Tuesday, November 22, 2005

My birthday is next Friday. December 2 is such a great birthday. Look at all the great stuff that happened on December 2: the first sustained nuclear chain reaction in the Manhattan project, the U.S. Senate condemning McCarthy, Fidel Castro declaring his Marxist-Leninism and that Cuba would adopt Communism... and that was just in a span of a few years! And on the very day I was born, two world-renowned scientists - one a Nobel Prize laureate - died. And oh yeah, that thing about Britney Spears.

University goes by so quickly. It's probably got more to do with my never attending a semestered school, but I still find it hard to grasp that the courses will be over by Christmas. In high school, I was barely getting started by Christmas. Remember how when we came back in January, it was all, "let's get down to business"? To think that my September-October-November marks will comprise real, final grades is just astounding. More than half of our work has been review. In Chem, it's all been review. And it's over for the year in April? I can barely get my head around it.

I'm still procrastinating. I have a nasty biology essay about nitric oxide, cell signalling, and something or other and a nasty Oxford tutorial that I'm trying not to think about. Being my intelligent self, I scheduled the Oxford tutorial to be on the same day the essay is due, which is this Thursday. Whatever, I've done worse.

I was thinking some more about Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire because I'm very bored these days. And I realized, the soundtrack in that film really sucked. What happened to Hedwig's Theme and all that? I think I heard some soap-operaish, tragically sparse piano music, but no magical John Williams music. That's what was missing. All it needed was some John Williams.

Every day I go to biology class, I realise a little bit more that I'm completely screwed for the bio final. There's a whole bunch of stuff about membranes and Krebs cycle and integrins and selectins. And there's some DNA and RNA stuff with TATA boxes and poly-A tails. Biologists are crazy. Why would anyone make up so many words? There's got to be some psychological explanation. Chemistry and Physics, now there are some sciences.

For my birthday, I'm going home and playing Xbox games (Prince of Persia!) and Gameboy games (Golden Sun 2!). And I'm going to watch all the shows that my brother says are stupid but I greatly enjoy, like Supernanny (which is extremely underrated in its hilarity), How It's Made, and lots and lots of Star Trek TNG. It's gonna be just like every other weekend I go home, but better because it's my birthday. And I need a Loblaws cake. I've had a Loblaws cake every year for as long as I can remember; I'm not stopping now.

posted 09:49 p.m. |

Saturday, November 19, 2005

Harry Potter! I've been all out of sorts all week, in anticipation. I even neglected to study for two midterms! They were abnormally easy, though. Like, "Use Hess's Law to find the standard heat of formation of MgO." and "In what area of the brain are the REM-on neurons found?" easy.

So I got on the four o'clock bus to McCowan station yesterday, expecting the usual two hour ride. And two hours was an overestimate - on a good day, you can get there in just over an hour. We left early, at 3:50.

So I got off the bus at McCowan and Progress at 8:00pm. Just my luck, it was the worst traffic on the 401 in several years. You know what's worse than sitting on a bus that's crawling along at 5km/h for 4 hours? Listening to Christmas music on CHFI for two of those hours, and on top of that listening to the other students sing along. But enough of that.

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire was actually... good. Even I, an admittedly purist Pottermaniac, enjoyed it. After hearing that it was better than the Prisoner of Azkaban, I lowered my expectations; I didn't like the Prisoner of Azkaban. But I don't know what they changed, because Goblet came out halfway normal. (Normal as in, you know, good.) Daniel Radcliffe acted... fairly well. At least, I never cringed out of embarrassment for him. That's always good. In fact, I had a pretty big lump in my throat when Harry was crying and refusing to let go of Cedric's body after they portkeyed back to Hogwarts. Much better than in Prisoner of Azkaban when I tried not to laugh when Harry ran away and sat on a rock, crying because he found out that Sirius was his godfather.

And I loved how they spent a good fifth (or maybe quarter) of the movie on the Yule Ball, mostly because it was completely hilarious. I don't know where that scene of McGonagall teaching the Gryffindors to dance came from, but unlike the other invented scenes in the HP movies, I liked it. I also didn't quite understand Hermione's hysterics after the dance; I always thought of her as more emotionally stable. Oh well, it was still funny.

Now I want to see the next one.

posted 04:11 p.m. |

Tuesday, November 8, 2005

Tuesday night will henceforth be known as the Night of Procrastination. I have a bio lab due tomorrow, and it's worth some large percentage of the course grade... I've been home since 1:00 today. Here are the things I've done:

  1. Ate lunch and watched Days. Since I was doing two things at the same time, I think this was an effective use of time.
  2. Here's where it starts getting bad. Watched two episodes of The Cosby Show; I'm not sure why. They were funny, though. One of them had Denise hooking up her friend with Dr Huxtable because her friend had an STD or something and didn't want to tell her parents. The other was the one when Theo's math teacher came by for dinner and Theo was really, really embarrassed. If I were given the chance, I might watch the Cosby Show all day, which is why I regard it as a very dangerous program that should be taken off the air immediately.
  3. Even worse: listened to two episodes of Seinfeld while cleaning the kitchen. I cleaned the counters and the sink, washed the dishes, swept the floor, even emptied the crumb tray of the toaster. I could tell by then that I was just looking for ways to not do my lab report. On the other hand, the kitchen is spotless.
  4. Managed to kill an ungodly amount of time surfing soap opera message boards (which are as fascinating as ever - seriously) and Fark. Watched a 40th anniversary interview tribute video thing for Days of Our Lives and pretended to be all nostalgic for things that happened before I was born.
  5. Took out the garbage, and managed to organize the paper recyclables (which have been stagnating in a pile for a few weeks - newspaper, magazines, flyers, boxes and all). Took it all out to the curb.
  6. Started writing a blog entry.

As you can see, my time management skills are out of this world! At this rate, by the time of my bio lab tomorrow, everything that was ever possible to do will be done. Except my lab report.

My dad bought us a new vacuum cleaner. It's some Dirt Devil stick vacuum thing. I tried it out. You know those orbital floor waxers that spin around violently if you don't hold on to them? That's what this vacuum cleaner is like. Someone had left it on, and when I plugged it in it spun around, hit my foot and fell down. The thing is deceivingly small and light. And by gosh, this thing is loud. Like above-the-threshold-of-pain, should-require-hearing-protection loud. Full sized vacuums are not this loud. I'm already planning waking up at 3am and running this thing to mess with the guys next door.

My friends are getting into the habit of copying my notes during lectures. And aggressively so, as well. They'll lean over so their head is two inches from my nose to see, and physically move my hand if it's blocking that last word. Sometimes they copy what I write even if it's exactly the same thing the professor wrote on the transparency; apparently they can't read his writing. This, however, applies to three different professors.

My sister is talking to someone on her cellphone and it's really distracting.

posted 07:23 p.m. |

Wednesday, October 26, 2005

Take that, QUEST. My winter-term schedule is conflict-free - no thanks to the evil course coordinators, who cancelled the one chem lab section that my beautiful schedule's success hinged on. You had to cancel Friday. You could have cancelled any other day. Well, no biggie. A little frantic rearranging later, I am out of French Module 1 and into Intro to Sociology. Both bird courses, so no big deal... but I was really looking forward to French.

I'm feeling a little better, after finding marks in the mid-80s on a few of my midterms. I was talking to my bio lab partner:

Her: How are your marks?

Me: ...okay. I could have done better. You?

Her: Also okay. What's "okay" to you?

Me: You know, 80s or so.

Her: (gapes)

Me: (looks confused)

Her: If you had my marks, you might commit suicide. You know, you're insane. 70s are okay.

I don't know who to believe, but it sure was a boost.

i want to skip to next term. No 8:30 classes, done by 6pm every day? It's paradise.

posted 10:40 p.m. |

Tuesday, October 25, 2005

I am putting off both reading tomorrow's Chem and Bio lab procedures, and taking out the garbage.

My new friend is reaching new depths of annoyingness:

  • In our Psych lecture, while taking notes from a video about tetarogens in fetal brain development: she slept and woke up every few minutes to copy what I had written down. She even pointed to specific words and asked me what they were, because she couldn't make them out.
  • While studying in between classes: Her: "I have a question for you." Me: "Yeah?" She proceeds to have me check every one of her answers for her pre-lab Chem questions, and explain how to get the answers for the ones she didn't know.

I'm so petty and childish. By the way, that tetarogen stuff was freaky. They had a picture of a face that a kid with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome drew: apparently, frontal lobe damage hindered their environmental feedback, so they got "stuck" when drawing facial features - they couldn't tell when to stop. There was this long line of noses going down the page, six eyes and two mouths.

My foot's asleep. Hey, maybe I'll start posting every day again! That would be nice.

posted 06:03 p.m. |

Monday, October 24, 2005

Midterms are over. At least, for now. Thankfully, they all went pretty well. Even bio! In fact, bio was probably the easiest. Biology, Psych and Physics: A Triumvirate of Easiness.

Does triumvirate mean three men? I thought it meant three of anything, but I'm not sure.

Chem and Calc were good too, but Chem was pretty rushed and Calc involved a little of the patented "making stuff up that vaguely makes sense", so they're not in the triumvirate.

Commencement! I'm unexpectedly excited. Also, I really really want to go home, because living here sucks. For example, right now, the guys on the other side (these are the agonies of the semi-detached house) are screaming and going "YEAAAAHHHH!" and "OH MY GOOOODDDD!" and laughing like hyenas. Seriously, like hyenas. I'd tape them, because they really do soud like hyenas, but that might be illegal. There are several possible courses of action at this point:

  1. Do nothing. I kind of like this one, since I get to continue playing the long-suffering victim.
  2. Go over there and politely request that they refrain from yelling after 10:00pm. This one makes the most sense, but no fun.
  3. Bang on the wall. Quick, easy, may cause them to hate us.
  4. Scream at the top of my lungs. Preferably about really weird things and/or at 6 am. No, 5 am. One of the weirdest things is Star Trek. Maybe I'll scream "KHAAAANNN!" or "THERE ARE FOUR LIGHTS!!!". Yeah, that could work. I won't do it, though.
  5. The major easy copout: Waterloo has strict noise bylaws (it's a university town; I guess it's to be expected). I could just call the police on them. It's so unsatisfying, though.

For now, I will continue my suffering. I just want to get out of crazy Waterloo with the loud neighbours. I'm buying a bus ticket out of here tomorrow.

posted 10:07 p.m. |

Monday, October 10, 2005

Meme of the week, thanks to Stella:

Rules of the game: Post 5 Weird and Random facts about yourself, then at the end list the names of 5 people who are next in line to do this. Also leave a post on their blog to let these people know.

  1. The sound of a person chewing drives me insane. I'm too weak and cowardly to outwardly show it, but if you caught me with my family during a meal (or, heaven forbid, driving while someone was in the passenger seat eating something - my worst nightmare) you might see some... severe irritation. It's worse the more familiar I am with the person who's eating.
  2. When I'm wearing shoes, I find insects very interesting creatures. When I'm not, I find them horrible ugly things with too many legs and I run away.
  3. I hate clothes shopping. I can shop for many other things for hours, but as soon as I start looking for clothes I develop a massive headache and usually leave after an hour emptyhanded.
  4. I don't eat raw tomatoes. If you watch me while I eat a sandwich, I'll involuntary take out the slice of tomato.
  5. I also involuntarily remove my goggles during labs. I put them on, and five minutes later I realize they're on my forehead. So I put them back on, and this continues throughout the lab. The TAs are constantly on my back.

Wow, I'm so fascinating. I should do a Psych study on myself. All right, if you have a blog and you haven't done this, do it. And tell me so I can take credit for "referring" you. I mean, so I can read all about your interesting self.

posted 09:00 a.m. |

Sunday, October 9, 2005

I'm in Toronto! Ah, good food. Coming here probably wasn't the best idea - I rarely do any work when I'm home - but hey, it's Thanksgiving. I have two lab reports to write, and an experiment write-up for Psych. Yup... later.

To avoid the chaos of course selection for this term (I ignored my sister's advice to look up the courses before my enrollment appointment, preferring instead to put together a schedule as I enrolled in the courses) I've engineered my winter term schedule three weeks early. If all goes well, I should get this. Wow, no 8:30 classes! And check out Thursday - I can go home and watch DOOL live! As if I don't still tape it and watch it everyday regardless.

I want to go to Commencement, but why didn't they make it Thanksgiving weekend? I have a Physics lab October 28 that goes until 5:30pm; there's no way I can get to Woburn by 6:30. I guess I have to reschedule the lab.

Hmm, I told my dad I would be working on lab reports until 3 today. I'm feeling moderately guilty.

© 2002-2004 Kala S.