Got my 3.733 again. I wonder how it was.

Stu's parents whisked him away this morning, and I cried for a little while, then I saw he left his black jacket, so I hugged it and was comforted. I wanted to give him some momento of me before he left, but I couldn't think of anything, poor baby.

Now I can start to put away all my things from school and clean the house, mow the yard, go on calls with dad, and just live for about two weeks before I myself am whisked away to a new family for a month.

It shows my road making a loop through my parents' pasture xD, a ridiculously extra long loop that cuts through trees, making it look pretty dumb on satellite view with overlay.

Unless they have added a road.

Oh no :O

My first car is my current car-- a silver 2003 chevy cavalier. it's a wonderful little coupe with mirror tint on the back glass (scraped off the front for legality :()

It had 30k miles when we got it, and I've put about 13000 miles on it myself since dec 2004, including a 1600 mile roadtrip to ohio :]

I kinda drove it over a curb at the beginning of last semester because I parked it in a lot that was supposed to be vacated and I didn't want a ticket, so it's been creaking and groaning ever since, but it hasn't affected its mileage any; with me and stu in tow, it usually gets about 33mph on the interstate.

It has manual windows and locks so I have to always remind my riders to lock their doors, but often I'll leave my window cracked enough that I can just reach in and unlock it. Stu doesn't think this is a good idea, but then it's my car and not his 8)

What we have here is the top 106 books most often marked as "unread" by LibraryThing’s users. As in, they sit on the shelf to make you look smart or well-rounded. Bold the ones you've read, underline the ones you read for school, italicize the ones you started but didn't finish.

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Anna Karenina
Crime and Punishment
Catch-22
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Wuthering Heights
The Silmarillion
Life of Pi : a novel
The Name of the Rose
Don Quixote
Moby Dick
Ulysses
Madame Bovary
The Odyssey
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Eyre
The Tale of Two Cities
The Brothers Karamazov
Guns, Germs, and Steel
War and Peace
Vanity Fair
The Time Traveler’s Wife
The Iliad
Emma
The Blind Assassin
The Kite Runner
Mrs. Dalloway
Great Expectations
American Gods
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Atlas Shrugged
Reading Lolita in Tehran : a memoir in books
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlesex
Quicksilver
Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West
The Canterbury Tales
The Historian : a novel
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Love in the Time of Cholera
Brave New World
The Fountainhead
Foucault’s Pendulum
Middlemarch
Frankenstein
The Count of Monte Cristo
Dracula
A Clockwork Orange
Anansi Boys
The Once and Future King
The Grapes of Wrath
The Poisonwood Bible : a novel
1984
Angels & Demons
Inferno (the Niven & Pournelle version)
The Satanic Verses
Sense and Sensibility
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Mansfield Park
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
To the Lighthouse
Tess of the D’Urbervilles ..
Oliver Twist
Gulliver’s Travels-
Les Misérables
The Corrections
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Dune
The Prince
The Sound and the Fury
Angela’s Ashes : a memoir
The God of Small Things
A People’s History of the United States : 1492-present
Cryptonomicon
Neverwhere
A Confederacy of Dunces
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Dubliners
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Beloved
Slaughterhouse-five -
The Scarlet Letter -
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
The Mists of Avalon
Oryx and Crake
Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion
Lolita
Persuasion
Northanger Abbey
The Catcher in the Rye
On the Road
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakonomics : a rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance : an inquiry into values -
The Aeneid
Watership Down
Gravity’s Rainbow
The Hobbit
In Cold Blood : a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences
White Teeth
Treasure Island
David Copperfield
The Three Musketeers

some of the italicized ones are movies we watched for class xD

I'm not sure how anyone could not finish reading American Gods.

I did pretty well (~85) on my physics test last night despite not having all the formulas down. I hope I won't have to take the final, but I'm probably too close to getting a B in the class to get away with it. (apparently the selection process is pretty subjective by the professor)

Took my last cal test (bar the final) today. I'm kinda worried because it really seemed very easy, but I'm afraid it might be faking it(wtf there's a word I wanted to use there and I couldn't think what it was, suggestions? oh yeah deceptive!).

I really really really lack the ability to go back and check my work. If I do check it, I have to erase the entire problem, because I can't concentrate with previous work there making me look at it and making me think in the same brain patterns as I did before. Is anyone else like that?

I have my GNEG presentation tonight. One of my group members was worried, one said that I shouldn't worry, and then the other is terse as usual. I haven't studied, but I did print out 3 copies of our slides to give to the panel judging us. Stu's group had to massively rework theirs because they didn't demonstrate enough of a grasp of the electronics involved with it, so he was down in the computer lab last night while I was freaking out because I can't do trig problems. xD

We honors fellows had a little dinner last night before the physics test (I could've been studying for cal! or writing the correct formulas on my notecard!) I think I interacted more with my roommate yesterday getting ready for, attending, and discussing it afterwards than I have pretty much any given month of the last two semesters xD

But that she was happy to interact is good, because if I haven't made a very big positive impression on her, it is a positive impression none the less and I'm not the most awkward person she knows! Is that a win? I think that's a win.

Here are the finals as I am worried about them:
I'm not: American Government, French
Oh, god: Physics, Cal

and I think that sums up the semester fairly well!

Oh, one last thing!
There's a guy in my french class who is in this Hmong students organization and today they're having a little sidewalk rally to protest the genocide of hmong people in laos. most people don't know anything about any genocides except the holocaust, but they go on.
Here is a geocities link of dubious quality (I haven't read it thoroughly) to give an idea of what's going on
http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/Lobby/4621/

just be aware. It's obvious that we are not told everything that goes on except as it pertains to the US becoming greater, but that's no excuse for not finding out about those things going on. (hello darfur!)

base by pixels.anlinasheng.com

she makes me think of selphie

Well, I dug out the old CREATIVE NOMAD JUKEBOX ZEN XTRA (that is its real name) and the USB cord, and we spent an hour searching for the power adaptor, and I updated XNJB.app and lo and behold, it still sucks. Not only will the faceplate not lay down flush with the body, but the thing underneath the faceplate has come off of the faceplate. I have it rubberbanded into place. I mean, it stays, but it takes like nothing to slip it off.

Anyways, I put from about A-D of my music on there (thank God for usb 2.0) but the app dies everytime it hits a certain song (such as Bedouin Soundclash) so that got irritating shortly.

I also realized that in my zeal to download the X-men Animated Series, my desktop had run out of space. I think I had like 1.5gb left on it. holy crap :D? So I uninstalled all those programs I never used when I still used it, word, premiere, sound forge etc (Also open office because I don't really have a reason to keep it). I deleted my mirc sound/log/downloads folders because I backed them up a long time ago, and I deleted My Pictures (man, that caused some heartache).

it's just sad. I mean the machine as a whole has been slowly dying for a long time now, but to do these definitive actions to truly kill it off is painful. At least it has a good life as a torrentbox ahead of it now? (10gbs takes a while to fill up when you can't get speeds better than 12kbps).

I also put the first 15 or so episodes of digimon on my laptop, hoping to have a chance to delete them off teh desktop, but we ran out of time for that.

I was pretty moody today, technology aside, so it was teh perfect time to angst over the state of my closet. Stu and I hung up every single thing that I had let pile up since the first day I brought clothes home out of season from college. There were a million hangers left over. It was impressive.

I also took the metaphorical blade to some long beloathed items hanging in there (perhaps I should've decided before wasting stu's brain cells on hanging them up. . .) His opinion spared a few (some items I have matured into, others I have more literally grown out of)

I was just kinda possessed by some hormonic kind of rage during though. I kept thinking of the deteriorating relationship between myself and my mother (now there's a confession for eoff-secret) and I cried for a while and stu hugged me and tried to make me feel better, but there really wasn't anything for it.

Cleverer than I ever give her credit for, she caught on and asked if I wanted her to stay home until we left instead of going out to church. How could I tell her that I couldn't stand her presence at the time? She can be so empathic sometimes, and things like that make me thankful she's my mom.

She just seems so silly and childish about things. And forgetful. But they're both getting old and I'm not around to keep them on track; i just get so frustrated when I ask her to do something like make a dentist appointment and a few moments later she's forgotten I'd said anything about it. Maybe I should schedule her a checkup :|

But yeah, axed some shirts. I did find one true gem in there I was glad I hadn't thrown out, even if I had bought a functionally exact replica at jc penneys yesterday xD (oh well, stu agrees that I have too many brown clothes).

( and now some girl talk )

It's so weird to think that these are the last two weeks of my second freshman year. And horrible to think that they are the last two weeks I will be with stu until the end of summer. At least with france I will only be leaving him once instead of leaving him twice, such an uncomforting overlap.

i also took a step out as an adult by getting a credit card (in my own name). I wonder when it'll be that I'll forget that the first thing I purchased with it was $42 of gas to completely fill my little car. Probably when I pay that much per gallon. Ahahahahahaha, fuck.

Anyways, it's pretty silly of me because I have no technical way to pay it; I've entrusted my funds to the bank of dad and rely on his grace and my glib tongue to talk him into making out checks for me while I ungratefully whine as I subtract the balance from our ledgers. ah, c'est la vie.

I read an article on slashdot today (i never read the article links anymore, the comments are usually just as informative) about how people were predicting ipods sales were finally going to slow down. I suppose it might be related to how people are practically throwing them away in giveaways, etc. I dunno.

It made me start thinking on whether I'd like to buy one. I really don't use an mp3 player. I have my creative zen jukebox (and I'll tell you how much I hate it, too) and it's sitting at home ontop of my iriver cd player. (such a violently passionate love affair I had with it)

I posted a comment saying it was silly of me to commit to a $1800 machine over a $300 one, but I guess I get a lot more use out of this laptop than i would an mp3 player.

(did you know, I feel weird tossing the word ipod around like it's generic noun candy? I don't think I've typed the word so much before as I have today in these posts).

Anyways, it's just a thought.

Here's a story from this morning. It's not all that entertaining, but it's a nice example of how there are some e-mails in the world that are not scams.

I get up this morning and check my centurytel email in thunderbird(I need to import those emails sometime. Is this possible yet? I remember having difficulty with it before) and I noticed a mail from a certain compnay about a credit card. Now, I did apply for one a few weeks ago, in the hopes that I could use it more effectively in france than my parents card, but I never got an e-mail confirmation as I accidentally reloaded the page in the attempt to select the option to recieve an e-mail confirmation. The e-mail today informed me of the last four digits of my so-called credit card ("oh really, I don't even know these digits, how can these scammers know!?") and Thunderbird politely informed me it feared this message might be a scam. I hovered over the link in the mail and inspected the url. It looked legit, but scammers are excellent fakirs. I clicked it and looked at the layout and noticed it was a secure site then did a domain whois. But it wasn't until I asked my dad over aim whether or not the card had arrived in the mail, gave him my permission to federally violate the envelope, and asked him what the last four numbers were that I was satisfied that this was the real deal.

Sadly the e-mail was an offer to be able to deal with the card on-line, but it required all the digits of the thing itself to use :] Luckily stu and I are going home this weekend, so we can revel in the $800 of freedom this thing will afford!

(it's a "student" flavored card, so the interest rates are killer*. Fortunately I have an account with the bank of dad, and I think that so long as I dutifully subtract the totals from our ledgers, he will happily sign the checks on time. Checking accounts are overrated! Gosh!

*my family tends to use credit cards as a convenience rather than a means of actually extending their buying power; a most wise decision imo)

oh, and before I forget, congratuatlions to flyingmullet for being added to my friends list! (oh no i hope his entries are interesting :OOOO)

quite a few people whose ljs I read have remarked on theferrett's 'open source boob project', generally negatively. This isn't really about that, but I've read a lot of comments on the issue since ferrett is someone whose lj I've read for a long time (four or five years now?), and one of them that piqued my interest said something along the lines of 'nerds should learn to live in society'.

Let me try to collect my thoughts. There's a lot of them running through my head just now.

Many of you who read my journal probably realize that I like to do rather odd things. I won't list them out, but one that has resurfaced in the warm weather is the act of going places barefoot. (here is the article that did it http://nymag.com/health/features/46213/ )

A lot of people in high school were pretty vocal about how disgusting they find feet. Not penises, not hands, not buttholes, but feet. One girl in particular who enraged me regularly the five years we went to school together, was particularly disgusted by them.

I never really understood why they found them so distasteful. My feet do a lot for me, help me walk or run, or keep me balanced when sitting in positions that would be unstable otherwise. They don't have any liquids that come out of them naturally, and really they're just hands that are shaped different and that we walk on.

We put our hands in some disgusting places sometimes, and a lot of people are total germaphobes and will lather their hands in antibacterial soaps. that's cool for them I guess, but they still don't consider their hands to be gross or dirty. Maybe it's because they can put them closer to their face to inspect them, I don't know. But why aren't they slathering their feet in antibacterial creams or anti fungal creams? Apparently they aren't concerned about that, so it must be that the concept of a foot in itself is abhorent to them. Whatever.

so anyways, I try to gauge the distraction and discomfort level realized in other people whenever i go around without shoes. I've overheard other girls barefoot explaning their condition away as though otherwise it would be shameful. I'm determined not to let it be shameful for me. My friends generally laugh or ask questions in genuine surprise ('did you walk all the way up here like that?!:O' no, just from the greek theater when i got sick of having them on, but I might tomorrow), but especially those girls wearing sorority shirts (or baseball caps. That's another dead giveaway), there's definitely a feel of apprehension from them. 'omg can foot disease go from her through my shoes to me :ooooo what if I catch the crazy!'

And really, what's the point? It took exactly one attempt at trying to shower in a communal shower with flipflops on to realize that it was worse than worthless, so I have trod regularly onto the tiled floors to defecate, to urinate, to me brosser les dents, to prend une douche, prend du bain, etc unless I happen to have shoes on already.

anyways, there is still this great social stigma about the foot thing. 100 or even 50 years ago, shoes were a status symbol; poor people didn't need to waste money on them in good weather. My family may be pretty low class (and maybe some of you are thinking 'ill-bred. my God, how could they have raised such a crazy as this girl?'), but shoe-money is definitely not an issue (unless you count my dad telling me I should buy quite so many if I'm not going to wear them xD).

There used to be social stigmas about other things as well. Girls wearing pants for one (I did wear a skirt today. And stu, the final count was something like 14 skirts and 9 dresses), girls with shaved heads, boys with tattoos, girls with tattoos, actually girls doing pretty much anything was a social stigma if it isn't still one today.

I find one great advantage in such a large school as I go to; if I do things that people think are crazy, I'm just one more crazy against the background, and they won't come up to me and be 'Allison, what are you doing? You so crazy' like some classmates from high school did (The aforementioned prissy anti-foot girl, and some others more closely tied in my circle of friends.). If I do know people, they're usually close enough (or relaxed enough!) that they take it for being me, or they laugh and don't care.

And the whole point of this long post is that this is how more people should be. Laugh and not care.

How many people would be going about their lives differently if people early in their development had laughed and not cared when they done things that went against the social norm?

Here, a poem

I pray I never lose the nobility of youth,
Be jaded to the miseries and greivances of life;
To always keep that Utopian dream
Awake within my heart, aflash behind my eyes.

I pray I never lose the nobility of youth,
That vigor to improve the world I love, Heedless of cost to self.
To serve and expect alike in turn;
But expecting naught by anyless than what I give, in return.

I pray I never lose the nobility of youth,
Never succumb to derisive cynicism or Dreamless apathy,
Toujours avoir l'esprit ambitieux.

I pray I never lose the nobility of youth.

I'm happy to see that while I might be more cynical about things, I am still willing to make a change. Still yet, I see assimilation as the supreme evil to pit myself against. I hope that the day that my spirit will have been dashed against the rock of social adversity one time too many is long off. I have referred to myself in the past as an emotional sponge, and I'm afraid I might not have the sufficient strength of will to survive the onslaught that I inevitably will be subject to.

To those of you who have given in your self control for the straight forward pace of following others' dictates, try to think back fondly to the times before you cared. This might be a very young age, perhaps the precise moment before your mother forbade you from ever bringing mudpies into her kitchen again, or it might have been yesterday, when you decided to dash it all and cut your hair the way the other ladies in your office have worn it for months now.

To those who still maintain a free spirit, let us trade encouragement while we laugh and don't care.

Anyways, you're probably wonderful wtf does this have to do with open source breasts.

What is has to do is with that comment. There is no reason why nerds should not form their own society. We have already done it . The countless circles of lj friends, on-line forums, IRC chat channels or networks, that is how we've begun to build a society apart from the one we see on the tv or around our neighbors. Wars have been fought because one group decided it didn't want to play with the other and tried to make their own playgroup. It's selfish to stop them, really.

So anyways-

I woke up this morning to my alarm clock reading 6:27 AM. I opened my eyes for a moment and noticed how bright it was outside already. Thirty seconds later, my roommate's alarm went off.

What on earth does she do so early of a morning?! It was bad enough when she would wake up at 6:45, let alone 15 minutes earlier (my alarm clock is 3 minutes behind real time. My 9:30 alarms wake me up at 9:27 according to it)

Anyways, I laid back and try to let the waves of sleep wash back over me before she started being loud in her morning routine, but schemes and dreams of demons and planes ran through my head (can you tell how stressed this project had me? I had gotten pretty good about laying stress aside in order to sleep, but after 5 hours of sleep I'm pretty susceptible).

Anyways, I awoke later to massive quantities of snot running down my nose, the first torrent of many today. The massively flash flood thunderstorm yesterday morning must have triggered all the trees to bloom and emit their pollen in my airstream. so I've been pretty miserable, if slightly coherent today. That is, I can think clearly, just not quickly.

We learned some massively fascinating things in physics today about the lensness of the eyeball, and I was astounded when JS informed us that the general 'near point' of the lens is about 7cm for the well-sighted young, and 20 cm for the aging populace. I may have misinterpreted what he said, but I think I can focus slightly well on things inside that range. I was also amazed that the far point of human focus is infinity. How awful would it be if we couldn't see the stars at all? Of course the smog and light pollution are doing their best to take that ability away. . perhaps I should move to Phoenix (for the stars and for the lack of pollen).

At lunch, it was revealed that the pomfreteria (did you know they are incorporating that dear nickname into the renovations they are making right now?) is trying to get us to cut down on wasting their food. I remarked to stu that they could do this by making good looking dishes tasty instead of merely good looking, and later Kaleb affirmed my statement, but I finished my plate of barbeque sandwich (and got that song stuck in my head for half an hour) and recieved a mini snickers bar for my trouble. sexcellent. Stu couldn't quite finish his quesadilla and his french fries both, so he recieved no compensation.

This brings my candy total up to about four pieces. I voted in the run off student goverment elections, so I felt free to take candy from the candidates for teh first time. (I refused to take anything from them earlier, seeing it as a bribe. However, when one side decided it was good policy to blast rap across the lawn where I was trying to study my french, the camel decided it had had enough).

In calculus, dr. meek surprised us all by bringing out some papers and saying we would have a quiz, and I felt so disheartened because not only did I not have a pencil with me, but also I hadn't practiced the problems at all. however, it was merely a bluff; he really wanted to refresh our minds on the parabola, the ellipse, to introduce the hyperbola, and bring together the hyperbolic sine and cosine with the idea of parametric equations.

I'm not sure I understand that all, having been busy sneezing during the lecture, but maybe it'll come to me xD

ANYWAYS THAT"S ALL MOSTLY IRRELEVANT.

The crux of today's experience was after our first GNEG meeting in several weeks when I stopped by my project advisor's office to talk about our failplane. He said the grade wouldn't be based so much on the actual performance, which really brings a load off my mind. Most of my waking dream this morning was ideas on how to invent a frisbee to deliver our nickel payload, so I can stop all that now, hopefully.

I do need to install the motor, or have someone help me install the motor, etc so that we can actually drop things. The dropping part is what I really enjoyed working on, because it's something much more accessible to understand. I liked learning about the airflow over the wings and body, but I don't know so much so thoroughly about it, so mostly my experience was asking [dumb] questions and building what I was told to build. So I don't feel so responsible about it. Anyways, I can concentrate on working on the presentation materials and writing an essay and studying parabolas, ellipses, power series etc than fretting that our plane doesn't fly.

I think I might make another post shortly. I've been distracted by a conversation now and it's piqued my interest on another subject besides my mundane life. 8)

Yeah I didn't realize I had forgotten to apply any until I already left for class this morning xD Then I made a note to put some on when ig ot back because it was going to be warm today, and I forgot againxD I just now really noticed. Rather sweet smelling for a 75° day and a thick knit shirt xD Oh well! I guess that's enough about my BO xD

I made a really awesome signature for eoff last night. I really love it. I also submitted a story for penny arcade's ten words WoW contest. I think it's pretty funny xD It has to do with gnomes being really short and able to see all kinds of different angles than the taller species.

Ugh, I feel like I have so much to do crammed in the four weeks of FRESHMANYEAR that are left. I'm kinda scared and nervous to my stomach to the point that I woke up at 8 this morning with some horrible anxiety. I'm glad I learned to push those kinds of worries to the back of my mind before I got to college. I wouldn't be sleeping half as well if I hadn't.

Things I have to do this week:
Physics Test (Thursday)
Calculus Test (Friday)
french homework (for wednesday and probably friday)
American Government quiz (Tuesday)
Make a glider and write up a bunch of word document and make powerpoint slides about it (All week and next week and the week after)
put up the clothes I brought back for spring weather. They're all dumped into my chair atm. Poor stu had to sit in emily's chair yesterday while we did physics homework. I also have to spray them with febreeze because they smell like my parents' house.

It's incredible how foul it smells there now that I don't live there. I almost hate to have mom wash my clothes there because then they smell like home :O I guess it's a combination of stale cigarette smoke (even if the door to her smoking room is closed and the ventillator is on it still seeps out ), animal smell, and probably five different species of mold. When I was little I never cared about keeping the house clean, and I couldn't imagine that it could smell so nasty. Well, the house doesn't smell nasty, but maybe that's me expecting it to smell that way, but my clothes and anything fabric will smell horrible for a couple of days after visiting for a couple of days. It's kinda frustrating.

It's inspired me to keep a clean house when I have one to keep up anyways. Although I probably won't since I haven't learned good cleanliness habits (although i do try to pick up the dust bunnies off the floor behind the door in my dorm! stu has some big ones piling up xD)

I keep alternating between feeling excited and scared about living in france for a month.

Things that are scary:

Having to speak another language daily. I may be leaps and bounds ahead of most people in my french classe in terms of faculty with the language and able to use it, but I'm not GOOD at it. I have to think phrases through many times before I can say them, and mouth them several times before I can say them without stumbling

Having coursework to do

Having to write a two page report when i get back (for having used fellowship money). I didn't know I'd have to do that until today. Oh well, c'est la vie des étudiants d'honeurs.

Not having any friends going over with me. Then again, I didn't really have any when i went to London either, so what's the difference? I also don't really have any at college anyways (besides stu! Oh I'm going to miss him for sure, but I will also be normal missing him over summer break anyways and oh it makes me want to cry thinking about it :() so maybe I can get a net gain of friendship for this time.

Things I'm not really worried about

Culture shock. I think most people who get to know me the least bit can recognize that this is the kind of culture I like to think about or read about or live. At least I think it is. Thats why it's not totally something I'm excited about xD

Being abroad. When I was in London they babied us to the extent of being annoying. It'll almost be worth not having people I'm acquainted with go with me as a group so that they won't be retardedly touristy. I don't know, I'm not really worried abou tpick pockets or anything. how many women carry a wallet like a man does? xD Perhaps I should carry a purse just so they don't think I do as well xD

oh, I guess that's a fun fact most of you reading probably don't know about me. I never carry a purse. Like ever. In fact, I bought a purse at th ebeginning of the semester so I'd have something small to take with me instead of the huge bag I had, but I converted it to a camerabag forthwith. I've had a wallet since I was like 13. I've gone through three of them so far I think. Black leather mens wallets just like my dad's always had xD In fact, the seat pocket on one of my older pairs of jeans has a faded outline where it's been so much xD

My friend's mom asked me one time if I didn't need to carry pads or tampons around, and really I don't. I keep one in my backpack for the long days at school, but my period has been amazingly regular as long as I've had it (I can't remember when I started anymore xD fifth or sixth grade I guess). Besides, I can tell it's coming froma mile away because my face starts breaking out and my breasts feel really tender xD (LOL TMI). So it's only if I underestimate how much I bleed that I need a pad around, but usually I overestimate, so~

ANYWAYS

Things I'm excited about!

BEING IN FRANCE (this is something I've wanted to do forever. learning to speak french is something I've wanted to do forever. This is kinda one of those life-long desires or whateveR)

Learning to speak french better xD (There was this book by david sedaris I think that I read once because someone on the internet loved it, and the only story that sticks with me now is the one where the guy was living with his boyfriend in france without having known the language and he picked it up out of necessity)

chance for good exercizes xD

and I think this is about enough for one post

What I did not do today in American Government:


What I did instead:


And I almost had the entire skein wound before he dismissed class. if he would've continued until 3:20 I might've had the whole thing whipped. Well maybe not, I had gotten to a pretty bad tangle and needed a lot of room to work it out. I'm crocheting a 'juliet cap' atm, and it's starting to get where it will stay on my head.

What I am doing right now:
Posting to LJ

What I am not doing right now:

Writing a lab report! :D

We made motors in lab today xD My group's lasted for 50 minutes apparently! I named it 'Mr. Indecisive' because it would keep stalling xD We also learned about the difference in american and japanese design methods xD
"American engineers would devise a way to detect whether the coil was at the appropriate part of its rotation and then contact an elaborate way to switch off the current at that point; japanese engineers would just device an elegant mechanical solution"
Our mechanical solution was to sand off all the varnish off one end of copper wire adn only off one side on the other end, so that as our coils rotated above our magnet, the current would short out every so often xD

Anyways, the best part of writing up physics lab reports is making the pretty illustrations in Illustrator. I'm getting to where I can almost about use that program xD

I was reading through the early entries in my lj the other night trying to find meme results to some meme I had taken several years ago, and I was kinda stricken by how depressing all the entries were.

I feel really happy right now, and I'm not sure why, but I thought I would post about it to document that it does happen to me (maybe I will look back at this post and think fondly of how it was the time that the dark cloud lifted into a healthy remission, and hopefully not as an island of sanctuary in the roiling waters of angst)

It's going on the list.

First I randomly called megan and asked what she was doing, she was at brittnays making hamburgers, so stu and I went to mooch a lunch. Apparently riley was also there to, making for insta-awkward, but that's beside the point.

Apparently the western sizzlin' Girls Night drinking megan imbibed in has expanded into a more general pasttime.

But when riley and brittnay turned away to busy themselves with food making, she seemed more like I remembered her. I can only wonder and kinda regret. I miss spending time with her, well her as she was.

When I was there, hannah called megan, and mentioned that I was there, so I made quick plans for hannah to call me at suppertime and we'd go hang out some, so at the end of the first x-men movie, she called and we went to popeyes and talked and I found out she was single and she kinda freaked out that I didn't know and she hadn't told me personally xD

Oh well, big school girl gets left out when she leaves the small pond! I don't really mind too much I guess. Is that bad?

Anyways, she's pretty much unchanged, but I seem to be changed because I feel different around her.

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Anyways, here are some thoughts on my and stu's longass drive.

1) it was long. Longcat Long.
2) I wish I could've seen kentucky in daylight. It seemed pretty.
3) Southern Illinois is gorgeous at twilight spring. Green median, blue sky, pink clouds, high rocks.
4) probably some others

So I was down in the computer lab all ready to work on researchin' for my gneg paper about sustainability in transportation (blech) and all excited because I chose my dorm room for next year (Yocum 623!), when this girl in my physics lab whom I loathe a lot came in with this california-girl simpering blonde that I'd noticed around and they chose the only room next to 623, that is, 624.

Grr. If I have to stay up next semester listening to CHRISTINE complain about how hard it is being an atheist or random BLAH BLAH BLAH like AVALON does now, I think I'll get mad or something.

yay I finished a picture for the first time in a long time xD



played with lots of fun photoshop stuff, including my [probably really obvious xD] forray into LIQUIFY.

The lighting made it not be such a boring portrait xD *lazy*

I must be the clumsiest play-baby in the world xD

I decided I'd refill my waterbottles tonight (a toilsome task, since it's gallon milk jugs -> 20 oz bottles) and I took a break to rinse out my orange juice jug from last week and use it for crystal light (my jug I have right now is really leaky and sucks. )

anyways, I got it and a new coke bottle rinsed and threw away the old coke bottle that smelled like ramen ( I need to put them in my dirty dishes bottoms down xD) and got back to the little pool of water I had spilled before (I had left one bottle with the lid on but not screwed down, this is a plot pont)

anyways, I settled down to commence refilling (I had stopped in between gallons, the orange juice jug has a wider mouth so it'd be easier to pour a full gallon of water into), well, I totally splash more water in the floor.

THEN I knock the unscrewed bottle over and gasp and right it quickly, spilling a few ounces of water. I keep filling and get up to put the bottles up on the shelf so I can make my crystal light, and I totally KNOCK IT OVER AGAIN.

At this point I have to laugh and get out a washcloth and take the opportunity to mop the floor xD I wish I had those mop skates that you always saw european ladies use in the movies (how fun would that be?)

Of course when making crystal light, I get a ton of the powder on the cabinet, and try to wipe it up, but it's worse than kool-aid for staining, so now emily's going to have to live with a pink countertop xD (I sat it on her side because mine's full xD)

I still can't find one of the lids, so I'm going to drink it first and hope I don't spill it or have my pillow fall off my bed onit (that's happened before, well it didn't knock water over, but I've woken up with half or no side body pillow in the morning xD)

Oh well, a chance to mop is fun, and it gets u[p a few of the dust bunnies xD

I think I did really well on my calculus midterm. There was only one thing I hadn't prepared for and I managed to reason it out pretty satisfactorally (centroids)

I did my laundry tonight and started reading The Bell Jar in one of the comfy chairs in the Great Room and no less than three people walked by me and waved, or said my name and talked.

It makes me feel good like I'm getting closer to having made friends here. :)

so my calculus, let me show you them.

(I have my cal midterm and a physics test tomorrow, one after the other. Silly me I thought I could handle it. Not so. INTEGRALS ARE KILLING ME. I spent three hours working them tonight and discovered I was failing miserably. I might have to suck it up and take the conflict physics test on monday, if they'll let me. We were supposed to say which we were going to do today. )

Alas poor Allison. I knew her, Horatio. A fellow of infinite limits.