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.

Sudden epiphany

This morning I spent about an hour and a half slowly and boredly reading the first chapter of a book called "The Physics of Medicine". It took that long because I was alternately reading said chapter, reading xkcd and browsing Wikipedia.

Then I remembered that I have some other homework. I have to write something backwards on a sheet of paper and hand it in, because we're starting optics in Physics (observing how stuff reflected in a mirror appears inverted. I NEVER NOTICED THAT). Since I can write anything I want, I spent about two hours avidly researching Godzilla on the Interwebs.

There is something odd about this. Behold the list:

a) While reading the anatomy book, I was bored and did not identify with what I was learning about. However I researched Godzilla with much interest; I had fun.

b) I learned more when reading about Godzilla than when reading the book.**

c) Both were fairly easy tasks to do.

d) Both assignments are for the same subject.


Conclusion: Screw anatomy, we should learn about monsters at school.


**Interesting things I learned from anatomy book: why it is, exactly, that we shrink after hitting 80, and the maximum height you can fall from without bending your knees without breaking your ankles.
Interesting things I learned from Godzilla research: a great many large, fictional monster facts to write about, a bit about culture, and some new words to boot.

Mouse

I don't want to go to school tomorrow! Well, actually, today. It's past midnight. I really don't want to go... I want to take the day off and lie in bed and eat oranges (which I've been craving for some reason. Luckily there's a big bag of them downstairs).

We dissected a mouse in my elective Biology class about two weeks ago. Then we had a funeral for it (rather, for what was left of it). Here's a photo of the mourning relatives around the grave, because I'm not going to post a picture of the mouse [gory spoiler] slit open, with no head to speak of, nor any lungs, heart, stomach, liver, etc., and with its guts hanging out [/gory spoiler].

See the cross? It's eensy...

Then yesterday I was walking by the grave, which is situated in the grassy bit behind the labs, and saw that the grave had been disturbed. I guess someone decided to dig it up to see what it was.

I hope they found a nasty surprise, and if so, that's what they for disturbing the departed.