August 2004 Archives

School started today, and as usual, I can't stand it. Here are three clsses that I had today (I have entomology tomorrow, so I will definitely post about it later):

Organic Chemistry I really don't like chemistry, but so far this seems better than any other chemistry class I've taken. As my genius British instructor said in the syllabus, organic chemistry can be "very beautiful and logical." I like things with rules, things that follow patterns, etc, so hopefully I will understand this better.

One bad thing about this class is that there are 123 people in it, and we're all stuck in this little classroom. Seriously, I'm surrounded by people on all four sides that are like 2 inches away from me. To make things worse, somehow half of the people know each other and I'm always stuck in the middle of them talking. The guy who sat next to me was some huge guy who had 5 protein shakes, 10 bottles of water, and 5 bottles of a mysterious yellow liquid. Yay. One of his twenty friends started coming down our row and I asked, "Would you like me to move into the next seat?" "Oh no, it's ok." I should have asked, "Can I please move into the next seat so I don't have to sit inbetween you guys and listen to you talk about how you've taken the class five times already and hope that you'll last at least two weeks?" Because that is really what they talked about.

We do get to use cps response pads (blue remote control is what I call it,) which is neat. I guess starting next week we will be using them every morning to "check in" (using a remote control is much cooler than signing a piece of paper!) The bad part about these blue devices is that we're going to have to take a quiz after every class using them! I'm going to have to think of it as "you're on a game show, Amy! Better study up so you can be at the head of your class!"

Cell Biology I know it's just the first day of class, but come on. This class just seems way too easy. This is one of the basic biology classes that I was supposed to take like two years ago. So today we had to get together with the kids around us (group work, blech!) and list all the components of a cell (I did this same exact thing in 10th grade.) Wellll, I had this partner named Natasha, and then this boy named Darren tried to steal her from me! And he pretty much did, I just kind of sat there and listed them out by myself. But when he didn't know what the golgi apparatus did, he didn't hesitate to ask me. Whatever, Darren.

We did get to watch this movie clip of a neutrophil engulfing some bacteria. That was neat. Cute little white blood cell chasing the bacteria around, pushing the red blood cells out of his way. Awww. For real, it's pretty crazy to see. It looks like the white blood cells are their own little organisms, with a mind of their own, chasing bacteria around and eating them to bits, all for the protection of their wonderful human host. But it's really just a cell! Biology is crazy!

Calculus II Death, destruction, and dooooom! I can't stand this class! I did terrible in Calculus l, and now I'm going to do terrible in Calculus ll. I just don't understand anything, and today all we did was review problems from Calculus l! It doesn't help that everyone in my class is a chemistry wiz! Half of them are freshman who tested into the class. My crazy teacher made us all write down who our previous teacher was, and I cringed as I wrote his name down. We'll call him Ronald Rykes (his name actually rhymes with this, cringe cringe.) My new teacher, we'll call him Stacy, was going through the papers and said, "Who is Mitch? You had Rykes, hey? You have this all down pat then, huh?!" Cringe cringe. "Well, Amy had Rykes too. Didn't you guys do like a million antiderivatives everyday?" Unfortunately, yes, we did. And this is probably the reason I didn't understand any of it. So now Stacy thinks I am some calculus genius because I had dumb Rykes as a teacher. Ugh.

Just when I thought the cringing was over, the worst part of class came. He started passing out our homework and said, "Here's your homework. I was lazy, so I just had Ronald Rykes write up some problems for you." EEEEEK! I wanted to throw up, staring at the 25 review problems written in Ronald's handwriting.

Did I mention that my teacher, Stacy, may be insane? He looks like he just rolled out of bed and used his hand to comb his greasy hair his bald head. His shirt was way too small and everytime he would write on the board you could see his belly hanging out. Everytime no one would answer a question, he would stand there with his arm ready to write on the board, and he'd bang his head against it until someone answered. And the way he stares, ugh, it's creepy. He'll be talking and will just stare at you the whole time he's walking across the room. You know, not the normal one second look, this is like a five second look. Whatever, Stacy, you will not intimidate me!

Ever since I took typing class in ninth grade, I seem to have this weird connection between my thoughts and typing. If I'm just driving in the car or something, just thinking about things, I tend to "type" things as I think them. As the word goes by in my head, I also see in my head where my fingers would go to type them. Obviously this doesn't happen with everything I think, because I surely can't type that fast. But it happens quite a bit. Or if I'm on the phone or something, I'll sit there and "type think" the previous thing I had said over and over as the other person is talking. I can't even begin to explain how I actually see the typing of these thoughts. It's nothing like actual fingers pressing keys in my brain, it's almost like just pressure being put in certain areas. I really can't explain it. Yeah, I'm crazy. Curse high school for teaching me the proper way to type!

This reminds me of when I was spelling words outloud as I said them. Kory and I had seen this on some tv show, and I started doing it, and oh my gosh, I thought it was hilarious. Instead of saying "How are you?" you would say "H-o-w-a-r-e-y-o-u ?" I'm hoping that this is a talent that only a few people possess (Kory can't do it at all), because I am really good at this. Maybe I could be in the Guiness Book of World Records.

I did it, I got my hair cut last night. It's much shorter, but my ears are still covered. But it's so wonderful not to have to deal with brushing my hair. And it just feels so much lighter and looks so much healthier. I probably look like a boy, but I don't care. But what is the girl at Krieger's going to think? There's this cute girl at Krieger's who kept staring and smiling at me the one day. When we went to checkout she was like, "I love your hair, I think it is so cute!" She said she had seen me last time I was in, but didn't have a chance to tell me. She's going to hate it now!

A few things to add to my $20 list:

1. Cave In / Converge tickets


2. Animal bedding / food


3. $20 withdrawal for laundry / church

Comments on the above list: I have kind of decided not to go to shows anymore unless I REALLY need to. Jessica told me that Cave In have started playing old songs at their shows, and since I've been ripped off by them a couple times already, I feel the need to see them in all their glory. Which means that if they don't play old songs, they are in trouble. Also, I would like to note that recently I have started using only my debit card. I deposit my whole check, and never have any cash (this also means I never have money for the vending machines at work, which is sad.) But in order to do laundry and give money at church, I need to have cash. I don't like doing this, because it seems like we just waste money that way. If we ever go to movies we take out money, and it seems like whatever money is left over just gets spent on junk food or something (wasted.) Mentioning animal bedding reminds me of something that happened this morning. Mama Sulu bit me! The little monster! She is very protective of things in her cage, like her litterbox and food bowl. When you stick your hand in the cage she charges at you, but generally if I let her smell my hand she'll jump away and let me take her bowl out. Not today though! I guess it's partly my fault since I was in a bit of a hurry. I just reached in and grabbed her bowl and she charged at me and took some chunks out of my hand. It was even bleeding!

Oh my goodness! I just looked down and there was a piece of my hair on the desk! Karrie, this haircut has failed! There is also some dust / dirt globule on my mouse cord that looks like a brine shrimp. Pretty gross!

On a recommendation from my mom, Kory and I rented the movie "In America" the other day. I know I never talk about movies because I generally do not like them, but I loved this movie. I don't know what it is, but I really really liked it. I even watched the whole director's commentary, which I may have liked even better. I also realized that I really really like Irish accents. Mmmhmm. So if you haven't seen this movie, I recommend you do so.

Oh! I almost forgot. I bought a cd yesterday! It's been so long since I've bought a cd. I bought the soundtrack to Garden State because I wanted the song that is on the commercial for it. I wasn't sure if this song was even on there or not, and after getting through track 10, things weren't looking too hopeful. Track 11 was the Iron & Wine Postal Service cover. And track 12 was just taking sooo long to start, but once it did I instantly knew it was my song. The band/group is called Frou Frou, and I know absolutely nothing about them, but I absolutely love this song. I can't even remember the last time I liked a song after the first listening. Not even that, after just hearing a snippet on a commercial! I must have listened to this song 20 times on the drive to work this morning. It REALLY reminds me of going to Toronto. I love it.

I'm done with summer school! I had my final yesterday, and I think I actually did pretty good on it. It seemed ten times easier than any of the labs we actually did. So now I have next week off, and then I go back to school on the 30th. And I get to start my entomology class where I get to run around and catch bugs with Dr. DeSzalay! My schedule kind of stinks because it takes up sooo much time, but the good thing is that my earliest class is at 8:50, which means I get to wake up at 7 instead of 5 like I do now. And now I won't have a chemistry lab, only entomology and cell bio! But this also means I'm going to be behind in chem labs again, because I should be taking the organic lab, but it just won't fit. It's two days a week for three hours, I have no clue when that is ever going to fit in my schedule. This is why I hate labs, they take up so much time out of your week, but you only get 1 credit for them. Such a waste. It's hard being a scientist.

I am starving. All the time. It seems like I never have anything to eat at home, except for "meals," which Kory and I only eat once a day. I'm finally making the switch over to vegan, so this lack of food is even worse than ever. I usually eat peanut butter toast every morning, so this now limits the breads I can buy. We found one kind at Krieger's, that only has honey, and it's pretty good. But I went to make toast yesterday morning (only like 4 or 5 days after I bought it) and the bread was moldy! What else was I supposed to eat?! My old bread used to stay good for weeks. I NEVER saw that bread go bad. Sometimes I'll bring carrots or grapes or something to work with me, but I always end up eating them within the first hour I'm there! So I guess I have two problems, a lack of food, and a huge appetite.

I'm worried about money. It seems like everything I spend is at least $20, or multiples of. And that adds up. I owe Kory's parents $40 for my phone. I need to buy crickets, which is around $20. I will need to buy soap from Mandie soon, which will be around $20. I also REALLY REALLY need my haircut (I'm thinking about cutting it short), and I also need shampoo, maybe some product for my new hairdoooo, so that will be at least $20. That right there is $100. $100 that I don't have! Also, the end of the month is coming up, which means bill time! I was expecting my loan refund money to be here sooner, but I'm thinking it's not going to get here in time to pay rent even. I don't know what I'm going to do. I get paid next Friday, but that by itself is not enough to cover just rent. Help! I need to start selling things on Ebay!

I'm scared to get my hair cut short again. Short as in you can see my ears short. I think it makes me look too much like a boy. I know when it was short before, little kids would mistake me for a boy all the time at the pet store. And one time a long long time ago, before he even knew me very well, Kory told me I looked like a school boy. Oh, but short hair is sooo easy to take care of, and I abhor brushing my hair every morning when it's long. I can't stand it. I swear, I think I lose like a fifth of my hair every morning. And let me tell you, it doesn't come out when you brush it. You've got to run your hands through it a million times to get all the loose hairs out, and then what do you do with the hair? The easiest thing is to throw it on the ground, but that's gross, nobody wants to walk all over your hair! So then you have to throw it in the garbage, and you can't really do that either because your hands are wet from running them through your wet hair, so the hair just sticks to your hand. And since I keep forgetting to put a new garbage bag in the can upstairs, I have to throw the hairs into the toilet. And boy oh boy, if you heard the noises my toilet makes you wouldn't want to do this. Yes, my toilet screams after you flush it. "Pleeeassee, jusssstt wannnttt tooo refillllll with waattterrrrr." That is what it screams at me and all of my poor neighbors who are forced to listen to it at 5:30 in the morning. So anyways, it's REALLY annoying having to take care of long hair. Did I mention that after going through this torturous task of pulling out all the loose hairs, I still have HUNDREDS of them that come out all the time? Kory is always pulling out hairs that are about to fall off my head, and I always have stray hairs on my clothes at work. UGH. Not to mention the hairs that Kory tries to pull out but are still attached to my head, but since my hair is so frizzy and gross now, it looks like they want to come out. So yes, short hair or not, I'm not sure. Either way, I need to get these bangs cut because they are making me batty.

Ugh! I just turned around and looked out the window, and it looks dreadfully awful! Did that sound British? I think it did. The weather has been dreadfully awful the past two days. Not really, it's just been rainy and crappy. LAST NIGHT! Last night I woke up at around 4:22, and thought "it is not time to wake up, why are you awake, Amy?" (I usually never wake up in the middle of the night anymore, probably because of my lack of sleep. This is a shame though, because it was always fun to wake up with chocolate chips (vegan ones, that is) smeared on my sheets and face from eating them when I was apparently sleepwalking.) And then I noticed that there was a huge storm outside that was practically shaking the apartment. I fell back asleep soon though, in fact, I didn't wake up again until...4:24! Yeah! I did this like four times, waking up a couple minutes apart. Everytime I would wake up I would think, "Is there something wrong with this hour? Why is it going so slow?" It felt like time had stopped or something. And then I ended up waking up a half an hour late, because I always seem to wake up late when I wake up in the middle of the night. Hey, I'm like that Billy Joel song. "In the middle of the niggghhttttt, I've been walking in my sleeeeep, to the kitchen to geettt, chocolate chips so swweee-eetttt, in the middle of the nigghhttt."

I have no idea why I haven't done this sooner, but today I looked at search strings that lead to my site. It seems as though people come to my page to look for "pictures of brent javier in ponds" and "pictures of scary deformed babies". Also, "mating polar bears figurine," "dissecting chicken legs," "naked dodge ball," "fruit fly rash," and "see nipples threw bra pictures." Do I really have the words nipple and bra somewhere on this site? If so, I wasn't aware. And do fruit flies even get rashes? Hmm...

A lot of the searches are for bearded dragons, totaled cars, seahorses, non-sweatshop shoes, keith haring, and shubunkins. Shubunkins? I had no idea I had anything about shubunkins on here. There is also a large amount of searches with Kory's name in them. "Kory's personal journal," "cradle of filth kory," "kory rye," and "reid kory." Strange.

Well I certainly am sorry to disappoint so many people in their searches. But keep them coming, they sure are fun to read!

Have I ever mentioned how great Dirty Kitty soap is? Well it is amazing, and I love it. I don't really spend much money, if any at all, on beauty/cosmetic/etc products, but I love soap. I've tried so many different soaps, and Mandie's soap is by far my favorite. A few reasons why:

1. It's vegan.
2. It smells great.
3. It lathers better than any other vegan soap I've tried.
4. It lasts longer than any other vegan soap.
5. There is a root beer float soap coming soon! Delicious.
6. There are plenty of kinds to choose from.
7. Great packaging!
8. Fast delivery! The soap I ordered from Lush took almost two weeks to get to my apartment, but my Dirty Kitty soap was sent out the day after I ordered it!
9. Mandie makes it!

Everybody needs to go try some of this soap (Marmalade is my favorite), as well as all of the other Dirty Kitty products.

The past few weeks have just been terrible as far as our animals go.

Cornelius, Kory's iguana, escaped out of his second story bedroom window. He pushed his way out through the screen...and now who knows where he is. Kory's apartment is right next to a forest, so Cornelius could pretty much be anywhere, up in a tree sunning and eating leaves. We made a bunch fliers and Kory put them all throughout the complex, hung them up at pet stores. He called vets, shelters, the police, told them to be on the lookout if anyone calls one in. Recently there's been some speculation that some kids in the complex have found him and kept him. Kory's tried talking to them a couple times, but their stories keep changing, and who knows whether to believe some ten year olds or not. This was devastating, and it still is.

Ever since I've separated Marzipan and Eleanor, I'm just at a loss for what to do with them. I originally had Marzipan downstairs, but she heard Eleanor talking the one day, and they started screaming for each other, and a second later, Marzipan flew up the stairs and back on her old cage (now Eleanor's.) I moved her new cage back upstairs next to Eleanor's, but I can't let both of them out at the same time. Marzipan still doesn't accept her new cage as her cage, she still wants to be in the old one. So in order to let her out, I took her into the bunnies' room, and I set up her old old old cage so she would have something else to sit on/play on, and she loved it. I set up some perches and toys in it for her, gave her a new cuttlebone which she devoured in five minutes...and then she heard Eleanor, and they both started screaming for each other. So right now, they're both in my room in separate cages, with Eleanor out. And what does Eleanor do while she's out? That's right, she sits right on the bracnch that's on the outside of Marzipan's cage (See picture.) She only goes into her cage to drink and sleep (she has food that she eats on the play gym, which is inbetween their cages.) Ugh. So I guess I just feel bad because Marzipan doesn't get to come out hardly at all anymore.

I just talked to my dad about an hour ago and found out that while he was gone this weekend, both our cats, Achilles and Sushi, escaped out of a window also. Apparently they clawed their way through the dining room screen. I've had Achilles for probably 10-12 years. I feel terrible. There isn't really anything I can do about it. I live an hour and some odd minutes away, and work and go to school all day. Achilles has escaped twice before I think, and she's always been just in the neighbor's yard, or in the garage. My dad is going to do a bunch of yard work tomorrow, so hopefully they will see him and come home. Maybe one day this week I can stop over and look for them.

I guess this is supposed to be happy, and it is in a way. Kory and I released Maude today. Maude is our one surviving starling that we raised. It's very lonely downstairs without Maude around chit-chatting away. We brought her cage outside, and opened the door. She stayed in it and ate for about ten minutes, then all of a sudden she flew out and up into a tree. She circled around my little street once, and flew into the trees again, and we haven't seen her since. We left her cage outside just in case she needs a place to get food or something. This is one of the hardest things we've had to do. It's really sad to go downstairs and see the empty cage stand. No more Maude chasing crickets around the living room. No more Maude decapitating crickets and leaving their wriggling bodies on the floor. No more Maude hopping up on your bowl and trying to eat your food. No more Maude splattering food all over the walls. No more Maude taking baths ten times a day and drenching everything within two feet of her cage. Yes, I'm actually going to miss these things. But I definitely won't miss cleaning up all her poop and making her gross food! I'm really glad we let her go though, I'm sure she's much happier outside eating all the bugs she could ever want.