December 2004 Archives

Kory and I were watching Sex and the City the other night, and there was a scene where Aiden licks a Q-tip, runs it along the top edge of his ear, and then sticks it in his ear. Both Kory and I said "Ewwww" at the same time and gave each other weird looks.

Me: "Ewww, why in the world is he running that Q-tip along the top of his ear?"

Kory: "What? Who licks the Q-tip before putting it in their ear? That's disgusting."

Me: "Well, I like to get the Q-tip wet sometimes, especially if I'm not using it right when I get out of the shower."

I then got a response that went something like, "EWWW Amy, you are so gross, I can't believe you stick wet Q-tips in your ear. Q-tips with your own spit on them! It's like getting a wet willy! EW, I can't even look at you anymore."

And then I was banished to the other couch for the rest of the night.

Here are some miscellaneous digital photos that I like.

• Pliers!
• Bug stamps.
• Kitchen towels.
• The most compact umbrella I have ever seen.
• Two painting sets.
• Movie money for the local independent theater.
• A wide-angle lens for my digital camera.
• A calendar.
• A beetles poster.
• The softest scarf and socks ever.
• Some more socks, sleepy pants, and gloves.
• Silent Spring by Rachel Carson (a must-have for everybody, especially a zoology major!)
• The 1961 printings of Winnie-the-Pooh and The House At Pooh Corner by A.A. Milne.
• Money!

Because I am sick of this. Every day that Kory works (at the hotel), I have to pick him up at 7 in the morning. On days that I work, I end up getting to my job late. On days that I don't work, I wake up WAY earlier than I need to. EVERY SINGLE TIME I pick Kory up, the person coming in to take his place is late. EVERY SINGLE TIME. Honestly, there is not one time that Kory has ever got off a few minutes before 7 or at 7. It's the most annoying thing in the world.

So here I am, back home now, with no Kory. I went up there to get him, sat in the parking lot for over a half an hour, no one ever showed up. Kory told me to go home because he didn't know when anyone would show up. So when he calls I have to put my boots back on, warm my car up again, probably brush the snow off of it for the thousandth time this week, and then try to get my car out of the parking lot filled with five feet of snow and ice.

And the funny thing is that two of the three people that come in to take Kory's place either LIVE at the hotel or spend the night over there on the days they work because they live too far away. How in the world can you be late to work when YOU LIVE THERE? Absolutely ridiculous.

And where is the manager that should have to take over when someone is late? He's the person that actually lives at the hotel! WAKE UP AND BE RESPONSIBLE! He could care less. Kory has to give the manager a wake up call every morning that he works, and then he still doesn't get downstairs on time. I just want to punch them all in the face.

I put up some digital photos from Christmas festivities.

Remember these caterpillars that snuck their way into my house on a plant I bought? Well, after a couple of weeks of being in that tupperware container, they just disappeared. I assumed they burrowed into the soil...but were they going to pupate? Were they going to try to pupate and not be able to because they didn't have the right conditions? Were they just going to die? I had no idea, so I decided to keep the container around just in case.

Fast foward about three months later. I moved the container the other day while I was cleaning, and behold, something was in it! A moth - what appeared to be a noctuid moth! It had survived after all! Well, it's dead now, and it's the only one I've seen, even though there were five caterpillars. Luckily the little lady (yes, a lady) left me some presents. A TON of little tiny eggs all over the side of the container! Now what in the world am I going to do with hundreds of caterpillars? It looks like I'm going to be in the same situation I was in before - not wanting to kill the poor things.

Mom - I opened up one of my Christmas presents (seeing as how I didn't get a single present from anyone for my birthday!) It was the painting one! Just what exactly do you think I'm capable of?! These look insanely hard! I actually think I might try the really hard one first because the only reason it's harder is because it has a bunch of little tiny areas. But I think I'm better at meticulous things, so I will try it. Thanks!

Also, I was wrong. Right now it's only 7º here! It really doesn't feel like it thought.

Apparently there was an 80 car pileup on the turnpike today! An 80 CAR PILEUP! That's insane. Might I remind you that this is the way I go to work. I'm going to try to make it to work tomorrow morning, but if the turnpike is too bad I will probably turn around and go back home. I drove the turnpike to work all through last winter, and it was only really bad a couple times, so I'm not sure why it's so yucky now. They're usually really good about keeping the roads clear. Hopefully it will be better in the morning (probably not since it's supposed to snow all night long!)

• My alternator decided to start dying the other day, so I spent $350 to get it replaced.
• I'm REALLY antsy because I'm not in school now, and I don't know what to do with myself.
• Being antsy makes me really mad. I've never had a problem with anxiety before, and I can't stand feeling like this! I can't even express how I feel let alone figure out how to stop feeling like this.
• I feel like I wash dishes ALL THE TIME. I am so sick of washing dishes. So are my poor dried out fingers.
• I am POOR. I can't buy gifts for anybody.
• I need another oil change. I feel like I need these every week.
• I played Mario Party tonight and Daisy (the computer) got one of those swap coin things, and I got her 34 coins and she got my 122 coins! OHHHH BOY was I angry. This ruined my night. And then she won the extra star at the end for collecting the most coins! How dare she?
• Kory and I ordered pizza to go along with our Mario Party party, and generally they don't even take the coupon from you. But this time they did and Kory wasn't prepared, so he just gave the guy the whole sheet. We walked out to my car later, and found the coupons lying on the ground with the coupon ripped out. WHATEVER, PAPA JOHN'S. We don't support pizza companies that litter. (Especially since we're poor now.)
• My boss doesn't want me working full time, so I'm just keeping the same amount of hours that I had during school. This = not much money at all.
• In order to get to work by 8, I have to wake up at 5:30. WORST THING EVER. I just want to fall asleep while I'm driving.
• My birthday is in less than an hour and I'm so old now. I wish my life seemed like it was progressing at least a little. But no, I'm still in school and I'm still poor.

Kory has been working on an art piece for the past month for his sculpture class: He took a bath in the same bath water for a month straight, and every day he filled up a jar with the bath water. He built a shelf to display all the jars on, including a jar with all his hair that he shaved off at the end of the project.

Yuck.

To tell you the truth, he seemed perfectly clean. He actually smelled really good. Except for his hair, boy was his hair gross at the end of the month. It's a goood thing he shaved it off. The disgustingness of this piece never really hit me because he really didn't smell. Well, the disgustingness finally hit me when I went to help him shave his head. This is the first time I had actually seen The Bathtub. I walked into his bathroom, and there were all of these canning jars lined up against the tub, and inside the tub was some really disgusting water. Really. I can't believe he took a bath in it everyday.

And don't think that Kory just went to my apartment and took a shower after he took his "bath." Uh uh. He kept telling me it would ruin the piece if he did that.

So you're probably asking yourself some questions right now, like "How is this art, let alone sculpture?" "How could someone possibly do something this gross and how could Amy even come close to him?" I can't even explain it, so you will just have to ask Kory. He is more than willing to discuss it, seeing as how he discussed it with about everyone at the church building tonight!

Just so you know, Kory's teacher LOVES this piece, and he most likely will get an A on it. That's the only way I can justify this, as long as his teacher likes it, it's ok.

Needless to say, my clean shower-taking Kory is back with a freshly shaven head and face, and I love him even though he does gross things like this for the sake of art.

That this semester is over. I had my last two finals today and I'm so relieved to not have any school work to do for about a month. What am I going to do with myself?

I got my insect collection back today, and I did much better than I thought. Really, the score he gave me is like almost double what I thought it was going to be. I got 100/100, and if there wasn't a maximum number of points, I would have got a 136.

I'm actually much more excited that Kory is done with this semester because it turned him into a monster. He got probably an average of 3 hours of sleep a day. He was always up doing some art project, going to work at night, coming home in the morning, and then going right to school. TWICE in the past couple weeks has he turned down my invitation to play Mario Party. Now if you know anything about me, you know that I really don't like video games at all. And you probably know that Kory loves video games, so for him to turn down these opportunities was a shock. And I will hold this against him forever! "Remember those times that I wanted to play video games, and you were too busy being an art monster to play?"

Things I plan on doing during my break:

• Eat
• Clean
• Sleep
• Sit around and do nothing
• Visit my mom and grandpa
• Sit around and do nothing some more

I put up some digital photos of Kory's sophomore review.

I just got back from my cell bio lab final, and I'm really shocked that my lab partner was cheating. I would have never expected her to do so. Not only was she looking at my test, she also had made a cheat sheet before class. I saw her writing down definitions and such onto a little sheet of paper, and was wondering if she was making a cheat sheet. Apparently she was! Our lab benches have these little open drawer holes without drawers in them, and I was about to say outloud, "These would make it so easy to cheat, just lay your piece of paper right there and the teacher would never see it." Then I looked over to say it to her, and she had her dumb little cheat sheet already sitting in hers! I should have said something to her anyways.

You could tell when her cheat sheet wasn't working because she would let out these REALLY loud sighs, it was pretty annoying.

I mean really, grow up. This was probably the easiest final I've ever taken. Considering half of the questions were on our midterm, and you were told that they were going to be on the final, I really don't think it would have been that hard just to study.

Tomorrow is sadly my last day of entomology lab. I have to turn in the supplies that I've borrowed, including my bug net (but don't worry, I have my own!) So for the past half an hour, I sat on the floor picking hundreds of seeds off the net and throwing them onto some newspaper while Fauxpaw tried to attack them. Those seeds are an entomologist's nightmare! They stick to absolutely everything and it's really hard to get the bugs out of the net when it's covered in little spiny seeds.

I've been working on finishing my collection since about 7:00pm. I had no idea it would take me this long, and I'm pretty mad about it because I don't like the way it ended up. You see, in order to "finish my collection," I had to print out the name of all the orders and families of my insects, pin them into the boxes, and place the right insects with the right order/family name. I know this doesn't sound like a big deal, but it was such a huge pain. It's really hard to explain, so I'm not even going to try, but trust me. If I could have put the order/family name on the insect pin itself, things would have been much easier. I think my fingers would agree with this, after pushing 144 pins through card stock and into the boxes (and these are just for the order/family labels!) And then having to push them through again when I had to rearrange things multiple times in order to get everything to fit in as best as it could. Ugh. This is definitely not the fun part of an insect collection.

Well, it's all over now, all I have left is to write out labels for my aquatic insects and stick them in the vials. I actually turned out with more orders and families than I expected, and as of how it is now, I have over the maximum points possible for the identification part of it. But then again, everything has to be identified correctly to get points, so who knows whether that 3mm long bug was really an aphid or not. And that other 3mm insect, was that really a bark louse? Identifying insects is not as easy as you think! Especially when the only way to tell them apart is by wing venation and whether their arista are bare, plumose, or plumose only in the basal half, and you don't have a microscope in order to look at any of these things! (These are some of the identifying characteristics of flies, the WORST of all insects to ID.) I'm pretty confident that the majority of them are identified correctly though, so we'll see.

Let's hope I don't drop all the boxes on the way to class tomorrow! That's if I even wake up for class!

I put up some digital photos from Thanksgiving. They're not really pictures of anything having to do with Thanksgiving, pretty much just family photos. The first few are from Michigan, the rest are from Carol's.

There's a picture of you on there, Dad. That's what you get for deleting those photos Kory and I took!