NASA’s Gravity Recovery and Lunar Interior Laboratory, a satellite orbiting the moon, has discovered what really caused the big, dark lunar feature called Oceanus Procellarum, the Ocean of Storms. Most scientists thought it had been blasted out by an ancient asteroid collision. But closer study shows that the feature is actually a series of lava-flooded rift valleys, like the cracks that appear where continents are pulling apart on Earth. The discovery shows that the moon used to be a much more active and violent place than experts had thought. (The pictures, from right to left, show the moon, its topography, and gravity gradients.)
Speaking of the moon, a total lunar eclipse is coming up on the morning of October 8. Might be worth a look if you’re up and about.
Oh my, a first post perhaps?
So I sassed my drawing professor in a major way today. We were trying to replicate a still-life with cut paper in four shades of grey (yes, in drawing class), and the only light source in the room was shining on the still life. Once it got dark (this is an evening class and gets out at 7:30), one of my classmates asked for a little more light and the professor grumbled but agreed. She then informed us that when she did this exercise as a freshman her professor blocked all the windows so it was “totally black” in the room. To which I replied, “And it was uphill both ways?”
She was unimpressed but I have no shame
even if I maybe should a little bitIt was uphill both ways ’cause in my day we all lived in an Escher drawing
October already? Holy cake, where is the time going? What monstrosity is eating up my time? I think I blame it on school.
Wow, time flies! Happy October, MuseBlog!
October! Mayhaps the best month of the year? It always blows past too quickly.
Had a 30 minute conversation about Star Trek, Doctor Who, and briefly Torchwood with a client of mine during a 30 minute hide-in-the-basement-of-the-vet-hospital tornado warning (watch? I can’t keep the two straight. The bad one, where a tornado ahs actually been sighted somewhere).
It was great.
That distressed feeling you get when you realize you’ve been pronouncing your favorite song’s title wrong the whole time…..
Don’t feel too bad, I’m the queen of mispronunciation. If you ever want to laugh, come with me to a restaurant and listen to me trying to order something I’d never heard of before from the menu. I *will* say it wrong, probably several times.
They have “Militia” on the menu?
I got that one wrong in second grade. It really DOES look like it would be pronounced “mil-ih-tah”…
I learned today that “succumb” is pronounced su-KUHM and not su-KOOM. Whoops.
And when I was little I said “organizal” (original), “whethether” (whether), and “sillahootie” (silhouette). I did TV commercial auditions for a bit and didn’t get in a Niagara grape juice ad because I insisted on pronouncing it “ny-GAR-a”.
I somehow reverted my phone to the status its predecessor had when I backed it up last year while trying to sync it? But I still have the apps I bought since? But all of my phone conversations and texts since are gone? But somehow I have the photos back that I had on my phone that was stolen that I had despaired of ever seeing again?
I don’t know, it was weird and scary.
Good Eats is now on Netflix. This is NOT a drill. I repeat, Good Eats is ON NETFLIX.
*goes back to puzzling about C and Unix*
I really want to marathon it now* but then I would want to eat things and I don’t feel like cooking.
*read: watch between one-half and three episodes, get bored or distracted, promise to come back to it for several months to years, when I come back it’s been so long that I have to start at the beginning. Cycle repeats.
Somebody in my dorm house has a Wii U and is letting us use it. Super Mario 3D world is the bomb! It’s so great to play with friends! I own 3D Land and was very optimistic about the prospects of the newest addition. There’s just the right amount of competition and cooperation to make every level exciting.
oops I just saw this… 3D world is great but I have no idea what you mean by “cooperation”??? There may or may not be videos of me and my else-internet friends playing it and making dumb jokes and cursing as we try to play the whole game in one stretch. I’d never reveal something like that though so this is all hearsay.
Happy Sputnik Day!
I’m grateful to Sputnik for enabling me to have a first-rate education.
It was also responsible for MB via a very indirect route.
Sputnik panic -> creation of DARPA -> development of ARPANET -> development of Internet -> creation of World Wide Web -> creation of MuseBlog.
Unless… DARPA created ARPANEat in the hopes it would lead to the creation of a community that would figure out a way to defeat the hot-pink menace… *X-Files theme*
So I’m helping costume a very Muserly musical called Zombie Prom that opens at the end of October. It’s kind of a Grease parody so it’s set in a high school next to a nuclear plant in the fifties. This girl named Toffee and this boy named Jonny fall in love, but Toffee’s parents think he’s a bad influence and force her to break up with him, and in a fit of despair he drives into the nuclear reactor…and later comes back as a zombie and tries to finish high school, get back together with Toffee, and attend the prom. It’s…weird. But really fun and I love doing costume stuff so I’ve been having a ton of fun.
Ha, it sounds great!
Guess who has a cat named Pangur Bán?
(ME IT’S ME I DO)
I assume you’ve sung the song to en.
Jade: white and grey! she’s adorable.
Rebecca: there’s a song!?
Look up the song “Aisling Song” on The Secret of Kells soundtrack! Or better yet, if you have the time, watch the movie
She sounds adorable!
I was thinking of the song in “The Secret of Kells,” but there is also a Samuel Barber setting of W. H. Auden’s translation of the original 9th-century poem.
The Auden/Barber version is very nice. I used to hum it to myself a lot during my senior year of college (though my cat was calico, not white).
Wikipedia says there’s another song, based on a translation by Seamus Heaney.
!!! That is very important and reminds me that I really need to watch that movie again.
I am in an airport. Phoenix here I come!! going to the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing 2014, where I will be presenting a poster.
Have fun!
Thank you!!!
Right now I’m running on 5 or 6 hours of sleep (went to bed at 11 and woke up at 5 today to get to the airport) and fumes from the cookie that was all they gave me on the plane ride. I am aware that I am posting much more and more disjointedly than usual. To be honest I’m pretty much in a fog right now – jet lag I guess? My soul’s still catching up to my body… (that’s something someone says in Pattern Recognition about jet lag)
Sorry everyone, hopefully I’m not too annoying and I reset soon.
You’re not at all annoying, Dodecahedron. Au contraire. You’re having an adventure, and we’re happy to hear about it.
Thank you ♥
The conference has been pretty great so far! My poster was well received (I think) and I’ve been meeting a lot of cool people. More cool people than usual are meeting me because of my engagement with the male allies fiasco* that’s been all over a certain microblogging site. The main problem is that the wifi has been really irregular (to put it politely) and usually doesn’t work.
*in summary: I’m at the preeminent women’s tech conference, which is 95% women, and they scheduled a large session that was full of men talking about how they were being good allies to women… including the CEO of GoDaddy, a company well known for sexist behavior. Many people online are very angry about it, myself included.
I’m glad you’re having so much fun!
update I am at the closing party, sitting outside the ballroom next to the power outlet, posting 140 character updates on the music that’s being played. There’s wifi here and the wifi at my hotel room doesn’t work so I guess I’ll stay here for a bit…
I giggled when I saw a sign in the student union that said “1$ for Ebola” because syntactic ambiguity is funny.
And then I donated because finding a cure is important.
SFTDP.
So I think I’m going to try to go to SpaceVision this year.
Trying to decide how much of the eclipse to watch. If I go to sleep now and get up at four I’ll get almost six hours of sleep and I’ll still see all the phases of the eclipse… Hmm.
Update: Woke up at 4:00. Discovered my beautiful cloudless sky had turned overcast. Did not stay up.
I repeated this cycle two hours later, just in case. No luck here. I hope others had a better time.
From what I can figure out, I don’t think the eclipse is visible here (not with the sky so cloudy, at any rate).
Anyhow… New classes, yay! I also have to write my first thesis and present it, which is kind of scary. My classes are also shaping up to be more intense than last semester, so thank goodness I have less of them.
And I had my first in-traffic motorcycle lesson. My brain still hasn’t quite registered that I survived. I know that 50-70 km/h isn’t fast, but it kinda is when you’re on a motorcycle surrounded by cars and trucks and things that could make bookgirl go splat. But it was awesome, and I officially feel more badass than Kiki Strike (vespas, amrite
).
So you know that client I mentioned on the previous thread that spent 30 minutes talking to about Doctor Who and Star Trek, etc during the evacuation to the basement during the tornado watch? Who is married with little kids?
He just sent me a friend request on facebook today. I would like to stress that I don’t think he meant anything creepy by it, nothing about any of our interactions came across that way, just a person with common interests who appreciated all the work we did for his pet.
I’m just not sure what the appropriate response is given that our previous relationship is that of “doctor” and client. Is it appropriate to be facebook friends with a former client?
Ethical questions. :/
I have a friend who frequently uses the phrase “can we talk about…?” with no intention of starting a conversation and only to draw attention to whatever inane thing he’s doing.
Ugh.
So. On list of intelligent decision making, watching the new TV show “Stalker” when hanging out in a hotel is not the smartest move…..Right up there with watching horror movies when I was housesitting when I was 16.
As if I didn’t have enough paranoia. And the first episode last week wasn’t even that engaging, and had my mom pointing out to me every few minutes of that episode, as well as the season premiere of Criminal Minds “this is why I’m always warning you to be careful and why I’m going to be even more concerned/bugging you to check in all the time/etc when you are in Las Vegas.” As if I won’t be paranoid enough when I am in Las Vegas, without her telling me after on Criminal Minds there’s a scene wehre lots of men are buying kidnapped women on the internet that this si why she’s so worried about me going to be in Vegas. Thanks mom. Now I”m going to add “being kidnapped and auctioned off as a sex slave” to my list of terrified thoughts everytime I see a shadow.
In light of… whatever those physics theorems were, I can now say MAGNET(IC FIELD)S. HOW DO THEY WORK. I would also say that 9am is too early for integrals, but I haven’t actually been to a lecture for that class in several weeks.
I got to see the lunar eclipse last night. There were plenty of clouds but they stayed out of the way. It was even at a reasonable hour – it was over by 12.30, which is early for me.
Last week my school’s comedy society put on a sketch show! which I acted in.
We had a very lose plot interspersed with random stuff. Given that people came, and laughed, I’d say it went well, copious quantities of fake blood and all.
(One of) my weirdo group’s next meet up topic is contrarianism – share the opinions that are contrarian for that group, which may be mainstream or yet another flavour of weird. Given that I’m apparently still not bold enough to hold an argument on anything I care about, I’m just going to sit there creepily noting what everyone else admits to.
I met up with three of my high school friends over the weekend, and… I have a lot of feels, but what I’d like to note here is that two of them are also obsessed with my recently-acquired fandom, Orphan Black.
Cute little kids at Public Night who want to talk about astronomy and have lots of questions always brighten my day.
Gun day fun day! Spent all day with my dad/uncle/assorted friends and cousins to the gun club slash outdoor gun range. Shot a 9mm, a .308, a Judge, an M1, an M16, an AR-15, a Winchester, and a Remington Rolling Block. The 9mm Glock is my dad’s which I’ve shot before. I’m terrible with it and I don’t much enjoy it. The .308 was hugely different, and I was a lot tighter with it. The Judge was really cool–it’s a revolver that can shoot .45’s or .410’s. It was a lot lighter and had a lot less kickback than I expected, and you couldn’t really feel or hear any difference between the two rounds. The M1 was probably my favorite today–it’s astonishingly accurate at 100 yards for iron sights. The M16 had a silencer, and with subsonic rounds it sounded like an airsoft gun–really crazy. The sight was set up for 200 yards though, so you had to aim way low, or at least I did. The AR-15 I’ve shot before as well, and I think I’ve gotten worse with it. The Winchester had the hardest recoil and so I wasn’t remotely accurate with it, plus it gave me some new bruises/calluses on my palms. The action is really heavy, too. The Rolling Block was made sometime in the decade after the Civil War, we think for the Spanish Army, and it hadn’t been fired in at least a hundred years. It worked great! A lot less recoil and noise than we expected–it was really easy to shoot. The first round we were pretty cautious with though, with a clamping/remote trigger pulling system (just in case it exploded). Once we determined that it didn’t malfunction catastrophically, we all gave it a try ourselves. If the rounds weren’t four bucks apiece I would’ve shot it a lot more!
Once again I missed the chance to visit the Leif Erikson statue on Commonwealth Ave on Leif Erikson Day (Thursday), but I was able to visit the day after and take photos. Hinga dinga dargin!
Is there a fandom for axolotls? Because they are adorable and endangered and superpowered and I saw some at the aquarium yesterday and wrote a poem about them…
Kokonventions! I’m about to meet Fireh, who is also going to be visiting my school tomorrow!
Awesome!
Have fun, both of you!
Proud day to be an Alaskan.
As I’m sure comes as a big surprise to absolutely no one, when it comes to following current events…..I am ages and ages and ages behind.
So imagine my surprise when I saw a headline on Friday (or maybe yesterday?) that the State of Alaska was being sued by several same-sex couples for the 1998 ban on same-sex marriage being unconstitutional.
Imagine my even greater surprise when I was reading comments on the article, and saw a comment that named the judge who would be making the ruling, and I recognized his last name. A brief bit of googling revealed what I suspected–I went to kindergarten with one of his sons ((said son and I were mortal enemies, for reasons I really actually don’t know, I just know that we continued to despise each other for years, when we interacted in other extracurricular activities throughout the years)). But that made a matter that I feel very strongly about, hit even closer to home, because holy cake I actually “know” the judge making the ruling, or rather knew one of his kids.
And imagine my very very very very happy surprise, when I found out a ruling was actually made over the course of the weekend. The judge in question ruled that Alaska’s ban was unconstitutional, which as far as I can tell, therefore makes Alaska the latest state to allow same-sex marriage.
So like I said. Proud day to be an Alaskan.
But seriously holy cake, small world, much?
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, PAUL BAKER!
Sorry about the late notice, everybody. It was today. Circumstantial evidence suggests that he must be about 500 years old. And there was much rejoicing!
Happy birthday, Paul! May your hurdy gurdies never falter and your shawms ever squawk!
Happy Birthday, Paul!
Happy birthday, Paul!
512.
Thank you all. It is greatly appreciated, especially since I tend to forget it myself.
For the record, I spent my brthday playing in Winchester Great Hall, below the Original Round Table which now hangs on the wall. The BBC was filming a discussion programme about Scottish devolution and the West Lothian Question. For some reason which largely eluded me, they wanted Elizabethan musicians to play before and after the discussion. One doesn’t ask. One simply takes the cheque.
That sounds like a very nice birthday.
Today at college I was wearing a fandom T-shirt and sneakers and sat next to this girl with preppy clothes, makeup, and her hair done up nice. We could probably have passed for the two girls in that Taylor Swift song. Anyway, she was telling her friend how Pretty Little Liars is on its 9th season and has become repetitive and boring, but she feels like she still has to watch it out of loyalty. I told her that I have the same problem with Supernatural (on its 10th season), and we agreed that it’s hard for a show to stay fresh and original after 5 seasons or so.
I don’t know, it was nice to see that even people who would seem to have nothing in common are united by disappointment for long-running franchise decline.
I’ve been coding purely in C for the last week, but now I have to do a programming assignment in Python, and it is unexpectedly weird. You mean I don’t really have to keep track of pointers? No semicolons? No type declarations? aaaah what is happening
C is assembler in disguise. Python is a proper language. But SLOW.
I have a friend who is a fierce opponent of Python. I’m pretty sure he’s a programming language hipster, because he’s currently learning Haskell, haha.
But seriously. It is weird to just declare that something exists without specifying what it is.
Has no one really ever made blueprints of either iteration of the Spaceship of the Imagination or am I just not using the right search terms?
*bursts in*
HOMESTUCK UPD8 MOST LIKELY ON FRIDAY
…thought you ought to know.
*faints*
*revives*
NEVERMIND IT’S TODAY
but it’s only one page and the site crashed
*faints*
Did you see the page? People put up a mirror.
Welcome back.
*update*
The upd8 is gone now. okay.
*waits until tomorrow*
Holy cake, “Dante’s Peak” is awesome, it’s like “St. Helens” except decent. (I actually wonder if the fact that they had the helicopter pilot be a jerk who dies was a Take That to “St. Helens” where the helicopter pilot is the hero’s sidekick.)
Has anyone heard of a singer-songwriter named Marian Call? I went to a concert she played in a coffeehouse near Union Station last night. She has a “They Might Be Giants”-like sensibility and sang a couple of their songs. It was refreshing to hear songs by someone who apparently has no inner demons and enjoys life.
But for me part of the fun of They Might Be Giants is that they do (sometimes) have inner demons – they just express them as obliquely and artistically as possible. Especially their earlier work (I’ve Got A Match is… not exactly the pinnacle of subtlety), but let’s take their most recent album Nanobots. Replicant is about raising a child. Black Ops is about foreign policy. I feel like a lot of their shorter songs on Nanobots follow this too – e.g. Sleep, Nouns.
(I’m not going to touch on their children’s albums because I have to get to class, but I do feel there’s a little tension on Here Comes Science – Science is Real makes a political statement. I’m most familiar with No, because I was still in the target audience when it came out, but I think there’s something there – Four of Two?)
Anyway, I’ll look her up!
drink, empty bottle blues
also your racist friend
That looked weird in the recent comments bar.
I really like that song. I like hearing songs about someone who doesn’t want to put up with their friend’s racist friend’s cake and is done with it all.
did I ever tell you about the time we went to see TMBG in concert and my partner messed up the audience participation chanting in Drink so badly that John Flansburgh had to start it over?
also I think there is a paper to be written on alienation and loneliness in TMBG’s early music especially. (maybe limit it to the pink album but you don’t have to?)
anyway I am in class so… deep thought will have to wait…
They do, but she doesn’t seem to. As far as I could tell, MC is a happy geek comfortable in her own skin. Maybe it’s all that sunshine she soaked up at Stanford.
Whereas we Berzerklers exude a constant haze of vaporized caffeine, stress hormones, and gray Bay fog.
ah, yes, it’s so cheerful and happy here and ahahahaha I am so busy and stressed *twitch*
^ Stanford Duck Syndrome, everyone. You look peaceful on the surface, but you’re furiously paddling to stay afloat.
So it’s not that different from Berkeley in that sense. (Everyone pretends to be fine, which coincidentally makes everyone feel terribly alone and inadequate.)
Re: your parenthetical observation…. this is a fine time to talk about stress culture, is it not? The attitude you’re describing is toxic. I would know, firsthand. I don’t know what individuals can do about it except opening themselves up to talk about not being fine (which puts themselves at great personal risk for little/no gain).
I think it’s really sad that it appears that nothing’s been done about stress culture, two full years after the Carnegie Mellon op-ed about it got so much press. (I won’t link, but it was written by a student for the student newspaper and is called “The happy mask”)
If anyone wants some stress-relieving warm dizzied and corny jokes, I’m here.
Fuzzies. Don’t you know that word, Autocorrect? Warm FUZZIES.
I’ve tried to open up more about it. I haven’t lost any friends who mattered; I’ve gained some friends who turn out to have similar experiences. Of course, you can really only do that in a safe, non-professional environment, where you’re not actively competing with anyone, but it’s a start.
>Of course, you can really only do that in a safe, non-professional environment,
The more I think about this, the more I think that change has to start with each of us who can, and personal/professional divides are largely self-constructed out of fear. (Says the person scared to come out as non-straight at my last internship, much less as mentally ill. Grains of salt.)
I was perhaps more open than was entirely wise to strangers at Grace Hopper this year, but I’m not job searching now, so I have that luxury. I have no idea what the environment will be like at my company (!) when I start in February (though they are a startup so I like to pretend they’ll understand). But I really want to be out and I really want to be open, so I’ll just see how it goes and if opportunities present themselves.
The stress culture at my school is interesting. We all say that Duck Syndrome is huge here, and in some ways it is, but I also hear people say “I’m stressed, I’m busy, I’m tired, I have soooo much work this week *a lot*. Sometimes it’s even to the point where I wish people would stop talking about all of the work they’re supposed to be doing during the times that we do have to take a breather, such as meals. We’re all so busy that we can’t even deny the stress. Does that happen at your schools, too?
Yes, somewhat, but — it’s a bit more complicated. People say “I’m so busy” or “I’m stressed out” or “I have so much work,” but rarely “I don’t know what I’m going to do” or “I’m not coping well” or “I’m falling behind.” There’s a difference I can’t quite articulate at the moment.
It’s the difference between a “meh, I’ll deal with it” attitude (whether or not the person can actually deal with it) and actually admitting that en needs help.
Yeah, exactly.
That’s a very good point. Thank you for highlighting that distinction.
It rings very true to me because I’m worried about my best friend here, whose usual answer to “how are you doing?” is a list of all the assignments she has to do. She was telling some of us about an awful cycle she was in of staying up until 4am to finish her work, then trying to do work in the afternoon and falling asleep because she was so tired, then working until 4am again because she couldn’t get everything done in the afternoon. The kicker is she told us that before she started 2-4 hour rehearsals for a musical. I can’t imagine she’s okay, but she’s never actually said “I’m not okay” or “I’m falling behind”. There definitely is a difference.
That sounds very familiar to me, as it’s exactly what I did–avoiding the question of answering how I’m doing (since the answer would be: I’m about to fall apart and I don’t know how much longer I can keep faking this) by instead talking about the objects behind those feelings. “How are you” gets “I have a massive project do tomorrow and I can’t focus” instead of “really bad and now that I’ve said that I’m going to start crying.” Part avoidance, part denial, part coping mechanism to lie to myself as well so I could actually keep working instead of breaking down.
You should probably give your friend some chocolate x_x
No, that doesn’t happen at my school.
Sometimes I am concerned that the level of academic rigor at my school is insufficient, in the computer science department at least, to prepare students for the rigor of technical interviews at the kind of companies I want to work for. (The school seems focused on getting students to work for small businesses/local startups that do, at best, web development for entrepreneurs, with maybe a good student going to work for IBM. I’ve always aimed higher than that – not that IBM is anything to sneer at, I mean I worked there for two summers, but my goal for the past few years has been to leave the local area for bigger/better things.)
On the other hand… not everyone can be a technical superstar who works for Google, we need entrepreneurs to have websites too. And trading that for a sane school environment, where people aren’t stressed to the verge of breakdown, is in my eyes an acceptable compromise.
That definitely doesn’t happen here. We are all united in our busy workloads. Unfortunately bragging about how you absolutely live at office hours usually doesn’t lead well to “and I am still having such a hard time in this class and I feel really overwhelmed by everything”. The hahaha *twitch* seem to be how most people, including me, approach it.
But I ask for it. I never learn. Every quarter I think my workload is going to be okay, and then right after the add/drop deadline I realize I’ve bitten off more than I can chew. I’ve managed to stay afloat so far, but I’m afraid this quarter will be the one that does me in. (I always think that, but then it never does, so I always feel okay… and then optimistic enough again to continue the cycle.)
This is what it’s like at my high school. Maybe it’s different in colleges.
POSOC’s covered a lot of what I would say on this, but yeah. the farther along I got in college and the better I got to know people, the ones who always seemed happiest/the least stressed turned out to also be a mess and just hid it very well, or had broken down earlier and were now using therapy/meds to properly deal with it.
At one point, the school did a college-wide survey on mental health. The results were never published & the study never mentioned again after (though they’d said beforehand they wanted to put it out), and i heard from someone who worked in an administration office later that the results were overwhelmingly negative and shocked the college so much they didn’t feel comfortable publishing the data anymore.
If you have a small percentage of people who aren’t doing well, you can advertise it as “you’re not alone.” When it’s the majority of the group, you have to start admitting that maybe a big cause is in how the environment works and admit at least responsibility
When I read your second paragraph I almost started cackling bitterly in the library. We’ve talked about these issues before, but I don’t remember that story. Wow.
See the Constellation is anti-light-pollution, if only lightly (ha!) so.
I’ve heard of her. She’s friends with The Doubleclicks, I think. (They’re another band of the same sort and I saw them recently.)
I do agree with Dodec re: inner demons, though.
I had time to listen to a couple songs just now. You know who she reminds me of, more than TMBG? Jonathan Coulton.
I don’t know him, but the description on his Wikipedia page certainly sounds similar.
Try “Future Soon” or “Re: Your Brains”
Also: “I’m Your Moon”, and “Code Monkey”.
“Space Doggity”, “Good Morning Tucson”, “Shop Vac”, “Ikea”, and “Skullcrusher Mountain” are good too.
Holy cake, I almost forgot about my blogiversary! Has it really been half a decade?!
Happy blogiversary!
I missed mine in September… It must be 5 years for me too; mind-boggling!
Congrats!
(About 8 1/4 years for me… time flies!)
Decades aren’t what they used to be.
Today at work it was decided that I am, by May, going to have helped write a chapter of a book and put together a small exhibit on a historic archaeology site nearby. So that’s cool. I get to find out whether public history is something I’m actually as interested in as I think I am.
Awesome! Good luck!
Enjoy the project!
Yesterday I sliced my left thumb open while chopping onions. Today I managed to burn part of my leg by spilling very hot tea. Conclusion: I am not good at life skills.
Ouch, I’m sorry. *gives ice and bandages*
I also sliced my left thumb while chopping onions last week. Life skills are hard.
Fortunately, thumbs are resilient.
I’ve sliced my left thumb innumerable times and even dissolved it with nitric acid once in chemistry lab. It’s fine now except for some barely perceptible scars.
You dissolved your WHOLE thumb?
Well, not quite, but it did change shape alarmingly. It looked as if it was melting. It was lopsided for about a week but then returned to normal.
Yikes! I’m glad it ended up okay.
When you said “dissolved” I thought you meant something more permanent, and as you seemed to have two healthy thumbs on the occasions I met you, I was confused. (Of course, prosthetic technology continues to get better and better…)
My senior thesis is shaping up both better an worse than I thought. Better because I’ve actually figured out what I want to write and how I want to write it (and i’m actually ahead of the official schedule, woot!), worse because I emailed my supervisor two weeks ago that I wanted to discuss the first part of the thesis. Which would’ve given me two long weekends + some week-time to write it, but since I spent the first weekend having pharyngitis I’m way behind and I can’t make up the four full days(!) I lost.
But I think supervisors might be people too so if I give him the rough draft and tell him what happened it might be okay? I mainly want to discuss the structure, remind him that I’m still alive (I asked him to supervise me a month before the semester officially started and we haven’t met since) and ask pesky questions about proper citation. I’m just afraid of coming off as lazy (because I haven’t written much and won’t have time to correct the style) and incompetent (because I don’t fully understand everything I’m writing about; I haven’t had time to do all the research).
Just explain that you were sick – supervisors are people too! Surely he/she has gotten sick before, and you’re still well on track even if you aren’t as far as you hoped you’d be.
I like photography class, I just really don’t like having to approach strangers on the sidewalk and ask permission to take photos of them. It’s just too weird and awkward. I wish our assignments didn’t have to be of people.
So. Question of curiosity. Did any of the rest of you get your halloween candy x-rayed after going trick or treating as kids? I don’t think it was every year, but I do have vague memories of taking my candy somewhere as a kid and getting it x-rayed.
((This memory and question brought to you as a result of a blurb on the radio yesterday about people in Colorado lacing halloween candy with pot.))
Not x-rayed, just examined by my parents before I could eat it.
Things I’ve learned about cats: they can yawn! I’m sure everyone but me already knew this, but it’s really deeply incredible anyway. And they really do walk across keyboards. (Also, she likes to hide behind the books on my bookshelf. We have Much In Common.)
You hide behind books on your bookshelf?
I hide behind books in other places.
Okay so today was an emotional day for me and I’m going to type this out to hopefully burn off a little excess energy so that I can get to sleep.
As I’ve mentioned once or twice, I’m applying to a monastery at the moment. The paperwork is long and grueling and taking way more time than I expected. My most recent setback has been that I’ve had some questions about some of the forms, and I needed those questions answered before I could complete the paperwork. So about six weeks ago I emailed the monastery. Three weeks go by, no response. Okay, that’s fine. So I sent them a letter as well. Another three weeks…nothing. Hrm. A little frustrating, but they’re extremely busy.
This morning my mom and I drove to the seminary (where I was originally going to go) for a tonsure ceremony there, as we do every year. It was great, I talked to my seminarian friends, I ate some tasty food. On the way out, my mom stopped by the restroom and so I checked my phone–I had missed two phone calls from a number I didn’t recognize. I googled the number, assuming it was another telemarketer or scam. But it wasn’t–it was a mobile number registered in Wyoming. Oh! I think I know who that is! So we drove home and I called them back and left a voicemail, then proceeded to stare at my phone for several hours.
Around the four-hour mark (Youtube was kind enough to keep me company) I suddenly had a thought: had my spam filter eaten any emails from the monastery? I dug through my Gmail trash to check: it had! October 2, an email from the monastery answering every question I had, and I hadn’t seen it because it went straight to trash thanks to an overzealous filter I’d set up a while ago. I fired off a quick, somewhat typo-riddled response explaining I’d only just seen the email and there was no need to call me back now.
So, the big things: one, they’ll accept a copy of the results of the physical I got for the seminary because I can’t afford to get a new physical just for them; two, since two of my letters of recommendation are from priests, the third can be from a close friend of mine who’s in the know in re the monastery; three, all the monks there miss me and want me there as soon as possible, and Father Prior “believe[s] with all [his] heart in [my] discernment and [my] call to Carmel,” further opining that my family’s opposition only seems to confirm my vocation.
And then my football team won handily–that always helps too. Now I’m subtly bouncing off the walls despite the fact that I have very few hours left before tomorrow in which sleep is an option. I hopped on IRC in hopes that my two best friends would be on and could put up with my joyflailing, but I think you guys were actually a better option. IRC doesn’t lend itself to such longwindedness.
Anyway, it seems now that I could realistically finish one hundred percent of the paperwork within maybe two weeks. I’m going to call that friend of mine tomorrow about the letter of recommendation, plus I need to call about the medical paperwork, and I need to get a copy of my baptismal certificate. Just a few other minor, easy things and that should be it. After that, it’s completely up to the monastery as to when I’ll be able to enter. It sounds like they want me ASAP, which is awesome because that’s exactly what I want too.
I don’t think I was successful here in lulling myself to sleep. Well, nothing to do but lie in bed and wait for visions of sugarplums, or something.
Nothing says fun like ants in your hotel room, right? Especially when you discover there existence when one goes crawling across your pillow.
It’s not spiders, though. Or ticks. Or maggots. So I’m not having an emotional breakdown, I’m just irritated. Less irritated than I have been by the children who have been playing hockey in the hallway ALL DAY
I’ve noticed a pattern in my life. 90% of the time I have nothing but my regular weekly activities on the agenda. The other 10% of the time everything’s going on at once and I’m rushing around and trying to coordinate two other things while in the middle of a third and I won’t be home for another two days.
Guess which kind of week this was.
Saturday was the best of it. One of my friends invited me to a book festival, and I went and met authors and got signed books. Probably the highlight of that was when one author was on a panel with the author of the book which had originally inspired her and gotten her into writing and shaped her entire career, the way she told it. They spent a large portion of the panel sending warm fuzzies back and forth, and it was a lot of fun to watch.
Then I went pretty much straight from there to a showing of Star Trek: Into Darkness with my city’s symphony playing the soundtrack to it live. I’d wanted to go to that ever since I’d heard of it, because I love the movie and I love soundtracks even more.
I almost didn’t get to go to it, though, because when I bought my ticket I accidentally got one for the showing Friday rather than the one on Saturday, and I had something I absolutely couldn’t miss Friday evening. I tried to switch the ticket, but I didn’t meet with any success through the official channels. Then sometime late Friday, my mom thought to talk to my violin teacher, who plays with the symphony even though he isn’t an official member, and he talked to his wife, who is an official member and a section leader at that, and she talked to the CEO of the cakin’ symphony! and I ended up with a ticket.
In the first ten rows.
Like, I’d originally bought the absolute cheapest option at the very back of the balcony. I was fine with that, and I expected I’d get another seat back there, probably tucked in a corner or somewhere nobody wanted to sit. Nope.
It was absolutely amazing.
That sounds absolutely amazing.
In less than a week I’m going to be in Vegas.
I’m kind of excited and terrified and oh my god this year is moving way too fast.
Random thought– given that contemporary neoclassical architecture is typically the natural color of the stone or painted white while actual Ancient Greek architecture had colored accents and fully-painted friezes, would Ancient Greeks looking at our imitations of their architecture think we were dull and boring?
I know a Classics professor who believes yes.
Last night the Melbourne/Sydney weirdos I consort with had our monthly Google hangout and it was amazing. When I read HP3 and tried to think what I’d use to cast the Patronus charm, nothing quite fit. Now something does. It will suck when I inevitably find out that something everyone believes is wrong (I don’t have specific sneaking suspicions, just general cynicism), but eh.
I was adding lecture notes to my Anki deck for much of it, because I didn’t want to miss the start or *gasp* do anything on Saturday. It was weird when everyone was tired because I had two major assignments due Friday and my sleep schedule had drifted to 3am. My asking what would be on around the time I expected to be in Sydney led to them convincing me that planning travel doesn’t have to be a total nightmare and is in fact a solvable problem.
I’ve accepted/ decided I want to accept that to have the kind of career I want and probably to do a lot of other things I’ll often have to be busy with ongoing things, and it’s better and possible to just learn to feel less stressed and continue with doing things instead of putting them off.
After all, if I don’t make room for things like high-quality leisure, I’ll end up aimlessly browsing the internet anyway.As I’m furiously working on a matlab problem set, during a break I realize: I actually think of Chicago as a home now. I really like it here, even though I’ve been more stressed out than I even have before. I have a whole lot of freedom, something I didn’t have back at home even with my car. I’m free to like all the stuff my parents don’t want me to like. It’s pretty amazing. And I really appreciate the few friends I’ve made here. I hope we all can keep on being friends after we graduate.
I’m being super sentimental because it’s my last year. But I really did like these past three years (last year more than most), even though I didn’t do a lot. Hopefully this year I can get out more to make my time here a little more fulfilling.
So I dreamed about this last night and now that I’m awake, it actually is quite interesting– if all if the hydra’s heads depend on the same internal organs, if you could avoid the heads and destroy its HEART, would that kill it without the need to cut off any heads?
That makes sense! I think it would be really difficult to get to the heart, though, since the heads are so long.
Oh, certainly. You’d probably need someone to fight the heads as a distraction, Hades’ Helmet of Invisibility, or both.
Did I mention I got a chalumeau a few weeks ago? Well, I did, and it’s fabulous and I love it. Also, i’m starting to have a social life. And making friends at college. And I finally cut off an extremely toxic friendship that I’m determined not to let them back into my life as I had the previous times I’ve “cut them off” because you know what, I’m worth more than that. Realizing that last night was an extremely important moment. I cried a lot, out of sheer relief and happiness because guess what guys? I’ve come so far against my depression in the past few years, and sometimes I forget that and things seem so dark so much of the time but then sometimes I’ll realize I think I’m worth it, I think I’m amazing, I think I deserve to be happy, and just how far i’ve come since the days when I never thought I would deserve anything other than loneliness and contempt is INCREDIBLE and I just wanted to share this with you guys because I love you all and you have been a huge part of this and I wanted to thank you guys so much for loving me when I thought I didn’t deserve it and showing me that I do.
Reading this makes me so happy, fireh! You are so amazing, you absolutely deserve to be happy, and know that we’re always here for you and we’ll always love you.
I’m so glad to hear that!
Today I’m really sick and lightheaded with a sore throat, I keep sneezing and I feel alternately too hot and too cold. I might have to miss drama club today if my parents will let me.
In better news, I was looking for reference pictures to draw my favorite YouTubers as Jaeger pilots and found out they actually did a video in collaboration with the Pacific Rim creators. With Guillermo del Toro in a kaiju suit.
I hope you feel better. Rest up and have some tea. And share your fanart with us when you finish if you want!
Okay, so I’ve finally broken down and have started reading Homestuck.
So far, I find it entertainingly addicting, I may just read on.
I’ve debated doing the same thing a couple times, but I don’t really have a good way to run Flash, and I hear that would be a problem.
Oh, yeah, it is for me, too.
I usually use Firefox for my internet, but I’m forced to use Explorer when I load Homestuck, because for some dumb reason, Flash refuses to install onto Firefox.
You can look up the flashes on Youtube if you search for the page name!
Hah, I knew someone would have a helpful solution.
Good to know. I’m still too busy to start it now, but I’m sure that’ll be useful when I get around to starting.
I second this! It’s what I do on mobile and is much better than skipping the large parts of the plot contained in Flash.
Ok, so, January. Probably the 11th, confirmation pending (though Father Prior’s the one that suggested it). I didn’t get to break the news to my mom the way I wanted, but when the archbishop asks straight up, you’re not going to just tell him it’s a secret. I don’t think she’s told my dad or my sister yet. Well, even she doesn’t know the exact date. Told my boss I’d be around through the end of November. I’ve got so much to do, so many people to visit, so many trips to make to Goodwill…or the landfill. The landfill looks a lot more tempting, actually.
I’ve been giving more credence to corny love songs lately. Having one topic that you think about constantly, literally from the moment you wake up till the moment you fall asleep? Turns out that’s actually possible. Actually, sleeping’s pretty tough, I’m too excited. Frequently throughout the day the realization of what’s happening hits me again and I get all giddy and can’t do anything useful. Well, not that I’m useful anyway, but it gets even worse.
Heh. Obviously I have different reasons again for liking corny love songs, but I see why “married to [something that’s not a person]” is such a common metaphor.
A metaphor? Try my life!
Wow. Piggy, I’m so happy for you!
I’m so excited for you, Piggy!
What will moving there be like? What do you know about what your life will be like at first?
I’m not 100 percent sure yet of the details, but basically I think my family and I will fly out there, there’ll be a lot of crying and hugging, and then I’ll “enter” as an observer for about a week, wearing my normal clothes and not entering the enclosure proper. After that I’ll be clothed as a postulant and wear a sort of modified/junior version of their religious habit (it looks a bit dorky). After a year as a postulant, the council will vote on whether to accept me as a novice, at which point I’ll receive the full habit as well as my new name in religion (“Brother So-and-So of the Such-and-Such”). Two years as a novice and then (pending a vote) I’ll take temporary vows, which last for three years, and if I’m still okay after that (we’re up to six years now), I’ll take my final, AKA perpetual vows.
The life there revolves mainly around the Mass, which is celebrated each morning with all the monks, and the Divine Office, which is a series of prayers and hymns that are chanted together at eight different times throughout the day and night. Obviously there’s breakfast, lunch, and dinner as well, plus one hour of recreation (recess!). There are also two one-hour periods of mental prayer, one in the morning and one in the evening. Outside of that, there’s a lot of work to be done, especially since they’re in the middle of a huge construction project building a new monastery. I’d imagine the newbies like myself are given the more menial tasks at first. There’ll be time for reading and study as well, especially for the “choir monks”, which are the ones who are priests (or will be in the future). The “lay brothers”, the non-priests, orientate their lives more towards work, and they don’t pray all eight hours of the Office. They also get to wear a Leatherman-type multitool on their belt as an official part of their habit (so cool!).
I won’t share a URL, but if you google “Carmelite monks”, their website should be one of the first results, because they’re the only Carmelites in the world right now that call themselves monks. The website probably explains things better than I can, plus there’s pictures and whatnot.
I won’t be on the internet anymore once I enter, but if anyone is in great need of contacting me, feel free to write a letter. Whether I hear from you or no, everyone here should know that I’ll be praying for you for the rest of my life, and my absence will not diminish how much I love all you guys.Y’all’re seriously the best, you know that?
I’d be glad to write you a letter.
I’m so excited for you, Piggy, and glad you’ve found something that you’ll find so fulfilling. How will it be possible for us to get an address to send letters to you at, when that time comes?
How should we address letters sent to you? The other monks might find it strange if someone sent you a letter addressed to “Piggy”.
I can’t imagine why they’d find that strange.
“Daniel” might be a better way to address any letters. As for where to send them (re: Tess), there’s an address at the bottom of their website, although I know of another address as well, which I sent all of my application materials to. Neither of them are the address of the actual monastery. The next time I call them, I’ll ask them where letters should be sent.
Wow, this is huge news. I wish you the best! <3
Wow, holy cake! I will most certainly try to write somehow!
Hey. I miss you guys.
Hey right back, we miss you, too! What have you been up to?
Hullo there! Good to see you!
THF, it’s really nice to hear from you again! How are things?
So I’m watching the latest episode of Forever, and I’m thinking the voice of the female Asian antiques dealer sounds really really really familiar. And that *maybe* she looks titch familiar, but I can’t place it. So I look her up on IMDb. And I’m scrolling back through her acting history, and thinking, no, none of this would make sense, little one episode roles at most in things I’ve seen, and as I scroll further, I’m like, no, must be someone else who sound similar, because I”m all the way back in the 90s–OMG she’s Miles O’Brien’s wife on Star Trek, *that’s* why she sounds familiar.
“ferrets should not be fasted for longer than six hours, as they become irritable.” Conclusion: I must be part ferret
Ugh, it turned cold and rainy…
I really want to paint a mural. I just need to find someone who wants one. Maybe a local school…
I bet they would! Or a community center, or a park?
John Finnemore’s Souvenir Program had a new episode today! It’s a radio sketch show, you can listen to it on iPlayer for a while — I’ve been listening to it for a while, but today’s episode is unusually fantastic. I highly recommend it, if you like sketch comedy.
I am currently looking up how to take the train(s) from Grand Central to the American Museum of Natural History. I applied on a whim for a hackathon there in two weeks and got accepted! I’m not sure how thrilled I am about staying overnight with no sleep and then taking the train to approximately home for hours (then driving another half hour from the train station), but on the other hand it’s literally called HACK THE UNIVERSE. I am thinking of you KaiYves!!
In a few months, New York will be where I’m living, and I’m excited for that new stage of my life, but I’m not sure I’m ready to be a person who is from the place people think of when they think New York. I think the Mid-Hudson Valley will be “home” for me for a little while longer…
Awesome! Travel safe and have fun!
I was never terrifically intimate with the nested-comments format of the blog, so I’m not sure if I’m being impolite in posting a quasi-response separate from the original train it was in, but LIFE IS FOR THE LIVING! I MUST THROW CAUTION TO THE WIND!
Hi!
It’s nice to hang with the MB! It seems everyone is doing well!
In THF news, things are good! I graduated high school a year and a half ago and I took a gap year doing sundry things. I’m now a first-year at Macalester College and enjoying it immensely. I’m doing slam poetry and break-dancing and sketch comedy and meditation and you know, taking classes on the side. It’s a good time.
You’re at Mac? That’s in the Twin Cities, and so is my parent’s house! Next time I visit when you’re likely to be there, we could Kokon maybe! Though my next visit is likely to be when you’re on break.
Oh my goodness, yes please! Let us make it happen!
The bakery that comes to our school farmer’s market sells the most incredibly delicious cranberry walnut muffins. These things are like little miracles, I swear.
Think Geek’s TOS hoodies are *finally* on sale, despite saying they’d go up “in October” for ages (I realize it’s still October, but barely). I’d been hoping to have it before my Vegas trip, which obviously is not happening since I leave tomorrow. But I ordered one and it should arrive while I’m gone (hopefully roomie will be around and not in class), so I’ll at least have it by the time I take boards.
But I was hoping to have it by halloween, in case it was chilly and i needed to throw an in-costume jacket over my costume…..but oh well.
So I want to bring a costume to SpaceVision, since it will be during Halloween Weekend, and I thought I could wear the jetpack I made for Yuri’s Night and we’re going by plane, and it’s too big to put in an overhead compartment unless I totally disassembled it and put it back together with hot glue there, but my friends said that’s not worth it. It isn’t that kind of convention, we’ll all be in business casual at the convention itself and only in costume outside of it. I could wear my boots, my goggles, my safari shirt and my bomber vest and do a quasi-Steampunk thing, I guess, but it might be cold without sleeves (how cold is Halloween in North Carolina?) and it’s not really Steampunk without props and accessories…
I feel like the older I get the more terrified of things I get. Like flying take off and turbulence and all of that never bothered me. Now? Take off is kinda scary and every little bump sends a shot of adrenaline through my body. And oh hey the ground is really far away right now and how cool is it that you can be on the Internet even when on an airplane inflight? I mean sure. The whole chargin for it thing is a little meh. But technology is cool.
Oh, but taking off is fun! It’s landing when I have to chew gum and squeeze my wrist and hope to gosh the Dramamine worked. For some reason landing makes me more nauseous than take-off.
Perhaps because you don’t really want to return to Earth?
Ah, perhaps. Maybe I really was born to fly?
There is an extra special hell for people who watch television at full volume on an airplane without using headphones.
Landing kind of makes me nervous, too. And the landing today was more turbulent than sometimes, and there were at least a couple of those stomach dropping out from under you free fall moments which are awesome on rides, not so much on airplanes.
That was suppose to be a reply to KaiYves 65.1 post. Clearly I fail at nested comments right now.
Why do they even make it possible to hear the TV without headphones? Sounds like a recipe for trouble to me.
They offer a online service in the flight, where you can download an app to watch television. So he guy as watching it on his laptop I think. Fortunately a stewardess did walk by not too terribly long later and offered him headphones which I think he declined/expressed confusion about why she was offering because I heard her say something about policy and how he can’t have it that loud and made him either turn it off or turn the volume down enough I could no longer hear it 3 rows back
Agreed.
The Boston Book Festival was a blast, I think I’ve got my reading list filled out until graduation. I can never control myself when buying books.
So. Alcohol. Tried some beer with dinner otnight cuz it was all the pseudo-fast food not Chipotle but similar style Mexican place I was at offered. So I had a Corona cuz of the 3 beers they had (Corona, Corona lite, and coors lite) it’s what the girl at the regsister recommended and i’m pretty sure i’ve heard coors is pretty cheap nasty stuff. So I got a Corona. And it was the most nastiest vilest grossest disgustingess thing I can recall putting in my mouth.
Also. They had a conversation in Spanish about my driver’s license. I caught a question from the girl at the register about “noventa” and the othe rlady said veinte something (dos, I think, which makes no sense whatsoever), and they were clearly havign a conversation about whether iw as old enough to purchase the alchol being born in 90.
As part of being a Wild Young College Student, I’ve tried hard lemonade, white wine, rum and Coke, and Czech beer (known for being extremely good and high-quality, on a different level than Corona/Coors Lite/etc.) and they were all horrible. (Interestingly, the hard lemonade and beer tasted like pure bitterness, while the wine tasted sort of like grape juice mixed with bitterness, while the rum and Coke tasted kind of sweet but also bitter — it was basically Coke mixed with a bit of rum.)
I am not an alcohol person. It just tastes bitter.
As part of being a Rebellious Young High School Student, I’ve tried a surprising amount of liquor mixed into various drinks from Denny’s (I hang out with a lot of theater kids). I actually like red wine, now that I know it doesn’t have to taste like Manischevitz-or-similar, and I like gin on its own- but beer is disgusting imho. Granted, the one time I had it, it was warm, but. There are so many better vehicles for fizz.
I like white wine, but not cheap stuff, only really nice stuff. Getting a little bit buzzed is mildly pleasant, especially when coupled with being really tired and just being able to sit around and talk and then go to bed. But I can’t imagine that being completely drunk would be any fun- it sounds kind of horrible. I’ve tried red wine, and it must be an acquired taste: it’s just so strong. Either way, wine as a cultural experience is [thumbs up emoji] [thumbs up emoji] [wineglass emoji]
Disclaimer: I’m sixteen but I was in Paris at the time, where it’s legal.
I’m in college but I’ve never tried alcohol, even when I’m 21 I might not. The idea of being drunk or high and not having control of my brain scares me, if you guys remember how terrified I was to be sedated for my wisdom teeth surgery.
The idea of being drunk or high scares me, too, so I was with a very small group of close friends and had just a swallow or two. (I turned red anyway, apparently. Yay Asian glow.)
*laughs a lot* Asian glow is great. My mom gets Asian glow from drinking konbucha sometimes if it’s too close to the expiration date. (Granted, she doesn’t have enzymes for breakin fermented liquids down, apparently?)
tl;dr I’m probably doomed to be eternally sober.
There are worse fates.
I thought that was in reference to the SpaceShipTwo accident when I saw it in the recent comments bar.
Yeah, the idea of being drunk has never sounded appealing to me. Just….no. It’s like a recipe for bad decision making, and honestly there’s a part of me that is terrified I’d get addicted and yeah. I have strange fears, but yeah. Drunk just doesn’t sound fun, and sounds a bit scary, unless I was in a very safe comfortable, no dangerous situations/people/decision to be made environment.
being drunk doesn’t change who you are fundamentally – you don’t do anything when drunk that you would be diametrically opposed to when sober. All it does is lower inhibitions, so all those little nagging second thoughts go away.
That’s not always the case. I’ve known several people who undergo drastic behavioral changes when drunk, doing things they would indeed be morally opposed to when sober. Granted, those individuals all had severe drinking problems. In most cases they didn’t even remember what they’d done.
I’ve got a lot of the same fears as Luna. Most people in my family are either teetotalers or addicts — I can’t think of any relatives who drink socially or occasionally — which makes me worry about a genetic component. Even to the extent that Lizzie is correct, I don’t really like who I am fundamentally and I often feel like my inhibitions are the only things keeping me an acceptable human. Really, this is more a personal psychological issue, but it’s a remarkably persistent one.
TL;DR: I have no problem with other people drinking alcohol, even friends, and I can see the appeal, but the prospect of doing it myself makes me twitch.
Well, old chap, WE like who you are.
Thank you. It’s always nice to be reminded.
I am 21, but I just have no desire to drink. Surprisingly, I’ve found a lot of people respect that. I could go to the campus pub to eat if I wanted, I guess, but I’ve just never gotten around to it. (And the Student Union has a place that makes the best sandwiches in the world.)
I’m in that boat with you. There’s a fair amount of drinking here, but I don’t feel any pressure. There’s just too much that is scary about drugs like that that I’d rather not jump into it at all; I went through the same terrified thing with antidepressants, though, and that’s turned out okay. We’ll see; life is quite an adventure.
I started off college not drinking at all and frankly being fairly scared of the idea (although fine with the idea of other people doing it). By the end of freshman year I had tried alcohol (Danger Punch at a band party) in small quantity, and so then and first semester of sophomore year was basically “Well, I don’t NOT drink, but I also don’t really drink.” By the second semester of sophomore year I decided that I was ready for that to change, so now in my first semester of junior year I drink socially (mostly at band parties, or if I’m with friends who are doing a social thing with drinking). I’m still not a huge drinker, but it’s a thing that I do and enjoy when it’s a logical option (but don’t typically deliberately seek out).
I like pretty much any kind of wine. I haven’t really had beer except for sips of my dad’s, but I like some beers and find others pretty gross. Cider is fantastic. Hard liquor varies between pretty good and completely disgusting (tequila is completely disgusting).
My first real foray into alcohol was local wine in Italy. My opinion of alcohol is definitely not negative. I really love beer, especially Belgian style beers, though I won’t turn down a stout or a pale ale or most other types either. IPA’s aren’t my favorite. I drastically prefer dry wines to sweeter ones, and usually lean towards red; if you’re ever in doubt about what to give me, try a merlot. Of the hard liquors my favorite is gin, though I also enjoy whisky and some tequilas. Vodka I wouldn’t drink straight but it does make a good mixer. Not a huge fan of sweet stuff like Bailey’s, though some ciders are pretty good. Ooh, and port. Limoncello I’ll choke down just because of the emotional/nostalgic connections.
As for the effects of alcohol on swine, I mostly just get a lot more sociable, which is really quite nice. One of the defining conversations of my life, and one of the very few really heart-to-heart ones, happened in a hotel courtyard in Rome after an uncertain amount of wine and beer (and several games of pitch). Oh yeah, that’s another aspect–I seem to become the drink disposal. “Hey Piggy, I’m going upstairs, you want the rest of my beer?” “Piggy, do you want the last of this wine? I’m trying to get the fridge cleaned out.” I’m okay with that.
I don’t like alcohol either. Beer is fairly disgusting, don’t like the taste of most alcohols, and any drink where you can’t taste it is just more expensive and less quality juice. I’d rather just have normal juice. Someday I’ll feel snarky enough to order a “virgin vodka cranberry” or something.
I don’t like the idea of being drunk either. Much like POSOC, I like my inhibitions right where they are thank you. I also DEFINITELY have an addictive personality & alcoholism runs strong in my mom’s side of the family, so I avoid it as I avoid almost all non-neccisary non-medicinal drugs, including caffeine.
Also, the feelings associated with being tipsy/drunk in theory (though I’ve only been the former) are a loss of coordination, a disconnect between what you plan to say and what you actually say, and tingling sensation–all of which are aura I get right before I get a migraine, and so associate with discomfort leading to excruciating pain. Not the best thing going for it. I tend to abstain.
I like cider as it tastes more like apples than alcohol. Wine can either taste good (if it tastes more like not alcohol and less like alcohol) or bad (If it tastes like all alcohol.) Straight alcohols of other kinds are way too alcohol tasting for me. Most mixed drinks are fine. I tend to drink only a couple sips/drinks of alcohol and then leave the rest in the glass as it doesn’t taste good enough for me to bother to drink the rest of it. Even stuff I like I tend to drink not all of. Beer is gross or just tastes like weird water. I like alcoholic ginger beer. I like fruity drinks.
I want to try being drunk once but I think I’ve only been tipsy. The try it once thing is mostly an experiment and I don’t want to be black out or throwing up. Maybe I should stick with tipsy. I’m really bad at getting drunk because I tend to not want to finish drinks, but I’m okay with that. Being tipsy when I’m around friends can be fun but it rarely ever happens and I’m okay with that too.
I also mostly abstain, but partially because it is expensive and partially because the situation usually isn’t right and partially because most alcohol doesn’t taste good enough for me to bother drinking the whole thing (even if someone else has bought it.)
My small exceptions to never touching the stuff because it’s horrible
are :
1) An occasional glass of Pimm’s and lemonade during Wimbledon fortnight – but it must be decorated with cucumber and mint.
2) A glass or two of mulled wine at Christmas, provided there is a log fire and mince pies. Preferably Tudor ones made with mince.
3) A glass of Italian beer in Italy, with pizza. Something to do with street cafes and heat. The same stuff is undrinkable in England.
reserved a zipcar-analogue to go grocery shopping tomorrow morning. Am terrified of driving. Wish me luck.
How’d it go?
metaphorically crashed and burned. will try again tomorrow.
round two and three: success
Dear brain, I would like to register a complaint. Last night you thought it would be a brilliant idea to read creepy stuff on the internet, despite also having access to memories of how unpleasant that the last time you did the same thing with the same topic. I would also suggest searching for a better coping mechanism than “read something really interesting until 2:30am”. Could you have at least timed that for the night we had a thunderstorm so my sleep-deprived laughter could have sounded appropriate?
I have done this and regretted it as much as you. Don’t let the bed bugs
devour your soulbite.My sympathies, I’ve done the same thing myself. I’m a complete skeptic on the matter, but I absolutely cannot read anything about alien abductions after dark even if it is also completely skeptical without having trouble sleeping.
Trying to cram for AP Bio while simultaneously listening to eleven songs all played at the same time was probably not the best idea. My brain feels so scrambled.
Saw 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee at my college today! Unfortunately I didn’t get to help with lighting or crew during the show, but I helped paint the sets and take them down afterward. I didn’t get picked as a guest speller because in this production they were plants in the audience, but the guy playing Chip pointed at me to be Marigold Coneybear, and after the show he came up to me and apologized because he usually picks someone he knows in the audience, but tonight there was no one. I had to tell him it was okay like five times. Also, when we were cleaning up the workshop after the show this guy was playing the piano and someone asked him to play Let it Go, to which about ten people shouted “NO”. I will hopefully get to help with lighting for Lend Me A Tenor and Charlie Brown Christmas this semester.
Halloween is on Friday and my friends haven’t planned anything, so I might go to my sisters’ movie night/candy potluck with their friends who I’ve met a couple of times. The idea is for everyone to bring a bowl of different candy and then trade so you can take home a mixed bag like you would get from trick-or-treating. My Cecil Palmer cosplay is almost finished, I just need to cut the long cord off my old headphones, and I might possibly put cat ears and paws on a helium balloon and tie it to my suspenders with fishing line to be Khoshehk the floating cat.
Hey, we’re probably doing Putnam in the spring! What a fun show! I’m so glad you’re doing awesome things with yourself. It sounds like theatre stuff is busy over there; I do hope you get to explore that realm.
That candy potluck sounds fantastic. I’ll have to remember that for future years.
I’m being Elsa and my roommate is being Anna. I’m imagining that’ll be very overdone this year, but I’m blonde and she’s brunette, and hey, princess dresses! I found a really cool dress at a thrift shop that one of my sponsees is going to hem for me so that it’s not 6 inches too long.
HOW DO YOU GET 100 ON ANALYSIS I HOW IS THAT EVEN POSSIBLE.
(Analysis I is the infamously-hard maths course that someone described to me as “It’s really hard. No. You don’t want to take that as a challenge”.)
(The person who apparently did this is the leader of our group, a physics/maths/compsci student *sigh*, better calibrated than the other 24 of us who played that game and quite a few others, and looks like Sheldon Cooper in a motorcycle jacket.)
Today, because finals are coming up and everyone’s focussed on academics, I was reminded of the existence of Mr 16-year-old PhD student. (Yes, also physics.) *groans*
I think my cheap-and-simple solution to the SpaceVision Halloween situation will be to bring a black turtleneck and leggings and tape blue Glow-Sticks down the lengths of my arms and legs to go as a deep-sea comb jellyfish. I just need to find somewhere to buy Glow-Sticks.
They tend to be easy to find at this time of year. I’d try a drug store.
You’d think, but the CVS has none, the convenience store has none, the comics shop had none but sent me to Newbury Comics, who had none but sent me to a costume store near the Christian Science Plaza where the line was out the door. That shop did have some, but only pink and yellow. I bought yellow ones just to have something close to blue-white.
Dollar Tree, Party City and its ilk, Home Depot, Walmart — those were names that kept popping up when I looked.
Glow-sticks are okay in carry-on as long as they’re in the liquids bag, right?
I should think so.Scratch that. I’ve checked some online forums, and the consensus is that you may put them in checked luggage but not in carry-on.No consensus after all. Some people have carried them aboard successfully; others have had them confiscated. I guess you’ll just have to hope for the best.
Aw pooh. All that trouble and I might have to throw them out at the airport.
I’m not gonna risk it, I’ll do the bioluminescent stripes with duct tape.
Everybody loves my costume, duct tape and all.
Heh – for a college party last week I dressed up as a Neolutionist (if you don’t recognise the Orphan Black reference you should all watch it, but not if you have finals in a week or something) minus the actual contact lens and hair extension. I was wearing my hair in a side braid and by the end of the night had shoved blue glow sticks in it.
I also posed with a friend, my MacBook, various fake swords, and a Gotham city backdrop.
Holy cake, I thought I just missed the Cygnus launch because of the clouds and getting chased out of my viewing position by janitors, but it exploded! Uncrewed, so no loss of life, but still…
Mission Control reporting all spaceport workers are accounted for and there are no injuries. Still, my sympathies for Orbital Sciences Corporation and all who had experiments aboard.
Wow… I just was reading about this. It’s a little humbling to think that we’re still far from completely perfecting/making safe launches. I wonder if anything will be very salvageable–guess they lost the satellite : /
Engineering is hard.
Looking at the footage, I doubt if anything much survived. The remains of the rocket and the payload seemed to drop vertically down into the centre of the fireball. Most of the contents are likely to be incinerated.
I think they may be reconsidering their decision to use refurbished engines built in the 1960s . It may turn out to be nothing to do with the engines, but the fact that one blew up on a test bed a few weeks ago is suggestive.
Why are they using engines from the 1960’s? Haven’t better engines been invented since then?
And if the answer is “budget”, then NASA needs a bigger budget.
Undeniably, it does.
This particular rocket, however was built by the Orbital Sciences Corporation, a private company, although they recieved some monetary support from NASA as part of their contract to deliver supplies to the space station. They did choose to use these older engines for reasons of cost, and they probably do wish they had more money so that they could build their own.
Today I discovered my love for the lounge in my college’s main (upper-division) biology building. A good size but still feeling cozy, it has almost two full walls of glass windows, wide cushy window seats all along them that you could lay down on, wood floors and tables, a whiteboard, and all of the recent issues of Science. ♥ It’s beautiful, and I can completely imagine myself hanging out there on a sunny day like a kitten on the windowsill and working on homework or some project. Now I want a free day to appear in my life when I can go hang out there and read all of the Science issues. Any favorite articles from this year, Robert? If only it weren’t so far from my dorm (as far as you can get and still be on campus).
It sounds silly, but while I’m looking forward to actual classes, too, it’s this lounge that just made me super intrinsically happy to be a biology major.
I passed the math placement exam, which I managed to put off until my second to last semester of college. Oops. I didn’t mean to, really, I just did. It was significantly less horrific than I thought it would be, and I only missed 6 (out of 32) questions. Which I realize isn’t something to be particularly proud of, given that it was all super basic maths, but also I haven’t done any math in three years and my entire training in the subject was self-done and it very much doesn’t come easily to me.
Anyway, that’s three years of worry about the thing over, and god knows how many more years of believing that I was not just bad at math, but wholly inept and would fail miserably because my mom said so.
I’ve still got a chance to bomb the required math class I need to take next semester, but I feel slightly less terrified.
Yay! If you get stuck in math class, remember your MBer friends are an internet away.
Ahoy, Museblog. Long time no comment.
I’m taking a Technology class through there and the teacher apparently only believes in hard work and determination, as I’ve gotten seemingly no end to the amounts of graphs I’ve had to draw, and the models I’ve had to build. It’s pretty fun, though, because there was a program that I had to download for it where I can create models of, say, a cube, and then alter the cube so it has rounded edges, or so it slants a little ways on one side, stuff like that. Eventually I think I’ll have to make a model of a real object, like a car or something!
Any advice on that?
What have I been doing? You actually care? Well, mostly I’ve just been caught up in schoolwork. Brand new to online school, and I still need adjusting
Also, I’m taking a Music Appreciation class, and I think the teacher hates me because he knows that I listen to heavy metal.
The rest of my time is taken up by writing (or pretending to write when I’m really just headbanging to Korn, whichever the case may be), taking care of the puppy, watching marathons of horror shows for Halloween, and fangirling over a few new fandoms. And sleeping, yeah. Going back to the subject of Technology class problems, I once stayed up all night until it was getting light out just studying for that class, so now my sleep schedule is really screwed up.
Anyway, yeah, this is what I’ve been up to while I was away from/stalking Museblog, what have you all been up to?
Hey, there’s a lot to be said for varied genres of music. There’s nothing wrong with heavy metal! If anyone looks down on your music tastes, they’re wrong. Sure, objectively, Beethoven may have been a better composer than whoever writes Metallica’s stuff. Having listened to Beethoven through a musician’s viewpoint, that’s true. But music is also about expression, and emotion. You can listen to anything you want outside of music appreciation. I, myself, am guilty of walking into very advanced jazz groups, playing jazz classics, and improvising solos— where only a few hours earlier I was jamming to bad furry remixes of “Wonderwall”. [Hey, we all have our guilty pleasures.]
Anyway, it’s easy for people to be pretentious about music, and I’m not saying at all that you should demean the “good stuff”. Give it an appreciative listen, and I’m sure you’ll find you’ll like a lot of it. But don’t let that stop you from enjoying what you like.
Watching the sun rise after an all-nighter is kind of surreal feeling. Your brain isn’t functioning all that well, all you can think about is how tired you are, and yet this wondrous shining globe is appearing. You realize you don’t need the light on anymore. The morning sun has vanquished… what was the quote again? The dark… the spooky… that’s not it. Oh, right, the horrible night. You put on “Rising Sun” from Okami to set the mood, but are dismayed that you still have work to do.
You finish your work, occasionally stealing a glance out the window, marveling at how bright outside gets. You finally get the chance to sleep for a couple hours before starting the day.
Alternatively, you go down for breakfast right when the dining hall opens along with the rest of your weekly all-nighter “study group” (aka four people pulling all-nighters together but not actively helping each other in any way). You get waffles, and laugh at things that aren’t actually that funny. Then you take a walk, spin around, and fall onto the grass. This is so much fun! It’s light out, and there’s nobody else around! Mornings are special.
You then get the brilliant idea to ride a bike. But nobody has a bike! That’s okay, there are a ton of bikes right outside the dining hall! Just gotta find one that someone accidentally didn’t lock! You miraculously find a bike that is unlocked and take turns riding it around in tiny circles.
…Yeah, all-nighters are weird. Fun and not fun at the same time. They also have sleepy consequences. Be careful.
NEVER EVER LET ANYONE BRING YOU DOWN FOR LIKING METAL BECAUSE METAL IS AMAZING *intense headbanging*
Somewhere in the Field of Reeds, a very confused goddess is wondering what she did to upset so many mortals.
iiit’s pumpkin carving season!! not gonna say what mine is yet, keeping it a surprise… but I think Robert will enjoy it
I’m on tenterhooks, whatever they are.
I’d say that was a “yes.”
An emphatic yes! Behold what Jade hath wrought!
My friend worked at a startup this summer that makes satellites, so I went to visit her and got the Grand Tour, which included me touching a satellite after it got cleaned! I was told my thumbprint would be going to space, but quickly forgot because my attention span is about as long as… something that’s really short.
Anyway…
My friend just told me that my thumbprint was on the Antares Ricker that exploded! Somehow, I think that’s even cooler, but I’m not sure why. Just thought I’d share.
*Rocket. Not Ricker. Sorry, I’m on my phone.
Awesome that you got the tour! I hope you get the chance to leave another thumbprint that goes somewhat farther.
So. Monday night, went and saw the Rocky Horror Picture Show for the first time, performed by the cast of Wicked, at one of the nightclubs/theatres on the strip. It was good, although the girl I went with still doesn’t believe me that I actually enjoyed it. (I think for some reason she thinks I’m a lot more offended and stuff by sexually provocative things than I actually am. Which is not at all. So I think she thinks I’m lying to be polite.) So that was fun and I had a good time, although I did not volunteer for tribute when they asked at intermission for people who hadn’t seen the show to volunteer. And I’m glad. Cuz I don’t have the personality where I would ever be willing to get on stage and throw on lingerie (even if over clothes like one of the women did) and do a stripper-esque dance. The men though. One of the men from the audience got really in to it, he was in stockings, heels, some fairly skimpy undergarments, and a boa, but most of the women (understandably) weren’t comfortable getting that wild on stage, lol. I wouldn’t have done it all, I don’t like being the focus of attention.
And anyway. So on the way to the strip, on the walk to the bus, some random woman walking on the sidewalk behind us told me how pretty my hair was and that I “looked like Barbie” with my hair (that was a first, lol, usually people compare me to Rapunzel). And then when we got off the bus, an African American guy who’d gotten off behind us, tapped me on the shoulder and asked: “Is that your real hair?”
And that was definitely the first time anyone has asked me if my hair is real. And more compliments in a day (someone else complimkented it later) than I usually get, despite the fact that it was all frizzy and ugly from having been braided that day, as I didn’t have a chance to get it wet and re-dry it (to return it to it’s normal straight state) before leaving.
*Mild spoilers for Doctor Who 50th*
Just caught David Tennant on the Late Show with Letterman. And Doctor Who came up and he was asked who the doctor was now and he said Peter Capaldi. And letterman asked what number Capaldi was and tennant said 12. And then was like well I guess you could say there’s been 13 because there was this thing. And I was like oh think god he knows about 8 1/2 (which of course he does. He was only in the bloody episode, so I’m not sure why I thought he wouldn’t know). But then he continued on: but here was also a movie, so really you could say there’s been 14
But there hasn’t. Because the bloody movie was the 8th doctor, not an additional doctor on top of the others. I mean dude seriously you’re the doctor you should know these things. I was cringing so bad. It was awful
Maybe he means the movie Peter Cushing was in?
…Yeah he’s definitely talking about the Peter Cushing movie.
STFP: Just like John Barrowman says Peter Cushing is his favorite Doctor.
That could be. I don’t really think of those two movies as a) canon and therefore b) I don’t actually count him as a doctor.
Although I did enjoy those movies.
I’ve heard that Tennant is a massive fan of Doctor Who, so yeah, I’m pretty sure he’s not just making stuff up.
One of my freelance clients has me using a church-oriented WordPress theme to make an anti-missionary website. I asked her if she was aware of the irony in this, and she said yes, that’s part of the reason why she chose it.
I chopped all my hair off last night. Well, my sutemate chopped it off for me, really. At any rate, it’s now short!
Today after my advising meeting (on Monday I’m registering for my last semester of college classes DON’T TOUCH ME I’M EMOTIONAL RIGHT NOW) one of my favorite professors was in the teacher’s lounge area and when she saw me screeched “CUTE! You’re so cute!” which totally made my day, because she’s the best and if she approves of my hair then clearly my hair is perfectly fine. Then her husband (who’s also one of my favorite people) and one of the philosophy profs poked their heads out of their offices and joked that they couldn’t say things like that to students, and it was funny and anyway three (four, if you count my advisor too) of my favorite professors said they liked my hair so. Yeah.
My head feels so light, and my neck actually hurts a bit, probably from changing to compensate for a different weight.
Short hair is great! I finally got a pixie cut after like a year and a half of being not bold enough to ask for one,
Nobody else liked it. Two years ago when I cut my hair to shoulder length after having it long for ages, approximately 100% of people I knew told me they loved it. This time it was about 4 people total. I don’t care because I think I look amazing and it’s super convenient.
After my choir concerts are done in the spring, I’m going to see what I look like bald.
Are those of you who are US citizens and over 18 registered and ready to vote or planning on registering at the polls but all ready to vote? Election day is Tuesday!
I voted already! I didn’t vote in the last state election, and apparently they’ve gotten a bit irate about my voting average. But Oregon’s got both marijuana and gay marriage on this ballot, so I had to vote!
I’m registered and I submitted my absentee application, hopefully it will be at my dorm by the time I set back to Boston on Sunday.
Ah yes, thank you for reminding me to send in my absentee ballot!
My ballot is researched, filled out, sealed, and stamped, and will be away in the mailbox tomorrow!
I just got my absentee ballot in the mail. Will vote tomorrow. (I need to register in Berkeley next year. I live there more of the year anyway these days, and it’s annoying voting in my small suburban town where the two people competing for state rep are not only politically identical conservatives but also husband and wife.)
And they’re running against each other? *boggles*
I don’t understand it any better than you do.
Haha, I spend most of my time at Stanford, but I’ll still vote in Minnesota — my vote will be pretty much pointless in California; at least the Congressional races can be close in MN (see: the Al Franken/Norm Coleman debacle of 200-something).
So I just heard about a type of book called “New Adult.” It is like Young Adult, but about people in college or first jobs. I never knew I wanted this but now that I know about it, it makes so much sense! I’ve been reading the MIT Admissions blog for a glimpse of this sort of thing, I think.
That sounds intriguing! I’ve seen a lot of those age ranges portrayed as such in fanfiction AU’s, as embarrassing as that would be to admit anywhere outside of the internet. Seeing as there are so many people in that age range going out into the world, and as I’ll be joining them in less than a decade, it seems an appropriately timed genre to become relevant.
Hm, how many books already in print would qualify as New Adult? Hamlet, Crime and Punishment, Pride and Prejudice, Moby-Dick, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, The Bell Jar, 25% of Anna Karenina, just about anything by Hermann Hesse…
Yeah, there certainly are a lot! I mostly want more books to read about people just out of college in modern times. Some of those would fit the category, I suppose, but aren’t necessarily about people looking for jobs. They’re certainly trying to figure out their worlds, and their place in life, though. (At least in the ones I’ve read of those.)
Let’s make a list!
Fangirl would definitely be on it. As would Tam Lin by Pamela Dean.
Doomsday Book by Connie Willis is about a time-traveling grad student. That should probably count, if only tangentially.
I read the beginning of that in August– it creeped me out a little that it’s set in 2054 and one character said that he had visited Egypt “forty years ago” despite there being a pandemic in Africa.
Final marching band rehearsal. I’m kind of glad the season’s over, but I’m going to miss a lot of the seniors.
I’m very tired, but I’ve been enjoying SpaceVision so far.
All my friends are busy on Halloween so I’ll probably stay home dressed as Cecil Palmer and give out candy. I carved a dancing baby Groot pumpkin that turned out pretty well and we don’t get many trick-or-treaters usually, so there will probably be candy left for me.
I hate to be negative but this is probably how people who are into romantic relationships feel about being alone on Valentine’s Day. I can’t remember the last Halloween I didn’t spend with my friends.
…So I never really used to like halloween all that much but now I really do? And I think the main reason is I find the word “spooky” really funny for some reason. I’ve been posting links of stupid “spooky” things on my house’s page all week and it’s been hilarious.
Plus I like to watch movies! I haven’t seen a lot of very good movies because… well because movies are kind of boring if I’m watching them by myself! But it’s great with a bunch of people! Especially scary movies!
I just finished watching Pan’s Labyrinth and wow was it so great. The characters were the best part.
I went outside to look up at the stars just now, and I noticed the moon was close to the horizon, so it looks big and orange… but it’s a half moon.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen that before. It was pretty, though. Reminded me of an orange wedge or something.
So after I finished this post I decided to go back outside with a camera to document this. It’d been long enough that the moon wasn’t visible from our house any more, so I set off down the street to see if I could get a better view. I ended up climbing a shoulder-high retaining wall, which put me high enough that I could snap a picture which sort of got the idea. While I was up there, I hit a branch with a bird roosting on it, which startled me badly, but fortunately didn’t make me lose my balance.
Of course, then I voided that good luck by deciding to jump down off the wall. Not from standing up, I do have some sense, but I still didn’t land right and ended up stumbling quite a ways into the street in an effort not to fall with my camera. Also, I was barefoot and landing on concrete, so that stung.
I was out there for probably less than five minutes, but I think it contained more adventure than the entire rest of my day.
My thoughts and prayers are with Virgin Galactic, their injured pilot, and the pilot who was killed and his family on this difficult day. My hope is that the cause of today’s accident can be found, that a repaired or replacement SpaceShipTwo vehicle will integrate these changes, and that the business shall continue.
This is not an easy week for the commercial space industry, but it is a reminder that it is a pioneering field and that pioneering involves risk and uncertainty.
NaNoWriMo tomorrow!
Is anyone else doing it this year?
In response to Errata’s unmoderated post: Yes! Except according to my mother, I need to not write novels and “keep my grades up” and “take it easy”. So she doesn’t know that I’m doing it, per se.
This’ll be a fun month. But I am so so so so excited about my plot this year. It’s going to be glorious, I hope.
NaNoWriMo in an hour and a half for me! [[vibration intensifies]]
I decided about two days ago that I was going to go for NaNo this year, as I won’t be in college much longer & there is not enough science fiction about queer teenage girls. That’s all I have, a short synopsis and a couple jokes I want to shoehorn in, and the insistence that there be girls who kiss each other and pseudo-cyberpunk elements and time travel/discussion of the geologic properties of rivers.
I haven’t won or seriously tried since 2007, and I also have an eight page paper due the first week of December + a full weekend hackathon the second week of November + a holiday fanfiction exchange gift to write for mid-December (though the hope there is that after November ends the 1000-word minimum for Yuletide will breeze by like nothing and I will write it over a blissful hour or so in December).
((psst, ZNZ, you should post that NaNoWriMo thread – I was going to make one but saw yours in the drafts.))
Can we do Musetide?
Halloween update: We hardly got any trick-or-treaters so me and Tangerine decided to go out and get candy ourselves. Some people gave us a ton of candy because nobody was showing up, we saw a lot of cute dogs, and only one person said we were older than most trick-or-treaters. One guy asked about my costume but when I explained he didn’t seem to know what a podcast was. Then we went home and traded candy and watched Dark Shadows on TV. So everything turned out better than expected.
Someone from my college posted a picture of themselves in hot pink bunny ears with plastic daggers and the caption “STAB! STAB! STAB!”. I am terrified.
I am Elsa and my roommate from last year is Anna, and with a beautiful thrift shopping trip and excellent hemming by my sponsee, our costumes are awesome. With construction paper, I also dressed up my stuffed polar bear as Olaf and my stuffed chimpanzee as Sven and carried them around with their heads sticking out of my purse. One thing I embrace about Halloween is that I can wear a costume to class and carry my stuffed animals around all day and people will generally compliment me for it. I don’t mind being one of only a few people wearing costumes in the morning; then it feels like we’re part of a secret club. Speaking of which, independently, the three members of my biology class lab group were the exact three people who wore costumes to that class today.
Anyways, I had fun wearing my costume to class. Then, tonight, I video chatted with my boyfriend, went to a sober party in a dorm lounge that some people I know organized, then my Anna and I left and watched Sherlock (Season 3, Episode 1 – I am catching up!). All in all, good evening.
It’s amazing how uniting costumes can be. I wore my 11 costume to orchestra rehersal, and there were about five other people also costumed. Even though I didn’t really know most of them, we still formed a group during break and hung out.
Our very last marching band competition of the season was canceled due to weather.
At least I’m still going to sushi with my section. They’re awful at times but I love them.
Ahoy Squidmates! Life has been crazy busy lately. Admittedly, I’m writing this in part to summarize events for myself, but I really enjoy reading what other MBers are up to so perhaps it will amuse? Inspire?
University is back in full swing, and I’m working on my first thesis. It’s actually going well and I really like my subject. My supervisor is really nice as well. So basically, I just have to avoid psyching myself out and I’ll be fine. My other classes are pretty so-so. Algebra’s a lot of work, but apparently no-one else in my class manages to finish the weekly worksheets either so hopefully the professor will see sense and tone it down a little.
I’m actually almost ready to take my road test for driving (cars)! It’s still kind of scary to think that I’ll be unleashed on the road alone and I really hope I don’t kill anyone (city driving = pretty stressful). Motorcycles I have yet to master, but I got to move up from a light to a heavier one that I’ll be driving for the exam. Admittedly, the motorcycle lessons stress me a bit more since I’m more worried about making mistakes: the heavy motorcycle weighs about 3 bookgirls and if it tips or dies on me, I can’t hold it or pull it up again without help. But somehow, the motions are very soothing and I really like the feeling when turns go smoothly. Especially figure eights, and yes, that’s actually a requirement to get a motorcycle drivers license. And a brief slalom- whoever wrote the standard exam exercises really just took the idea and had fun with it.
I’m working too, just some receptionist/real estate stuff. Not fascinating but income-generating, which is good. Besides, some of the guest are really sweet.
On the less-realistic work side, the film I auditioned for pushed back shooting dates to spring. So they won’t conflict with my exams (yay), but my final audition isn’t going to be till January (eh). On the positive side, that raises my chances to get the part, since the choreographer is incredibly kinda and really likes me (I have no idea why) and has offered to work on my acting with me. On the negative side, that a lot more time to invest in another tangent and I’m starting to feel like I’m spread a bit thin.
I’ve also talked with an organization that runs two schools for underprivileged children in Africa and might take me as a volunteer next year. I really, really want to go there, but I’m afraid to get my hopes up. But I’ve heard a friend of mine pitched me to the founder and he’s interested in having me come? Anyhow, I should probably work on my other applications. Mainly one that I’ve been putting off for a while, since I know I won’t get into the organization that I’d be applying to directly. Bluntly put, they’re very catholic and I’m not. But they have an ethos I agree with, and most importantly partner organizations that I might qualify for. So. must. apply.
On the friends front, I’ve started to reach out to people more. A catalyst for that was something that I’ve put off writing this far because I didn’t want it all to come off negative: I broke up with my boyfriend again yesterday. Yes, the same one I’ve been on and off with for ages. It wasn’t a smart idea to get back together in the first place, but I think this time it has finally started to sink in for me that it’s never going to work. So I’m trying not to cry about that.
Anyhow, the whole thing lead to to realize that I neglected a lot of my social life for him, so I’m making an effort to reach out more to people I’ve half lost touch with and some new people who seem nice. And I just signed up to try Krav Maga, which I’ve been wanting to do for ages and hitting things sounds fun and cathartic right now.
Whew, monsterpost. Belated Happy Halloween, everyone
I think I’m going to pretend like my thesis is a NaNoWriMo Novel, perhaps that will help me make better progress.
Today I got up horribly early and took a train to meet up with Paul! And then we went off to Stonehenge!!! Which has been a place on my bucket list for ages so WOOO (although, what is really on my bucket list is touch Stonehenge, which they Do Not let you do, but i have a Plan for the next time I spend a significant amount of time in England). And then we went to Avebury, which is like stonehenge but much bigger and more impressive and lesser known. We had the last of the sunlight for that, and then the moon came out and was super bright! So we did the rest of Avebury by moonlight. And then we went up to see the long barrow since it was so nice out, and when we got up there it turned out the whole thing was filled with candles and some people holding some sort of pagan ritual? They were nice though, and it did make it very pretty. One gave me an apple and they offered us some cake.
All and all, another magical weekend out so far!
Awesome! Jelly!
Today I got paid $20 at a casino for being a test person for a study on TV stuff, lost $4.78 of that on Star Trek TOS slot machines (!!!), touched Criss Angel’s hand (he’s kinda super hot even if I only like very vaguely had any idea who he was until a few days ago), and played $4 more on different slot machines and managed to recoup 60 cents by having my more lucky friend press the buttons on the machine, because the first $3 I put in I lost everytime, and so the fourth dollar I had her press the buttons and managed to bring that dollar up to $4.60. Ending with a net loss of $4.18.\
Conclusion: gambling sucks. And it makes me angry and aggressive and I dont’ know why people enjoy it.
But I touched Criss Angel’s hand that was kind of awesome.
And the fact that Star Trek slot machines exist is cray cray
Halloween report: Was a cat (lame, i know). Went and hung out at the college radio station and had a pretty good time. Ate all the candy that the orthodontist would hate me for.
Dolores Umbridge shares a birthday with Chris Pine. What.
Protip: Long hair + glasses + lab coat (don’t ask about the stain) = pro at lazy costumes.
I was too sleep-deprived and behind on assignments to want to do much last week, but I do go to the CS society’s games night dressed as Cosima from Orphan Black. I hung out with one of my friends at the front desk, attempted to dance, ate too much pizza, and then caught the bus home in a vain attempt to finish my lab report before midnight. I didn’t.
Also it was actually due on Thursday.
Which I found out while checking my email in a lecture for another class, so I hope the lecturer didn’t think I was headdesking about his exam, or that I was grimacing about the course content when I was actually discovering the heels I wore no longer fit. The things we do for cosplay…
Aren’t we due for a November random thread?
Technically, we are. Patience, grasshoppers.
bookgirl’s learned lesson of the day: Sometimes when people whom you haven’t talked to in a while don’t text you back, they just have a new phone number and will respond really enthusiastically to a short Voldynet message. They don’t actually dislike you or not want to see you anymore (not that I’d ever have thought that, obviously).
Well, that was an interesting night.
At about 1PM I headed over to a sushi place with some people from the baritone section, plus the clarinet section leader. We ate about 200 dollars worth of sushi (they had a buy one get one free deal though, so it was affordable.) Then we said, “Hey, let’s watch the big local competition that’s going on.” We normally go to that competition every year, but didn’t this year, and then the one we were going to go to got canceled as a perfect end to our overly disappointing and unrewarding season.
So we all headed to the next town over to watch that. It was very cold there, and when they were doing the A, AA, and AAA awards ceremony, we walked across the street to a mall where we got coffee and played Cards Against Humanity.
After that, I somehow ended up convincing everyone involved that I should go to the clarinet section leader’s house with Ren to play Super Smash Bros. For five hours.
My mother wanted me to come home and texted me frantically the whole time saying “NO DRUGS!!!! NO ALCOHOL!!!! NO SEX!!!!!” which was a bit frustrating and embarrasing since we never even thought of doing any such thing. We’re not that type of people.
Anyway, an hour or two into our intense Smash training session, we got the idea to watch the Smash documentary, which is apparently a thing that exists. After one episode of that, we started watching the DotA documentary, which was very depressing considering it was made by Valve. You would expect a DotA documentary made by Valve to be extremely biased, but it gave a brutally honest view of the lives of pro DotA players and the sacrifices they make, and how much of their lives ride on whether they live or die at tournaments.
Finally, it was midnight, so we headed over to Waffle House (we had been passing time until midnight because you can’t go to Waffle House before then) and met up with the clarinet section and some other folks. I won Cards against Humanity.
It was fun, and kind of weird driving all around town and actually having a social life and stuff. Hm.