few hours in December. I'd like to go to Scotland, Switzerland, Germany and Australia. Oh, and Slovenia, because there was that really hot guy on YouTube from Slovenia. Also Belgium... and Finland!! How could i forget Finland? It's awesome. I mean, i've never been there or anything, but there's a lot of great band from Finland, so it's awesome by association. I know that's a fallacy (ad attributing-the-qualities-of-the-one-bit-of-something-to-the-whole-thing). But I'm still willing to bet Finland rocks.

I wonder if there's still cake. I'm too lazy to whip more cream, so i'll just drizzle it on and hope it tastes the same. Yum.

** 15 minutes later **

Ahh. Great cake. Good thing I whipped the cream and all. Now I'll just serve myself some of this tea that someone made –with a soup spoon, because I'm rubbish at pouring things from the pan into a mug, I always get it all over the counter– and slosh in some milk and get cracking on my homework. Only I'm a bit afraid that If I drink tea in front of the laptop, I'll spill it on the keyboard and send dozens of thousands of pesos into the bin. i mean I've seen the prices for laptops at the Mac Store. Nothing I could afford. Ever. Which is why my Daddy is getting one for me.

hey, the Q key is crooked. Well, this is annoying, what with me being slightly obsessive-compulsive. Not much, but enough that the Q key is really beginning to trouble me. Also when people spell "yogurt" wrong and stick in an H willy-nilly. The one that bugs me the most is when they write "yogurth". I mean, if they're too lazy to look it up, can't they at least use common sense? If it were spelled "yogurth", it would be pronounced with a bit THHHH sound at the end, which is obviously wrong. "Yogurt" and "yoghurt" are both right, but if in doubt you can just leave the H out.

I'm going to get a T-shirt made that says "Se escribe 'YOGURT' ó 'YOGHURT', no 'YOGURTH' ". And I'll wear it under all my clothes and flash it as needed. Or, for that purpose, I could just get it tattooed on my stomach. But no, when I get tattooed (which will be when I move out, I guess, since I can't imagine my parents warming up to the idea of a needle piercing my body and permanently depositing ink beneath my skin) I want to get a maple leaf and a nopal, on my upper back and off to the right. I know it's a sorely common place to get a tattoo, but I wouldn't want it on my legs, front, lower back or neck. Well, maybe my neck, possibly my shoulder. Left shoulder... But then if I get fat for any reason it would look weird. Nope, upper back and to the right it is!

But I was going to do my homework. Ahem. Role of men and women in romantic relationships in... about twenty books. And i didn't read them all. Zzzzzz.

Hey, Wikipedia says that In Finnish, "Finland" is "Suomi"! I always thought it would be something like... I dunno, "Finski" or "Fïnløndånkka". Suomi sounds like a variety o sushi to my brute ears. But now I know why the Wikipedia language-side bar doesn't have "Finnish" as a language. It says "Suomi" instead.

Wow. That was... probably not read by anyone. I mean, not even I bothered to proofread this, I bet it's riddled with typos.