July 2004 Archives

I started summer school this past week, and even though it is only one class, it seems like the most overwhelming class ever. It's my general chemistry 2 lab, and it's 3 days a week, 3 hours a day. I'll start off by saying that my general chem 1 lab was the easiest class ever. My TA let us turn in our labs the next day (by 5pm), if we couldn't get it turned in, he would let us turn it in the following class (which was a week later). We were even allowed to finish the lab and leave two hours early without even LOOKING at our post-lab. He went over the whole experiment with us beforehand, and even gave us his own data. He went over the pre-lab and the post-lab with us before we even started the lab. It was so easy. To study for our final, he gave us a copy of the previous semester's exam and held a study session where he went over all the answers. He also made copies of all the pre-labs and post-labs and handed them out to everybody. Even to the students who came to his study session instead of their own TA's.

So now I'm in this chem 2 lab, and my TA much more strict, and it's very hard to make the transition. Every day before we start lab we have a quiz over the material we are covering that day. In addition to these daily quizzes, we have 4 more quizzes throughout the four week span of the class that are going to be pop quizzes over concepts that the class is having problems with. We have to hand in our pre-labs at the beginning of class, and if we don't, we can't do the lab that day. He doesn't give us answers for ANYTHING. He tries to give us hints if we ask him personally, but they don't help a bit. We have to stay the full three hours to finish our data sheets/post-lab questions, and if we don't finish them, he has to sign every paper that we're taking with us, and they're due the next day at 11am. This poses a problem for me, because I work every day, either from 8-12 or 8-5. I work an hour and fifteen minutes away, there's no way I can get the lab in by 11. I talked to him about it, and he would not make any exceptions. I can't drop it off early in the morning before I go to work because the chemistry building isn't open at 6:30am. Luckily, Kory is the best boyfriend in the world and he is willing to ride his bike up to the school for me and drop my labs off.

Not only are my TA's policies hard to deal with, but the pre-lab and post-lab questions are insanely hard!! I don't understand it. I took the lecture for this class this past spring, and I got an A, no problem. I just really don't understand the questions. My TA tried explaining the first post-lab question from yesterday's lab to me, and it seriously took 20 minutes, and I still don't fully understand it. How in the world are we supposed to find these answers if they're not in the lab manual, not in our book, and he hasn't lectured over it? My goodness, yesterday I just wanted to go sit down at a table and work on my post-lab, but noooo, no one is allowed outside of the lab room because we could possibly try to help each other with the questions. SCIENTISTS DO NOT WORK ALONE. I think it's ridiculous that we can't help each other. If someone is dumb enough to just copy someone's answers and not actually learn the material, it's going to screw them over when they take the 500 dumb quizzes, so what's the big deal? I couldn't believe that I was not allowed to go sit outside on the floor in the hallway to work on my questions. I was so mad. "Can I at least take my goggles off???" Luckily I was allowed to do that. Boy, I sure can't wait until I have to take organic chem lab. It is probably going to be a million times worse.

A few more things that bother me about this class. Everyone in the class has their own lab bench, and under each lab bench are probably 20 drawers, each full of the equipment needed for the lab. Out of the 20 drawers under my bench, the creepy lab assistant, with an angel with devil horns painted on his lab coat, gave me the key to the only drawer there that is a PIECE OF JUNK. He could have picked any of the drawers, but NO, he picks the one that doesn't work. It takes me like ten minutes to unlock my drawer everyday. I mean, you can stand back and look at all the locks and say, "Hey, number 170 needs a new lock, it looks like a piece of JUNK!" Hey! I just remembered that when he was assigning a key to me, he looked at the key, tried it in the lock, looked at the lock, looked at the key, and repeated that ten times, and then gave me the key. HE KNEW something was fishy with the lock, but he didn't care! Oh my goodness, and I have to complain about the bunsen burners. I cannot STAND them. I am scared to death of them. My whole hand was engulfed in flames yesterday, I have no idea why I didn't get burned. I either A) can't the dumb thing lit at all, or B) it ignites and the flame is like 20 feet tall and everyone around me is looking at me like i'm insane. My TA, who is actually a nice guy aside from his class policies, had to come fix/light it for me FOUR times yesterday. The guy who is at the bench next to me lit it TWICE for me. I lit it ONCE myself, it was incredibly scary. Yes, I had to light my bunsen burner seven times for yesterday's lab. Ridiculous.

My mom came down to visit this weekend, and it was great. My grandpa and Shaun came down too, and on Friday night we all went out to eat at Quaker Steak and whatever it is called with Kevin, my Uncle Ralph, and Aunt Mary. Kevin was hilarious. He was flirting with the gross waitress, it was so funny. She would come by to drop off a beer, and would rub his ear between her fingers as she left. It was so gross and funny at the same time. I've never eaten at that place before, but they bring out these warmed up napkins in these little bags. Kevin hadn't taken a shower because he had just gotten off work, so he was taking the napkins out, washing his face with them, his hair, sticking them up his shirt and pretending to wash his armpits. I couldn't take it.

On Saturday my mom and I met up with Heidi, Kane, Alena, and Emma and then we all went down to the Columbus Zoo. The trip to my sister's was hilarious! Let it be said that my mother and I should never be allowed to travel alone together! We were talking and babbling the whole way down 71, and we ended up missing my sister's exit. Actually we missed the exit by about 45 minutes of driving! By the time we had realized we had gone too far, we were only 32 miles from Columbus, and were joking about how we should just call Heidi up and meet her at the zoo. We turned around and finally got off of 71 and drove on these country roads the rest of the way. Once I got off the highway, I don't think I saw a single speed limit sign, and it was driving me crazy. What's the speed limit on these roads? I was going about 55, and there were like 20 cars lined up behind me! My mom was on the phone talking to Heidi, and I'm trying to figure out how fast I should go, all the while having hot flashes, afraid to open my window because the wind would be too loud while my mom was talking. "I wish somebody would tell me the speed limit because there are five hundred cars behind me!" My mom started cracking up and then I did too. You know, the laughing where you're not really laughing at all, more like hyperventilating and crying. I could barely see where I was going and I was probably going like 25 at that point because of all the uncontrollable laughter. Heidi probably thought we were insane, there were times where my mom wasn't holding the phone up to her ear anymore, she was just sitting there cracking up. I'm sure the 500 cars behind me were not very happy with my erratic driving.

We finally got to the zoo, and it was insanely crowded. It took us about a half an hour to finally get into a parking spot in the middle of some field. Everybody was hungry at this point, so we decided we would go eat first. NEVER eat at a zoo when it is so crowded that it takes ten minutes to walk from your car to the entrance. My mom, Heidi, and I must have been in line for at least an hour, waiting for gross greasy expensive food. It was ridiculous. Not to mention that there were so many annoying people around. Like the little teenage lovers behind me oogling over each other and bumping into my camera bag at least once a minute. No matter which way I turned or how much I tried to scoot up, they were still bumping into it. But hey, at least we weren't in Kane's situation. He had both girls and a tray full of macaroni and cheese, and he walked around the food court for probably a half an hour before he actually got a table.

After the two hour eating situation, everything else was great. They have a manatee rescue/rehabilitation center there, so that was pretty neat to see. In their nocturnal house they have a kiwi! I love kiwis, they're so cute and amazing. What other bird has external nostrils at the end of it's bill and lays eggs that are like 20% of their body weight? None! Everybody should read Stephen Jay Gould's essay on them in Bully for Brontosaurus. Especially since amazon.com has used copies starting at $1.10! The zoo also has a place called the Habitat House which is made out of recycled materials and is run on solar power. There's a great sign in it that says "Cigarette Butts Are Litter". I need one! It absolutely disgusts me when people throw cigarette butts out of their window. There was a study recently done in Ohio (by a company in Kent actually) that reported that "smokers pitch an estimated 421.7 tons of cigarette butts yearly." That is a lot of cigarette butts. Not to mention the 972,372 bottles of urine that are found on Ohio's roadsides every year. Disgusting.

We got back to my apartment late Saturday night and mom went to do laundry with me at about 11:00pm. She was hungry afterwards, so we went to Taco Bell, and let me tell you, I hate going through the drive thru. I don't like going to fast food places at all. It was about 12:15am, and there was a big line of cars, and the service was sooo slow. We finally pulled up to order, and realized that this was no normal drive thru. Instead of an employee screaming at you through the little speaker, you had to talk to them ON A PHONE. No way. I hate talking on phones. I was not about to talk to Taco Bell through a phone that 5 million drunk college kids had breathed their stinky breath all over. So I handed the phone to my mom, and the whole situation was just weird and frightening.

My mom brought her two cockatiels down with her, Wally and Winky. I love Wally and Winky! They are so sweet, so inquisitive, so funny. I had brought Eleanor, my cockatiel, to see Dr. Krupka on Thursday, because she is missing feathers on her head. He thinks it's Marzipan that is pulling them out, so I had to separate the two, and Eleanor had just seemed depressed ever since. In fact, she didn't seem like her nomal self at all until Sunday I think. Actually, she hasn't seemed her nomal self since I moved to the new apartment. Anyways, we brought Winky and Wally into my room, set up the little playgym, and Eleanor became immediate friends with them! It was strange though because on Friday I had brought Winky right up to Eleanor's cage and she was hissing at him. She acted like she didn't want anything to do with him. But on Sunday they were so cute, Eleanor seemed so happy. She actually flew down off her cage onto the floor to play with them, and she hasn't come down onto the floor since we lived at the old apartment. I'm not sure what I'm going to do now that Wally and Winky are gone, and she's probably lonely again. I'm not sure if I should try to rescue another cockatiel to be her friend or not. Dr. Krupka said that ideally we want to put her back with Marzipan, but if she really has been pulling Eleanor's feathers out I'm not sure if I want to do that.

On the show Clean Sweep, they let each person pick one of the other person's possessions that they absolutely cannot stand. And then somehow one person "wins" (I think it's the person who sells the most at the yard sale, I didn't watch close enough to catch it)and they get to get rid of the other person's possession that they hate. Kory and I were talking about this, and neither of us can think of anything that we would pick for this. There are definitely things of Kory's that are so nerdy and creepy that I don't want to be around them (Dungeons and Dragons "stuff" and his Battlestar Galactica dog), but they are things that he enjoys, and I would never want to take that away from him. I think a lot of this has to do with the fact that Kory is a minimalist, and practically owns nothing. It's not like he collects Beanie Babies or M&M paraphernalia , or anything like that. I could see how collector's collections might become overwhelming, but Kory just doesn't have anything like that. Except for books, but that is something to be encouraged!

I got an e-mail from Kane and Heidi the other day. Kane's stepdad's parents are getting older, and they have a bird that they just can't take care of anymore, and Heidi was wondering if I wanted it. Me, want a bird? Of course I do! I was at work when I read the e-mail and I was so excited. I talked to Heidi, but she doesn't know anything about the bird. She told me she'd find out more today, and would e-mail me tonight with the details. So here I am, waiting for the e-mail. It could be any kind of bird! A cockatiel, a macaw, a quaker, who knows! I'm so excited, I wish she would e-mail me! Heidi, if you're reading this, e-mail me!

If you didn't know, I love birds. I used to work at a pet store, and I never will again! But, we used to sell all kinds of birds; macaws, cockatoos, caiques, electus, everything. It was amazing. I loved working with these birds. I would make special food at home for them since the store wouldn't provide any real food for them, just seeds. My favorite bird we ever had was a black-headed caique. Everyone else called him Willy, but I just called him Mr.Caique. Here is a bad photo of him. I loved this bird more than anything. Anytime I would walk near his cage he would fly over to me. If a customer had him out and I walked by, he would fly off of them and onto me. Whenever I scrubbed down the fish tanks (which is a terrible thing to have to do, and I did it A LOT) he was either on my shoulder or sitting on the tank right next to me. I loved Mr.Caique. And then one day a mean lady came into the store, who knew nothing about him, and she bought him because he looked "cute". It was devastating. To see such an intelligent bird going to live with some lady who knew nothing about him and what he needed to be happy and healthy.

Anyways, I love birds, and I really hope this situation works out ok. It basically comes down to whether or not it's a bird I can have in my apartment. Let's hope it's not a macaw!