Buying an Ant

Decluttering

2012-01-13T09:40:00.005-06:00

I got rid of a ton of clothes. A drawer full of pajamas (I don't even wear pajamas. I sleep nak- um, I wear a T-shirt and shorts), about thirty tops including a load of huge-black-metal-concert-tees and some things that never really fit right, around eight pairs of jeans, some sweaters, loads of socks and underwear, some five pairs of footwear, and I still have loads of clothes.

Where does it all come from??

I mean, I gained a few items, too, because my sisters decluttered their closets at the same time. So I got some hand-me-down jackets and sweaters, some tops, and a skirt (for funerals, because I do have this one other black skirt, but it's a flouncy miniskirt and I'm not sure that other funeral attendees would appreciate it).

And I realize that sounds counter-productive, but some of these things are clothes that I lusted after for years. My sister's "I love you very mush" sleeveless hoodie shirt, for instance, which has four little mushrooms on the front. Or this one green jacket she bought in Europe.

Oh, and the jeans I got rid of– I was a size 3 in high school, apparently. Holy crap!

Before giving it all away to our housekeeper (who has lots of daughters and grandchildren to give clothes to), we went through it all with our cousins so they could pick out whatever they might want. They all went home with a few things and we were happy knowing that this stuff is going to loving homes. I mean, most of it is in really good condition, plus it's good quality, brand name stuff.

My cousin took this shirt by mistake and was about to make off with it. I was all, nooooooo! Get away!!

Although there were a few times when certain items were hard to let go of. One of my cousins was looking for clothes to make crafts out of, rather than wear: "Hey! This skirt would make a great cushion!" My eldest sister's eyes shot wide open and her mouth formed a tiny, horrified "o". Later that night I saw her wearing the skirt in question and telling my aunt, "She wanted to sew it into a cushion. This skirt, a cushion!"

Good morning

2012-01-13T09:15:00.005-06:00

I set my alarm for 9 AM. It's a good time to wake up during the holidays, as it's neither early nor terribly late. When you wake up at 9AM, it's already light out and you don't feel like you're getting up into a dark, lonely world. You don't lie in bed for a while wondering what to do. The day has already started and it's the right time for going downstairs to fix yourself coffee and breakfast.

"9AM," I thought last night as I set my alarm, "that's a good time to get up tomorrow. I'll get nine whole hours of sleep."

I woke up at 7:30 and couldn't get back to sleep. Typical.

What is up with that? One of my resolutions for this year is to sleep more, but how do I do that if my body won't let me? Adolescents are supposed to get nine hours of sleep, but short of taking meds, I don't know how I can do that. I'm on holidays! Why can't I sleep more?

Also, it's really bugging me that I have these bags under my eyes that won't go away. I put concealer under my eyes so that they won't freak people out. Whenever I forget or don't have time to wear makeup, people take one look at me, remark that I look tired, and ask me if I'm okay or if I pulled an all-nighter.

I've always looked tired, even when I was, like, eight years old. You just couldn't tell so much before because I wore glasses.

Ao anyway, I got up at 7:30, stretched a bit, put on some music, read some blogs, danced around a bit, drank some water, took a body test on the Wii Fit and fixed myself a coffee.

I'm too lazy to use the coffeemaker very often, so by "fix myself a coffee" I mean "heated up my leftover tea from last night, plus some extra water, and put it in a mug with some instant coffee. Also milk."

Speaking of which, my sister and I have recently switched from drinking low-fat milk to whole milk. For as long as I can remember, my family's always had low-fat milk. My cousin said it was like drinking insipid, white water and I thought she was exaggerating… until I tried some whole milk in my coffee. After years of drinking 2% milk, drinking whole milk feels like drinking cream.

When I get used to whole milk, I intend to start melting butter and stirring that into my coffee.*

Coffeeeeee.

*Just kidding. OR AM I?

Book loot

2012-01-09T21:41:00.003-06:00

I went book-hunting in the city today (as in, the Centro Histórico– I'd mentioned it before) because the other day I found myself in a bookstore, wanting to buy Kurt Vonnegut's Breakfast of Champions. It cost 219 pesos. I emptied out my pockets and came up one peso short, willing as I was to walk home. So instead I bought a tube of lip gloss (flavored like Dr Pepper), a bar of chocolate (as dark as it was delicious) and made a mental note to buy the book another day.

When I got home, I told my mom what had happened and she told me that she could find it cheaper on the 'net, shipping and all. She's working on that, but the book-buying fetish was niggling away at the back of my mind, so I scoured the used bookshops today and found four volumes which, all together, cost about half of what Breakfast of Champions did. Yay!

I got Julie & Julia, because I rented the movie last Thursday and my eldest sister, who is visiting, loved it. I called home to ask if I should get it, and her boyfriend (my sister was busy) said sure, go ahead. I thought it was sort of boring and watched about half of it, by the way; maybe I'll enjoy the book more.

I got Me, Natalie, by A. Martin Zweiback because it was small and cheap and it seems interesting.

I got Speak, by Laurie Halse Anderson because it has good reviews on Amazon and the format is rather unusual.

And the star of the show is Cat's Cradle, by Kurt Vonnegut. Almost every single page is underlined and annotated, but it's all done very lightly in pencil. It has the names of the characters written in the margins (Mona, Frank, John, Felix, Julia Castle, ...) and some paragraphs have short comments written in ("how ridiculous", "bomb shelter"). Better than buying it new, because it tells two stories instead of one.

Seven: a memoir

2012-01-03T00:16:00.004-06:00

When I was in second grade, we were learning to multiply in school. So, for a while, our daily homework was to learn one of the times tables. A new one each day, working our way up from 2 to 10.

Now, I've always been lazy. In kindergarten I never did my homework unless I deemed it a fun assignment. And in second grade, that still happened if I felt I could get away with it. It was fine when we were multiplying in 2's and 3's, but it got harder to fake as the number grew bigger. I'd sit in class while everyone around me recited "Six times seven, forty-two! Six times eight, forty-eight!" and I'd sort of mouth along with them. I was probably a bit nervous about getting called on, but not enough to want to study.

Eventually, my parents found out that I was slacking off. They were not amused. A laminated poster was purchased with the times tables on it, my mom made flashcards, and the pièce de résistance was a horrible educational CD procured from some dark corner of horribleness. The CD claimed to teach kids math… with rock music! I remember hating it: the stupid-sounding character (called Mr. Rock or something to that effect*), the bad music, the feeling of condescension that emanated from it all. Mr. Rock would recite the times tables (too fast for me to glean any nuggets of wisdom) and ask his listeners– his buddies– to join in!

Since the CD wasn't bad enough in itself, my sisters mocked me for it as well. In fact, my cousins were visiting a few weeks later and they made fun of me, too, when they found the CD. I hated that CD.

Yuck.

Anyway, my parents made me sit on my bed and learn the times tables using all the study aids they'd showered upon me. So I did, sort of. That was the day my class had been sent home with the mission of learning the seven times table. So that's what I focused on: seven times four is twenty-eight. Seven times five is thirty-five. Seven times six...

Now, I didn't study the six times table, or the four times table (the fives time table is easy, as we all know, and not worth mentioning). What for? Those had been covered on previous days and I'd never be quizzed on them again! No, I studied the seven times table, learned it by heart, recited it to my folks, and thus convinced them that their deed was done.

The same dedication did not go into the eight or nine times tables on following days: I slacked off one those, too. But I'll be damned if I didn't master the seven times table. And here's a little secret: to this day, I have to stop and think for a second when I'm multiplying small numbers... unless there's a seven involved.

I'd thank my parents if it weren't for that stupid CD.**

* I looked it up; it's "Professor Relamido". As in, musical notes: re-la-mi-do

** Which you can buy on iTunes. Don't, though.

Resolutions

2012-01-01T00:25:00.004-06:00

I haven't thought these through, but here goes:

Form these habits:

Dink 2 liters of water a day (more when exercising, obviously)
Lie down and listen to podcasts* when I'm stressed
Floss most days
Go to bed early**
Wash my face before bed
Lose arguments more often (i.e., stop needing to be right all the time)

Break these habits:

Eating as soon as I get home even if I'm not hungry
Eating before bed***
PROCRASTINATION!!

Do these things:

Run two races.
Throw out/give away/get rid of 60 things in my bedroom (i.e., declutter)
Get a 10 in Parasitology
Redecorate my room****

* Such as: Definitely Not The Opera, Vinyl Cafe, Ideas, Quirks and Quarks, This Week In Parasitism, The Age of Persuasion, etc.

** I'm planning to still take afternoon/night classes, so... be in bed before midnight, most of the time.

*** I now suffer of reflux (ew) when I eat big-ish portions, and I do not want esophageal cancer!!

**** Put up a painting or something, at least.

Grading my year

2011-12-31T12:45:00.003-06:00

After making it, I had described my list of 2011 resolutions as "eensy and doable". I'm not sure what I was thinking at the time, because when I read over it now it seems pretty lofty and huge– and this is the second version, which is smaller than the first one.

So let's see how I did:

Get a 9+ average one semester. My second semester, which ended in June (I think) was my best semester in University, so far, with a 9.0 average. So this resolution has been met (never mind that I failed half of my subjects in my third semester, which just ended a few weeks ago. Rough patch).

Talk to people more. Compared to how the year started out, yes. I can talk to people more easily now, and all it took was practice.

Make my own school lunches. Healthier and cheaper! I don't always do it, but I bring food pretty often. I don't like to depend on packaged granola bars (unhealthy) or cafeteria dinners (sometimes tasty, but sometimes... well, not. Also I don't alway have time to choose, line up, buy and eat).

Brush my teeth more often. I did at first, but then I reverted back to twice a day.

Learn to drive. Nope. But I did get my licence, so at least that was a step in the right direction.

Stay reasonably informed about the going-ons of the world. See the teeth-brushing resolution.

Read 100 books. Failed. Read only 53 books in eleven months (started counting in February).

Finish a 5k race (and get a free T-shirt from it or something). Nope, but I did run a 7k race!! This is the only one where I went above and beyond.

Eat 8-9 serving of fruit and veggie a day. Nope. I did go through periods where I ate this much, but there were other times when I'd have 2 or 3. Currently I oscillate between 4 and 7.

All in all, not bad. Not good, but pretty decent. I'd say 7.1 out of 11.3.

Books 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53

2011-12-30T12:46:00.007-06:00

Book 48: Roverandom, by Tolkien

It was by Tolkien, it was tiny, it was about a dog. It's also a children's book, and has a sort of a simple, old-timey feel about it that is reminiscent of The Moomins. Cute, but I didn't enjoy it too that much because it felt a bit tedious at parts.

Book 49: was The Reptile Room, by Lemony Snicket.

I need fast reads to rack up my numbers before the year ends tomorrow. Pathetic, I know, but this is a good book so it's not as sleazy as it seems. Hopefully.

I read the Unfortunate Events series once before, when I was in secondary school. It was the end of the school year so we were obliged to go to school, but there was nothing to do there except sit around and talk and play. I'm a boring person so I sat on a desk that last week and read all the books (there's 13 of them) except the first one. We don't have it anymore because my eldest sister lent it to her then-boyfriend and he never gave it back.

Actually, we do have the first book, but only in French and I'm too lazy to read in another language (also, my I take this moment to express my admiration for the people I know who do read in English even though it's not their first language? You guys are ballsy and awesome).

Books 50 and 51 were the first and second Death Note graphic novels.

Yes, they count as books. They're a bunch of papers bound together and there's a story in them, even if it's mostly pictures. Shut up, I'm not cheating!

I watched the anime a few years ago and bought the first four volumes of the manga version because they were cheap, but I never actually read them. I'm making up for it now.

Book 52: The Gospel According to Larry, by Janet Tashjian

Someone mentioned it in a review of another book and it sounded good, so I asked my mom (holder of the Card of Credit) to buy it online if she saw a good used copy. She did, but it got lost in the mail so she bought it again after a few months.

It was good, but I would have liked it more if it had been written for an older audience (it's for ages 12 and up) because although the story is pretty far-fetched*, the themes it deals with could be developed a little further.

I really liked the idea of having only 75 possessions because I'm a fan of decluttering. Well, sort of– I love the idea but I have too much damn stuff to find a good home for (and I'll be damned if I'm throwing out my Darth Vader spiral-straw cup).

* 17-year-old genius dude writes short lecture/sermon/rants about consumerism, hypocrisy, etc. and posts them on a website under a false name; eventually he becomes an anonymous celebrity and struggles to keep his identity secret. He's also in love with his best friend, so there's a side story about that, too.

If you want it and you promise to LOVE IT FOREVER, give me a shout.

Book 53 is What Einstein Told His Cook: Kitchen Science Explained, by Robert Wolke.

I finished several months ago, but I didn't mention it because I read it in parts. It lived on the breakfast table, so every time I sat down to eat, I'd read a section or three. First the ones about chocolate and desserts, then the ones about kitchen equipment, then the parts about temperature, and so on, until reading the ones dealing with salt. Plus all the recipes. Eventually, I ran out of sections because I'd finished it all up. It was excellent.

A year in review

2011-12-26T08:40:00.002-06:00

Not the best year I've had, but I wouldn't change it. Well, I wouldn't change the last two months– the rest could have never happened for all I care (but then that eliminates the whole point of why the last two months were any good, because they were like a phoenix rising from the ashes of the crappiness that was the beginning, middle and lumbar region of the year. Have I lost you yet?)

A few highlights, and by highlights I mean a few events that I remember off the top of my head:

I learned to swim, sort of.
I went to the beach for the second time in my life (excluding lakes). I felt miserable while I was there, but that's neither here nor there.
I also went to some scrubland, and mesophyll woods, and marshes and a lake on other field trips. The lake was not the type you'd like to swim in, though.
I got my voter's I.D.
I got my driver's licence about half a week ago!
I started weightlifting (I mean, besides BodyPump class)
I got four pairs of Nikes, courtesy of my dad and my boyfriend.
I got a boyfriend!
I discovered the joy of lattes from the communist café next to the Faculty's cafeteria.
I ate at the cafeteria and learned to appreciate the cheap cheap food.
I turned 19. Obviously.
I got contact lenses.
I worked up the nerve to see a psychologist (hardest thing I did all year), and it's crazy how much he helps me. Or helps me help myself, whatever.
I got an Android phone (I lost my old one. Ahem. At least now I don't get calls from my dad's colleagues who've kept his old phone number for three years… or more)
I ate toffee.

Those aren't in order, by the way. Well, the toffee is actually the last thing both on the list and in real life, so it's not completely out of order.

My meanderings

2011-12-16T20:32:00.003-06:00

Last Wednesday I went to the movies and watched The Muppets. Even though it was dubbed (I was with my boyfriend) it was super funny and I laughed a lot. My favorite part, I think, was when Miss Piggy screams, "Can't you see I'm busy!?" through a mouthful of doughnut.

Since it was a weekday night, the theater was relatively empty –there were probably fewer than 15 people watching– so it felt sort of cozy and private. I hate crowded movie theaters.

Also, I hate crowded malls. And crowded parties. But crowded concerts are cool (except that I'm shorter than most men, so that's not so cool).

Oh, speaking of concerts, I went to the Britney Spears Femme Fatale Tour concert at the beginning of this month (on Dec. second, to be exact. If you care) with a sizable piece of my family: my sister (who viewed it as an "interesting experience"), my cousin (big Britney fan), my uncle and my mom (who didn't exactly want to go, but filled in for my absent aunt). We also went a friend of mine from high school– he's a huge Britney fan and turned me back onto her for the first time since I was about eight years old.

It was really fun. My friend and cousin and I screamed and danced around while my sister, mom and uncle looked on calmly. And I got a T-shirt with Britney's face and strategically-placed hands on it. I like to think she's being supportive.

Books 45, 46, 47

2011-12-16T13:02:00.004-06:00

Book 45: Historias de Diván, by Gabriel Rolón

The only book in Spanish I'll have read this year, it seems. It's made up of eight short, true stories about the patients an Argentinian psychotherapist has treated. Apparently the author is quite famous in Argentina, having shows on television and radio wherein he dispenses advice to the public; sort of like Dr. Phil, but probably less annoying. Hopefully.

I bought this at a book fair last Saturday for a measly 39 MXN (instead, I could have bought 4 liters of bottled water, 19.5 packets of gum or a movie ticket if it were a Wednesday. Fun fact for you.) The book, anyhow, was pretty good although not spectacular. Gave me a few things to think about.

Book 46: Princess in the Spotlight, by Meg Cabot

The second book in the Princess Diaries series. I had a long journey via public transport ahead of me, so I picked this up because it's easy to read and very entertaining. Unlike, I might add, the last few books of this series which are kind of boring.

Book 47: What I Was, by Meg Rosoff

Good up until the last quarter or so of the book, at which point it became very good. I liked that the main character wasn't entirely likable, yet I still sympathized with him. Usually when you don't entirely like a character it's because you hate them. At least, that's true in my case.

Tacos

2011-12-09T12:10:00.001-06:00

Last week I ate tacos for the second time in my life. And by "taco" I mean tacos prepared and eaten on a sidewalk. Because you could argue that "taco" is anything wrapped in a tortilla, which is true but not what I mean to say here.

The first time I ate tacos I was several years ago with my cousin, a veritable connoisseur of street food. This time I was with my boyfriend, who thought it was hilarious that I'm pretty much a taco virgin and felt really full after eating two of them (he said he's eaten up to eight, but there's no point in comparison because the man is huge).

I have this idea (courtesy of my parents, I suppose) that street food will fill me with tapeworms and kill me, so I hardly ever eat it. But damn, those tacos were awesome and you can be sure that I'll be sure to inclue them in my diet from now on. Not often, probably, but maybe every few months.

And tapeworms are pretty cool. Biologically speaking, that is– I don't mean that I'd want to have one, obviously.

Books 42, 43, 44

2011-12-01T10:08:00.004-06:00

Book 42 was Away Laughing on a Fast Camel, by Louise Rennison.

This is part of the Confessions of Georgia Nicholson series, number five or six, I think (can't be bothered to look it up). I picked it up because I wanted something I could read on the bus during the weekend I spent on a field trip; our copy of this book has relatively large print (good for bus-reading) and is covered in plastic (essential for avoiding cookie crumb impregnations and accidents involving filthy pond water).

Anyway, as for the actual book, I'm pretty sure I've read it before, because it seemed quite familiar. It was very, very silly but also entertaining and a fast read.

Books 43 was Then He Ate My Boy Entrancers, also by Louise Rennison

Next in the series of the Confessions of Georgia Nicholson. I read this because I wanted to know what happened after the last book, but this one didn't answer the big question (does Georgia end up with Masimo, the Italian Stallion Sex God?). Pfff, I thought, have it your way. I'm done with these for now.

It was fun, but I don't think I can read more than two of these in a row. My brain could quite possibly melt.

Book 44 was my comfort book, my favorite book, the one I save for when I really want it. Bellwether, by Connie Willis.

I don't know what to say about this book. I like the format: short chapters (less than 10 pages, in most cases) that start with a short description of a fad. Much like Scott Westerfield's Peeps does, actually. Except Peeps is about parasites, and Bellwether is about fads.

When you see a movie, read a book, listen to a song, look at a picture repeatedly, with enough time between viewings, you notice things that you hadn't seen before. Like in Shaun of the Dead, there's little jokes that hint at the end of the movie but you only catch them when you see the movie for a second time. Or the Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets VHS that's sitting on top of a pile of movies in Mean Girls, in the scene where they're watching scary movies on Hallowe'en.

Sorry, I got sidetracked. Anyway, repeated readings of this book make me notice things that had previously gone in through one eye and out the other. One of the fads described at the beginning of a chapter was the Dr. Spock books (Spock the childcare expert, not Spock the Science Officer from Star Trek). A few months ago I was in a bookstore sifting through piles of used books from the bargain table with my mom and I found an old edition of Dr. Spock's Baby and Childcare. I was all "Hey, look, Spock!", and my mom looked over and briefly explained that Dr. Spock was really famous back in the day.

It wasn't a hugely important moment to me, and I probably would have forgotten it completely if I hadn't been reminded of it by the mention of Dr. Spock in Bellwether. But I think it's interesting that my brain formed the association immediately and without effort while I was reading what I had repeatedly skimmed over many times before.

Here's a picture of Shaun the Sheep, because sheep are an important part of Bellwether. In a herd of sheep, the bellwether is the leader sheep that the other sheep follow around, sheepishly. And Shaun is obviously the bellwether of his flock.

Books 39, 40, 41

2011-11-18T03:33:00.004-06:00

I don't have anything specific I wanted to write about. Actually, I clicked the "New Post" button by accident, but I figure I might as well write. Right?

The end of the semester is starting. I didn't do too well this time around. I started out motivated and capable, but lost steam about one month into the semester and eventually dropped a class (I can't get home at 11PM, be at school at 7:30 the next morning, and do my homework in between more than a few times, it turns out). It was horrible deciding wether to drop it or not, but when I did I felt much better. And I'm going to fail another course (damn lab), which means that effectively I'm only going to pass four courses out of six. Ironically, I only decided to take six courses to make up for last semester, when I only took four.

So that backfired. Lessons learned.

On the other hand, I feel better in general. Better than I did a month ago (miserable) and much better than five months ago (very miserable). So that's good.

I have no idea where this post is going. Oh, I read some books.

Book 39: This Place has no Atmosphere, by Paula Danziger

I thought this book was pretty bad, but somewhat entertaining nonetheless. Entertaining enough that I finished it, anyway. At the end it gave me a few things to think about, but I'm guessing that's because I was thinking a lot about things when I read this book (I mentioned I've been feeling better; that didn't just happen serendipitously, but rather it is fucking hard work).

Book 40: The Salmon of Doubt, by Douglas Adams

A compilation of letters, essays, interviews, etc. etc. by Douglas Adams, as well as a portion of a book he never finished. Immensely funny and thought-provoking, and also made me feel rather guilty that I don't have strong opinions about some things (namely politics and society, and that sort of thing). I really enjoyed this book, especially so because I was still thinking a lot when I read it. The only bit I didn't quite like is when there are several articles about technology, one after another. I mean, it's fascinating stuff, but after a while I felt like I was reading the same things over and over again. Four stars.

Book 41: A Spot of Bother, by Mark Haddon

I was feeling miserable one day and spent some time in a bookshop to cheer up (also I bought some lip balm that claims to taste like cookie dough, but really just smells faintly of sugar). I was going to buy The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy because I can't find our copy at home and I've wanted to read it for about five years, but then I saw this and got it, instead. Firstly because I've read another book by Mark Haddon (The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime, which I think about half the English-speaking world has read as well). Secondly, I was sucked in by the description on the back cover (it said that a character "quietly begins to lose his mind". SOLD!). The first half was pretty hard to read and took me about a week and a half to chew through because it's really well-written and I kept getting nervous on behalf of the characters, but it got easier as they became less sane. Liked it a lot.

Wow, I write about the same things over and over. School and books, basically. I don't do much else that I want to write about...

Connecting thoughts

2011-11-08T14:14:00.004-06:00

My boyfriend ("manfriend"? We're adults, technically) may or may not have run over a squirrel yesterday. He maintains that it was the squirrel's fault, and that a squirrel should know better than to run across the road without looking bothways first.

When I was in Japan, I got used to crossing the road guided only by the traffic lights and not having to look for cars, and I was rudely snapped out of this habit when we got back to Mexico.

I don't know how to drive. I don't even have my license yet.

In the same mall where I'm going to get my license (you know. One of these days), there's an outlet store that sells clothes. The first and only time I went in, several months ago, there was a sweater with a picture of Kermit on it that I liked (and had seen before in a different store). I didn't buy it because I didn't have any money on me, which is a good thing since a lot of girls seem to have that sweater.

There's a T-shirt that I really want. It's blue, and by Nike, and it says MAKE YOURSELF on it in huge yellow letters. I really like that phrase. I thin

k I'll buy it on Monday on the way to school. Otherwise I'll regret it for years to come.

When I saw that T-shirt for the first time, I tried it on along with some other bits and pieces. The manager of the department store's sports section insisted on trekking over to wherever it is they store the clothes and rooting around there, just to get me a pair of exercise capris in size medium. It all took him about ten minutes, only for us to discover that they ran big and I was a size small after all. There were several pairs that size on the rack. Whoops.

I made two giant ice cream sandwiches for my b

irthday. It was at the beginning of October but I couldn't make the time to have my family over for coffee and cake until November, which is when we celebrated the Day of the Dead anyway. The ice cream sandwiches turned out pretty nicely. I made thin brownies (and ate a lot of batter) for the cookie bit.

In fact, I'm eating some of the leftovers right now.

I can't put pictures in a post without adding legends. It's from writing so many lab reports, I think...

I went for a run yesterday. I like to run. Sometimes I don't feel like it but every so often, after a long week full of crap, I get really fidgety and it seems impossible to sit still. I feel the overwhelming need to quickly move away from my current location at that time. So I run. I feel much better afterwards, and I can sit still in class again.

Actually, I guess I should do some running this week, since there's a race that my boyfriend (of aforementioned squirrel-squishing notoriety) and I want to enter. I forget when it is, actually, though probably it's next week or the week after. It's a 7K, which I've done once before, and this time it would be a good idea to train for it. And by "train" I mean "run a bit two days before just to make sure my legs still work".

I'm chewing on some floss now. We ran out of the good floss so this one is waxed. Megh.

I chew a lot of gum. I bought two boxes of gum so that it would be a cheaper habit, but I think it just made me chew more gum. It's strawberry flavored. Delicious.

I'm tired of things now.

Contact lenses

2011-10-15T16:12:00.005-05:00

I skipped the gym today and picked up my contact lenses from the optometrist's instead. Since it's my first time ever wearing them, I needed to have a one-hour session with one of the employees in order to learn the correct eye-poking technique necessary to insert and remove them, before being trusted with two boxes full of them (just in case I were to become hyper, rip the boxes open, and run around in a circle with contact lenses stuffed up my nose. Maybe). And don't think you can just drop by whenever you see fit and demand to be taught– no! You need to go early before the shop fills up, otherwise they'd run short of employees and eye-testing rooms. So the only time you can do it is right after they open, or at six in the evening on weekdays.

Since I have classes all day during the week, it had to be the weekend. Today I was really sleepy and so was delighted when I groggily realized that I could sleep in a little more, skip the gym and get my contact lenses instead: a win/lose/ultra-win situation.

While the optometrist taught me how to pull my eyelashes out of the way and pretend I was in a blinking contest so that I could get the lens in, we chatted about metal. Metal as in the music genre, I mean; we didn't converse about tin cans or remark about how, when you run a piece of metal through the sand on a beach, you come up with a bunch of microscopic magnetic particles. This, by the way, is pretty annoying if you're using a pair of metal tweezers to sift through a sand sample looking for foraminifera.

Anyway, after dropping a contact lens on the floor, exchanging band names and staring at my eyes in a magnifying mirror for about half an hour, I finally left the shop and wandered through the mall, the supermarket, the bazaar, a fabric shop, the street and a home goods store looking at stuff. Everything looks much clearer when you don't see it through a layer of fingerprints and muck accumulated on your glasses.

I had to come home from my wanderings when my sister called me because she was locked out of our house and nobody was home, but that was alright because at that point I was debating whether it's okay to buy a plastic eggplant just because it's funny and on discount (!), despite the fact that you know it will sit around the house looking ugly, gathering dust and generally being clutter-y, until one day several years into the future, someone puts it in the trash.

Logic says no, it'll sit in a landfill until the next ice age, but my heart was saying yes, yes, yes, it's an EGGPLANT!

Now that I have contact lenses I can:

a) See where I'm going in the rain

b) Identify people in the gym

c) Get an infection more easily and lose one or both eyes

d) See things under microscopes normally and not have to fiddle with, sharpening the image to my myopic eyes, and thus leaving it out of focus for everybody else

e) Get hit on the nose a bit less painfully

That last one reminds me of that STUPID F***ING thing people do where they sneak up from behind you and cover your eyes. Half the time the idiots are too busy ham-handedly touching your face (ew) that they don't realize that your glasses are crushing the bridge of your nose.

Ahem. Anyway, I have bionic vision now!! You know, sort of.

Nineteen

2011-10-08T18:44:00.004-05:00

What a nineteen-year-old looks like from afar. Actually I was a few days away from being nineteen here, but whatever.

Last Thursday was my birthday. On Thursdays, frozen yogurt is on sale (two for one) and there's a special deal on chicken wings– it's like the planets had lined up. On my birthday, my friends and I would eat frozen yogurt in the afternoon and chicken wings at night (and no vegetables! *hip thrust*)

The frozen yogurt part of the plan was especially for the people who couldn't make it later that night, but everyone was too busy at the last minute (surprise!) and only three of us had assembled by one o'clock. Being lazy, we drank frappés and coffee in the cafeteria and chatted out heads off, instead of going to the mall. It was actually more fun that way, I think. I mean, it sounds lame ("Uuuuhh, we drank coffee. And, um, talked!") but it was really nice because normally nobody has an hour and a half to set aside and devote specifically to nattering.

Ahem.

At night, I skipped my last class (Botany, which I'm not a big fan of, anyway. And I've never skipped it before) and went out with a bunch of my friends to eat chicken wings. There was the obligatory sequence of the three cars losing track of each other, and only one person knowing where the place is, and yelling out the window "No! Don't turn there, it's straight ahead!", and confusing phone calls ("But the OXXO is before the supermarket! We're there, but where are you?").

Anyway, we sat in a kiosk and ate a few batches of fried chicken wings (a whole lot of which were 80% skin) and my friends spelled out "HAPPY BIRTHDAY" in bones. And then we rolled around and laughed and so on. Really fun.

And when I got home, my mom had made VARENYKY!! I was full of chicken wings and it was around midnight on a Thursday, so I didn't sit down and have my yearly feast, but still: Varenyky and motherly love.

So I actually did something fun on my birthday, for once, other than seeing a movie and eating cake. Although I'll still be having cake, make no mistake!!! Probably the weekend after the next, when I have time… unless I have a field trip that weekend, I don't remember.

Well, whatever. I'M ~~OLD~~ NINETEEN!!!!

Books 35-38

2011-10-08T17:58:00.005-05:00

I'm not going to bother saying much about these books. This list is still tiny and it's already October... crap! I still have like sixty books to go before I meet my goal. School is getting in the way.

Book 35 was Ender's Game, by Orson Scott Card

There's thousands of review of this book already and I don't have anything to add, really. Basically it was really, really good (a bit less so the second time around) and the ending was excellent.

We have a used copy that once belonged to a student, so it's highlighted, annotated, and heavily decorated in marker. I googled the name written in the cover, and it appears that this girl is now a cross country runner. Cool.

Scribbled all over.

Book 36 was Ender's Shadow, by Orson Scott Card

It took me ages to finish this book. About two weeks, I think... I mostly liked it, about 8 out of 10. Since it takes place at the same time as Ender's Game, which was written before it, some parts felt a little forced (since they had to fit in with the other storyline) but there was nothing terrible about it.

Book 37 was Roll of Thunder, Hear my Cry

It also took me a while to finish this book. It was good, although it felt a little bit too educational. That's what it's for, though, so that's not really a problem.

Book 38... crap, I forgot what it was. Oh, yeah, POD! Book 38 was POD, by Stephen Wallenfels.

My mom really wanted us to read this book, so she ordered it online. It got lost in the mail (bitch) so she ordered it again. It was reminiscent of the Moon trilogy by Susan Beth Pfeffer, except POD is faster-paced, and funnier. Also there's less emphasis on things such as hunger and thirst; they're all, "Oh, yeah, we're down to our last can of kidney beans. I'll go to the window and spy on my neighbors now." This has the advantage of not making you want to go to Costco and buy several dozen cases of tinned food just in case.

Reporting home

2011-09-27T23:53:00.002-05:00

I've started drinking a lot of coffee from the faculty café, which is run mostly by communists. The blend is actually quite good. I've been having one or two large lattes a day, and I look forward to them so much that it's weird. This morning I was nodding off during my first class, and the guy sitting next to me had a flask of coffee which he would periodically sip. It was tortuous. I felt like jumping on him and stealing his drink (I didn't).

Oh, and also today I ~~crammed~~ studied all day for a test, only for the teacher to not show up. It's a bit weird, actually, because he's not the type to just vanish. I suggested that he maybe fell into an open manhole and lost his phone, so he couldn't call us to say he wouldn't be able to make it. Or maybe his mom is still in the hospital. I hope not. I hope it was a manhole with a pile of pillows on the bottom to cushion his fall.

Pardon my terrible writing. I want to get this over with so that I can do my homework before I get too sleepy.

On Saturday it's my first field trip for this term. We're going to some mountain or other to gather mushrooms, so that should be fun. And then, in a few weeks I'm going to... um, I forgot where. Somewhere for Botany, someplace else for Earth Sciences, and then four days at the beach for Zoology.

Going to the beach should be a lot more fun than it was last term, for Algae class. I was in a funk that time, plus I didn't like anyone in my class and spent all my free time being talked at by a really annoying teammate:

"Let me see your iPod! *grab* My ex-boyfriend had an iPod like this. I used to borrow it. But he's an ass because he..."

"[Teammate dude] is making me really angry!! He didn't help carry the algae back up the beach [or something stupid to that effect]!! All men are the same. Like my ex-boyfriend, you know! He..."

"…but he changed, and I changed. It just wasn't the same. We spent some great times together, but then he started to…"

"…and his dog had seven puppies. One of them was called…"

If I hadn't been in such a crappy, apathetic mood back then, I think I might've smacked her over the head with some ever-handy Sargassum and told her to shut the hell up.

Anyway, in my Zoology class I get along pretty well with my team and I don't feel like rolling around in a hamster ball all of the time anymore* so I'm looking forward to it. Also I always hated Algae class anyway, but this time we'll be looking for ugly, slimy, spiky, worm-like invertebrate... things… hanging out under rocks. Much more fun.

* You know? So I don't have to talk to anyone?

Tired + prose

2011-09-06T23:52:00.005-05:00

This schedule is cracking me. Last week I had my first baby stress attack ("I thought this assignment was due next Monday! NOOOO!!! World... shrinking...! GAAH!"**).

Actually, that's wrong, now that I think about it. The first stress monster was like two weeks into the term. I think.

Anyway, the point is that my schedule is kind of wearing me out. I don't actually hate it; in fact, I like not having lots of free time between classes, I like constantly having something I need to do, and I don't mind spending so much time at school. The only bad bit is that, in order not to fall back, I have to get a big chunk of my homework done ahead of time, so that I can do another big chunk of my homework ahead of time, and that way I can get the last chunk done in time.

Also, time seems to pass really slowly. Today was Tuesday and it felt like Thursday. When I'm going home at night, I think back to what happened that morning and it seems like it was two or three days ago. The beginning of the semester seems like it was before the summer holidays.

Also, I'm not reading nearly as much as I used to. I used to get through a lot of books while I stood in the bus, during lulls in labs, and when I was procrastinating. Now I sleep even when I'm standing and I don't have time to procrastinate. Basically I read in lab, while waiting for our test tubes to stop bubbling*** or for our turn on the single spectrophotometer (the Molecular Biology 2 lab is sort of under-equipped. The Molecular Biology 3 lab, on the other hand, is REALLY under-equipped).

I did finish two books... in the last month or so. I'll do a post on those sometime later.

Wow, this post is boring. I'll tell you a story to try and salvage something from the wreckage. Your mission is to guess how much of it (if any) is real.

Peanuts

So there I was, walking up the first flight of steps to the library. Some men in blue overalls kneeling on the steps, chatting about videos they'd watched on YouTube. Sawing at a thin, wooden board. Can't they do that somewhere else? This isn't a place to fill with dust. The hostile thoughts come to a halt when I become aware of the crunch underfoot. Glass. The glass that was in the library door lies shattered on the floor.

The men in the overalls are cutting the wood to fit into the doorframe. I continue up the second flight of steps to enter the main part of the library. No shattered glass here, but the door is hanging off its hinges. I pass under it quickly– knowing my luck, it must be waiting for me to get near to finally collapse on top of my body.

What happened here? The books I've so often browsed are lying in tatters on the floor. The library computers are spread out in pieces, the desks have all been knocked over. The bookshelves are leaning at odd angles against each other and against the walls. A loose page flutters down the staircase leading up to the reading room. The place is deserted.

I hesitantly ascend to the reading room. I don't know what to expect. I don't even know if I should be here. I'm alone. Where is everyone? I consider asking the men I saw before, but then realize that the sawing noises have stopped. They've gone, too.

I'm jerked from my thoughts when I see the state the reading room is in. It's even worse than it was below. Feeling uneasy, I turn to leave– and see the peanut shells. They lead around the corner of the room, away from me, away from the stairs, away from the exit. A perfect trail. I can hear my heartbeat, feel it in my throat. Are the rumors true?

I make a decision; despite my misgivings, I get down on my hands and knees. I don't want to be seen before it's inevitable. I slowly crawl forward, painstakingly inching my way towards the photocopy machine. There's a cracking noise now, constant, growing louder as I approach the source. Crunch. Crack. Munch.

Munch?

We catch sight of each other at the same instant. Stiffen in surprise. Hold each other's gaze unblinkingly. I stop breathing.

Then he blinks. The spell is broken, and I exhale in relief. The librarian left her peanuts here when she finished her shift. It was just the library elephant that got loose again.

Oh, come on, it's 1:00 AM. Cut me some slack. Yesterday (or last week? I don't know, I told you about my time distortion) I went into the library, and some guys were boarding up one door, and the second door was on its hinges. As I walked under it I thought, "What, did an elephant run through here?".

** I'm just kidding. When I get stressed I find the nearest corner, put my forehead against the wall, close my eyes, hyperventilate and ~~cry~~ breathe deeply. If there are no corners handy I curl into a little ball. Then I go for a run the next day, or as soon as possible.

*** Which sounds like an odd thing to do, but imagine they're full of strong acid. There you go.

Gym, more detailed than you need to know

2011-08-23T00:04:00.006-05:00

This is what my leg looks like now. Yes, it is, shut up.

So I went to the University's gym on Monday for the first time. I went up to a (hot) trainer guy and was all,

"Hey, can you help me out? I don't know what to do."

And he was all (hot),

"You don't have a routine? It's your first day, then? Okay. Warm up on a bike and I'll design a routine for you."

So I went and got bored on a stationary bike (usually when I'm on one, I have my laptop handy to watch sitcoms), and then I went back over to the (hot) trainer guy. He weighed me, asked my age, how much water I drink, my opinion on tuques with pom-poms on them, etc. etc.

"So what's your goal? What do you want to achieve?"

"I want, you know, muscles!"

"Muscle mass? [hot, slightly entertained smile] Okay. Glutes back, hold on to the machine here, five minutes."

After the stair stepper it was lower abs, then leg curls and extensions, and then... squats.

The squats are where three years of LesMills classes proved their worth**. First the (hot) trainer guy had me do twelve squats. Then he gave me a 20-pund dumbbell and told me to do eight more, but stopped me after two. He walked with me over to the barbell (!!) and said,

"I don't usually do this, but you're strong. It usually takes people a month at the gym to get to this level. Think you can do it?"

The barbell looked huge and I was all, "Ummmm, how much does that weigh?", but it was just 20kg, so that was fine. Eventually another (hot) trainer guy came over and they decided together that I could squat with the barbell plus another 15kg. I wasn't sure about the last five, but it was okay.

When I say it was okay, I don't mean it was easy. I mean I went all the way down and got a little bit stuck there after a few reps, and needed a tiny bit of help getting back up. Not a lot of help, but just a smidge, to get past the first bit. Also there was a constant stream of,

"Face up!"

"Glutes all the way back!"

"Face up!"

"Squeeze your knees!" (Squeeze? My knees?)

"Face up, look up!"

"...five... six, no, I didn't like that one, do it right or don't do it, six, better..."

At that point I fell in love. We want a June wedding.

And as for the knees, apparently I let my them bend inwards when the going gets hard. This is annoying because a BodyPump instructor pointed that out to me like, a year ago. I thought I'd taken care of that. Damn.

Then I did some other painful things, was released from the gym, and flopped over on a near patch of grass to eat my protein jello*** and do my homework before going back to my faculty to tidy up and attend class.

Phew.

** Actually, they pay off all the time. Other people's abs get sore from laughing.

*** I came up with it just this week. I made rum-flavored jello, but added powdered milk, almond extract, vanilla extract and protein powder. The protein powder separated and made a delicious layer on the top and it was AWESOME.

3rd semester, GO!

2011-08-20T12:24:00.007-05:00

This is what I spend a lot of my time looking at. Once you've seen the face, you ALWAYS see the face.

I started my third semester at university two weeks ago. It's okay, so far.

Most days I get in pretty early (9:00 or 7:30 AM) and finish sort of late (8:00 or 9:30 PM). I chose this schedule because it's Monday-Friday, so I can still go to the gym on Saturdays. The only thing is, on Saturday I was too tired to go**. I might as well have gone, though, because once I woke up in the morning I couldn't get back to sleep anyway. I employed my time in a half-assed study session instead.

I joined the gym at school, along with a friend. So we can pop off during our free time, do some bench presses while looking at pictures of boob-y models posing on weight machines, and run back to our respective classes, all in the time it takes you to blink! But only if you take a nap between the beginning and end of the blink, obviously. Otherwise we mightn't make it.

So anyway, I had five classes originally, but dropped Math because my teacher was... well, she was quite something:

Teacher: Look at this sequence. It oscillates between increments of ten and seven. Add ten, then add seven, then add ten... okay?

Me: Um, but that goes against the definition you just wrote. That sequence diverges, and the definition is that it doesn't diverge.

Teacher: Huh? Oh, you're right. That's a good observation. Add a little note next to it in your notebook, that it works this way, too, so you don't get confused. It just doesn't say so in the definition.

Me: Ohmygod.

Yep, her examples were always helpful. Like this other one:

Teacher: So what's the general term of this sequence? Let's see. To get the first term we could do this... squared... minus two... but that won't give us the second term... if we divide it... Okay, then. [Wites one board: As we can see here, in some cases it is hard to figure out the general term of a sequence****.] So, on to the next example!

I was left with four classes and days punctuated with long stretches of nothingness in the middle, so I signed up for another class, preforming a complicated e-mail operation in which I arranged to take lectures with one class and lab with another (due to schedule problems). I also signed up for another class thinking I wouldn't get it anyway (five people wanting the one spot left) but SURPRISE, I got into both classes.

Oooooh, I thought, will I be able to take all six classes and pass with proper grades? Or just, you know, pass? Should I drop one? If I drop Earth Sciences I'll have Mondays off... Okay, I'll do it! I'll drop a class!

So on Friday I was all set to drop Earth Sciences, but then I found out that the deadline was the day before. Why not publish that useful little tidbit on the Faculty's website? Gah!

So I have bitten off a lot, and it may prove to be more than I can chew. But it's like that time three weeks ago when I overestimated my hunger and accidentally made too much oatmeal: I buckled down and ate it anyway (okay, I ate most of it and the dog got the rest, but oatmeal is cheap and it's not wasted if it goes to someone furry who really wants it. Shhh!).

**I figured I'd need recovery time from lack of sleep. The day before, Friday, I fell asleep on the bus to school (standing up and constantly jerking awake), in Molecular Biology lab, in Fungi class and on the bus home. I stayed awake during both Plants lab and Animals lab, though! I mean, in Animals lab I fell asleep a few times while I was drawing a sponge, but that was just because the sponge was big and the structure got a bit repetitive. Other than that, I was fit as a fiddle.

**** When she wrote it her grammar was bad, too, but that got lost in translation.

This is really pretty. It's a (thin thin thin) slice of orange peel, dyed with Sudan III, a brownish-reddish, carcinogenic (!) dye. The oil in the peel got stained this here purty shade of orangey yellow that you're got yer eyes on.

Second-hand books (33, 34)

2011-08-17T11:26:00.003-05:00

These books were both second-hand. Well, I'm not quite sure about The Daughter of Time, but the copy I read was a bit shabby and quite aged, so I'm guessing it is.

In the case of Fearless, my mom bought it recently at a used book store in the Centro. Those things are crazy. My mom had gone to lunch with some friends nearby, and I had gone elsewhere to buy some concert tickets*, and afterwards we met up to book-hunt. I couldn't call her phone (no service inside bookstores, apparently) so I walked into the first shop I saw, and found her working away at the Used English table. There was already a big pile of goodies already set aside.

So we worked away at opposite ends of the table, dissecting piles and remarking upon the findings ("Hey, another Sweet Valley Twins!" "Mmm"). Well, my mom worked, and I held up books which I thought were cool (an old Hardy Boys mystery, a book from the 1950s about raising babies, etc.). When we payed, there were enough books to fill her backpack.

Anyway, she bough Fearless either on that trip or on a subsequent one to the same store a few days later (she regretted leaving behind a book about Samuel Pepys which she had originally turned down because somewhat expensive).

Anyway.

Book 33: The Daughter of Time, by Josephine Tey.

This was really good (good characters, historical mystery, et.c etc.) but it was SO HARD to get through. I had to keep flipping back to the genealogical tree at the beginning to see who everybody was. And then there was the business of remembering who had claimed whose children were illegitimate and when, and whose mistress was where in what year, and who is Warwick? And who's Clarence? And Henry VII was the grandson of whose cousin again?

It all got to be too much so I put the book down for two days or so, and when I returned to it I'd forgotten whom most people were. Aagh.

And then it turned out that not only was there a genealogical tree at the front of the book, but a different one at the back. It would have been really helpful if I'd found it before I'd finished the novel.

Fearless, by Francine Pascal

Another Francine book! (number 12 was Hangin' Out with Cici). This was quick, entertaining and the writing style was good (I think the style would have better fit a short story, but it worked fine in the book, too). It's the first part of a series, and out of curiosity I read the plot for the next few books. They get pretty weird.

This one was good, though.

*but apparently they don't sell concert tickets on Sundays. Note to self: buy those soon or they'll run out. And Alestorm will probably never return *sob*

**They really did

1:00 PM - Productivity review

2011-08-15T12:50:00.007-05:00

Bit of moss I photographed. See? Productive.

Things I could/should get done today:

Get medical exam done so I can join the University's gym
Get driver's license
Read about sponges (the animals, not the ones for washing dishes)
Transcribe Earth Sciences course notes and start on homework
Pay scholarship fee (twenty cents!)
Brush up on plant biology (vascular plant spores are haploid)
Go over Biology of the Fungi notes, and start on homework
Buy 8 freshwater fishes (live) for Animals lab

Things I've done today that could be considered (however remotely) productive:

Wash my yoga mat
Do a few bicep curls
Take photos (Moss: Week One) for Biology of Plants class
Make walnut butter
Listen to a CBC podcast about advertising (I'm learning)
Write for blog (will be greatly valued in future)

"To Do" lists have items of varying priority and urgency. If you spend a while doing the easy, non-urgent, non-essential things first, then you're still getting things done. You're being productive... by procrastinating!

Yeah, it's a stretch. Shut up.

Minute details, my wallet

2011-08-01T22:41:00.006-05:00

I've attempted to relate every little bit of one of my last days on summer break. It got really tedious towards the middle. This isn't actually interesting, but I think I might appreciate reading later on, just so I know what I filled my days with (CliffNotes version: not much). I posted a little story at the end to make up for it.

* * *

Last night I stayed up until about one in the morning, eating bowl after bowl of frozen berries mixed with yogurt and topped with bits of walnut. It was one of those nights when I'm not sleepy at all until it hits me, very suddenly and very strongly. Usually I manage to brush my teeth and stumble to my room, but last night I just climbed into the guest bed, still in my clothes and dirty teeth.

There was a vicious mosquito in the room, and she bit me about several times (arm, other arm, under my chin, and two foiled attacks on my nose) until I took refuge under the covers. A normal mosquito might give up and gone away, but this mosquito kept buzzing around and trying to get at my nose while I was hiding. When I was almost out of oxygen I threw the covers aside, took a big breath and… the mosquito was gone. I think she died smothered by the bedclothes.

Ah, well, eye for eye. Life for bite, rather.

At eight in the morning I woke up to the sound of doggie nails clicking on the porch outside (love that). Then I picked up my laptop and tried to register for my classes next semester, but apparently all the other biology students were doing the same thing and all I got was "Error 503! Server overload! Hahaha on you!".

My throat hurt a bit when I swallowed, like there was still a walnut stuck in there. My stomach felt like the berries from last night had partied with the yogurt and trasmogrified into a brick. My breath stank. I wanted a mug of tea but went back to sleep instead.

The next time I woke up it was past three in the afternoon. I tried to register again ("Okay, I'll let you log in. Type in the class that you want to take… now press enter… now wait for it… wait for it… oh, sorry, the server timed out. Go on, try again. Oops, error 503! Server overload!").

Anyway, I got up and went to the kitchen and made my tea, read british gossip websites (Britney Spears lost weight while on tour, some celebrity couple I don't know had lunch at a fancy restaurant, another celebrity I don't know was photographed walking her dog). I made a sad substitute for Jaffa cakes to have with my tea: graham crackers spread with jam and topped with a few chocolate chips, then microwaved. Not really the same at all, but still tasty.

I scratched Maxie the Dog and gave her a dog cookie. I ate some cottage cheese with swiss chard. I drank more tea. I made and ate popcorn with parmesan cheese sprinkled over it. I watched three episodes of How I Met Your Mother (Marshall and Lily got married). I read. Did a bit of exercise. Swept the floor of my room. Managed to finally register for my classes.

Now I'm lying on the carpet, the iPod is on random, my head is itchy.

One of those times when you don't seize the day, on purpose.

* * *

Here's something more entertaining as a reward for scrolling down the page (good on you!).

My wallet., featuring $20 and a Metrobús card.

I made my wallet out of playing cards because it folds up tiny and I can carry it in my pocket. People seems to get a real kick out of it, for some reason. They go "Ooooh, is that your wallet? Can I see it? Did you make it? That's so cool!" which is flattering but also disconcerting. I mean, I guess I think my wallet is cool, but not that cool.

Yet it's always the object of much adulation when people first see it. So much that I was in Wal-Mart a few weeks ago and pulled it out to pay for some socks and a caramel-scented sachet, and the dudes ahead of me in the queue started poking each other and going, "Look at her wallet! Look at her wallet! Look look look look!". I handed it over for closer inspection* and we exchanged 5 words or so, I got my wallet back and then I got on with my life.

So there I was getting on with my life, standing at the corner outside of the store, waiting to cross the street, when who should run up to me but one of the guys from Wal-Mart. He explained pantingly that I was "different" (gee, thanks. My goal in life is to fit in and be comfortably normal**, but that's okay, you didn't know) and he would have regretted it all day if he hadn't said anything. So now we've added each other on Facebook and nothing at all has become of it.

I mean, it's just a wallet, after all. Come on.

* That sounds like a stupid thing to do. Trust me, they weren't the types to bolt off with a wallet that's worth not much at all. I mean, they were with their mom and until they noticed my wallet, they had been playfully slapping each other.

** Well, it is. Being original is tiring, from what I gather. Artists and the like are always lopping off their ears because they just can't take it.

Books 29, 30, 31, 32

2011-07-27T18:04:00.006-05:00

I think from now on, I'll just post the title and author of the books, say what I liked about them, and then move straight into the nitpicking. YAY!

Book 29 was Wake, by Robert J. Sawyer.

Much like the other books of his I've read:

1. Gets lots of points for originality, interesting themes, explaining science/technology without making the reader feel talked down to.

2. His characters, sadly, were only meh-ish, which brought the overall score down a notch or two. I mean, the people had interesting traits, but I didn't feel like they were developed much.

3. The main character is blind, and it's interesting to read about her adaptations to life in a seeing world. Last summer I read a bok with a deaf character, so a year ago I was walking around with my hands clasped over my ears, toying with sign language (I can say "milk" *) and reading forums for deaf people**. This time I was walking around with my eyes closed, bumping into things. Fascinating stuff.

3. The main story happens in Canada (go beavers!) but there's a secondary story taking place in China at the same time. It's interesting, but then halfway through the book it just... stops. It doesn't really get connected to the main part, and it doesn't get properly resolved. Huh?

5. My nittiest, pickiest nitpick: One character is overweight, and the author constantly makes little comments about his heavy breathing, furniture creaking under his weight, etc., or makes little snide comments, like how he was so eager to get to work that he only had 2 helpings of dinner, or whatever. Like, really? Does Robert J. Sawyer have some sort of weird grudge? Was his pet chihuahua crushed by an chubby person or something? HUH?? IS THERE A PROBLEM HERE?? And is said problem just me, being paranoid?

6. Other than that, good up until the ending. I know this is the first part of a trilogy, so it has to have a somewhat open ending, just not that open.

Book 30: Bet Me, by Jennifer Crusie

Chick lit. Entertaining, light, good characters. Like watching a romantic comedy, only more explicit (side note: if someone fed me six donuts I would probably feel like throwing up, not like ravaging them and having an all-night sex marathon, but that's just me).

My only complaint is that roughly 90% the dialogue consists of witty one-liners. It gets a bit old.

Book 31: Anyone But You, by Jennifer Crusie

Chick lit again! Yep, I spent half a week reading Jennifer Crusie. After the previous one, I didn't feel like reading anything serious. Again, it's entertaining, light, with good characters.

My stupid, catty nitpick: everyone is glaring at each other all the time. Someone will make a small joke and the other person will glare in response. I mean, a glare here and there is a healthy things, but it gets used constantly and seems like a bit of a strong response to a clever quip made by your romantic interest. It was bugging me so much at one point that I started counting (yes, I'm petty), and it was used once on each page for three consecutive pages. Finally it was replaced with "an icy stare". Agh.

Maybe "glare" doesn't mean what I think it does. Maybe it's a look of annoyance: a short, playful squint of the eyes accompanied by a pursing of the lips. Maybe it's not a death stare, like I've always thought it was. VOCABULARY POLICE!!

Anyway, all that aside, I'm noticing a few patterns in Jennifer Crusie's books:

1. There's no real doubt that the main character will pair off with Prince Charming (or in this case, Hot Doctor From Downstairs Who's Ten Years Younger Than The Main Character), which is refreshing. It's the how and when that's interesting.

2. The off-beat best friend(s).

3. The fixation with some sort of junk food. In one book it was donuts, in this one it was Oreo cookies and ice cream milkshakes.

4. Main character has an average body, but her friend(s) are thin and beautiful.

Book 32: Home From the Vinyl Cafe, by Stuart McLean.

I read this book once before, a few years ago, and was careful not to read it again until sufficient time had passed. I didn't want to wear it out, like when you watch a sitcom episode too many times and it stops being so funny. Or like eating varenyky too often so it stops being quite so special (varenyky only happens on my birthday).

Anyway, I love the Vinyl Cafe podcast, and I love this book. No complaints here.

* I learned other words, but promptly forgot them. To say "milk" in Mexican sign language, you mimic milking a cow. No, really!

** Apparently some deaf people only date other deaf people, and feel very strongly about it. Who knew?

Whipped cream? Nope.

2011-07-20T00:38:00.003-05:00

My sister Reenie's birthday was last Friday, but we didn't celebrate (read: eat birthday pie) until today. That's because on the day after her birthday she was scheduled to stand up in front of 100 or so people in some pants and a tiny, midriff-exposing top, and when you're a fitness instructor, you want people to see your muscly abs and not a fleshy sack of half-digested cake. YUM!

So today we had our aunts, uncles and cousins over and ate birthday pie. It was chocolate tofu pie, which sounds weird but is reeeeal tasty. I went out to buy whipping cream to top said pie with, only apparently whipping cream does not exist south of our local Costco. I didn't have time to go to Costco (ages away on the bus), so I looked in the nearby grocery stores and cremerías (shops that sell dairy products, ham, and related stuff) and NOBODY HAD ANY. Sheez.

I bought some vanilla-mint gum instead. Mmm.

***

I started running more frequently when I got my SEXY NEW SHOES!!! and now my feet have baby blisters in several places, and the skin on the back of my heels is all tough and manly. I'd forgotten that happens. Ugh. Now I'm always paranoid being barefoot during Body Balance class, like the person behind me will glimpse my roughed-up tootsies during the swan poses and get grossed out or something. Ridiculous (?), but still true.

Book 27, 28

2011-07-15T18:48:00.004-05:00

My posts keep getting longer and longer. Back in the day, it was a few paragraphs tops. So I'm publishing just the books in this post so that it's easier to skip over when I'm going through the archives, reading old posts.

Eee hee hee.

Book 27: Nation, by Terry Pratchett

Plot: A giant wave swallows up a bunch of islands from an archipelago, and kills almost everybody who lives on them. Mau, a native guy, survives and befriends Daphne, an English girl who was shipwrecked on his island. Eventually survivors from other islands join them, and they form a small community. Human nature, loss, religion and so on are common themes.

I realize I make books sound unexciting at best. I'm sorry about that. There's a much better review here, anyway. Basically, I really like it because: It gives you a lot to think about, it's mostly serious with just the right amount of funny, the plot is good, the narration is good, it seems pretty well-researched, and the characters are absolutely marvelous (not like the Airborn ones, as I'd mentioned before. Ugh).

I picked up this book because it was lying discarded on the kitchen table after my mom read it. I nearly finished it but didn't want to read the last chapters, because (spoiler!) it was pretty obvious by then that Daphne was going to sail off ad probably never return to the island. Nooooo! Mau and Daphne would have made such a great couple. Sigh. After bracing myself and finishing the last chapter, I was ready to toss the book down and throw a tantrum, but the epilogue stopped me. Now that was a good epilogue! (Pay attention, Scott Westerfeld. The Peeps epilogue was the only bad part of your book, IMO).

On a related note: There were so many passages of Nation that I liked and should have bookmarked to think about later. I didn't, because it was too good to put down in favor of a Post-It hunt, but I really should keep a little notebook with me to copy down phrases. I'll try to, from now on (and will probably fail. Shush!).

Book 28: Kitchen Chinese, by Ann Mah.

We got this book from my sister, who picked it up at a discount shop and passed it on to my mom when she visited her. Thanks, Izzy!

I didn't expect much from this book, to be honest, but it was better than I expected. 3.5 out of 5, I'd say. Nice bit of light reading, and adequately entertaining.

Pros:

1. Some interesting characters (the main girl, her sister, her friend, her boss).

2. Takes place in China, which was interesting.

3. The workplace and job-related scenes were good. Nice dynamic going on with the coworkers.

4. Features food. I like food!

Cons:

1. The romantic conflict was annoying: it is OBVIOUS from the start that she'll dump the macho-guy (whom she repeatedly says she doesn't like anyway) and end up with the charming, successful upstairs neighbor. It felt forced, could have done without it.

2. Some characters were under-developed (mainly the romantic interest).

3. She uses "e.g." instead of "i.e." twice (yes, I'm lame and care about this). But that's an editing thing.

4. Sometimes the descriptions get a bit... er, boring. Going on about the lovely pillars which draw the eye up to the nice thatched roof and whatnot.

5. The timeline was a bit weird. She doesn't really say how much time passes between scenes, so I was surprised when it was mentioned that nearly a year had passed.

Sushi, dad, shoes, book 26

2011-07-13T18:34:00.008-05:00

Huh. I'd started to write another post and then abandoned and forgot it. I'll go back and finish it when I'm done this one.

My dad came back from a business trip to Spain two days ago. I woke up the exact moment he arrived home, because despite the fact that it was early in the morning (by summer vacation standards: sometime around dawn) the dog* went ballistic and started yapping because she was so happy. The dog loves my dad. Loves him. The first time in her life that he left on a trip she sank into a deep doggie depression and refused to eat ("Well, maybe a piece of grilled chicken stuffed with caviar. If it's been marinated in white wine. And served with truffle oil. No, leave the bottle.").

Anyway, Dad was in a good mood so we went out for mexican sushi (you can tell it's mexican because it has cream cheese in it, for some reason) and a bit of mall roaming. Several times during the meal he would fill lulls in the conversation with a micro-speech that always starts with "Now, I just want everybody to be happy and enjoy this outing, now that we're together…". That's just a thing my dad does. Like he wants to nip bad vibes in the bud, even when there are no buds to nip (this sometimes has the effect of creating bad vibes. Imagine you were having a regular old conversation with someone, and they kept going "Whoa, stay cool, man, stay cool!").

Stores are having summer sales now. And sports stores have sneakers at affordable prices now. Shoes that my sister and I would lust after cost less than half of what they normally do. So when you've got a happy dad with money to burn who's smiling at you and asking what it is that you want, and there's beautiful, beautiful sneakers in the same building, you can guess what happened.

My old sneakers are over a year old, anyway. So, you know, it was time.

Photo from www.runpals.com

I own and love pair of these now. Nike Air Max Turbulence+ 16, in pink (pink is cute). They're really great! It's like wearing pillows on your feet. Pillows that do all the running. All you have to do is swing your arms and let them do all the work.

When I wore them for our first run together, the first four miles were great, but the last two were a bit uncomfy because the arches are a little bit too far in front. So it was like running on aggressive pillows. And today, the day after, my hip hurt a bit in the morning but it's fine now. I'll see how this develops.

But I still love them. And they were cheap(ish).

I don't suppose anyone is much interested in the placement of the arches of my feet, so please enjoy this photograph of one of my sisters and me, circa 1996. Or 1995. Or 1997. Er, of my sister and me in the 90s.

I'm the one that doesn't look ecstatic, just generally content (i.e., I'm the one with short hair).

Book time! Book 26 was Mexican High, by Liza Monroy.

It's about Mila (shortened from "Milagro"), a teenage girl who moves to Mexico City in the eighties. She starts out relatively innocent, but since she goes to a school for über rich kids she picks up a few habits: a lot of smoking, a lot of drinking, a ton of drugs and some sex here and there. Seriously, she's high or drunk or both about half the time. The rest she spends hung over.

The book itself was just okay. None of the characters are developed much, save for Mila and her mom (some people are introduced and talked about for short while and then just disappear forever. Poof!), and the climax wasn't really much of a climax. The timeline was a little odd. But none of that really matters, though, because I read it to pick on it! For example, she mentions the "sweet smell of the bougainvilleas". Directly after typing that sentence, I went outside into the garden and literally stuck my nose inside three different bougainvillea flowers. Those things do not smell at all.

Oh, and in another part of the book she mentions that none of her mexican classmates had ever heard of or eaten string cheese. Um, hello, Oaxaca cheese?

Of course I'm being nitpicky just for the fun of it. Being mean brings me an odd sense of satisfaction that has a lot to do with my ~~lack of friends~~ unique personality.

* When I say "the dog", I mean Maxie. We have another dog (Reyna), too, but she's like a permanent house guest or something. Which is to say, my mother accidentally called me "Maxie" once or twice, but would neve confuse me with Reyna… I think.

Happiness, that elusive bastard

2011-07-09T23:48:00.004-05:00

I suspect I'm not quite well. But then, nobody is really happy, right? I mean, whatever "problems" I might have, or fancy I have, well! That's just small potatoes! There's people around me getting kicked out of their homes, and people who are scared to come out of the closet because their family is freaky religious, and people who have depression, and eating disorders, and are living in a strange city and feel like they don't fit in, and people whose dad died out of nowhere. I mean, I didn't just make those all up.

But just now I've realized that I've been... I don't know. I'd repeat the previous paragraph to myself every time I felt bad, small, insignificant, uninteresting and lonely. I haven't felt too happy since my last year of high school. In fact, I don't remember all that much of my last year of high school, except that I felt miserable a lot. They made us take like 5 different psychological tests (those horrible ones that take hours to complete and are hundreds of questions long) and the psychologist called me in to discuss my results because I came out unhappy.

I'm wondering if I plan to publish this post. I meant to at first, but now it's getting a bit embarrassing. I have a whole bunch of private-ish posts that sit unpublished.

Anyway, she held up the results of one test that evaluated... I forget, but there were five or six things, and one of them was sociality. I still remember that she held up my chart and said, "Look! Your social bar isn't there! It's a zero!". We talked for about an hour (well, she talked and asked questions and I went through her Kleenex), and she said she'd like me to go back but I never did.

My self-esteem remained pretty low until... Well, let's see. There was a little spike where I felt a bit better around December before last, while I was on a trip with a group of students. We were in Europe, and I could let loose a bit there. We were in sort of forced cohabitation, so it was easy to hang out with other people, get to know each other, and so on. Then the trip ended and I don't remember anything much after that, except that I became really irritable. Like, I though everyone else was being annoying and stupid. And then I realized it was me (and started crying in the library. Luckily my friends are not asses like I am, and patted me).

I'm just going to briefly mention again that I feel really stupid writing this. Wait for the end.

Anyway, I finished high school feeling sick of everyone (and feeling guilty and mean for it). Oh, and I felt fat because I'd gained like 5 kilos during the last year and especially in Europe, where they force-fed us pasta, pizza and fast food. My jeans did not fit. Also I had a brief stint with a dude who was an ass (he wasn't mean to me or anything, he was just dumb and had some weird sort of god complex. I mostly hung out with him because we hadn't known each other very long. Then I got sick of him, too, and sort of stopped talking to him).

Then I got into university. Yay! I was determined not to fuck this one up! I wanted to make friends! Be proactive! Hurray!

So I sort of sat by myself until one very talkative girl in my class spoke to me one day and I got very slowly sucked into her social circle. It took me ages to actually be comfortable talking to the other people. Like, months. Like, pretty much the whole semester. Even now I still don't know what they're talking about half the time because I'm out of the loop so much. But! I'm there. And the talkative girl is basically my best friend at university.

Then what? Oh, yes, holidays after my first semester. We all hung out once, just as the semester was ending, and then I lost contact with everyone. I stopped charging my cell phone because nobody was texting or calling anyway. I mostly hung out by myself and didn't do much.

Don't get me wrong, every now and then I'd do something with my cousins or my sisters (one came to visit. We sat on the couch and talked a bit). But mostly everyone was busy and I, um, wasn't.

Then I started my second semester at university. Oh gosh. My second semester. Well. I wasn't in any of the same classes as my crowd from first semester (except for one girl whose name I barely knew –I told you I was out of the loop– and whom I've since gotten to know much better). Luckily after a few weeks we realized that a lot of us (the crowd, I mean) finished our classes at roughly the same time several days a week, and we'd meet up at the end. I got rides home with my friend, and eventually befriended another guy in my Biochemistry lab team who'd give me rides home when my other friend couldn't.

That guy is awesome. My friends were all disappointed because he's both gay and good-looking ("But why?! Are you sure he's gay??"). He's just one of those people who you sort of click with, even if you're quite different, sappy as that may sound. I've come to associate the feeling of being in a cigarette smoke-impregnated car full of garbage with being in some sort of safe little cocoon. And when I had a bit of an eensy panic attack once and was hyperventilating manically into a corner, he showed up out of nowhere and hugged me and suddenly I felt so much better. I mean, that won't work coming from just anyone.

I'm going to take another moment to remind you that this is really embarrassing for me to write.

Anyway, meeting my friends at night and riding home with my friends were about the only decent times I had for a good chunk of the semester. The rest of the time I felt like a piece of shit, pardon my french. I couldn't concentrate in class, no matter how hard I tried. I walked around aimlessly in my free time with nobody to talk to and nothing to do. I'd randomly burst into tears (in the library, in the lab, sitting on the grass, in class...). I lost my appetite (and, thus, some weight!). For the field trip for Algae class we went to the beach. Everyone else ran around all happy in the sand and went swimming an, you know, had fun. I was just sort of on automatic. The only pictures I have of me are the ones I took on the last day because I realized I wouldn't have any to show my parents, otherwise.

It got worse, until I wasn't just feeling crappy at school. I was feeling crappy at home, too. And then I started to feel crappy at home and not care much if my parents saw me feeling crappy. And then I started to feel crappy at the gym. The gym! The gym is where I was always happy! My mom said I'd get over it, and my dad –oddly enough– sat down with me and we talked a bit. Also he bought me stuff.

It sounds awful, but that made me start to feel somewhat better.

For the first four or so months of the semester I didn't want to go see the faculty's psychologists because I was afraid of making them bored. I was convinced that if I showed up and said that I wasn't feeling well, they'd think "Oh, geez, another bored, whiny kid who thinks they've got problems." When I finally decided to go for at least one appointment, I figured it wasn't worth it anymore, because I was able to concentrate in class and was feeling pretty much okay.

So why was I feeling so bad in the first place? I have no idea. I know that way back in high school it was because I felt that there were so many things that I couldn't control, first and foremost that trip to Europe. It was done on the terms of some egomaniac bossy ladies. The psychologist I mentioned figured that one out, that I felt bad because I couldn't control any of it. And then, built on that, I felt so, so, SO stupid and guilty, because come on!!! I'm unhappy because I'm going on a fucking trip to another continent? Um, hello, how many people would love to have that, on whatever terms? And that's sort of a theme throughout the last two years. I felt stupid and guilty for feeling sad. But I have so many things going for me! My family is complete, we've got money, I'm in university studying something I love, my grades are okay. Or what's more, there's clothes on my back, food in my stomach and a roof over my head.

How could I be so selfish? Why on earth would anyone feel unhappy, having all that? God, I don't know. This is all messed up. Anyway, on to the epilogue.

I made conscious decisions to be more open, to talk to people more, to adress things that bugged me. I learned corny, useful things, one of which I remind myself about often: Happiness is not a destination, but a journey. As in, you don't wake up and say "Finally! I'm happy!". It's a process. And I'm working on it.

Oh god oh god oh god, am I going to publish this? Aaagh. Okay, must not chicken out. Nobody reads this blog anyway, it'll be like saying it out loud... to my pillow.

Summer Holidays, Book 25

2011-07-04T15:39:00.004-05:00

My summer vacations started about a month ago, and there's still another month to go. That's actually a lot of vacation time, a fact that my Biochemistry teacher quickly noted and whined about. He likes to complain about the school administration, not without reason. Anyway, the weeks scheduled for final exams were free time for me, since I only wrote one final (and did okay).

My grades this semester were the best I've had since middle school, and while I'm not really sure how I managed to scrap a 9 in Algae & Protists, I'm not questioning it. I'm terrible at algae (nasty, slimy, stinky things) but am just fine with protists as it turned out. Anyway, my overall average is like 8.6 or 8.7 now, which is not mediocre. Hurray!

***

I spent the first few weeks of my holidays socializing, but then stopped answering text messages, e-mail and Facebook inbox thingies. See, I like other people and all, but get tired of them very quickly. And then I get all sad because I'm all alone (yeah, I know, it's my fault. Whatevs).

Some friends from my first semester and I held a Lord of the Rings movie marathon. We tried to do one last semester, too, but ended up watching Disney movies because half of the attendees strongly objected to reading subtitles. Instead of watching Aladdin with the others, I helped the host cook dinner by repeatedly flinging pasta onto his ceiling until it stuck there and I had to ask him to unstick it (this guy is really tall). See, I don't care for kids' movies*.

Anyway, we planned a LotR marathon with the extended DVDs, but decided that this time non-subtitle-lovers would remain uninformed of the event so as to avoid Disney-hijacking. So it was just me, two friends, a guy that tagged along because he had a crush on me (let's call him Crush Dude for now), the host and his girlfriend who came over later in the day.

Funny side story, Crush Dude poked me awake in the wee hours of the morning before leaving and asked if I wanted to go out later.

Crush Dude: So... you want to go out later today?

Me, bleary-eyed and wanting to go back to sleep: No.

[Pause]

Crush Dude: Oh. You sure?

Me: Yes.

[Crush Dude stands there for several seconds. Goes away.]

I mean, who thinks it's acceptable to poke people awake unless it's necessary? That's rude, right? Blah.

Back to the movie marathon, though: history repeated itself, and we ended up watching only the special features for the second movie and Disney's UP. I don't mind UP because I like the dog and the kid. And the bird.

I'm not sure I'm being totally coherent here. I think I'm just skipping around subjects randomly. I just hope that when I read this in 40 years I'll be able to know what I meant at the time.

The next morning it was just me, the host and one of the aforementioned friends, because everyone else jumped ship. So the three of us had breakfast (well, I had tea and they had Corn Pops with crushed Oreos mixed in. I'm not sure if any of that is a real breakfast) and then vegged out playing video games. I managed not to lose all of the time– I was competent! Even when we were joined by the hosts 15-year-old brother I managed to mostly not lose. I consider my video game abilities to have reached their peak.

* About kids' movies: They bore me and I don't like the humour (it's all crass and slapstick-y). The exception is Brother Bear, with the commentary by the comedian dudes who did the moose's voices. I watch that... every two or three years.

Book time! Yay!

Book 25 was Bill Richardson's Bachelor Brothers' Bed & Breakfast

Lovely book. It went perfectly with this summer, which is RAINY AND MISERABLE. I don't mean to say that the book is miserable –it's really good–, but rather that it made me go on walks out in the rain and appreciate the crap weather instead of staying in bed and being mopey.

Seriously though, what up with the weather? It's s'posed to be SUMMER, for f*ck's sake!

Books 20, 21, 22, 23, 24

2011-06-28T12:30:00.005-05:00

Okay, I've been very lazy about blogging. If I don't get it over with now, I'll forget what I did this summer and spiral down into desperation, filled with regret for wasting my life.

Which is only half-true, so let's start with the books.

Book 20: The Princess Bride, by William Goldman

Well, this was excellent, OBVIOUSLY. The introduction was a bit boring, but perhaps necessary. Anyway, our copy has a cover picture of Buttercup (in a white dress and wreath of flowers) and Westley (in sexy pirate-clothes) with their arms around each other and gazing bravely off into the horizon. I was reading this as the semester ended to help me not go mental, and everybody just had to remark on the cover. They said it looked like some sort of swash-buckling, corset-ripping romance novel. I tried to explain it was a comedy, but I could see in their eyes (and great, big smirk) that nobody really believed me. Gah.

Book 21: Airborn, by Kenneth Oppel

I re-read this because the third book in the series was delivered a few weeks ago, and I wanted to refresh my memory before digging in. I remembered basically nothing from Airborn except that I really, really liked it when I first read it.

See, the thing is I guess I was 14 or so when I read it the first time, which fits into the target audience for the book. I'm 18 now and the story was cool, but the narration wasn't stellar and the main characters annoyed me because they were immature (which is to be expected, seeing as they're 15). The redeeming bit is that it has PIRATES! in it, but I don't think I'll finish the series for now.

Book 22: The Opposite of Invisible, by Liz Gallagher

It's one of those girl-enters-adolescence novels (that sounds gross, sorry. It's not). It was predictable, and the characters were typical, and overall it was pretty similar to the other books of this genre. This was on the better end of the spectrum, though.

Book 23: Peeps, by Scott Westerfeld

This was really, really, REALLY good! It's well-written, well-researched, has vampires and has parasites! It talks about the biology of several parasites and now I want to be a parasitologist (predictably).

Book 24: Good In Bed, by Jennifer Weiner

This started out as a nice, normal chick-lit book and progressed rather in the usual fashion until the end, at which point it got weird. Very weird. But it was still good.

I got a medal, anyway

2011-06-05T13:10:00.004-05:00

When I was in my first year of high school a few years ago (SHUT UP that makes me sound so old!), I had a Math teacher who doled out extra points to help his students pass the subject. He'd give you +1 if you built a kite and entered a contest. +1 if you participated in the class ofrenda. +1 on your birthday. +1 if you ran in a certain race.

I ended up with a grade of 11 out of 10 that year.

That's not the point of my story, though. I entered the race, a 10K run, with my fitness-nut sister. We started out jogging together at an easy pace, which my sister kept for the rest of the race**. I, however, wheezed out after two minutes that she should go ahead, and then I walked the rest of the race. I might add that at one point, a ~~bastard~~ man on the street called out sarcastically after me "Oh, yeah, you're running justgreat."

So that was my entire experience with races. But at the end of last year I started jogging/running and really, really liked it. Also it wasn't very hard anymore because I've been doing exercise regularly for about three years now. And since I liked it so much, I'd been meaning to enter a race, except that involves actually going somewhere and handing over money and doing stuff. Lazy people like me don't like to do stuff. No, I'm kidding, I did look up a few races but they were expensive or not at a good time or place for me (yeah, I'm not really hardcore about this). And THEN! The Science Faculty's yearly 7K race rolled around and I registered as soon as I found the sports office (which took me three days because it's tucked away at the bottom of some steps, next to the taco stands behind the parking lot).

On Friday I remembered that it was the last day I could pick up my race number. I also remembered I'd forgotten my proof of payment, but that was okay because they didn't make me beg for it or anything at the sports office, they just SIGHED at me. Phew! Only then today I woke up late (actually my dad woke me up with a charming "Are you going or not?!?". I hate it when he does that. He could just say, "Hey, it's a bit late" instead). Never fear, though, I got there on time anyway.

What is it with people that run races? They were all wearing baggy shorts and drab t-shirts. I almost felt out of place in my bright pink shirt and little purple shorts. But that was actually a good thing, because during the race I just picked out the people ahead of me that were wearing the same colour as me and concentrated on passing them. And I only passed three pink shirts, so that should tell you ~~how slow I am~~ how few people were not wearing boring clothes.

Oh, oh, and there was this one guy in a green shirt and black leggings (yes, I know) whom I passed around the second kilometer, only he was one of those people who don't like it when you pass them, so he sped up and passed me. Only then I passed him again, and the cycle repeated a few times until I was a few meters behind him about 1 kilometer from the end... at which point I ran past him very quietly while he looked the other way. He saw me– I felt the indignation aimed at me– but he didn't try to catch up. I beat him by... I don't know, a minute or so. We did smile at each other when he crossed the finish line, though, so it as all friendly and sportsmanship-like.

I'm not gloating, I'm just telling you about a specific thing. 'Cause if I just say, "I ran a 7K!! There were lots of hills! Lots of hills!!! LOTS of HIIILLS!!!", well, that's not fun to read.

Something like this, the guy's leggings. Now imagine them with a baggy green shirt and a human inside, and there you go! That's the guy I'm talking about. (Photo from www.sportsshoes.com)

And now I have a baggy race T-shirt and a medal (the kind that they give everyone at the end. I didn't win, obviously). As for my time, I'm not sure, but I asked a girl what time it was after I'd been hanging around the finish line for a little while, and she said it was 9:42, so I'm guessing I did about 40 minutes. The absolute winner finished in 24 min., 40-something seconds OHMYGODCRAZY.

**Little anecdote about my sister here; she thought it was a 5K race and concluded that she wasn't as fit as she had previously thought, because it was taking her longer than anticipated. Then she crossed the finish line, and was all "Oooooh..." DUH. These people are all muscle and no brain! (Just kidding, Reenie. I love you, smartie).

Bad science, book #19

2011-05-31T10:16:00.006-05:00

I baked some big chocolate-chocolate-chocolate cookies last night (or technically, early this morning). They're cake-y, with two types of chocolate chip (or three, I don't remember. I made the dough earlier this month and froze it, so I'm not really sure what I put in anymore). They're huge, because I made them to celebrate the fact that I fixed a giant ice cream scoop we have. Because, you know, I'm so handy and all. And I used the scoop to portion out the dough.

Huge!

It's exam season! Final exams! Departmental tests!! Aaaah!

Litle story about my Algae team: we lost our results (shhhh!!) from the field work we did in Veracruz, so we're just flying with what we can remember (pH in the pond was like... 6?**) and whatever is in samples we brought back, which means mostly diatoms. And there's about four species of diatoms, so they don't even look that cool what with the lack of variety.

I just spent about ten minutes trying to remember what book I read last week. "Not science fiction, not chick lit, not popular science... Oh, yeah!"

Book #19: The Road, by Cormac McCarthy

I'm a fan of post-apocalyptic fiction, except the books I've read aren't quite so bleak and depressing as this one is. It was really good; I kept waiting for something to happen, thinking "Eh, it'll get better when it picks up a bit", except then I was halfway through and I figured out that the whole book was like that; sort of slow, dare I say lethargic? I don't know. That makes it sound boring, but it wasn't boring. It was good. Especially the ending, which I thought might be disappointing, but it was totally cool.

The only thing that annoyed me was the selective use of apostrophes. This Cormac guy doesn't use apostrophes in his dialogs most of the time, which is fine, except that while he has no problem saying youre, dont and cant, he does leave the apostrophe in I'm. WHAT'S UP WITH THAT??

**Im kidding here, obviously. We're not going to guess the pH, that's just bad science. I mean, so is losing your results... but, uh.... huh.

Pissed. Off.

2011-05-17T15:43:00.004-05:00

I feel pissed off for some reason (hormones? lack of sleep?). Grrrawrrr. Not at anything specific, but silly things are irritating me way more than they should. I'm annoyed that the housekeeper covered my desk with clothes and then disappeared, when I was planning to do my homework. I'm pissed off at myself for being too lazy to wash the blender properly after my sister used it, and instead just giving it a thorough rinse; it leaked gross metallic water into my food (I keep forgetting it does that if it's not completely dry).

I mean, what kind of loser gets mad because of things like that? They're not important. Nothing to hold grudges over.

Ugh.

Today I registered and got my photo taken for my voter's I.D. (finally). I'd made an appointment for 10:30 a.m., but for some reason I didn't show up on the appointment list ("Oh, that happens sometimes, just print out your confirmation email"), nor was I sent a confirmation email ("Huh! Well, you'd best take a number and sit down... the wait won't be too long, two hours at most"). So I got a slip of paper that said my turn would be at 12:20. They saw me at 1:40 p.m.

Oh, the whole time there was this fucking kid playing a game on her mom's Blackberry, with loud, annoying music after every level.

I did take a bit of a walk. I bought a box of chocolates for my Systematics class. This is because I forgot to put my phone on silent mode during class, and my Mom sent me a text message. If your phone interrupts the class, you bring everyone a chocolate. Dumb rule, since everyone is too cheap to bring nice chocolate, and bring crappy stuff instead (actually, I've still got my shares sitting around. I should throw them out or give them away or something).

I still feel pissed off. Mostly at myself, for letting myself feel pissed off for no reason.

Oh, yeah, I made cupcakes last night. Vanilla, with amaretto icing.

Grr.

Oooh, I know! I'll watch British T.V.! That always cheers me up.

Train of thought (& books 17, 18)

2011-05-15T19:45:00.005-05:00

Aah! Another month of my life whizzed by and I didn't blog. Like, at all.

So books #17 and #18 are done and over with.

I read another book, Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason. Yes, more chick lit. It was okay for the first half, and the second half was awesome (it picked up quite a bit when she went to Thailand. that was hilarious).

I also read Northanger Abbey-- YES!!! I'VE READ SOMETHING BY JANE AUSTEN!!! Actually, I haven't actually finished it, because I misplaced it about a week ago. But I'm only a chapter short, and I'll just lug The Complete Works of Jane Austen off the shelf and read it from there. I saw a girl reading Sense and Sensibility on the bus once from an Austen compilation. It looked, um, inconvenient. I breezed past with my 150-gram copy of N. Abbey and felt smug.

Har.

I've been on a baking kick. Within the last week, I've made three batches of cookies (double chocolate chip, white chip chocolate, and vanilla pudding with peanut butter chips) as well as chocolate marbled banana bread (which is really more like cake, but "banana bread" has a nicer ring to it. And "banana loaf" sounds even better, because it rhymes with "oaf"!) and marinated tofu from Sundays at Moosewood Restaurant. Oh, I made granola, too. With cinnamon and applesauce. And nutmeg.

Mmm, chocolate. I've nearly polished off an entire bar of 85% Lindt chocolate. But everybody knows that dark chocolate is somewhat good for you, which means that I can eat as much as I want. Hurrah!

Although I do try to eat no more than two pieces of fruit a day, or they crowd veggies out. And fruit is just sugary veggies.

Speaking of granola, why do people think granola is so healthy? It's bits of oats and seeds stuck together with sugar and oil. Honey, too. People think honey is magical or something... it's sugar syrup (I mean, it's got trace amounts of minerals, too, but that doesn't give one license to smother stuff in honey).

What else? Oatmeal cookies. They're cookies with a few oats mixed in. Oh, and All-Bran: wheat bran stuck together with corn syrup. Seriously! I bought some plain toasted wheat bran the other day, and it's WAY cheaper and tastier (and without the stupid stick shape. Why is All-bran shaped like sticks? They could make it into little rings, like Cheerios!).

I'm way off topic. Well, there was no topic to begin with, but I'm still way off. Now I'm just ranting about stupid things nobody cares about. People can eat oatmeal cookies if they so wish. Cookies!

Perhaps I need a nap. I feel a bit woozy.

It rained today. Unfortunately, it was extremely sunny while I was jogging in the morning and now I'm all caramelized.

I took Reyna, one of our dogs, for a really long walk on Friday. I met a man who told me that I shouldn't let her lead me around, and that I should be the one telling her where we would go. I lied and told him that I lead her for the first half of our walks, and then let her sniff around at will. He nodded and we talked about our dogs for about ten minutes. Reyna tugged around at her leash and got scared of things (like the mans' dogs), and eventually flopped down in the dust, while his dogs sat next to him nicely and payed attention when he spoke to them. They nuzzled his hand and all.

I wonder if this is how mothers with fussy toddlers feel when they see other children who are well-behaved, and their own kids are screaming for candy?

Anyway, I took the guy's advice (his dogs really were lovely... cute bastards) and spoke to Reyna the whole way home. She seemed to be pulling less at the leash, but I think it might be because we had been out for a long time and she was tired. I won't let her pull next time, though. And I can put a bandana on her when we go out so she looks endearingly klutzy instead of fluff-brained.

Books 15, 16

2011-04-19T10:18:00.004-05:00

Har. Once again, all I have to write about is books.

Actually, there are other things, but I'm lazy (SHOCK!). I will try to make amends by following this post with something else, because I'm getting a sneaking suspicion that when (if?) I'm 72 years old and hire someone to read my blog to me, I'll just skim over the whole book bit and go, "Eh... let's hear the bit about the rogue pony instead". Provided, that is, the blog and me have both survived, and I have money to hire someone to read it. Or I can bribe them somehow. Maybe I'll have grandchildren, or –OR– literate cats! Oh, and also I'd have to say something about a rogue pony.

Anyway, I'll keep this brief.

Book 15: Illegal Alien, by Robert J. Sawyer.

My sister brought this book back from Canada when she came to visit sometime last year. She also brought back a trilogy by the same author, about Neanderthals living in a universe parallel to ours. I enjoyed the first book and abandoned, out of disinterest, the second, after about 3 pages. But that was last year, so it counteth not toward this book count. I'm just throwing that in there so you can see how awesome and literate I am (har).

This book was pretty fun, mostly because it deals a whole lot with things happening during a criminal trial, inside a courtroom. That may sound boring, except I do enjoy Law & Order: SVU whenever I catch it on TV (and since I usually get home around 11 p.m., that's at least once a week), so I know who the prosecutor and the jury are, and what "Objection! The defendant is arguing their case!" mean. Actually, I have a much better idea of how the justice system stuff works in the U.S. than in Mexico.

See, Mexican-made television includes a lot of telenovelas, which I'm not exactly a fan of. Recently there have been efforts to produce proper T.V. series, though, which is good.

This book earns an extra brownie point because it's science fiction and has aliens in it.

Book 16 was Mini Shopaholic by Sophie Kinsella.

That's 3 of her books I've read this year, I think. Lots of chick lit. Hee hee.

I'm a big fan of the Shopaholic books, especially the three first books. The fourth, fifth and sixth (which is the one I just read) I progressively liked less, just a bit each time. Which is not to say I didn't enjoy this –I really did– just... not as much as the first half of the series.

That's it. Whooo!

Books 13, 14, Singleton

2011-04-12T00:40:00.008-05:00

Good thing I've been taking notes of the books I've read, because otherwise I wouldn't touch the blog. Ha.

Book 13 was Time Cat by Lloyd Alexander.

I picked it up one day when I was late and just needed whatever to take to school and read. It turned out to be a childrens' book, and it was okay. I like the cover, it was quite spiffy (but nobody seems to have uploaded a picture of our version to the Internet for me to steal. Granted, I didn't look too hard).

Book 14 was Bridget Jones's Diary, by Helen Fielding.

I was surprised I finished this– I'd started it about twice before and stopped after about 20 pages for reasons unclear. This time, though, I thought it was great. Marvelous. Lovely. Particularly because Bridget spends a good deal of her time feeling lonely, dejected and bingeing. I can identify.

Anyway, what is it with British chick lit always pairing off the protagonist with one of the country's richest bachelors? In Shopaholic, Becky gets with Luke, who lives in a pile of cash; in The Gatecrasher, Fleur gets with what's-his-name, who has oodles and nothing to spend them on (!); and Bridget Jones is suddenly swept up by Mark Darcy, who not only has millions of pounds stashed away, but is also called DARCY! I mean, come on. I'd be happy if the dog licked me, forget a rich Mr. Darcy.

Actually, no, because I've seen the dog eat revolting lumps of slime from the garden. But my days have passed in sorry Singleton existence while everyone else is running around being social. I just sit there getting old and spinster-y. I mean, I'm not even interested in anyone. And the only guy who's shown any interest whatsoever is this totally boring guy. Oh, and also my weird ex who contacts me every few months to remind me he still thinks of me bla bla bla. But I'm not sure he counts. And also that girl from Biochem who may or may not be hitting on me but who I find intimidating either way.

Anyway, I'm not saying I'm much of a catch (even I know there's not that much to me) but surely I can do better than that?

Sorry, I've gotten side-tracked. The point of it was, I'm with Bridget all the way up to the last three pages, when who should show up but Mr. Darcy, the rich hottie. Jealousyyyy.

- . - . -

Ugh, tonight I was feeling desperately thirsty but we were out of drinking water. I found a bottle of mineral water and, after not having a sip of fizzy drink for months, guzzled about a pint of it in all of fifteen seconds. Big mistake, as within seconds I thought my stomach might burst and I'd be found dead the next morning on the kitchen floor amidst a pile of jumbled intestines. "Oh, yes," my mother would say, "I thought I heard a popping noise last night".

Books 10, 11, 12

2011-04-06T00:00:00.005-05:00

So I settled down for the weekend and knocked off another three books (much helped by the fact that I swung into a deep pit of self-pity and possibly hormone-ridden dispair, and spent most of the time either reading or staring at the wall and trying to keep my mind blank). Not great literature, but still.

Book 10 was The House on the Gulf, by Margaret Peterson Haddix. I quite liked some of her books from the time when I was about twelve to fifteen years old. I'd read this one a few years ago and felt it deserved about 8/10 back then. When I re-read it on Friday it didn't seem so great; I'd give it a 6/10 this time around. It was just... meh.

- - - -

Book 11 was Donna Parker Takes A Giant Step, by Marcia Martin (which Wikipedia says is a pen name, thank god). I read this one out of curiosity, because it's old (published in 1964) and sounded dorky. It met my expectations perfectly.

Donna is this girl starting high school. She says "Golly!" a lot. The teenagers in her town throw parties every two minutes, but the students from the neighbouring town crash them and spoil all the awesome fun by starting water fights with garden hoses and the like. And get this: Donna's classmates don't like that the parties have been getting too wild. WHAT?? Nobody was even drinking or anything! Pardon me, but if there was none of that cheap tequila that everyone says makes you go blind, then it was no party*.

But I've gotten sidetracked here. The kids decide that what they need is a community center dedicated to the town's teenagers so that their parties can have proper adult supervision. Yes, really. So all their parents bust their hides and in, like, a week, the kids have a fixed-up house where they can throw their boring chastity club meetings and eat crackers with cheese while sipping apple juice (or whatever it is they do at their "parties").

Oh, yeah, the "giant step" that Donna takes is realizing that people are multifaceted or something.

It was like 300 pages long (although with relatively large print and the occasional picture that makes the kids look 35 years old) but it was worth it to plough though. Mostly because then I could compare it to the next book...

- - - -

Book 12 was Hangin' out With Cici, by Francine Pascal. This is from 1977 and I really liked it.

Victoria is 13, is about to be expelled from school, hates her mother, is extremely cruel towards her little sister (which made me stop liking her for about 30 pages, seeing as I was the victim of much bullying, flying objects with pointy edges, injustice, twisted arms, insults, etc. back in the day. It sucks), and gets caught smoking weed. Basically, she's the anti-Donna Parker, and two years younger.

Then she whacks her head and travels back in time to 1944, where she meets and befriends her mother when she was Victoria's age. Turns out her mother smoked, shoplifted, tried to steal a test, etc., but eventually –with Victoria's help– learns to take responsibility for her actions (only after she got caught, I might add). Victoria smacks her head again, travels back to the 70s where she belongs, follows her young mom's example, and gets along better with her real-time mom.

I liked it because it was pretty funny AND it proves that Donna Parker and her "parties" are absolute bull. Also I thought it was weird how Victoria thinks. Like, she smokes weed but wouldn't let anyone feel her up. Huh?

* Have I mentioned that I don't like parties? I don't drink, see. I'll make an exception for eggnog (if it ever crosses my path, which it hasn't for about a decade) and maybe the very occasional mojito. Oh, and flavored beer in Belgium. I mean, chocolate beer. Chocolate!

Books 8, 9

2011-03-31T09:34:00.004-06:00

So! Book 8 was Anne Frank's diary. I liked it a lot! I guess I should note that we have the "definitive" edition, consisting of a mash-up of her original diary, the one she edited herself after considering it might be published, and the one released by her father. In case anyone was curious.

It surprised me that Anne was such good writer, making me want to smack Mrs. van D. up the side of her head and everything! And about Peter: when she first got to know him better she was like, "Oh, he's nice as a friend. I feel nothing else for him", and I was all, YOU'RE NOT FOOLING ANYONE, ANNE!! And sure enough, a few weeks later they're making out in the attic! (Or the Netherlands equivalent, which involves hugging and pecking each others' cheeks).

My classmates have gotten used to my carrying a book around 90% of the time*, so they just pick it up, remark about its being in English, and then tell me about the one or two books they've read in the past five years. I smile and nod. One of my classmates in Algae lab picked up the diary and said,

"Oooh, Anne Frank's diary! I read this book, I liked it soooo much!"

I thought, "Awesome!" and, wanting to discuss it further, said the first thing that popped into my head:

"Yeah, it's really great! It surprised me, though– she sure writes a lot about sex, huh?"

My classmate look at me for a few moments, bug-eyed, and then answered,

"Uh, I think I, uh, read the abridged version."

Oh. Well, how was I supposed to know?

- - - -

Book 9 was Madeleine Wickham's The Gatecrasher. I enjoyed it while reading it, but the end was a bit unsatisfactory and afterwards I got a feeling like I didn't really get to know the main character very well. I mean, you get told about her past, and her motives and all that, but not so much about her personality beyond "frivolous" and "charming". But altogether, it was a fun read.

Madeleine Wickham is Sophie Kinsella, author of the Shopaholic series (much beloved by myself). I knew "Sophie Kinsella" was a pen name, and I thought "Madeleine Wickham" was, too. Turns out that's her actual name, which is weird because it sounds totally fictitious, whereas S. Kinsella sounds like a real person. Oh, well, such is life.

*Sometimes I forget my book at home, but I came up with the solution of keeping a back-up book in my locker. Brilliant. Except I don't want to keep anything too valuable there (a book we only have one copy of or something) because what if something spills in the locker above mine? I might open the door one day to discover all my stuff is drenched in cat pee. Or something.

Pictures! Animals (deceased) and book 7

2011-03-18T08:57:00.007-06:00

Here's a toucanet to get you interested. It was soft and silky. I know that because OH, THAT RIGH THERE HOLDING IT UP IS MY HAND!! I GOT TO TOUCH IT!! I GOT TO TOUCH IT!!!

On Monday my Systematics class got shown around the Faculty's zoology museum (museum as in collection of stuffed raccoons and speared butterflies kept in cabinets, not museum as in stuff on display for a Saturday visit and a picnic afterwards). I always thought you had to handle stuffed specimens with the utmost care, lest you snap off a claw or poke a hole in a wing, but my teacher was picking up birds, poking them, and passing them around like nothing.

Actually, he picked up a woodpecker and, to demonstrate how loud it could be when carving the fancy wooden panels and balustrade for its bird-house, began banging its beak against a cabinet right over my head (he was right, they're loud).

It wasn't all fun and desecrating bird bodies, though. It's saddening as well. Like when we were shown a beautiful, HUGE woodpecker: an Imperial Woodpecker. The largest in the world, in fact, except they're extinct.

I didn't get a picture of the woodpecker. Here's a roseate spoonbill to make it up to you.

My teacher is an ornithologist, so 80% of what he showed us was birds. He didn't even start with the mammals until there was a general clamor for furry things. "You want to see furry animals? Instead of these beautiful birds? Fine!" and he pulled out a drawer full of rats.

And you know what the AWESOMEST part is? Their freezer broke!! DO YOU KNOW WHAT THIS MEANS!?

"Ah," you might say if you're a bit slow, "their waffles will thaw so they'll have to eat them soon. There will be a waffle party!"

No! That's silly. Who would share their waffles? No, the freezer broke– the freezer where they keep animals that are dead but not yet gutted, stuffed, etc. SO they need to fix them up before they decompose. So they need help. They need... newbie students who are willing to handle rotting corpses!

And that's where I come in. When I finish this post, I'll get ready and leave. Whee.

ALBATROSS! Get it on a stick!

This pelican was massive. A girl almost got smacked in the face when the prof picked it up.

I took the above pictures with my crappy phone camera. They don't really do justice to the real things, but just so you have an idea, I included some birds (the other pictures didn't turn out at all. Like the bats and the raccoon, which is a pity).

- - - - -

I finished reading The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows. I really liked it, which was unexpected because I'm not really big on war; but then again, I loved the Tomorrow series, and I recall enjoying The Guests of War trilogy (it's been ages! When did I read those? I think around five years ago*). Other than that, though, I haven't read much about war. Oh, there's When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit... I feel like I'm forgetting some.

Anyway, this has turned into a boring list rather than an interesting snapshot of my life meant for posterior examination.

Since I really liked the Potato Peel Pie book, I started on Anne Frank's diary. Embarrassingly, I've never read it. I do know the basic plot, though:

Anne Frank is 12 or so, calls her diary "Kitty", lives for a few years shut up in an attic with her family and others– according to Angela from My So-called Life, there's "a guy she really liked" there, too, so there's room for some romance or at least sexual tension here– and can't make any noise (they have to sneeze into pillows) lest someone hear them and figure out that they're there. They get found, though, after a few years, and are taken to a concentration camp where Anne dies when she's 14 or so.

I'm about 50 pages in, and at first I thought Anne was a bit conceited, but now I'm thinking maybe it was her age (except that when I was an tween I didn't think quite so highly of myself. But then, I don't think much of myself now either, so I'm biased).

*Someday when I'm old and withered I'll read this and marvel at how five years could be described as "ages". But five years ago I was thirteen and not quite the same as who I am now (much more sullen and cynical, I was back then. But I often wonder, if I could go back in time as I am now and meet my younger selves, would they like me? Would they be glad I didn't turn into a dithering ninny? I have, actually, a bit. But of course I wouldn't dither in front of them.)

A story & book 6

2011-03-11T08:59:00.004-06:00

"So, you wanna make graham crackers?" I asked my sister.

"That sounds good," she said, standing at the door to her room. "Dad's students are all gone, right? 'Cause I'm in pajamas." She indicated her oversize T-shirt and too-short purple cotton pants.

"I think so, it's all silent down there," I replied, and started down the stairs. "And anyway, I was wearing my pajamas in the morning and no-one batted an eyelash."

"Yeah, it's called el umbral de la pijama," came the reply from upstairs. "Once you've crossed it, anything's fine."

"Ha! That's good!" I called up, "Next step is underwear!"

I turned and walked the last two steps into the kitchen, where I discovered that there was still one student left, busily coding on his laptop, sitting next to out Japanese house guest. He looked up and said hi.

Oh god, I said underwear.

Book report time! I finished book number 6: Remake, by Connie Willis.

Honestly, I didn't like it much, but of course I was comparing it to the other things of hers that I've read. It didn't stack up that well. I didn't actually get into it until I was two-thirds in, and I only got that far because I had nothing else to do in my free minutes at school (I forgot to upload new podcasts to my iPod). And as for the surprise twist ending, it would've been cool, but at that point I didn't care about it anymore.

On the plus side, it's a small book, so it was easy to carry around.

And let the record show that I'm only being this mean because she's written some other stuff that's really great.

Books 4 and 5

2011-03-05T20:27:00.006-06:00

I forgot to mention that I finished some more books.

Number four was Never Trust a Flamingo, from the Full House: Stephanie series.

Yes, I know. Permit me to explain. When my sisters and were wee lasses, and we were all normal and untroubled by nasty eating disorders and depression and all that** we would sometimes get to Go To Work With Daddy!! Yay!! These were awesome days, when you got Daddy to yourself (it was one daughter at a time), and you could use his colored chalk to draw on his blackboard, and meet Daddy's coworkers, and go to a restaurant for lunch.

The thing is, though, that wee lasses can get bored easily. I mean, you can't draw on a chalkboard for six hours straight and still have fun. So there's been a small stash of kid-friendly books in my Dad's office for... I don't know, probably more than a decade.

On Monday I found myself the unwilling owner of five hours between classes, so after doing a bit of homework and going for a bike ride, I ate my lunch in my Dad's office and read this book.

You see? It was either that or stare at the wall for half an hour.

So on to the actual book, it met my expectations. Which is to say, it was terrible.

Plot: Stephanie (whose age in this book isn't mentioned, but I think she's around thirteen) goes on a 3-day school trip to some mountains. There is skiing involved. Stephanie's dad had vowed that none of his daughters would ever ski (yes, really), but gives his consent anyway. He has nothing better to do (job? who cares about jobs?) so he goes along, too, AND brings Stephanie's little sister, 8-year-old Michelle.

It bears noting that for some reason Steph is being really mean to Michelle for no apparent reason. Example: Stephanie is chatting with her buddies in the living room and Michelle enters to eat her after-school cupcake snack (healthy!), at which point Stephanie goes all batty and tells Michelle to go away and give her some privacy. Michelle is all, "I don't give a sh*t about your conversation, I'm just eating my cupcake", but Stephanie keeps on being all snooty until her sister gets fed up and leaves.

Anyway, blah blah blah, they go on the trip, Stephanie is a total bitch not only to Michelle but also to this other girl, Melody, whom she'd never even met before. She banishes Mel from their room, refuses to hang out with her and kicks her out of their ski team because she doesn't like Mel's friends. Oh, also, her best friend sprains her ankle, and her first thought is not "OH MY GOD ARE YOU OKAY!?", but rather, "OH NO!! NOW WHO WILL TEACH ME TO SNOWBOARD? I'LL LOSE THE SNOWBOARDING RACE!". Nice.

So anyway, she spends three days being mean to people (and flirting with a guy she doesn't even like just to make another girl jealous. Have I mentioned Stephanie is really classy?) and in the end, apologizes to the people she's wronged. These people also happen to be the best snowboarders on the trip, and immediately accept her apologies and win the race for her. Oh, and aslo her friend's sprained ankle magically got better, and she participates in the race, too.

I call bullsh*t on that last part: when I was in second grade, I sprained my ankle and hobbled around for more than two days. No way was I snowboarding.

Book 5 was Finn Family Moomintroll.

I picked it up because I thought it was the first in the series (wrong, it's the third) and I wanted something very light and illustrated. It fit the bill.

I like the Moomins. They can be jealous, and selfish, and pig-headed, but you don't dwell on it because

a) They're super nice about 90% of the time

b) They're furry and cute

Also, the book contains the words "stupid" and "ass". Ass!

We have an edition from the 70's, very similar to the one pictured here, except ours is one year younger (1974) and listed as being for sale in the UK, New Zealand, Canada and South Africa. I enjoy the thought that somewhere in South Africa, there are families that have the same edition as we do sitting on a bookshelf, or in a box somewhere.

**Well, not me. My mother says I'm the sanest, and that if feel I'm getting worse, now we know how to get help. But I digress.

Cake?

2011-03-05T19:58:00.003-06:00

For some reason, I've spent two days compulsively reading cake recipes. I wanted to choose the cake for my birthday this year. Yes, that's right, for my birthday in seven months**. What about it? Huh? You got a problem with that?

Good.

Anyway, I swung around for a long time, and finally I've decided I'll make a strawberry mousse cake. Fluffy, fruity, fresh, and with oodles of whipped cream. Yum.

Speaking of baking, (which for some reason I've been doing plenty of in the past few months) yesterday I made some sort of chocolate bar cookie/brownie/monster. I actually have no idea what the hell it is, as I started out with the idea of making cookies but about halfway through, that idea got scrapped and I just sort of winged the rest. It turned out quite dry, as was the intention, because I was envisioning it as being the "bread" for ice cream sandwiches or topped with whipped cream cheese.

So imagine my surprise upon discovering that the batch of Chocolate Monster Stuff is half-gone. I'm also somewhat offended, as 87% of the oatmeal bars I made on Tuesday were consumed by myself (my mother expected them to be sweet and confectioner-y. Um, no, they were meant as a handheld brakfast. AND I THOUGHT THEY WERE DELICIOUS, SO THERE). Why did my lovely, tasty oatmeal bars get ignored, but the dry chocolate bars get snapped up?

Although they are pretty tasty when microwaved and topped with whipping cream.

Even so...

** Wait, seven months?? I've been legal for almost half a year already, then. Oh god. What have I done since then?? Nothing!! Aaaaugh! My life is passing by me! Pant, pant.

Book #3, swimming

2011-02-26T22:40:00.004-06:00

I finally found my flippers! Or sea-feet! Or whatever they're called!!

See, I've never been much of a swimmer. I took classes intermittently from the ages of somewhere around 3 years of age to 9 or 10. I was a terrible swimmer.

Upp until last week, my aquatic talents were composed of dog paddling, floating on my back, and floating on my back and kicking my legs. The one I employed most often was the last one, because it's easiest. Unfortunately, since all I could see while I "swam" along was the sky –or the roof over the pool– and I'm not good at reading clouds, I'd often veer off course. Way off course.

One of the last years I was at summer camp, I took the swimming test at the beginning of the week. It consisted of covering the distance between to stakes driven into the camp's pond, three times. If you passed, the counselors gave you a plastic bracelet to be worn all week, and which granted you access (with a buddy) to the deeper part ofthe pond. Non-bracelet holding losers were relegated to the shallow bit near the shore, which wasn't so bad if you didn't have much will to live anyway.**

So anyway, I took the test (after having verified that you could swim with any stoke you liked) doing a backstroke. Remember how I sid it's really hard to tell where you're going? After my third half-lap, the counsellor whose job it was to hand out bracelets gave me a funny look and said, "Uh, how about you do another lap?". I wasn't sure why he wanted me to swim some more –I'd already done enough, hadn't I?– but I wanted the bracelet, so I did as he asked.

Once I straightened up and looked around, I saw why he wasn't sure about me. I'll illustrate the situation, as seen from above:

Really, the guy shouldn't have given me the bracelet at all. Luckily I've always been a wimp and I barely even entered the deep part that week, except to go canoeing (I love canoeing).

Despite my Mom's insistence, learning to swim properly was never a priority for me until about two weeks ago, when my first field work trip-thing was announced. It's for Algae class, so naturally we're going to a place with water. Lots of water.

Let me tell you, when I started to care about it, DAMN DID I LEARN FAST!

I mean, at first there was much dramatic gasping and spluttering (which I'm sure grossed out the other people in the pool). But now I can swim along just fine. Now I'm all ready to go collect little algae beasties near the sea.

- - - - -

On other news, I finally finished my third book of the year. I'm going really slow. Agh.

I needed something super, super light, a book that would practically read itself. So naturally I turned to Confessions of a Shopaholic, by Sophie Kinsella. I love that book. It was a re-read –I'm actually not sure how many times I've read it and the sequels– but it's always fun.

Also, oddly, all 3 book I've read so far have been set in England. Heh.

** I jest. Mostly. The shallow part did have the advantage of being inhabited by little fishies in one part, and if you stood still they'd gather round your legs and TRY TO EAT YOU!! ...well, part of that sentence is true, anyway.

I suck at Chemistry

2011-02-16T00:22:00.004-06:00

Seriously. In Biochemistry I have a hard time keeping up, but now and again I'll know something that nobody else does.

Ah, you say, if I know stuff it must mean I'm doing okay, right?

Well, not really. The things I know are very rarely useful, and are usually just little random info tidbits. Today:

Incident A:

"Living forms use L amino acids only, except for a few very rare exceptions."

OOOH, I KNOW THE EXCEPTIONS!! I HEARD ABOUT THAT ON A PODCAST!! SOME BACTERIA USE A COATING OF--

"But we won't get into that now, because that's part of the presentation that Team #1 will do later on."

Boo. That could have actually been a

valid contribution.

Incident B:

"So amino acids are chiral. Mirror images of each other. That reminds me of a Star Trek episode, which none of you have watched, where Captain Kirk's mirror image takes command of the Enterprise, and wreaks havoc because he's evil..."

OOOH, I SAW THAT EPISODE!! IT'S CALLED "MIRROR, MIRROR"! THE REFLECTION-PEOPLE ARE EVIL, BUT MR. SPOCK STAYS THE SAME BECAUSE HE'S HALF-VULCAN AND– and... and... ... ...maybe I should spend more time studying.

Sigh.

But I'm wearing my Spock T-shirt next time I have Biochemistry class. I need to suck up, as I'm not quite so talented... ;)

This is actually a man-shirt. It was on discount, YAY! I normally use it as a pajama thing.

Creepy

2011-02-09T03:02:00.006-06:00

I'm researching the chemicals we're going to use in the Chem lab tomorrow, and couldn't find much toxicity info at first for one of them. But its ICSC said foreboding things– like "harmful to aquatic organisms", "Do NOT let this chemical enter the environment," and "Insufficient data are available on the effect of this substance on human health, therefore utmost care must be taken". I mean, that sounds scary, right? What if someone sneezes on it and a crystal gets in my hair, and later I scratch my head and RUB IT INTO MY SCALP?? And the I DIE!?

So anyway, I Googled it and it turns out that the substance in question is currently smeared on my face, as it's a common ingredient in sunblock.

Gaah! You just can't win. Am I to walk around with a parasol all day, or what?

Silicon-based life

2011-02-07T10:16:00.003-06:00

For my Organic Chemistry class I have to find an article dealing with the possibility of silicon-based life and comment on it. I'm considering sending my teacher an e-mail with this video embedded...

I'm going to try and watch that episode today (the Star Trek one, not Baywatch). Hee hee.

Tragedy strikes! & book 2

2011-02-05T12:44:00.003-06:00

Remember how I was happy because my Organic Chem teacher was a total babe? Yes, well, yesterday he stepped into the classroom as we were sitting around waiting for him and went,

"Hey guys, I have some problems with my schedule, so I won't be able to teach this class. Albert here will do it instead. Bye!"

And left. Trodding on the shards of my broken, useless heart as he went :'(

Albert (I think that's his name) is a gangly guy who looks about 19 years old, and was through no fault of his own destined to be the object of my hatred for six months. He snatched away my hottie teacher! But he redeemed himself within the hour because it turns out he's a really good teacher. Really good.

Such is life. At least I'll be able to pay attention in class instead of drooling like a dope.

On other news, I finished my second book of the year, Meg Rosoff's Just In Case. It was good, but I didn't find it spectacular or anything. It felt a bit off, but I guess that was the point since the main character appears to be insane. I suppose it was just that I couldn't quite identify with him, never having had the experience of going to the butcher's and witnessing the skinned rabbits singing at me.

Although yesterday on my way to school I passed the butchery just as they carried in some pig heads. Those things are HUGE.

Book 1, late arrival

2011-02-04T00:00:00.004-06:00

Ah! Just this minute, I finished reading Connie Willis' Doomsday Book, which is my first official book of the year. Shameful, really, because it's February already. I think I'll have to stuff in a few shorter books to reach the 100 book goal this year, but that's okay– I can re-read our Edward Eager collection. They're all, like, 150 pages or so.

Doomsday Book was awesome, even though my Mom accidentally spoiled an important plot development ("...and they all get sick and die..." "WHAT?!?!"). It's the third Connie Willis book I've read, and even though it was truly, truly good, I think I still like Bellwether and To Say Nothing of the Dog more. Actually, I think Bellwether may be my absolute favorite book of all time.

Today I only had one class, from 8:00 to 9:30 pm. The bus that goes straight to the University apparently stops operating sometime before 6:30, so I took three buses total to get to school. I took 2 buses home, since I got a partial ride home with a friend (and her grandmother, a sprightly young thing who was there to supervise her driving. It reminded me of when my sister was just starting to drive, only my friend and her grandma were civil to each other the entire time, and, dare I say it, nice). I got home some time around 11:30. Sigh.

I wish I could teleport. Or had a jetpack. Ooooh, a jetpack...

Anyway, I'm picking a light book for my next read. Not because what I just finished was heavy, but because it's almost 600 pages long and there were a few little transportation issues. i.e., it was fat and took up a lot of space in my backpack.

Second semester

2011-02-03T14:20:00.003-06:00

Last Monday I started my second semester at school. I only have four subjects (I meant to take five, but couldn't fit the last one in) and I'm in afternoon classes, so it's easier and harder at the same time. Easier, because, HELLO, four classes, eaaaasy! But harder, too, because I'm totally not used to taking afternoon classes. I end at 9:30pm most days, so I'm arriving home quite late.

And once I'm home, what? Do I study, unwind, or go to bed? My strategy this week has been to get home and then eat while watching late-night TV, but that's probably a crappy idea.

As for my teachers, I chose them carefully and they all seem to be good. You know how much I enjoy lists, so!

a) My Protists & Algae teachers are a young dude with a bit of a beer belly (specializes in protists) and a lady (specializes in algae). They're nice, seem smart.

b) Systematics... an older guy who I don't like that much so far (but he's apparently a good teacher, I'll have to wait and see) and another young dude who makes TERRIBLE jokes (we chortle anyway).

c) Molecular Biology of the Cell I (Biochemistry with a fancy name) I like so far. He's quite cynical, and if he ever gives me a reason to dislike him, it'll be really easy to do so; but so far, he's good (and looks a bit like Ryan from Whose Line is it Anyway). The lab teacher is just some random girl. Okay.

d) Organic Chemistry. Ooooooh my god. I thought it would be another old man, but he's a really cute dude with a lovely smile who looks no older than 25 (and has a doctorate!). Totally caught me off guard. Oh, and the lab teacher is a young girl, seems pretty sensible. I like her so far.

100 Books

2011-01-26T01:21:00.002-06:00

I was watching the news a few minutes ago and it seems the average Mexican reads 2.9 books a year. Ouch.

It reminds me of something– a few weeks ago, I was looking at the Facebook profile of one of my classmates from high school. Nobody really liked her, because she wasn't nice and she sucked up to all the teachers at the expense of the rest of the class. She worked hard to get good grades, but she wasn't one to enjoy knowledge. Just good grades.

ANYWAYZ. In her profile she'd listed about fifteen "favorite books". Cien Años de Soledad, Doce Cuentos Peregrinos, El Amor en los Tiempos de Cólera, María, ... Hmm. That's odd, those are ALL THE BOOKS THEY MADE US READ IN HIGH SCHOOL. And you're not fooling anyone, María is really crappy. Seriously, hardly anyone actually read the whole thing (I did, it sucked. Waste of time). I'll bet my eyelashes that she just listed every books she's read in the past ten years, and that those books happened to be obligatory.

So, the whole Facebook-book fiasco coupled with the thingy on the news have spurred me to try to raise the national average by about 0.000000001 books per capita. Not that it will have any effect on the survey– not so much because it's such a small amount, but because they've never included me in their little survey (party poopers!). Oh, unless they're basing their data on that which is collected from book fairs, which they shouldn't.

So I've cobbled together a list of books I want to (re)read this year. Not Anna Karenina or similar paper bricks, just something nice and doable. Also, I'm going to start the counter at zero as of today. I've finished some books this year, but I'm not quite sure which ones were in January and which were last December. Better to start fresh.

This is going to be a lovely mash-up of really good, good, okay and crappy books.

Three Men in a Boat (Jerome K. Jerome)
One of the many Lord Peter Wimsey novels (Dorothy L. Sayers)
Chocky (John Wyndham)
Agent to the Stars (John Scalzi)
Something by Dick Francis.
Something by Jane Austen
A Prayer for Owen Meany (John Irving)
Prince of Foxes (Samuel Shellabarger)
Seeing Voices (Oliver Sacks)
The Third Chimpanzee (Jared Diamond)
Doomsday Book (Connie Willis)
Something by Ursula K. LeGuin

I've started Three Men in A Boat about five times, and each time I absolutely love it, but then slowly grind to a halt when Jerome gets to the point where he rambles about the scenery and the kings of years gone by more than he talks about George getting lost in a maze, or Harris trying to sing a comic song and failing miserably. But this time I'm further in than I'd ever been before, and I'm determined to finish it.

It's clicked in my mind, now– in Connie Willis' To Say Nothing of The Dog, there's all these jokes about Victorian people having sudden fits of poetic-ness. I'd never fully understood just how severe they were.

And as for #12 on the list, I have read one Ursula K. LeGuin's books– I picked up The Word for World is Forest last year, and enjoyed it very much. I'm liking science fiction quite a bit, but I'm very under-read in it (actually, I'm under-read in general).

Speaking of science fiction, I never got to finish Ender's Game. My sister brought it with her during her visit last summer, and I got really into it, but she left with it when I was maybe 30 pages from the end. Fruuuuustrating. If I can wheedle my Mom into ordering a copy, I'll add that to my list and re-read it. Ditto Kurt Vonnegut; I read Slaughterhouse Five last year and it was amazing, so I'd like to read more of his.

Oops. I've really rambled on. Ah well. This list– the blog, actually– is for myself (in the future, you know. In case I bonk my head and have amnesia, or if I make it to old age but can't remember what my life was like back in the day).

2011 revisited

2011-01-26T00:53:00.002-06:00

I went back and read over my 2011 resolutions. I kind of churned them out, one after another, without putting much thought into them. Now that I'm a bit saner, I'll change them up a bit. For instance, I'm eliminating the one about watching Dr. Who. Partly because I've already watched about five episodes (and that's enough for a while), and partly because I just wrote that on a whim.

I'm going to whittle down my list until it's eensy and doable. So:

Get a 9+ average one semester.
Talk to people more.
Make my own school lunches. Healthier and cheaper!
Brush my teeth more often.
Learn to drive.
Stay reasonably informed about the going-ons of the world.
Read 100 books.
Finish a 5k race (and get a free T-shirt from it or something).
Eat 8-9 serving of fruit and veggie a day (I think I have about 5 or 6 currently).

There! That's nice and small.

Who's cleaning up?

2011-01-23T21:29:00.002-06:00

I just finished watching Appleseed. The last time I watched it was about 5 years ago, and while the dialogue is kind of cheesy and the storyline is a bit blah, the mecha and background design kick some serious ass. The music is quite nice, too. All lovely and epic.

At the end of the film, ten HUGE "mobile platforms" (five-legged AT-ATs, basically) stomp all over the city. I'd say each one is roughly the height of 1.3 Godzillas. It was cool and all, but throughout the entire scene I had to wonder how much it was going to cost to repair all the damage. Oodles of money, that's how much. Oodles.

And when they managed to deactivate the platforms, they all just froze where they were, and this raises an even bigger question: how the hell did they cart them off back to the sea (or something)? Maybe they just left them as decoration, and let grapevines grow all over them. Or they got disassembled and sold as scrap metal.

Also, in The Lord of the Rings, Gandalf was all buddy-buddy with the giant eagles, right? And an eagle rescued him when he jumped off Saruman's tower, and at the end, more eagles went and scooped up Sam and Frodo. Which leaves me wondering why they didn't come and help a bit earlier. I mean, the hobbits had to WALK the WHOLE WAY to Mordor!! And they probably got flown home in about two hours! Pssh. It was in the best interest of the eagles to have the Ring destroyed anyway, because they hated orcs (I think. It was orcs, right?). And, you know, there was an army of orcs being bred because of the Ring.

Oh, and ALSO in the Lord of the Rings movie. The Shire is maybe ten miles across, so why do the Hobbits have different accents? It can't be just the different classes.

ELEVEN!

2011-01-17T22:22:00.003-06:00

Yesterday I jogged not 3, nor 5, nor 7593756 kilometers, but 10! Or possibly 12, I'm not sure. Let's split the difference and call it eleven.

ELEVEN!! YAY! That's even MORE than ten! And a bit of a relief, because I did that after sitting around on my bum all week and not doing much of anything.

On other news, on Saturday (since I slept in and didn't go to the gym, hee hee*) I started to organize aaaaaall of our books.

We have lots of books. Lots.

So I made huge piles on the floor of:

childrens' books
very young childrens' books
science fiction/fantasy
young adult fiction
classics
mystery/crime novels
war novels
popular science
Canadian/Mennonite history
books about Mexico
books in Spanish (to be properly sorted later)
books about housekeeping
books about woodworking
dictionaries
teach-yourself-[some language or other]
books about translation and teaching English
regency novels
reference books
chick lit
books about writing
how-to books
(auto)biographies and memoirs
textbooks
software manuals
classics
general fiction
religion (Bibles)
religion (reflections on)/philosophy/poetry
stupid books to be hidden in a cupboard**
books in German (no idea what they all are)

And others that I'm forgetting about (yes indeedy, those were only the ones I could remember off the top of my wee head), as well as several piles that belong to a specific author or series (such Harry Potter, which we have like 17 copies of in different languages, PLUS companion books. It's not like we ever read it in French, I don't know why we don't just have a bonfire one night and burn the repeats***).

It's pretty cool– and useful– that my Mom has read the vast majority of our books, because she can tell at a glance which category pretty much any book should go in, although this gift can also be a bit annoying at times ("That's a historical young adult science fiction crime novel!"). But I guess it's only fair, as I also have a little pile of books that don't have a blurb on the back and I can't tell from just glancing through what genre they are, so every so often my Mom gets bombarded with,

"Where does this go?"

"Oh, that's a fun read! It's about [summary of plot]"

"But where do I put it?"

"It could be adult, or young adult, or even childrens'"

*Blank sheep stare* "But where do I puuuut iiiiit?"

Also, it turns out my Mom really likes her mystery novels, and intentionally bought four copies of this one book which she says she really, really likes. "To give away," she said, "because it's so good!".

And one last story: one time, years ago, my sister let her hamster loose in the bookshelf. Before we knew it, he had chewed up our ancient copy ofAnne of Green Gables, among other unfortunate volumes. Maxie chewed up a book too, recently. My Mom is going to trade it away this weekend at a bookswap. Ha. She said it was badly written anyway.

*I'd better not write so much about exercise, or I'll come across this when I'm 86 years old and get sad because by then I'll probably be old and frail. And I'll remember back in the day, when I was young, and get teary-eyed and then go on a cruise and fling myself into the sea in a fit of desperation. Ha! Just kidding, I'd never do that. Cruises are so expensive.

**Including books from the series of Sweet Valley, Full House, Nancy Drew, The Hardy Boys, and a few select others.

*** Just kidding. I'd never damage a book on purpose. Except maybe the Twilight series, which is lousy, IMO. I wouldn't mind toasting marshmallows over those.

2011

2011-01-01T01:17:00.004-06:00

Just over an hour into a new year. It doesn't really mean much to me this year, for some reason, and I found the people on TV talking about peace and happiness and resolutions and good wishes very irritating. But I think that was just me being irritable and cranky. Sorry, TV people!

Also, I can't sleep. Luckily my laptop was beside my bed, so I picked it up and now I can make up some resolutions. In the following 12 months I intend to try to:

Watch Dr. Who, so I can talk about it with my sister when she visits next (also the new Doctor is HOT!)
Do better at school, grade-wise. At least next semester, I'd like a 9+ average.
Talk to people more. Try and make a friend, as in a real friend– not just someone I hang out with when we happen to be in the same place.
Obtain pajama pants.
Modify those metal band tees that are too big so they fit better (currently it's like wearing a tent. Almost. Sort of. A bit...)
Be more comfortable with myself.
Be nicer to my Dad. Particularly after how I ended 2010.
Walk the dog! The small one.
Actually, be nicer in general. Not just to my Dad.
Make my own school lunches, and definitely not buy rice from the woman who sells pseudo-japanese food at school. Her stuff is way over-priced.
Stop eating tuna and salmon, substitute with sardines (mmm!).
Be on time/early/anything-but-late for school (and stuff in general, but mainly school).
Brush my teeth more often. Prevention is the best way of keeping your teeth in their place.
Learn to drive. My mom insists that my awesome Mario Kart Wii skills won't do for real-life driving. Also, apparently "manual" mode in real cars doesn't mean that you can hop up and down when turning a corner. Which is dumb, because then how are you supposed to avoid POWs?
Read the news!!! I am grossly uninformed about, um, stuff, and it matters because I'm a child stuck in the body of a now-legal "adult".
Read the Lord of the Rings. There's ten-year olds floating around that have read LotR! Why haven't I? If there's one thing I have, it's an odd sense of pride over stupid things that don't matter, like how long I can jog and what books I've read.**
Practice the accordion! PRACTICE!!!
Enter a 5k race :)

That's quite a bit to do in a year! Well, not really, but it's mostly stuff that I suck at, so it's going to be hard to keep to it all. But it's all stuff I want (or should want), so there you have it.

ARE YOU HAPPY, BRAIN?? I'VE UNLOADED YOU, LET ME REST NOW!! INSOMNIA BE GONE!!

**Story for you: I was jogging two or three days ago, and was planning on doing only 3km, to rest a bit, but I kept on passing people and being paranoid that they'd think I was a loser if I stopped. Despite being very badly hydrated, I squeezed out 6km. Stupid? Yes. Did it make me feel good? Not physically, obviously, because I was rasping like an effing Dementor by the end, but it made me realize that it was all in my head when one of the people involved in my aforementioned paranoia actually cheered me on. I've gotten sidetracked here. What did this have to do with reading The Lord of the Rings? Ah, who cares.

Christmas

2010-12-25T08:22:00.006-06:00

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...

2010-12-22T21:00:00.004-06:00

...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

2010-12-22T18:58:00.003-06:00

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

2010-12-16T15:05:00.005-06:00

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

2010-11-29T19:35:00.004-06:00

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

2010-11-22T21:36:00.004-06:00

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

2010-10-26T00:00:00.007-05:00

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

2010-10-20T19:31:00.002-05:00

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

2010-10-07T21:56:00.004-05:00

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

2010-10-06T19:26:00.003-05:00

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!

2010-10-06T19:16:00.004-05:00

...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

2010-10-02T18:50:00.003-05:00

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

2010-09-23T00:04:00.002-05:00

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

2010-09-22T20:21:00.007-05:00

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.

2010-09-14T20:06:00.004-05:00

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

2010-09-13T23:12:00.005-05:00

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

2010-09-13T18:51:00.003-05:00

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

2010-09-10T16:00:00.003-05:00

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

2010-09-09T19:12:00.004-05:00

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!

2010-09-04T22:04:00.003-05:00

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

2010-09-03T03:51:00.002-05:00

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

2010-09-02T22:20:00.004-05:00

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

2010-08-31T22:08:00.005-05:00

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

2010-08-30T00:39:00.007-05:00

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

2010-08-24T19:49:00.003-05:00

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 ;)

2010-08-12T19:39:00.004-05:00

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

2010-08-11T23:31:00.004-05:00

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

2010-08-10T22:11:00.003-05:00

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

2010-07-01T12:32:00.002-05:00

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

2010-06-22T20:26:00.003-05:00

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

2010-06-07T01:30:00.003-05:00

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

2010-06-01T18:49:00.004-05:00

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

2010-05-15T22:24:00.005-05:00

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

2010-05-12T21:35:00.007-05:00

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

2010-05-02T22:23:00.004-05:00

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!)

2010-04-20T22:55:00.006-05:00

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!)

2010-04-19T20:07:00.005-05:00

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

2010-04-18T20:16:00.003-05:00

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.

2010-04-16T17:04:00.003-05:00

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.

2010-03-30T20:23:00.005-06:00

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

2010-03-30T19:25:00.005-06:00

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

2010-03-20T12:43:00.004-06:00

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

2010-03-10T00:05:00.004-06:00

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.

I don't want to get old!

2010-02-22T17:04:00.003-06:00

Noooo! Nooooo!

I hadn't really thought about it, but I'll be finishing high school in a few months. A few short, short months. Well, right now they feel kind of long. I suppose because I have work to do. But pretty soon it may start feeling like I have little time left.

But! My point still stands. I'm in my last trimester of ~~pregn~~ school. Of, uh, high school.

Today, after Literature class (Hey. HEY. After these three or so months are over, I'll never EVER have to take a Literature class again. Hah! Hahaha! HAHAHA!!!)... anyway, after class, these dudes came by to tell us t hat in two weeks, they're taking the school photo.

Damn! Hadn't had one of those for years, and I won't for many years to come. Eek.

This year, they're making a yearbook, too, which they hadn't done with previous generations. So I can purchase a flimsy thing, resembling an ugly magazine, with photos of all the people I don't know who just happen to be in my grade (no fancy-pants binding here, no siree!).

Which is not to say I'm not totally going to get it, but, you know. Odd. If someone there becomes famous, I can sell their photos to... someone else. With money.

I mean, I know I'm not actually old, or near growing up (right? right??) but it's still kinda creepy.

Snoring

2010-02-02T21:14:00.002-06:00

I've been told I snore ("Lalli, you snore.", "Andrea, you were snoring last night." Um, sorry), but I'd never been able to verify this. I mean, I knew it was true, 'cause a bunch of people have told me, plus I'm not a terribly delicate person in bed (What? No, I mean sleeping. As in, I used to kick, and whap people across the face with my arm when I rolled over. And someone thwacked me back a few times. I've stopped doing that now... or maybe people stopped telling me).

But recently...

Well, I woke myself up with my own snores. It was really weird. I somehow pushed myself up the bed, so my head was leaning back over the edge. I woke up suddenly, but I couldn't figure out why. I had been pondering this for a few short moments when I heard a big snore.

I was all, dude, someone's snoring. BUT I'M ALONE. WHAT UP. Snooooore. Oh, it's me! Phew.

It turns out that with my head leaning back, I kept snoring even after I woke up. Odd. Even odder than the fact that I was snoring loud enough to actually wake myself up.

Tee hee.