new!

Wednesday, March 29, 2006

It's the last full week of classes, and I can totally feel it. Too much, in fact: as I type, I'm putting off a calculus assignment, a physics assignment, and studying for a genetics quiz. I didn't wear a coat today, and being my lame self, I was preoccupied with that fact all day. There's a sort of freedom about not wearing a coat. With a coat, you have to account for the many seconds required to remove or don your coat whenever you want to go somewhere. Without one, you just get up and go. See? I'm really lame.

I've found another indicator of spring: instead of going to do the work that they probably have to do, a crowd of students and professors alike will simultaneously go "screw it" and sit around the square between Dana Porter Library and Arts Lecture Hall watching some guys play hackysack. Also: some students get a little overzealous and try to walk around in a t-shirt and shorts, which doesn't work so well.

Last weekend was pretty cool; I came to Scarborough and had some dinner at Jack Astor's with good, old friends: Elaine, Anita (whose attendance was a complete surprise to me, which was cool in itself), Stella, and Webnesh. Stella even has some cool pictures up, because she's cool like that.

I use 'cool' entirely too much, but eh... it's cool.

I also played a surprising amount of video games, which is always a plus. There's nothing quite like displaying mock fear and stress as you try to get through a (weirdly long) Dahaka chase in Prince of Persia: Warrior Within while your brother and sister laugh and laugh. And then displaying mock anger at them for laughing, while they continue to laugh and laugh.

I'm coming back this weekend, mostly so I can play more video games. Also, a training session for my Ontario Place job. It's almost over! I can barely wait.

posted 07:13 p.m. |

Wednesday, March 22, 2006

Well, the term's winding down. Weird, huh? And then exams, during which I hope to catch up on monumental amounts of television and reading. Oh, yeah, and study. April 21st, look out world: I will be free (a word which here means working and lazing around). Until September. It will be very good. My aspirations for this summer:

Hoard/invest all my beautiful money. I'm thinking of a nice, diverse portfolio, definitely some high-risk stuff - 'cause I'm 18 years old, and when else? And as much of Tim Hortons as I can afford. The idea of owning a bit of such a fine, noble, caffeine-distributing establishment is just so... oh, it's really just indescribable.
Read read read. Read good books. Lots of good books. My reading list is very small right now, it needs major cultivating.
Watch a lot of TV and play a lot of video games.
Make my brother mow the lawn a lot. Walk behind him while he does so, spurring him onward and planning out a good mowing algorithm so the lawn has a cool pattern on it when it's done.
Maybe walk around aimlessly a bit. I'm much better at walking that I used to be. I used to take maybe 10, 15 minutes to walk from the bus stop on Sheppard to my house; a few months ago (in the middle of last term) I tried it and it was about 7 minutes. I think I was just perpetually out of shape. (I'm still out of shape, just in better shape than I was before.)
Get my dad to wake up at three in the morning to drive us way up north on Kennedy, until we're in the middle of some field, far from the city's lights. Watch for meteors. We've done it before, we never see many of them. But damn, it's fun.
Go to the Real McCoy. I haven't had a horrible, fattening, half-of-a-day's-worth-of-calories poutine in years.
Try out that P.A.M.'s Coffee and Tea Co. cafe in Agincourt Mall. Inevitably, I will not like their fare; I will then walk down the mall and turn right and be at the lovely Tim Hortons.
Not spend too much time in Waterloo. It smells in the summer, you know, all that manure they spread on the lawns.

So that'll be my summer. Oh, and working. I have to do that too.

Stella said it would be, and so it will be:

Something to pass the time...

Rules: people who get tagged need to write a blog entry about their 5 quirky habits as well as state this rule clearly. In the end, you need to choose the next 5 people to be tagged and list their names.

I always hit the snooze button twice. This is a remnant of last term, when I had to get up at 6:30. I would set the alarm suitably early, so that I could ease myself out of sleep with multiple hittings of 'snooze'. This term, my waking hour is a little easier on me, not to mention that the sun now rises before my alarm goes off. Yet even if I'm awake when the alarm rings, I hit the snooze - not once, but twice. I haven't spent much time analyzing it, but I think I feel that I'm 'owed' extra sleeping time, even if I don't need it.
Sometimes, when people tell me 'thank you', I say 'thank you' back to them. Not in a stupid way, like "No, thank you." I'm just repeating what they said, like when someone says hello. Once, I think I said 'happy birthday' back to my uncle. When I do something like that, I generally realise it immediately - but there's nothing else to do but smile and walk away blushing.
I wear socks to bed. Used to be because my feet got cold and they would keep me awake; now it's because I just can't sleep without them.
I always watch Breakfast Television on CityPulse24 in the morning, even though I live in Waterloo and would be better off watching the weather channel. I have opinions on all of the anchors on the show. Kevin is obviously the best one; Liza is so annoying, and I wish she'd stop it with that laugh; Frank is much better than Nalini, although she had nice outfits; Tracy is boring, where's Dave gone? etc.
I gravitate towards those "improve yourself" types of reality shows on the W network. For example, I find 'How Clean is Your House?' extremely fascinating, when it isn't grossing me out. Also, 'You Are What You Eat' and 'Maxed Out'. I think I just like feeling superior to the idiots they find to be on those shows.

Next: (I'm just going to make these names up, but if you actually have one of these names, then consider yourself tagged.) Zachariah Cayanan, Rosario Preuitt, Ronna Laurenceau, Dannie Maniace, and my old pal, Gemma Blaho.

posted 11:05 p.m. |

Monday, March 13, 2006

Randomly browsing websites for no reason. Aahh, March... spring is my favourite season. Even more so after a winter of shovelling the driveway. What? I'm a weakling. I'm looking for my-house-in-Waterloo-specific indicators of spring, you know, for future reference. So far I've got: the gutter (which is perpetually clogged despite multiple cleanings) starts overflowing again rather than spawning two-foot icicles; the streets fill up with bicyclists who don't stay in the bike lane and not on the sidewalk; and my favourite, students start freaking out about exams.

I'm gainfully employed! Or, at least, I will be this summer. Cashiering at Ontario Place... I mean, it could be worse. And I will finally have credibility in telling people that it's the Princes' Gate, not the Princess Gate. No one believes me when I'm right.

posted 11:31 p.m. |

Thursday, February 16, 2006

Snow day! A real one this time, not just me being a scaredy cat about freezing rain. My physics lab is cancelled, my genetics tutorial is cancelled, my sociology class is cancelled, and most importantly, my physics midterm is postponed. Until after reading week. I'm smiling right now.

Yesterday's chem lab was the worst ever. We were supposed to be timing iodine clock reactions to determine some reaction rates, so of course we had to vary the concentrations of the reactants in each trial. Since I had a watch, I was timing the reactions and my partner was setting up the trials. So at the end of the fourth trial out of seven, I noticed that the times I had been recording were all a few seconds apart - even though the concentrations we were supposed to use in those trials were all over the board.

So I turned to my partner. "Uh... you're not putting the same thing in each trial, right?"

My partner: "Oh, my god."

So that was pretty bad. It was only by the good grace of our TA, who whipped us up more solution, that were were able to finish the experiment. And there are iodine stains all over my lab manual. Maybe one term I'll be able to get through a chem lab course without getting staining chemicals spattered all over my stuff - last term it was copper (II) oxide. I also got iodine on my hands, but that's only because we were running out of time, so I started fishing the magnetic stirring bar out of the beaker with my fingers. That's my fault.

Ah, a whole day of nothing. I'm studying for reading week.

posted 09:22 a.m. |

Wednesday, February 15, 2006

Ha, they extended the due date for our weekly calculus assignment because some students were complaining about midterms. My fellow first years: grow up. However, please continue to get me extra time for assignments.

My sociology prof was all sombre and serious today because he graded the multiple choice part of our midterm and it sucked. Oh my gosh he's such a bad lecturer. He writes overheads before class, and I think he goes overboard with the thesaurus - and he has some weird approach to grammar that (sometimes) technically works, but makes the sentence nearly illegible. For example: we learned about C.W. Mills's concept of the 'sociological imagination', or the ability to relate an individual's personal situation to overall trends in society. Simple enough, right? Well, here's the definition he gave us in his lecture:

"a quality of mind critically uses information to develop reason that achieves clear summations of what is happening within us and the social world"

That is what he put up on the screen. Verbatim. I didn't capitalize it or put a period on the end, because it's not a sentence. And he has no idea why the class is doing badly. I read the text before class, so I knew what the 'sociological imagination' was - but then I saw that, and my world crashed down around me as I wondered whether or not I had forgotten how to read. It slowly dawned upon my that the prof was insane, so now I don't listen to a word he says, and I'm a better sociologist for it. Anyway, sociology is boring. I miss psychology, because our psych prof beat up a bobo doll to demonstrate a study about the Social Learning Theory of Aggression, and it was really funny. And he was on Jeopardy.

My chemistry midterm is tomorrow... it's 1:14 right now though, so it's actually today. I went to a presentation about medical school on my dad's advice tonight (last night). He thinks I should be a doctor. I took a whole bunch of notes, but didn't learn much that wasn't common sense. Oh, except that if you take four courses in any term - even if the university considers it a full course load - the med schools regard you as a part-time student for that year. That'll be an unwelcome surprise to some of my friends who are trying to beat the system by taking four courses this term and catching up in the summer.

Next week, reading week! I'll be lazing around in Toronto. Ahh, I miss the good tap water.

posted 12:53 a.m. |

Monday, February 6, 2006

Thankfully, my last two classes were cancelled today because of power failures. So what did I use my extra time for? Studying? Eating lunch? Lounging in the student life centre? No, I went home and shovelled snow until standing up straight and moving my arms caused me acute pain. Stupid winter. My sister keeps complaining that she can't get the car up the driveway... she doesn't seem to have learned the whole "if your wheels are spinning in place, stop accelerating" thing. Man, I never get to use the car anyway, so why should I shovel at all?

I have the first part of my Sociology midterm tomorrow: multiple choice and true/false questions. Of course, I haven't started studying yet. The test is at 2:30 tomorrow, and I have nothing else to do until then, so I guess I'll be fine... although, I think this might be the straw that broke the camel's back. All this slacking and lack of effort has to backfire eventually. I shouldn't be so experimental with my academics, but what else can I do? I mean, study, of course, but come on, I'm young. If I don't know how much slacking off is too much slacking off, then really, what have I learned?

This is going to be one of those stream-of-consciousness entries. Ooh, I was watching a rerun of the Gilmore Girls today. It was the first episode. Wow, Alexis Bledel's voice was actually deeper when she was young. And that guy that plays Michel, he was exactly the same. I wonder why they dropped this whole "Sookie is really clumsy" bit. Actually, no, I don't, I could see that getting really old.

My calculus midterm is this Friday. I've lent out all my notes to classmates, I haven't done even one of the recommended homework problems, and I feel fine. I think this isn't normal. Something has to shock me into gear. I've been doing second-rate work all year, and getting ridiculously good marks for it. Bah, I'm going to sleep.

posted 10:27 p.m. |

Tuesday, January 17, 2006

Playing hooky. I'm easily swayed, see. Many things stop me. The idea of a 20-minute walk in freezing rain is one of those things. Good luck that it's just one class, and Sociology at that. Now I'm saying a prayer for my sister, who drove to campus today... I'd just leave the car in the parking lot and take my chances on the sidewalk.

So I voted at the advance poll on Saturday. Such a strange feeling - my vote counts? Really? I had to register at the polling station, and they initially told me that I was in a different riding - which, they said, seemed strange because one of them lived in my neighbourhood and recognized my street name. Anyway, haha, a naive 18-year-old had a say in the government of Canada. Everyone should vote. Vote early, vote often! Wait, not often. Just once.

When was the last time I posted? During exams, I think. Well, exams went well. I liked the lack of structure of exam time: one exam today, two tomorrow, a day off, etc. And each one was like the last hurrah. Good marks all around, except for Physics lab because they lost some of my assignments. What can you do? My current average is 3% lower than my high school average, and without stupid Physics lab, it would be 0.5% lower than my high school average. I'm fine with that.

This term is going swimmingly. I keep having this experience where everyone around me is really confident about some subject that I think I'm shaky on, but it turns out that they know even less than I do. Biology especially. What did you guys do in high school biology? I was studying with a girl who didn't know what incomplete dominance was.

Still, I really should have taken biology in high school. Not because it would have prepared me for university, but because then I wouldn't have had to take that awful Anthropology class in grade 11. That survey project, oh my gosh, what a waste of paper.

Ugh, does anyone know how to find the volume of a "cylindrical hoof"? Integration is the devil's work. I miss differentiation.

posted 02:05 p.m. |

Tuesday, December 13, 2005

The only time I write entries here is when I'm procrastinating, so just assume that's what I'm doing when I post things from now on. My chem lab exam is at 7:30 tonight; I'll probably open my lab manual at 5 or so.

Well, 3 down, 5 to go. Stupid lab exams. I've done bio, bio lab, and chem - all satisfactorily easy, even though I was sure I would bomb all of them at some point. Biology was the big kickoff - the activation energy of the finals. I had to become an activated complex to start the whole reaction. That's a really bad analogy, though.

I'm sure "satisfactorily" is a word, but it just doesn't look right.

I am drinking entirely too much tea these days. First it was just Tim Hortons tea, which was bad enough because it cost money - but at least that stopped me from buying too much. Now that I'm home all the time, it's mug after mug. Okay, not quite mug after mug, but something like 3-4 mugs a day. It's a fair-sized mug. I'm not very fond of it, either: it has a metallic design on it, but I always forget and stick it in the microwave. Then there's a little light show, and I hurriedly get it out. What a hassle. Stupid free "SCI '05 orientation" mug.

Instead of studying chem lab, I'm just fondly looking over the lab reports I got full marks on. It's pathetic, really. "Oh, that's where I did some dimensional analysis. Yep, I standardized that acid all in one line." I'm so bored.

My birthday was kind of cool. My sister gave me the book I wanted: All the Days of My Life... So Far by Alison Sweeney, who plays my favourite character on Days. What? I can read unadulterated fluff if I want to. It wasn't half-bad, either. It was like 2/3 bad. But I still liked it. My sister also gave me Tuesdays With Morrie, because she wanted to get me "something good". Hmph.

You know, I've never thought of UW as having a particularly beautiful campus. In fact, it's downright ugly in a few places. Take the math building, MC - it looks like a maximum security prison, and the CS statue doesn't do much to help. Someone thought it would be a good idea to put a boar statue outside Modern Languages. But snow just makes everything look lovely. After the big snowfall a few days ago, I walked around campus at 8 am - and damn if it wasn't insanely gorgeous. Even good old MC looked more like juvie. I'd love it if I didn't have to shovel it off the driveway. They should just have fake snow all over campus, year round.

posted 03:45 p.m. |