commotiocordis

Got an email from my Biomolecular Interactions professor telling everybody to sign up for the online class. . . idk, document repository and grade report thing. It's still got stuff from last year up, which I'm pulling off and looking at (from fall as well as spring, which leads me to hope that he leaves at least one of them up all year for studying purposes) and this guy looks pretty awesome. I'm excited. It's my major's department, the same one as the genetics class from last fall that I loved (though a lot of that was because I love genetics as a topic), and there seems to be quite a variance in teaching methods in the syllabus. Papers, quizzes, tests, articles to bring home and read, group work (blech on that one, if only because I tend to fail at. . . making friends), some thing entitled "service project," which really intrigues me.

--thought sidetrack ("That would have been hard last year; I'll have to have a car to do any kind of service anywhere.") I do not know what (if!) car I'm taking to Springfield. Except that it's not the van nor either of my parents' cars. Which means it's the red car, which, while I love it, cannot do highways for extended periods of time. I jog from one exit by the Walmart to the next by my house sometimes on the highway just so I don't have to deal with traffic lights, and it's not happy getting up to 60. Most of that drive to school is 70, and I'll be damned if it's going to take me 8385673 hours because I have to take backroads. Plus, no cruise control. Plus, (and this is the biggest plus) no air conditioning. And I can't exactly open the windows on the highway unless I want to get negative 48 mpg.

I was rather seriously looking into if it would go on the Cash for Clunkers barely-masked-extra-auto-industry-bailout thing that I'm paying $3 billion into, but no. Even though in practical driving (I've measured) it gets comparatively shitty gas mileage (for that little thing. I wonder if something's wrong, because Dad says he's gotten mid 30s when he was driving it when we first got it, but all I get is 22), it's not shitty enough according to their records. And because of this hugely popular car trade-in program, nobody'll give me anything for it for a good while until after the program's done. Oh, and plus it's not actually my car, so it's not like the parentals would let me keep any money I got from trading it in. Details.

--end thought sidetrack. *scrolls up to read what the hell she was actually talking about*
Oh yes. Besides the fact that the lab is back to back with my organic chemistry lab (fuck. me.) adding up to my 9 to 6 or 7 school day on Mondays, it looks interesting. I'm the kind of kid that's always been fine with the straight up lecture courses if you make me interested (meaning the plethora of amazing history teachers I've had), but the stuff I really retain? Let's look at the abnormal psych course that I got some 99% in this spring without buying the book much less reading it, all because I had fun in my AP psych class 3.5 years prior. A bit less so, but ditto to 2 years ago's AP economics that I remember much more than I ever would have expected (meaning. . . more than 0. I'm not good with it, but I can tell that it would take 15 seconds of refresher to bring it all back) considering that I couldn't give a flying fruitbat about econ and was only taking it because I'd pretty much exhausted the school's offerings and it was the only prerequisite-less AP course I hadn't yet taken.


As usual, this was a few days ago. New stuff.

I met Ianto!kitten and he is adorable. bleakone and my house is going to be a freaking menagerie. Yay for this.

I got some of the most awesome shoes ever today. AND THEY DON'T FIT. So pissed off, as that was the only size they had in the store and natch, my sister got one too and they fit her. Going to have to try to shop them around to the other branches (dad says the storelady said that there were three of the same stores within 15 miles, though he got them in the first place so I couldn't even tell you what store it was) and try to swap up. They're like Chucks or whatnot, that canvasy style, in black, BUT KNEE HIGH BOOTS. It's like 10th Doctor went through a sex change machine and all his clothes got changed as well, this is how awesome. And they're $80-something normally and he bought them for $30, which is way more than I would ever, ever spend on shoes, but Dad gets pissed off when I talk about returning things he bought for me because he thinks I don't like it rather than it's just me being obsessively cheap, so after he huffed for the first time I quickly made it seem that it was just because they didn't fit rather than because OMG$30SHOES and that they didn't fit, hence why I now have to look up where those other stores are. And hope he didn't pitch the receipt (like usual). Kind of hard to look up when I have no idea where, though, so that'll have to wait.

Also spent the better part of the last few days looking for cars on Craigslist. Emailed a couple of people, and here's a shoutout to the lady that was all honest-like and told me that the car she had wasn't for me (I mentioned that I was leaving in a few weeks) because though the part it needed replaced was a cheap replacement (which was all my googling had found me re: the problem the listing said it had), it was lodged between the engine and the transmission, so not an easy fix. I like that she told me that so much that I kind of want to show the listing+email to dad and ask him what he thinks--he fixes all of the cars everything by himself (plus the kids as his bitches, naturally), so it might not be impossible, and I think it was otherwise a decent car for like $700.

ETA: Oh, except that I deleted the email yesterday and it's not in my trash anymore. Oh well. Cheaper to just put a cruise control on the red car like I want to.

There was a millipede (or some such many-legged fellow) on my bed a moment ago. Such are the perils of living in the basement. So I caught it and stuck it in a plastic bag that was within arm's reach. And bit some air holes in the very top and set it down to show people in the morning. Only to realize a few minutes later that it turns out I didn't need the air holes anyway, as half of one side of the bag was split open. So now there's a millipede on my floor somewhere. If it crawls anywhere on my body, though, I cannot be responsible for what my reflexes do.

Blood donation. This was a fun saga. I got asked to do it by the teacher that runs the Saturday Scholars (fake!minimed) because the people that were supposed to did a crap job of promoting it and so practically nobody was signed up. Plus, I asked my econ teacher about these “professional development” points we had to have (50 per quarter—I’ve never even gotten close to that number, but last quarter I only got 15, which hurt my grade, so I’m trying to make up for it this quarter) and she said she’d give us 5 for donating. Never hurts to ask was the lesson there, even if it is only 5 out of the . . . 85 or so that I need to cover this quarter’s number and last quarter’s deficit (because I think we can do that—I know you can pay points forward, I’m not sure if it works the same way backwards, but methinks it should).

Anyway, I was planning to go during English class (because I forgot we had weirdo triple reading over the weekend and barely finished—even though I totally half-assed the second half of it—the uberlong double helping of To The Lighthouse, totally forgetting that he’d tacked on “Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown”), but Character Council had a meeting then, so I got out of English anyway. Got to talk for a bit in there about the abortion protesters that were outside the school on Friday and sort of set people straight—whatever I may feel about the issue, and however poorly they may have chosen to present their side (they had posters with graphic dead, cut-up babies on them outside a school), they were perfectly within their rights to do so. They were careful to stay on public land, and from everything I saw were perfectly respectful to everybody—which is much, much more than I can say for everyone towards them. Was tagged to be one of the people that helps when the national character evaluator peoples come around in April because the asst. principal in charge of it knows/likes me, which is cool. And the head principal (who came to the Saturday Scholars presentations over the weekend, which was nice of him) pulled me forward for having done that and made everybody clap, which was not necessary but smile-worthy all the same.

So that was that. Worked on this econ project in AII, almost finishing that up (because I didn’t know how much my partner ended up planning on doing, so I just did everything I could for it in the time that I had—we ended up partially doubling on one thing, but most of the project hadn’t been done until I did it, so twas a good thing).

Then biology. We were just finishing a lab I’d already gotten done (with much time to spare) last week, so that wasn’t a big deal. Though I think we may have a test tomorrow, so must ask about that. Anyway. This is when I went to do the blood donating stuffs.

I get down there, sign in, wait around a bit, spell my name, tell the lady my weight, give her my social security number, etc. We move on to pulse. She takes it. Calls another lady over to check. Evidently, mine was too low. This is weirdness, but I feel it and she’s right. I sort of pump it up a little bit with my mind, and it’s up enough to be okay by the time the second lady takes it, so we’re past that hurdle. Still. Idk how to feel about having a resting pulse of 48 (and not even that resting—I’d been sitting for a few minutes, but before that had walked across campus through the nastycoldwet that is the current weather); I don’t think my workouts are enough to make my heart that good, LOL.

She found my blood pressure to be significantly higher than the last two times I’ve taken it (though admittedly, I was about to get blood sucked out of my arm, so perhaps with reason), but I wasn’t so sure about the number she got. You can feel the point when your artery opens and closes and the blood flow is stopped/resumes, you know? And I was looking at the sphygmo, like I always do, and I don’t think it was that high when I felt it. Plus, with the issues that later came to light, it made even less sense. (Note how I totally avoid spoiling you here in order to maintain the suspense.)

Now comes the finger-prick float test for hemoglobin. This is the one that I was most worried about failing, because I don’t get a whole lot of iron in my regular diet. Red meat’s got too many calories for my comfort—I’m a fish and poultry kind of girl when it comes to meat, but egg whites if you give me a choice of protein, so not much there. I’d been stocking up, though; Mum donates platelets all the time, so she’s got iron pills that she takes for a few days before she goes, and I’d been doing the same. The lady had some trouble getting me to bleed enough (portent #1) and had to do much squeezage of the finger to get enough blood up the little tube to drop it in the solution, but when she did, it dropped like a rock. Well, not quite like a rock. It was still kind of slow, but it went straight down (none of this “within 15 seconds” stuff) and didn’t come back up. I was impressed with myself.

And then there is movage to the little cot. Where I hang out. It’s the period in which everybody takes their lunch (which I missed entirely due to this endeavor, so I’m significantly peckish right now) so we’re shuffling blood-taking people around and going on breaks and such. It took a while there. They didn’t like the antecubital on my right arm, and though they were going to try to stick it anyway, I could tell that the (different) lady didn’t think she could make it, so I sucked it up and gave her my left, which has a better AC. More waiting, preparation stuff, the stick (which wasn’t that bad). Wiggling of the needle, bad. But then it was taped on and I was good. Except I kept trying to cross my legs, which evidently is not allowed. And that the lady was a bitch—she explained nothing about what I was supposed to be doing/what was going on (the latter being something which I think we’ve established I’ve got problems with), and then sniped at me when I moved my arm around too much after she marked the vein (scraping my arm hard enough with the pen to draw blood while doing so, btw) and later when I wasn’t or was squeezing the ball when I was/wasn’t supposed to. I was all “Okay, then how about you tell me what you want me to do rather than have me guess at it all?”

This is le part one. The busses are here, so tis time to be with the leaving for home (and lunch). Will resume later (prolly evening, because I was up too late with the dog last night trying to get him to shut up and take his medicine and not pee on the floor and thus need significant quantities of nap).

Because I am a failure, a good half or so of the paragraph that I'm on for this paper that was due yesterday has been left on my computer at school. So rather than write it again, I think I'm going to bed now to hopefully be able to pull together that plus a conclusion into a page or so during the 70ish minutes I'll have free before economics. Shouldn't be too hard, but then again, until my dog shut up (he thought he didn't get enough to eat tonight before we ran out of dog food, the baby, and so cried for hours until I finally tossed him a couple of pieces of bread just to shut him up before I was forced to open the front door and let him out into the neighborhood so he'd bother somebody else) I only managed to scrape together about half a page in some two hours.

Ehh. This is life. I do not want to get bitched at for not taking the trash out (in 4 hours or so). Like always.

Reminds self. You made up a couple of page numbers for the second book citation. If you ever want to do anything with this paper beyond turn it in to econ, fix that.

Edit: Oh, and I found that Star Trek book, Before Dishonor, that everybody's been talking about. It was Peter David, what can I say? Perhaps talk to come on that. It confused me, because I'm pretty sure there was supposed to be a book before that, but nothing in this book said so, so idk.