commotiocordis

Harry Potter's Daniel Radcliffe gives major donation to The Trevor Project

The Trevor Project is "the only nationwide, around-the-clock crisis and suicide prevention helpline for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and questioning (LGBTQ) youth", among other related services.

I still say this manchild is a gay. Not that being an ally means you're a homo, obvs, but because he sort of just feels like it to me. Idk. Claiming to like only "older women", and he's so polite, stuff like that. Maybe just because he's cute with guys in my head.

I'm interested to know what made him choose this organization to donate to. I hope it's not because he has a friend or somesuch who has benefited from such services, because that is sad. Also sad is that he will probably feel the need (or his publicist will) to make several high-profile appearances with a "female acquaintance" to ~~temporarily~~ stop rumors that he is gay.

Back from the DMV--totally forgot I needed to renew my license (didn't actually run out until September 19th, but I'm fairly sure I won't be back on a weekday before then and idk if I can renew it in a different county). Ran around all morning trying to find appropriate proof of residence. My name's not on any of the utility bills or other government documents with my parents' address. They say you can just bring one of the parents' items, but that you might need a signed statement or something as well (saying what they don't specify, natch), and I know I've never had a problem with it before, but the last time I was at the DMV was when I was actually getting my license for the first time, so Dad was with me. Also had to find the birth certificate, remember that my social security card was actually in my wallet from when I was looking into donating plasma and they had to have your card for whatever reason, etc. etc.

Want to guess what the lady asked me for? My old license. That was it. Last time, even just to get my actual license I think all I needed was the birth certificate and to tell them my social. I've decided that the entire purpose of the new "Show Me Proof" Missouri bring-a-bunch-of-crap-to-get-your-license-renewed program is just to intimidate people into not trying to renew your license if. . . idk, you've somehow un-naturalized in the interim or something.

Got the glasses restriction taken off my license, though, just to prove the guy at the Lenscrafters wrong (and, you know, because I went to the gym at 8 this morning to watch The West Wing and went by the DMV straight from there without grabbing my glasses like I'd intended to just in case I couldn't pass the eye test). This eye doctor man a few days ago was giving me the third degree about whether I wear my glasses driving or not (90% of the time, not; usually only going to and from Springfield and often not even then)--I told him yes, but for some reason he didn't believe me (perhaps because I didn't bring them and he didn't realize that my mom was his next patient and therefore, natch, I didn't drive). I swear, he was about to try a citizen's arrest or something. All "you know that's illegal!" I was like "yeah, but I'm pretty sure it's not a felony." I always figured that if somebody pulled me over and actually looked at that and cared, I could just claim contacts (and the once that the guy of non-turnlane-usage hit me, I don't remember if I was wearing them but I doubt it because I was on the way to the gym, and the officerchick didn't say anything).

Anyway, I'm only 10 past the limit (it's 20/40, I'm 20/50 or something), so I just faked it on the little machine thing. I was totally shaking afterwards, though, because I knew I got a bunch of them wrong--I focus really slowly, but usually if I stay there long enough, my eyes can get there. So I was on the the third set of letters (I think it was a second distance set at a different depth, while the middle was near) when the first distance set popped into focus, and I was like "oh, shit. She's going to call me on it," but I hadn't wanted to go slowly because then I'd arouse suspicion. (I'd already tried to get away with just reading the middle set, but was told to read all the way across). Nope. There was nobody in there, really, and everybody was all laid back, and it was fine. The picture wasn't even too bad though my Chinese food-induced vomiting yesterday caused, as usual, the petechial hemorrhages around my eyes that made me look like I'd been socked in the face.

Bored now. Thought I'd share. I slept on and off on the drive down (Kaci kept waking me up every 15 minutes all "LOOK, A LLAMA!" which while interesting, when I was already 5 hours past when I should have gone to sleep, not appreciated), but only maybe 3 hours worth. And then I was falling asleep after we got back to the hotel this evening only to get constantly woken up because I was in the wrong bed. Seriously? Can't you guys just rearrange around me? It's not like it really matters. But I managed to de-tired enough that it's 1:15, I'm relegated to this shitty cot thing that's way too close to my brother for comfort (it's right up against one of the beds, and he's sprawled half off of the edge of said bed), and not really tired. I could be, prolly, if I tried, but it's like I've broken through the sleepy. So I'll just be miserable tomorrow.

However, I will have had my monthly quota of vitamin c. I think I've polished off nearly half the bag of satsumas myself.

Democratic lawmakers opposed to federal funding for abortions said Tuesday the House leadership's health care bill contains a "hidden mandate" that would allow taxpayer dollars to be used to end pregnancies.

God, that's a hard question. (Though first of all, I'd call it a loophole rather than a mandate--the bill just doesn't say anything about abortion, which means that insurers that already cover it will continue to do so, possibly funded by the public subsidies of low-income subscribers.)

I've hashed this out before--I'm pro-birth control and sex education and extremely anti-abortion, but I'm more or less reluctantly pro-choice because data says that if it's illegal, it'll still be done, just criminally and unregulated and people will die. (Like pot.) I take a more practical aproach to the whole issue--reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies, and soon abortion won't be an issue. (Kay, that's really optimistic, but we can reduce the need for it drastically.)

If we change something, that's government interference with private companies, which people scream about. (Mostly the Republicans, which is probably why the article I read talked about how it's Senate Democrats making a fuss about closing the hole, LOL.) 90% of private insurers cover abortions (which flabbergasted me until I realized that they probably just cover it some minimal percentage that they cover any gynecological surgical procedure by an approved provider), so the government just steps in and is all "Umm, sorry. Change your practice. You don't get to cover that anymore, even if you have no publicly-subsidized clients, because, you know, how can we tell that you have no subsidized folk?"

And on the other hand, I'm way not comfortable with my tax money (that I pay way goddamn too much of for a kid who's only income is a freaking scholarship--I'll bitch about this again; I've got a full ride, room/board monies included, and all of that went straight back to the school, but because they didn't, idk, waive my tuition or something, they actually deposited money into my account, I had to pull some > $600 out of my savings to pay the taxes on it) going to abortions. And since the money goes to people who can then use it for whatever insurance provider they want, the only way to ensure that I'm not contributing to this is to stop all of them from covering it.

Huh. Legally, infringing the right to an abortion is a no-no, so they're just going to end up having to not do anything and leave the loophole or whatever in, but it might be yet another interesting fight to derail the healthcare bill (that I'm not paying nearly enough attention to considering I'll prolly have to buy into it when I age out of my parents' plans and still have mounting education debt).

Also interesting, a study from the Department of Transportation that was blocked from release in 2003 and just gotten under the Freedom of Information Act says that your driving sucks just as bad whether you're talking on a regular cell phone or a bluetoooth, handsfree thing. Makes sense--I mean, most of the distraction is cognitive. More so if you're a business type person or taking important calls, it says, because you've got to pay a lot more attention to that. At first, I was like "Okay, so places with cellphone bans move to banning even hands free stuff, but then isn't having a conversation with somebody in the car going to be just as bad? How about listening to NPR or other high-brow talk radio? Ban that too?" But you really can see how

It's funny, because most of the time when they talk about cellphone driving laws, it seems directed towards the stupid teenagers, when according to this, it's businessfolk that are the problem. Except for texting, natch. But it's not like you can really get caught texting like you can get pulled over when they see you with a phone in your ear, so that's rather impossible to enforce.

Moar news.

Prometheus Laboratories v. Mayo Collaborative Services et al. is heading for the federal circuit in early August. Hells yes. I've long been of the opinion that medical patenting has gone WAY too far. For instance, what this case is about: testing for metabolites of a drug to see how well the drug is working in somebody's system. Sure, patent your little kit for doing so, whatever, but if a lay person can walk up and say "Oh, because if there's lots, it means there's lots of drug being metabolized!" and get it just like that, it's way too common sense to patent the process.

If Prometheus wins, I kinda want Obama to step in there and be all "Dude. Judge-types. We're over here trying to make healthcare less expensive and you're on the other side of the beltway screwing us over by making sure that every one of this whole category of tests has to be run through your company. WTF. See if I put any of you on the Supreme Court now." I can see it coming out as sort of a compromise decision--the company gets the patent on testing for this drug because Mayo's simply changing the threshold numbers the test looks for is too derivative, but. . . I don't know. Mayo's kinda been a sneaky little bitch by trying to avoid the patent like that, but in my world, that kind of a patent is invalid anyway. I mean, what, can only one company in the word do a CBC too? Counting eosinophils, we did that in microbiology, should we have to have licensed that process first? No way.

And finally? Interesting food fact. I tried this out when we had a fire in the backyard a couple of times this week (it's been unseasonably cool and wonderful lately) and didn't feel like pigging out on s'mores but also didn't want to lose the opportunity to make them for later, so I made a bunch, wrapped them up (some in foil, some in wax paper--the latter first just because I couldn't find the foil at first, but then switched when I did because I had to tape the wax paper to get it to stay, and the tape didn't stick well) and froze them. I made the mistake of trying to eat the first two when they were still frozen, and then the graham cracker just turns to powder in your first bite, though the innards are good, but the other two I'm eating right now, and I let them thaw first and it's marvelous. So. Has discovered that that works. I mean, you lose out on the warm and gooey, but I can still taste that campfirey-marshmallow flavor. Win.

Just testing out the "post from email" option. For the third time, as it's not liking me. Perhaps it's on a lag, and because I just set it up a few hours ago it takes a while for LJ to acknowledge that this email is an accepted post-from venue. Or they're all backed up in LJ and will all post at once. Either way, some three-plus copies of this will probably show up at some point, LOL.

Third time failed, and thus we're posting from Semagic as usual. Don't know why that's not working, but the above reasons are probably at least part.

So, Psych on Friday? Not a fan. Really just wasn't very funny, IMO. The whole Lassiter scene was quite touching, but we'd all called it from the very beginning and his lovey speech didn't really fit with the overall tone of the show. I kept asking myself where the joke was.

Did not get to watch Dollhouse, but my worries from the beginning about how it didn't sound that good are being reinforced by the vague reviews I'm hearing from others that did see it. Showed Dr. Horrible to the mother yesterday, who enjoyed it quite a bit (though she wasn't crazy about how it just ended), so weekend Joss fix = accomplished.

I'm at home atm for the long weekend. I should be leaving around 4 tomorrow to get back for a mock trial meeting Monday night, but I don't think that's happening, as BILL NYE THE SCIENCE GUY IS COMING TO SPEAK HERE. And since he's kinda one of my favorite guys of all time (you should hear me quote things like "Science rules" or burst into giggle fits anytime anyone says "Consider the following"), it wins. Must come up with a good excuse for not being able to come to MT, though I really shouldn't have to as I could make every single other meeting we've ever even proposed having. Still not looking forward to that in general. I'm sticking with the distancing myself plan, as then I can resist taking over and rewriting everyone's everything and can brush it off when since I didn't rewrite stuff, we get our asses kicked in two weeks.

Had lobster for the first time yesterday. Yum. It wasn't even good lobster (so says my dad; naturally I have no comparison), but I'm a huge fan of the richness (which is actually what Dad says was lacking in this one, so I can't wait to taste a good one). And scallops, though I think I've tasted them before. Fan of both, but the lobster more; I liked the scallop but it wasn't really anything new, delicious but not different from other seafoods like the lobster was in its richness. That's what my parents did for Valentine's Day, LOL, Dad bought lobster and Mom bought scallops and they cooked them up just in the kitchen and ate them at the table. I'd make a recession joke, but that's always what they've done, really, because they like homemade food. I trust nobody noticed my switching to my ancient, made because of a challenge I misread the rules for and so never actually entered it into, Valentine's NCIS icon, which was my only concession to the day.

[[There was at one point a whole huge thing here that I went back and added after finishing the rest of the post where I segued into Valentine's Day being my paternal grandmother's birthday and the whole situation with her and my dad and her health and such, but it became too long for this post and not the right attitude to then jump back to my sister being a socialite, so that will come in a separate post.]]

My sister is quite the social animal, I'm realizing. I mean, I knew that, but sort of forgot as with other people's vacations and such there wasn't much of it over Christmas. I come home Friday and she's having a Friday the 13th party with some 5 preteen girls (interestingly enough, two-maybe-three of whom have parents who teach in our school district; one of them math at the high school who actually recognized me despite my not ever having him nor spending more than one hour a day in the math building and none last year nor even ever having a conversation with the man, I don't think, which was somewhat weirding, though less so as he was quite nice). She spent Saturday afternoon out somewhere, and spent today making plans for people to go with her to BILL NYE OMG tomorrow. I mentioned to Mom, "Aren't you glad that you managed to skip this with your first two?" She responded with an emphatic yes.

I'm kind of jealous, though. Not of the socialization, as I tend to find that tiring, but idk, of the happiness she gleans from it? I do remember a time in elementary school when I loved going to parties and such, but it seems like people don't just get together and have fun just for the sake of it anymore. Since. . . hell, probably 8th grade, there was either a reason (a birthday or event) or (usually 'and') alcohol involved. Since none of my friends drank (most not at all, and never around me), it was like we didn't have that reason to get together that "mainstream teenagers" did, so we just didn't.

Or maybe they did all through high school and just didn't invite me. Tis a distinct possibility, as it's pretty easy to admit that Katie was the only person I was really close to. Which is why it really sucks that we aren't really talking anymore. I made some reference to something we used to do, one of our many collective quirks, and Mom asked if I'd talked to her recently, and I sort of scoffed and said no. Mom was like "What, are you mad at each other or something?" and I was really sort of idk, proud that I was able to say "Well, I am, idk about her." Because you know what? I am pissed that I made an effort to stay in touch and I wasn't getting any help with it, and I'm damn well allowed to be (/part of Alexandria's "not everything is your fault, Ms. Self Esteem Fail" campaign). She was always the more social of our pair, so she knows that my making the effort was an especial stretch for me, and yet I haven't heard from her since probably September. Mom says that she and my Aunt Beth didn't talk for most of college, and yet got back together enough that she's my godmother (though idk how much they've talked beyond notes in Christmas cards in the last few years).

And in completely different news, I'm pissed off that my dad/I didn't go ahead and buy NFL swag off of this Fox Sports website that was having this killer sale, as sometime today the sale died. It was killer. $2.50 hats, $7 shirts, $12 jerseys? We're talking easily 75% off. I would have worn Denver stuff every day (and actually bought a coat that fit me--as much as I lovelovelove my Denver Broncos coat, a good part because it was my Dad's and is huge and comfortable and you can settle down in it for the winter, because it was my dad's and is huge it doesn't trap body heat especially well when the wind blows like it does in Springfield because there's just too much air between you and it to try to keep warm under the bitter onslaught.

Figured out in a burst of figureoutedness (finding the word I want fail) that the headaches I've had all weekend are from caffeine withdrawal, LOLOL. At school, I've got a glass of soda (invariably at least 18oz, usually closer to 24+) with both lunch and dinner every day, unless I'm trying to be good and abstain, which usually lasts all of a day at most. Come here, and practically nothing. I was really pleasantly surprised that taking a Tylenol worked, though; I've got it in my head that NSAIDs don't work on me, which I think is the case because I take them so rarely, usually only when I'm actually in the midst of a full-out illness (and usually not even then unless I've got to suck it up to make it through school, as I'm of the mind to try to fever things done with quicker), so they can't relieve all the sick. When it was just a medium-strength headache and I grabbed some just because they were right next to me and I figured what the hell (and also "oh god, oh god, please do not be the beginnings of a migraine" as I've had surprisingly few lately *knock on everything solid within reach* and feel like I'm due), Tylenol could do it.

I really want a soda, LOL. Or anything, I suppose, but there's an empty can of Diet Coke over near me and the caffeine monster WANTS THAT and not the lukewarm last bits of a water bottle next to it.

/test of the ~~emergency broadcast system~~ email posting. Chances are this will have to be cleaned up as idk if it will handle coding or anything, but I'm hopeful. Could be handy, as I tend to log in to my email on any computer I'm on for more than a few minutes (in a computer lab or something), but logging into LJ is rarer and that extra step is a deterrent from posting. Though the fact that oddly, the Firefox built in spellcheck doesn't appear to be working right now is similarly a deterrent. Idk what's up there.

O. M. F. G.

Marburg hemorrhagic fever, imported case, UNITED STATES

LOL at how they retrospectively diagnosed it, though.

Atm, I'm in the first floor of the biomedical sciences building while my gel runs upstairs because I've got a shitload of work and no time to do it. I've been getting maybe 4 hours of sleep each of the last three days, which doesn't make me happy as with my 8 and 9 am classes, I was trying to be in bed by midnight. Yeah, that worked until I got, idk, actual homework.

And now I'm swamped, between the lab and mock trial right now. The former is new and weird. Though this is only my third day working in there, so it's understandable, and I am really getting the hang of things because I know what I'm doing, just not where everything is, LOL; keeping the notebook is the hard bit--I'm not sure how much/what to write out. As there's a large continuum of detailedness in procedure, especially since it's all written out for me already as standards and I only really have to mark down changes I make (different buffers, annealing temperatures for the PCR, etc.) And I'll definitely have enough to actually write it up when I'm done, but I'm not sure how much the supervisor wants in terms of that kiddish bullshit regarding actually enumerating every item you ever even think about touching in the materials section, etc.

MT is. . . interesting. We're just prepping every witness just in case, which is what I'd been advocating forever, but now we have enough people to do it. I'm pretty much pissed at most of the people, though, as they just jumped in on Sunday so they could get to go with us to Columbia for the competition. And worried, as I've never heard any of them do anything mock trial-y. And one of them not even talk, really. I'm worried about him the most, as he's not even in Phi Alpha Delta (the pre-law fraternity that's sponsoring the MT team) and. . . doesn't really strike me as intelligent. I mean, at all. But as a result of this last-minute thing, we don't have an overall case strategy, nobody's working with each other to coordinate examinations (because sometimes you've got to make sure somebody says something earlier so you can get in what you want later), etc. So we're pretty much going to get our asses kicked, which I severely dislike. Because I'm good at this mock trial stuff, but I'm having to spend all my time just trying to get everybody (or even some of everybody) in the same room at the same time. We had both of the other lawyers and one of my two definitely-going-to-be-used witnesses not show up to the meeting on Sunday, so I can only hope that they didn't just quit on me or something. I don't understand why people here think they don't have to make any kind of comittment--it's only since the president of PAD intervened for me and started browbeating people that anybody would show up, since I've got no incentive/disincentive to enforce to ensure attendance. But seriously? Nobody seems to get that you've got to make the meeting times fit, you can't just say "oh, I've got work, can't show"--it's called asking off, seeing as how MT'll be over in a few weeks, it's not like it's going to be forever.

And I've got my microbiology test tomorrow that I'm going to fail since I still can't get the book (they're out at the bookstore; they offered to order me one, but I'll be damned if I'm paying the new price much less also the "having to ship it in" fee that I've heard they tack on)

And a psychology test that I'm going to spend all of 5 minutes looking over stuff for because I'm fairly certain I can take this class's final right now and pull at least a 97% but still adds to the stress

And chemistry lab (and thus in-lab quiz and writeup) tomorrow.

And journal entries due for Hero and Quest reflecting over material I haven't actually read all of. These being that which I was up until 1 and then from 3:30-6ish doing two weeks worth of last night (and it actually did take me that long, because of both the ADD from hell that's decided to be a bitch this semester simply because my doctor moved to Wisconsin so I've got no way of getting my meds for it reupped again), but it turns out that even though we didn't have class at all the third week, we've still got to do one.

And to add insult to injury, I was all excited about lunch today because it was some French theme and one of the counters was going to be fruit and cheese dessert. Which I thought might mean decent fruit (berries and such instead of the standard apple/orange/pear/banana/grapefruit rotating selection they've got of fresh, and nasty mushy sugary frozen/canned other fruits). With no interest in dinner (chicken strips and mashed potatoes/macaroni and cheese in both dining halls, blech--since they're for some reason killer popular, that's all it would have been at all the counters and in both places on the same day, which just seems stupid to me), that was going to be it for me for the day, but no. That dining place has a power outage.

And the chairs that I'm in in the computer lab have the most worthless backs in the history of chairs. Which would be okay if you just didn't use them, like stools; painful but doable. But no. The seat is slanted backwards so as to tip you back towards the back, which then leans so far back that I'd probably fall asleep if I stayed that way for more than a few seconds.

On a less-whiny (okay, still whiny, but different topic) note, House last night. How long after all the hoopla was that last scene supposed to have taken place? They didn't establish any kind of time passage, I think, which is fail. Because really? Not so much with the sexing after all that medical shit goes down. (Plus, erm, not really a fan of the 14.)

An internal intelligence assessment, obtained by The Associated Press on Wednesday, says the high visibility of the event, the presence of dignitaries and the significance of swearing in the country's first black president make the inauguration vulnerable to attacks.
Feds say inauguration attractive terrorist target - Yahoo! News

I bet we paid them a lot of money to come up with that profundity, too. File this one under "no duh", joint FBI and HHS task force.

And in other news, OMFG, I just made one of the most delicious dinners I've ever eaten totally by accident. It was one of those spontaneous, "What do I have in the fridge? Ooh! this will be good added in" things: just fresh broccoli all chopped up and softened in the microwave for a minute with spaghetti sauce my dad made (that was actually not one of his better batches, as the spices were wrong), that I ended up adding a bit of corn, a cooked and chopped up egg white and half a slice of fat free sharp cheddar cheese to. Warm it all up, mix it together, and I tried to fix the spices a bit--the thing was that Dad made the sauce for the meatballs he also made that were both delicious and sort of spicy, so to compensate the sauce itself was rather bland as the meatball spicy leeched out, but I got mine from the non-meatball batch, thus insufficiently spiced. I figured it needed more oregano, but though I'm a fan of that in the spaghetti in small amounts, by itself not so much, so when I picked up the jar and sniffed it, I decided a no on that one. So instead of trying to make it really spaghetti-saucey, I threw in some cumin and more garlic (because garlic:me is like butter:Paula Deen--everything needs more) AND SOMEHOW IT WAS AMAZING. And then just to make it more food, because it looked kinda small (and because I watched Top Chef at the gym and decided to make it into a blintz even though I've got no idea what a blintz really is, because this felt like one) I split the mixture in half and wrapped each bit up in a lettuce leaf that folded up all nicely like a cool wrap/sandwich(/blintz). But since it was Dad's sauce and the philosophy in our house with spices is that there is no measuring involved, there's going to be no way to recreate it.

Still. Man. Delish. Kinda dampened by the fact that before I ate it, I had to run to the bathroom so I stuck the whole wrapped thing into the microwave on half power for a minute while I ran there and back, and though the lettuce stayed decently crispy and the insides stayed warm, it was enough heat to cause the vegetable cooking phenomenon of doom: everything gets watery. And because it was all wrapped up and in a dish, I didn't notice until I carried it back to my room and picked it up to eat. While sitting on my bed. For whatever reason, I'd pulled over this section of newspaper to set the dish on, and thank god for that because otherwise there'd have been reddish tomatoey water all over my sheets. So flavor still magnificent, presentation got killed a bit there.

And in other, other news: DIE, UTERUS. That is all.

So. Busted up my van, sort of. I'm blaming it on the stupid sporty chick in the SUV that parked next to me. Unfortunately, when it comes down to the damages, they're all on me--it was her fault, but I did the actual damaging. The bitch pulls in to the spot next to me as I'm trying to pull out of this one at a weird angle at the very end of the parking lot (all but impossible to get out of on one try backing up, even if you're in a car and not this full sized van) and she's so close to me that you literally couldn't open the passenger door. Not even just not wide enough to get out; she was maybe 3 inches max from me, way over the line. I'm halfway pulled out, but need to pull back in and re-angle because it's the odd edge spot, but can't because now she's there (I gave her the nastiest look, LOL, and she just sort of shrugged), and it's either scrape the fuck out of my car on the parking lot sign or scrape the fuck out of my car on her car and then have to pay for her car. There was no way I was getting out of there without scraping something, no possibility at all, and since I was halfway out, it's not like I could just stay there and wait for her to leave (as while I was agonizing over what to do, she'd speedily jumped out and left, so I couldn't make her move her car so I could get out). Add to that that it was dark and wet and gross, so considering the circumstances, I succeeded pretty well at trying to minimize the damage, but there's a pretty deep scrape all down the driver's side, as well as the side headlight is completely gone, both cover and light (which is amusing, considering last time I went home, I spent 2 hours out in the cold getting the inside front headlight repaired).

I was unbelievably pissed all through exercising after I got out and saw what the damage actually was. In that "Oh, shit. What am I going to do?", internalizing it into depression sort of way. No fun. But then I was like "Torchwood yay" because

bleakone and I watched an episode down in late night dining and I got engrossed in that and my chicken salad (that is not sitting well, though that's probably more due to the fact that it just now sort of hit me that I've got a final in less than 12 hours that I've not yet begun to study for) and forgot, which is good. But the father is going to be uber pissed.

Reading tons of CJ/Abbey fics all of a sudden (mostly because I started playing with a CJ/Donna Christmas fic and wanted to get into the voices and absent having episodes to watch, went to read fic; unfortunately in this circumstance, there's much more CJ/Abbey than CJ/Donna) and I got drawn in to Cj's excellent, but unfinished (!!hate!--I was so engrossed!) Repetition series.

( Review. This cut is purely so I can possibly link to this later without making people read through my car woes before or my suitemate woes later, but whatever. )

And now, on another note, I was just trying to get this typed up (the car story; the fic rec was an inadvertent sidetrack caused by my trying to pick out an icon to use for the post, seeing my CJ/Abbey one, and going "Ooh, that was a great fic") so I could hop into the shower and either go to bed to get up and study in the morning or study some and then go to bed, but now I think people are hanging out in our suite area. And it's quite awkward to go in and take a shower when there are even my suitemates around, much less in the suite area, much less with people (including guys) I don't know in there.

Except now, as I kept typing up the review, they're gone. But the others are getting ready for bed, so I've got to wait a bit longer. Fail, timing.

The girl--Kate--who's more or less in charge of this expedition is scarily spirited. She keeps screaming generic "Hooray" type sentiments. And things like "Ballin!" I can't even describe how much this hurts me, both in the excessive use of the word "ballin'" by this 85 pound really white girl and the volume and pitch of this woman's shrieks.

Miserable, I am. Particularly after being told that we are 6 to a room with only 2 beds and a couch. What. The. Fuck.

(And conference gets tagged as "dorm", because though it's a resume line plain and simple, that's close enough to it on topic, at least.)

Patty, one of the more senior members of the expedition (definitely more towards "adult" in my mind; I think she's a recentlyish graduated grad student?) is totally the opposite. Still cheery, but this. . . pastel is the best word I can come up with for her voice. Like she's totally scared of everything. And Angie, the other woman along is way too old (she's probably not more than early 30s, but I can't really tell; still. . . ) to be as rah-rah as she is.

In the meeting for this expedition on Monday where I found out I was going, they read through every word of every line of this packet of info that was passed out. I can probably count on one hand the number of times I've been that frustrated in my life. It was excruciatingly slow and painful between Kate's loud shrillness and Patty's simpery voice.

And somewhere between waiting in the lobby of our building to board the van (the driver of which, Angie, spent much of the time talking on her cellphone and merging across multiple lanes of traffic, which made me feel quite unsafe, I might add, on top of having the guy behind me adjust his knees against the back of my seat every few minutes) I lost the battery cover to my cellphone. Gah.

Now they brought in pizza. And 4 different varieties of non-diet soda. They've got the menus for the lunches and dinners and it pretty much looks like I'm not eating this weekend. Not that a little metabolism shock isn't good for a girl, but it seems quite inconsiderate.

Only the second wrong choice for Missouri in more than 100 years. Thank God it didn't matter. Here's to making 44 a million times better than 43.

Edit (11:34pm): Strike that. Not all the precincts are in, and a good number of the ones that haven't reported are in, surprise of surprises, St. Louis County. It's 2 years ago all over again, LOL.

After polisci first thing in the morning, I spent my time after a 10 minute Communications quiz working a table in the freaking wind tunnel of campus (read: holding down all the Obama swag I was passing out more than actually passing it out), then went back to mythology for fun mythology stuff (the movie Black Orpheus? I hates it), followed by data input for the Warren exit poll from 12:30 to about 9. Then straight to working out, where I watched results come in; they called it for Obama right as I was done, so we hightailed it back to watch the speeches. Missed McCain's, so I'll have to check that online at some point, but hoorah, Barack; your eloquence is still impressive.

However, as a result, I haven't eaten all day. But now, though I'm not quite pass-out tired yet (almost--it's been a long, long day), I know I will be before anything gets made to eat, so idk what I'm going to do there.

Requisite update from last Sunday (28 Sept.): Up all night trying to get tickets to this football game after we got shafted our old ones because the brokerage didn't have their listings updated, and thus let us buy tickets that the vendor didn't actually have anymore. Since Dad already had the hotel down here, I figured I might as well try. Posted on Craigslist finally, asking about tickets by way of bitching about the brokerage, and got tons of responses overnight about people with tickets and people advising me to just show up anyway, because there would be tons of people trying to sell them around the stadium due to there being a concurrent Nascar game and everybody expecting Denver to wipe the floor with Kansas City.

So we went. Dad ended up having to fuss around trying to check out of the hotel for quite a while, so we ended up leaving about an hour later than we wanted to, so we got there halfway through the first quarter. Drove around trying to find a place to park, walked around (as we'd parked on the opposite side of the stadium from the only gate that remained open that long after kickoff), got a pair of decent seat tickets on the way for $20 each. We were in the top level (whereas the original tickets had been in the lower), but low in it (though not as low in the section as the earlier ones either) and at the 30 yard line or so. The higher was good, we decided, as you could get a good picture of the whole field. Brought the binoculars, so we got to watch Shanahan pace around a bit, and get some good close-up looks (though it was more useful to just watch the play as a whole most of the time).

But then, you know, Denver didn't bring its defensive team with them to Kansas City, so that was sort of disappointing. But I had a lot of fun with Dad. Staying up all night the night before wasn't the best idea, though, because I wanted to be able to help him drive the bits when I was there so he didn't have to drive the whole six hours by himself (back here to drop me off and then back home). But in retrospect, I'd forgotten that he doesn't like me driving--he had crazy dreams about it last time we went somewhere (I think here to school for some reason, but I might be wrong) and thus won't let me drive long distances with him, though he never enunciated it this time around. Worse, though, we didn't really get to hang out on Saturday when he came down that afternoon, just a couple of shopping runs and then dinner--he ended up going back to the hotel around 8 or so and giving Rachel and I the car to run around wherever we needed (though nothing's open to do down here on a Saturday, it appears; even the mall closes at 9)--so in the car was the only time not occupied by something else that I really got to spend with him (football games = loud), and I was struggling to stay awake (and failing quite often) for most of it.

Downloaded this SopCast software today to let me watch the Denver game today, and ended up blowing my entire week's bandwidth. So I'm running at dial-up speeds for at least the rest of the week, which sucks. Further suckage comes from the fact that the entire bandwidth usage came from the P2P reuploading--3.75 gigs of it, when the whole 2 or so hours of football watching only took 635mb. Planning to look for a way to limit that like you can with normal P2P software, but I haven't found it yet for this program. Which means I might have to find another one that works, because that's not going to be doable if it busts me every week.

But above mentioned defeat to Kansas City, though humiliating (it seems like we only can get beaten by teams with horrible reputations--first Houston, then Kansas City?), really appears to have paid off, because it humiliated them early and enough to pick it back up for this game against Tampa Bay. Today's was a defense game, and we brought it.

Just got off the phone after about 40 minutes of conversation with the parents. Talked to Mom about the VP debate and politics and such--she's pretty disenfranchised with politics in general; she's voted in every election at least since I've been alive, and I'm pretty sure that's been since she turned 18, but she definitely doesn't get into it like I do. She's of the opinion that all politicians are crooks (often true, I'll concede), but as a result, isn't locked in to one party as much as I used to think she was (as much as she used to be?) And I'm pretty sure I've got her voting for Obama as well. So that's both parents turned from almost exclusively voting Republican. Job = success. She was asking me about the whole Obama/Ayers thing, which still hasn't really been explained well, but I read to her the couple of pertenent lines from the AP article I linked to in the last post (that was mostly about Palin calling Obama a terrorist) and she was reassured a bit ("That makes me feel better about--" I assumed 'voting for him' was the next line, which made me quite happy). She likes that Biden votes for the partial birth abortion ban, as she was always pretty much a one-issue Republican (stems from the Catholic upbringing plus probably more from the shitty luck she had having kids, I would guess). Not a fan of taxes either, but who is?

So win there. Same note, on Friday got to see Kristen Bell (from Veronica Mars and Heroes) and Rashida Jones (of The Office) come talk about Obama. Got some pictures of that on

bleakone's camera that I'll have to have her email to me/nick with camera cord and put up for kicks. Mostly just went because Kaci and Mom watch Heroes and I wanted to snap a couple for them, as they didn't really say anything interesting. ("Register to vote! And then make your friends! And then vote for Obama!")

Cleaned out my email inbox on Friday night too, which took a long time. Brought it down from near 700 just in the inbox to 170 or so; my goal was enough less than 200 in the inbox that everything showed up on one page of messages even when I had some unread emails in there, which has been achieved. I'd say about half filed into my folders (that need renamed/reworked, as I combined some things and filed emails into folders that were originally for other topics, as they didn't have their own folder and I didn't feel like there were enough emails to deserve it, such as all Star Trek topic'd ones into the Voyager folder, etc.), and half deleted.

Missed breakfast and lunch (it's really just one brunch on weekends, but still) out shopping with

bleakone and her mom (LOL at how I'm officially out of cash--as in, I have something like *counts* 37 cents to my name, and I didn't even buy more than a couple of 67 cent bottles of soda, a $1 package each of vanilla wafers and Wal-Mart brand cookies, and a thing of my Wal-Mart sugar free fruit punch that I down in two-liter quantities like water), so I microwaved one of my bison patties when I got back. Fairly successful--I could have gone down and cooked it on the stove in the basement, but I was watching the Denver game, so that wasn't happening until at least after that was done, and by the time it was over it'd be time for dinner and thus pointless, so I went for it. I did the math according to some website's suggestion of 7 minutes per pound (thus about 1:30 for my 3.5 oz), but stuck it in there for only a minute at first, which was good, because it was definitely done after that. A tad too far done, actually, but still quite eatable. So yum.

Now I really want to go to sleep and just wake up early enough to finish up my lab book for genetics (I've kept it mostly caught up, I just need to locate all the random papers I'm supposed to paste in and make sure they're up to date, as they're all the spare copies of ones we turned in, and I tend to fill in one copy and forget about it until right before I've got to hand it in and then not have enough time to duplicate it for my book), but I've had something like 3.5 liters of fake!Diet Dr. Pepper and two or three glasses of Diet Mtn. Dew since 2pm (I'm a whore for the soda--it's a problem, but I'll drink whatever you give me in whatever quantities you give it to me in, thus making the two liter bottle last not even a day in most cases) so I don't think it'll happen. Even though my body is tired (and my brain sort of too), I'm hopped up.

OMG beautiful weather today. Downright chilly most of the morning--add the windchill from bike riding and I was goosebumpy through all of my polisci class. Which is interesting. The class, not the goosebumps. It's one of those ones where all the material is interesting, but you come out of it looking over your notes and wondering what exactly there is in there to be tested on. Plus, the teacher's still trying to pretend she's from Oklahoma. Seriously. I recorded part of her lecture today, so I'm going to go though that and pick out some of the strikingly not-Oklahomian bits to share.

I'm in the top floor lobby atm, and not only did (in the few minutes it took for me to run back to my room, pop a bag of popcorn, and come back) somebody take my spot in the cushy chair alcove, now two other people (boyfriend and girlfriend, I'm assuming) have come into the same alcove to powow. Idk what they're doing--the girl padded in in her pajamas, bringing two bottles of water (vodka?) and the guy came off the elevator, and now they're just talking. Nothing wrong with that, I mean, but don't you have rooms? And at 11pm?

I am quite annoyed currently with the network stuff here. They're all "don't go over your weekly bandwidth or you'll drop down to dial up speeds!1!one!!" Umm, that's what I'm getting anyway. (And still managed to get within 400mb of the limit a few days ago, LOL). It's horrible. The inconsistency is the worst part--I'll be going 80 bytes per second for a while, and then it'll jump up to over 1mb/sec for a while, then back down to where it usually hangs out at 20-30kb/s. No idea how I got the killer speed, no idea what made it go the snail speed--all on Megaupload at pretty much the same time of day, so that's not it. And it's not even the wireless--this is on the wired connection. The wireless is more consistently fast (300kb/s ish in the basement lobby) if you're actually in the wireless zone--I can pick up the wireless from my room since this lobby has it, but the connection is spotty so it's not as quick.

[Edit: later, 1:20 am ish? I'm getting between 750k/s and 1mb/s back in the room on the wired. *sigh*]

Food here still doesn't make me happy. Omlette bar days do, because they've got whole eggs that I can separate myself (LOL at how I have to do it) in the hall that's practically in my building and a bucket o' egg white in the one that's on the way to most of my classes. But due to my scheduling, I rarely get down there for breakfast, which is sad. Most other days, the only thing I can count on is the salad bar (which tends to suck at the one near my classes--wilted lettuce, still-frozen vegetables, etc.; I only hit that one on T/Th for lunch, though, as other times I'm either in class during the meal times or near the closer one) and I have to bring my own fat free italian down because they only have one fat free dressing (raspberry--it's good, but you get tired of it quickly because it's a pretty flat flavor). There's a grill with burgers and stuff every day, and then some random fried meat substance most of the time for the main course (pork fritters today, etc.), and then one random thing that's usually not something I'll eat.

Even with the good weather today, the gym has not become any more tolerable. If there's more than one other person on the tiny row of treadmills, it's too loud to hear whatever episode of something I've put on my MP3 player (I wrap the velcro arm band around the handlebar thing to sort of prop up the screen so I can see it, though I've got to keep adjusting it the entire time because it tends to flop around because I can't quite get it to velcro on tightly enough), and you can never hear/see the TV. The latter mostly because my glasses are too wide for my face, idk how, and I can't get the ear pieces to sort of go back inwards, so if my face gets at all sweaty, they start sliding down.

Speaking of TV. O HELLZ YES, DENVER BRONCOS. Thank you for Monday night, sirs. But OMG, I didn't realize that we let Elam go. The new kicker's not bad (by that I mean he didn't miss last night), but IL Jason Elam. He's 38 and still the best kicker in the league. Plus, he's been playing pretty much my entire Denver-watching career, so he's one of the names that I still know from the Elway days. I read an article talking about how that's the exact reason that all the Denver fans are up in arms about his leaving, which is prolly true. Doesn't hurt that he kicks ass, though.

Re: mock trial. So, turns out that the pre-law fraternity is trying to start up a group. Which is good--takes the pressure off of me having to try to do so (as that almost definitely wouldn't have gotten done this year, now that I've looked at how many hoops you have to jump through). Nobody on the team's got MT experience at this level, though--two of us did it in HS (I think I actually beat her in State two years ago--definitely in rankings, if not also in a physical match) and we were talking after the intro meeting about co-captaining it. Which would be cool. I've pretty much got to join the pre-law frat to captain it, though, it's seeming, as the team's being done through them rather than as a separate club. Which is pricey. And I still don't have my bank card that they were supposed to send me (the form got turned in the 2nd of September, and I already had the account, all they had to do was print me up a card). Nor do I have my Public Speaking book that I ordered more than two weeks ago (totally could have done without it, too, as I know people in that class that I could have borrowed the book from to write my "Teach a chapter of the book to the class" speech, but it was only $6 or so including shipping, so whatever). That one's ticking me off. It's getting negative shipping feedback, LOL (as though most of the delay was probably the post office, the shipping confirmation they sent me says that they didn't ship it for some 5 days after I paid, which is not speedy).

Battery is low on the computer. Must go back now. Final note? Need to find out why I'm so sick pretty much since I moved in here. Dining hall food, methinks, but it's gotten to the point where I'm actually throwing up more days than not because I'm so nauseous.

Went to the downtown library after genetics today. OMG. This thing is tiny. 10 computers or so in a room with maybe one bookshelf's worth of books/magazines/DVDs/CDs in the entire place (along the walls all spread out so you could see all the covers). Stark contrast to the main city library that is a monster. But that one's more space, less books as well--I mean, significantly more books than this one had, but probably about as many as our Headquarters library at home, though the building took up twice the square footage (according to its website, the monster one is 82,000 sq ft and includes "a 185-seat auditorium, a glass-enclosed recreational reading room, a story hour room, outdoor story garden, a 134-seat public meeting room, five other meeting rooms of various sizes and capacities, a 'Between Friends' gift shop and MudHouse cafe"). And had a coffee shop built in (both this tiny one that I hit today and the main one that I got my card at back when I first got here two weeks ago). There were these really cute little alcove things, though, that would be really nice to hang out in and study or read (as I did) or whatever. (It's also got a Flickr photo stream here; no pictures of the alcove like I'd hoped, but the weird/pretty light things are on the ceilings of the alcoves. I also don't think it looks like this anymore, as some of the stuff--the white backed couch/benches by the magazines?--I don't remember seeing today.)

So yes. Not good for browsing, but I can request stuff from any of the libraries to be sent there, and the school shuttle will take me there M-F for free, so it works.

Post-library (picked up a copy I'd requested of the soundtrack for the Xena musical, LOL), I tried to take a nap (not a whole lot of success), got up, met up with

bleakone and ate dinner (nothing good but salad, as per far-too-often), and then headed to the school library's open house. Which was a really good idea--you had to go around and get your "passport" stamped at all the different places in the library, and then come back for pizza and putting your name in for a drawing. So I now know the library. And pretty much all the librarians in there are awesome--beyond the "friendly, local, lesbian librarians" and the Battlestar Galactica fan, all the others that we talked to were really nice and totally excited about us being there--the turnout was impressive, from my hearing of the library/faculty types complimenting each other, but I still got to take home most of a box of pizza. And an iPod shuffle and $15 iTunes gift card, because odd twist of luck meant my name was one of the ones that got pulled at the end. Had about an hour in between finishing the library facility scavenger hunt and the drawing, so I planned on going to work out (as the only treadmill-equipped exercise place is right across the path from the library), but it was closed again today, idk why. Which really pisses me off, as it was closed yesterday for the football game, today for whatever reason, and will be tomorrow because it always is on Saturdays. So we just hung out in the lobby until the drawing, playing around on the interwebs.

Following said winnage (and dropping off swag in the room), we went over to the game center in the basement of the student union place and played chess whilst waiting to partake in the free bowling night. And then, since there was a two game limit, when we finally got called up to bowl, put our names in the game three times each, LOL. We only got through the one game, but it was essentially like playing three, so that was cool. More LOLZ in how I managed to get a 94 on one of my people and barely break 70 on one of the others. Decent, the first one, for how I bowl prolly once a year. Since it looks like they're doing this free thing every Friday, I'm going to try to get better, because I enjoy the bowling stuffs.

It's probably 11 by the time we get back, so I hang around until 12 when Psych reruns and hit the gym in the basement. Working out + stretching + putting my numbers in my online fitness thing + loitering around before I sucked up the courage to actually come over and sit down, and around 2am I end up joining a Rock Band marathon, which lasts until 3:15. I'm still good at that, btw--it really surprised me when I was rocking out on it in New York at the cousins' house, this bizarre natural (I won't say "talent", but) decency at the game.

And now it's 4. And nothing's on TV. But I'm ravenous after bowling + stairmaster + Rock Band, so there is now significantly less of that pizza left over. Which needs microwaved again, as it's gotten cold through my typing, but I don't particularly want to open the door and run the microwave and such and risk waking up Chelsea. But, erm, lukewarm pizza? No.

I know who's going to win the Sri Lankan Civil War.

From the Wikipedia article.

"Apart from the LTTE, there initially was a plethora of militant groups. The LTTE's position, adopted from that of the PLO, was that there should be only one."

The Highlander reference kinda makes itself. I have no idea what that really means in context (mostly because it's 3am and I've only recently realized that I don't really have to become anything more than slightly conversant in the war to give 1/5 of a 5 minute speech on it when chances are nobody else even knows it's going on, and therefore I'm forcing myself not to bother to figure it out).

In other news, [ONOES, it's complaining tiems!] the luck of Alexandria continues. Rained like a bitch today. And it was my day of all 1 hour classes and really long rides between each one. So I pretty much only ever just began to dry before having to go back out there. Plus, construction all over makes the puddles (this school = underwater) mucky and now all the white bits (that admittedly, weren't overly white before today, but a lot closer than they are now) are this murky, rusty, red-brown. Butwaitthere'smore. Really nice, cushy bike -seat? Absorbs water. Butt = soaked even worse than the rest of me. Which is horrible-r because nobody likes soggy hair/shirt/knees-of-pants (as that's what points up whilst bike riding), but soggy underwear are even worse.

And then this "Don't Forget the Lyrics"-esque game in the evening. And it was hilarity. In that I had been joking that, on the first real elimination round, I'd know every other song in the round but the one I got. Guess what happened? Not only was I actually very familiar with every other song in the round (I think out of the 10 or so, 7 of them are currently on my MP3 player and the other three should be), it wasn't just that I didn't know the words to the song I got, but that I'd never heard it in my life. And I've got a pretty good music memory, so I'm confident in that. LOLZ.

Plus, dinner's tofu wraps were fail. I was so excited about that, and even more so when it appeared that they had spinach tortillas to go with them, but no. Twas just green flour tortillas and the tofu was blech; not cooked or anything (or even warm!) like I'd expected, but some kind of eww tomato/onion/chive flavor (that might have been good if the tofu was warm, maybe lightly stir-fried, but coldmushysoft, no).

Downloaded the software update for my TV tuner computer thing, which turned out to be freaking gigantic, and now I'm getting nasty automated emails about my being more than 75% towards my weekly bandwidth. Thanks, Pinnacle, for not only not including Vista support with your software CD, but not even just making it a patch but rather a 1.3gb full software download. Whores.

And the gym's closed pretty much all day tomorrow (from 2pm on, which doesn't do me any good as I've got class until 4) for a stupid football game. On the same note, had to do beginnings of fitness testing stuff in gym class. What happened to me, LOL? In middle/high school, they used to make us do those same types of tests, and I know that my 1 minute situp number was well into the 40s, not mid 30s. I was making sure to do the maximum range of motion on them, though (more than I actually had to, methinks), as I was partnerless and therefore having my feet held by the teacher (and therefore unable to skimp) which may explain it.

And now I'm really, really thirsty (because tortilla chips = salty), but don't want to get up and get a drink for fear of waking up Chelsea. Will anyway, though, because thirst > sleep.

Re: that article that's making the rounds about the swimmer Michael Phelps' diet while training. And it being something like 12,000 calories a day. It includes a 1000 calorie energy drink (twice a day), supposedly. I began to wonder what that would be like.

Let's do some math. One gram of lipid is 9 calories. That means that 1000 calories would be about 111.11 grams of fat.

If 1 tablespoon of pure oil is 120 calories, that makes each tablespoon about 13.333 grams.

111.11 grams divided by 13.333 grams is about 8 and 1/3 tablespoons.

That's half a cup plus a teaspoon. (Sad that I can do that off the top of my head, innit?)

Can you imagine downing half a cup of oil twice a day? Sure, mixed in with other crap to disguise the taste, but fats deliver the most calories in the smallest package, so the bulk of the calories in this drink would logically stem from emulsified lipid. And who wants to drink a gallon of energy drink a day; so it's probably not cut with very much of said other crap for sheer minimization of guzzling time.

Summation? Blech.

In the Philadelphia airport right now. LOL at how I've not been posting all the stuff before this that I've been meaning to write up, so nobody has any idea why I'm in PA. Went to Corning NY for the reunion, then up to Rutland(ish) VT for the aunt's house staying (where she'd lost the password for the wireless internets, so virtually no access for me at all there--add that to the no air conditioning and me having to sleep on the couch, which would be fine if the aunt hadn't been getting up ungodly early every day, thus waking me up at same ungodly hour, and scenery or not, I'm happy to be out of there), and this morning we drove down to Albany for me to catch a flight here (Philadelphia) to get a connector back to St. Louis. At 6:30, gah. I tried to get them to switch me up to the 4:45 one here, but since I had a checked bag, I couldn't. I was like "I could run back and get the bag like everybody else and recheck it on the new plane!" but no, because they would have been done unloading by then.

Got here rather surprisingly early--I assumed that planes left when they were scheduled to leave or later, not earlier, but we were up in the air a good 12 minutes pre-scheduled departure and touched down right at 2:50 (Eastern time--I finally got all my watches and computers and such switched perhaps day before yesterday only to have to switch it all back when I get home). So I have to hang out for the next 3 hours or so, but I found a spot with a power plug (not my terminal, but who's really going to check that?) and the airport has free wireless, so I'm content. Not so content in that flight sickness has not quite subsided, however. I should have figured that I'd be sickly, but I didn't realize how much dipping and bobbing and majorslantage (that seriously OMGfreaked me out the first time--when I thought about it, I immediately knew that the plane had to do that to turn, but it didn't stop the pre-thought OJEZUSWE'REGOINGDOWN shudder). I took a bunch of pictures out the window and such, but I don't think I have the cord or I'd stick them on right now. Perhaps, we will check when I finish typing.

First flight plane was seriously the smallest ever. See pictures to eventually (hopefully) be attached. Nine rows of seats, pairs on each side of the aisle with the last (9th) being a bench at the back of five seats. No bathroom either, which is funny, because we (mum, Kaci, and aunt Anna who all rode the hour and a half or so down to Albany with me) were listening to NPR on the way over, and they had their "We give you three news stories and you tell us which one's real" bit and it was about airplanes/airlines, and one of the two fakes (that we all thought was the real one) was about one airline possibly taking out bathrooms from their planes on flights less than 2 hours. Looks like it's already happened--THIS MEANS I WAS RIGHT, ANNA. I was supposed to be in seat 8D, but there was only one lady for the whole back bench, so I asked her if she'd mind me sneaking back there with her. She did not, and thus I was able to get a couple of out-of-window shots too without squishing the woman I was supposed to be sitting next to. And got essentially 2.5 seats to myself, as it was window-emptyseat-her-empty-me-empty-window. I really hope that some sort of the same situation will be possible on flight 2, as that's the one where I'll be in the air around sunset time, which is really when I want to be able to get the out-of-window pictures.

Wicked good timing with the flights, though. We bought the ticket on the 7th, and if we had waited until the 9th, I would have had to cough up $15 to check a single bag. And since it's before methinks August 1st, I still got a free Diet Coke on the plane.

Gah, stomach, stop being queasylike. You're on the freaking ground, what the hell?

Cool things about this airport. The food. They've got an A Bon Pain, which I'd been wanting to try out because of their whole menu of < 200 calorie foods. They have a smoothie place with < 100 calorie smoothies, too, which is win. I might end up trying both at some point, as no lunch was had (due to driving to and then being on a plane), though admittedly the breakfast happened around 10am, and thus the hunger has not returned (killed by the airsickness?). And it's all guaranteed to be street price, which means it's not going to kill my wallet (or, you know, will anyway because Philly's street price can't be cheap, but at least it's not going to be hugely more).

So sadness about the not getting on the 4:45 flight back to STL, but I have stuff to do, so it's cool. And I'm still getting home significantly sooner than the 13 hours of driving that it would have taken were mum ready to go home (I've got to work on Monday doing this teaching assistant gig for a summer camp for gifted 1st and 2nd graders, she loves Vermont too much to leave after only 5 days) or the 25+ hours of Greyhound bussing or train that was the second choice (Anna found the flight, thank god, and it was only like $20 more than the by-then sold out train and actually less than the bus). Though AIR CONDITIONING, PHILLY, WOULD BE NICE. It's probably just warm because I'm in the terminal area, where they've got the connectors to the outside and all, but it's 88 degrees in the outdoors and not a whole lot cooler in here.

O LAPTOP PLZ STOP THAT. It just had a popup thing telling me that Windows Media Player found somebody else's (the lady sharing this outlet with me, permaybehaps?) computer and can share files with her. NO THANKS, LAPTOPPY SIR. This unsecured network thing does not happy make me, especially since my Norton Anti-Virus trial that came with the computer ran out a few days ago. Scary.

Current Location: Philadelphia International Airport

I remarked upon a person, a bit ago, eating raisins and drinking grape juice. Does it not occur to you that there's a more direct way to do that? Say, eating a grape? Idk, just seems like a waste of effort on somebody's part (galactic energy, let's say) to separate the juice from the flesh and then eat them both.

Neighbor guy is outside washing off the carport again. At least it's not raining right now (though it's humid enough that it could and you probably wouldn't notice).

Michelle Trachtenberg in next week's TV guide? Really hot. They got a great shot of her in there. I usually just think she's pretty, you know, cutesy; they've got her all up with the smokey eyes and such. I was trying to pull the picture off of the TV guide website, but it's not up yet.

I'm being bitched at to get a job now that volleyball's over (as is school), but all the ones I want aren't working out. The one at the YMCA needed me to be 21 (as do many of even the grocery store positions--you can't do anything but push shopping carts around or bag stuff until you're old because all the stores sell alcohol now), the one at the bank needed money handling experience (which, while I'm good with money, I don't actually have time records backing me up on), the grocery store we shop at (because I figure if I'm going to get a shitty job, might as well get one where I might get a discount my family can use) isn't hiring, etc., etc. Tis frustrating, this.

My allergies have been kicking my butt lately. They’ve been bad for a week or two now, but mostly in the headache plus scratchy throat accompanied by the occasional sneezing bout and uncontrollable runny nose kind of way. Which, now that I list it all, sounds like a lot, but still. And then my chest was kinda tickly all last night, like I had to cough. Woke up this morning with full-out massive chest congestiony symptoms. Not the goodish kind where you can actually cough and make yourself feel better by getting something out—it doesn’t feel like I’m actually clogged up at all, I just have the cough tickle and the sort of labored breathing, you know?

Fail, I say. I was afraid this morning that it was because I was getting sick and not just allergies, but as it hasn’t really gotten worse throughout the day, I’m assuming not. Which is good, because I’m tripping down to Columbia (‘bout 2 hours away) on a bus with the fakey!minimed people for another leg (the last one, thankfully) of the program.

Which should be interesting. It’s all day Sunday and Monday morning. Which doesn’t make me happy in itself, because I’m only going because a) it’s free and b) we’re shadowing doctory people on Monday, but the doctoryshadowing is only a few hours. The longest part (the Sunday bits) are almost all going to be me vs. the idiots (I’m sorry that sounds pretentious and snotty and horribly bitchtastic, but they’re so dumb) on some fictional case study they’ve got going on.

That, and the schedule is really weird. Meaning I’m worried about my nutso sleeping and the food stuff. I’m afraid that every meal is going to be shitty and unhealthy and pizza and such (at least one of them is pizza, another is something else in a food court-esque place, etc.) not to mention provided at times where I’m not at all hungry, and I’m going to end up not being able to eat all weekend. I planned on bringing some soup and veggies and other healthy food type things along, since the hotel we’re in has both a microwave and a fridge in every room (it’s freaking swank—we’re talking more than $100 a night standard rates for this place) but it turns out we’re only going to actually get to the hotel for the first time after 9:30pm on Sunday and leave again (presumably not to return) really early on Monday to go do more stuff. Which restricts what I can bring along with me, because that means we’re probably leaving our clothes and stuff on the bus while we do most of the stuff, meaning I’d have to lug whatever food I wanted to bring for the day on Sunday around with me. Along with whatever food they provide that I decide to stash in my bag for later rationing/sharing/saving until I’m hungry—necessary because I’ve been eating my biggest/highest caloric meal around 2am lately because I’m fail like that, and when I screw with my system too drastically I get migraines, which would really manage to ruin the weekend in a lickedysplit type manner.

But yes. Yay for that in a not-so-much-yay type of way. The shadowing will hopefully make up for it, providing I got matched with somebody in the emergency department. If I’m chasing around somebody from the path lab, I’m going to be pissed. Because I have to call my boss today (I’ve been putting it off because I feel bad because I know I’m really leaving him in the lurch) and tell him that sorry, I can’t work on Sunday night because I’m going to be out of town, and since I don’t have anybody who can cover for me . . . sosorry. I want him to just call the coaches of the volleyball teams and ask them if we can cancel Sunday and tack another day on the schedule at the end, because that way I still get paid, but idk if that’ll happen. He’ll prolly either get one of his daughters to sit up there and just keep score (since I’m pretty sure none of them can ref) or try to do it himself. Still. Prefer, I would, the money.

Got free tickets from school to a baseball game for Tuesday evening, which might be nice. I’m not interested in baseball, really, but just going out to the thing is most of the fun. It’s for the Character Council (promoting character education, blah, blah) thing I’ve been sort of taking the lead on this year. Which I’ve been really enjoying, actually. I’ve developed a quite nice relationship with one of the administrators (Mr. S.) that is in charge of the program because of it—he really recognizes both the work I’ve been doing and that I’ve got interest in doing it and has been seeking me out for other leadershippy things, both related and not, which makes me rather proud. Plus, he’s just a pretty awesome guy all around—I was in his office yesterday on a conference call to give feedback on a panel/conference on cyber bullying that I went to back in October through the Council, and afterwards we were talking about everything from school policy on things to his personal history; he reminds me a bit of my dad—managed to turn things around from a poor family where nobody went to college and barely graduating high school (him)/having to drop out of college to work (my dad) to having several degrees and working in education and co-owning a swanktastic French restaurant (this is where my dad diverges, because unfortunately, this is not a possession of ours, LOL) and such. And we (there was another girl in there for the feedbacking too; actually the daughter of my theatre teacher of previous years, point of interest) were talking about religious stereotypes—she’s Southern Baptist, which people hear and go “OMG, conservative”, as with my Catholicism; Mr. S.’s grandparents were Orthodox Jews but were unexpectedly really cool with him marrying a Gentile, etc. And he bought us sodas afterwards, which was the cementer him into the winnage column.

But Character Council leadershippyness continues, as we’ve got some kind of national character award evaluator people coming in week after next and I’ve been fingered to be one of the two smarmy, lead them around type people, which is a big deal because most of their information about us and what we do is thus going to end up coming from me and my choices of places to take them to see “character in action”. Kinda high-pressure when I think about it. Which is why I’ve been choosing not to as of yet.; Mr. S.’s going to take me through a bit of what they want to hear, what it’s going to be like, that kind of thing on Thursday, methinks--after we have the discussion period on Wednesday that we’re going to part-reproduce/part-critique when the guys come the week after. The day the national people are coming is the day of the all-day Special Olympics thing that I’ve done for the past couple of years, though, which makes me sad, because I really like doing that and I’m going to have to miss it. I don’t think I got to do it last year either because of some big test I had that day, so doublesuckage.

Indeed. I’ll be leaving for home in a few minutes, then it’s callage of the volleyball boss, then to Shop N’ Save to return the nectarine that they shafted me on; $1.07 for one piece of fruit, which is frakking outrageous in the first place, but then it was totally worthless because it had been frozen and had that nasty, ex-frozen, mealy texture—no way I wasn’t taking that back. When I went by last night, though, the lady couldn’t give me my money back because it was after the hours that the customer service/cashbox desk was open and policy was to not give any cash back then (why she couldn’t slip me a freaking dollar out of the register, idk) and they didn’t have any new nectarines to swap it with (not that I’d really want to anyway—when one’s frozen, chances are the whole batch has been exposed to the same conditions). Should be a new batch today, she said in between being bitchtastic (it’s always the same lady when I go there after going to the gym, and she’s always got this huffy, exasperated attitude that really pisses me off), so I might just swap the fruit out, but idk if I want to chance having to do the whole thing again if this one’s bad too.

Failed to wake up at a reasonable time again today (closer to noonish than 1:30pm ish this time, but still bad), so slept late in the afternoon, so woke up really late and only got home from the gym around midnight. Couldn't find the soup mix that I wanted to make (and it'd been lying around in the way for ages--somebody finally moved it somewhere right before I decided I wanted it), so putzed around looking for different things, couldn't get the microwave to cook my vegetables (because I usually boil them in there for a bit to get them going before throwing them in the pan to cook the rest of the way--and I know I've got to be doing something wrong there because this time it took more than 30 minutes to get them just a tad soft--prolly because there were too many things in there and it couldn't heat up that much water), so it's 2am and I'm still making dinner. Gah. Especially because I'm not even that hungry (or really, hungry at all), it's just more of a "Gotta eat something because you haven't had dinner and otherwise your metabolism will screw you with your pants on." So veggies and a catfish fillet.

Re: Saint Louis weather. You've got to see it to believe it. Hilarious lately, I tell you. Major rainstorms and flooding out the wazoo last Monday and Tuesday (to the point that the rivers all still have flood warnings). In the 40s and 50s degree-wise those days. Up to a high of 70 on Friday. Wake up Easter morning to a pretty heavy snowstorm. Back to murky, nasty, overcast rain all afternoon today with thunderstorms in the late afternoon and again right now, and it's mid-40s (and close to it inside--must go find sweater). IL this city.

And now my food is gone. LOL. I was complaining about how I was cooking it when I wasn't really that hungry, and now I finish it and I'm killer hungry for more.

Giving people presents for their anniversaries. Odd, no? I mean, when we're talking a friend of a couple giving them this gift. And for only a 6-month dating anniversary, which doesn't even count as that much of a real thing, IMO (though I don't deny that that's probably a while in the world of datage, I don't have much to base that on/compare it to, so idk).

This is the conversation topic that I overheard on the way to lunch. Someone had done such a thing, presumably, because another friend in the group who were congregated more or less in my way as I attempted to gather my things stated that now she felt bad that she hadn't and was now going to have to go get them something belatedly.

Umm, what? I mean, I understand people within the couple giving each other gifts. And perhaps relatives; my parents are hitting the big 25 years in May, and that means I prolly have to get them something (though more often in our family, the other parent chooses/buys/finances the gift with "help" from the chitlins), and I know that we got my maternal grandparents something (bought into a big screen TV, methinks, with several other of Mum's siblings) when they hit 50 years a bit ago (actually, 5 years ago--a group of overzealous aunts and uncles have begun to plan the 55th party for this summer, last I heard, which the remaining aunts and uncles aren't so much looking forward to as not as that means having to buy a more expensive present for the anniversary on top of traveling somewhere for the party, since nobody's in the same geographical region anymore).

But friends buying other friends anniversary gifts? This seems stupid. Is this the custom now? Have I just been missing out because most of my friends don't date? A 6-month dating anniversary, while probably a big thing to the couple, seems to deserve a pat on the back and a "Congratulations" more than a gift from everyone else.

In other news. I was up late last night because I was in a Spring-y mood. I was looking for bright and fun and Springish clothing--prolly inspired by the fact that I hit up Goodwill yesterday afternoon and tried on a couple of Spring/Summer-y dresses just because they were there and in my size and pretty (one that was striped pastel blue and green, and floor-length with a good amount of slink but still not overly formal; the other was green paisley/ivy/floral patterns on a white, spaghetti-strap halter that hit just above the knees). I really wanted an excuse to buy the first one--I was seriously considering getting it to wear to church on Easter like you do when you're little, but I didn't have enough money neither on me nor to justify buying a dress (though it was only like $5) that I would only wear once.

~~But yes. Lunch just ended, so postus interruptus yet again. Fail.~~

I had spent most of the evening re-reading La Dama del Alba for the Spanish test over it today, so I got to the gym really late, so I got back really late (pushing midnight, actually, after I stopped at the grocery store because I’ve got coupons that are pushing the expiration date but then turned it into a worthless trip when I decided not to buy anything yesterday since it’s $10 off of $50 day today and I can make the parentals use the coupons for veggies and such and lump it in with enough other things to get the extra discount) , and then I messed around trying on clothes, and then I made dinner, and then I messed around with more clothes. And watched Canterbury’s Law. While painting my nails to matchish the shirt I decided on (the “hippy on acid” shirt). Which was hard, because I fail at nail painting simply because I don’t think I’d need my toes to count the number of times I’ve done it since. . . elementary school. Plus, the nail-biting makes it harder still, because you’re all like “Oh, but this is not nail but rather finger.” But they’re this shiny pastel blue color that has purple glimmery bits that you see when it hits the light. With a purple failstripe (I spent so long trying to make them even sized, but the purple nail polish was that gooey kind of old that makes it impossible to do anything but gunk it on) down each thumb for fun. Makes me smile, anyway.

But then I look at the clock and realize that I’ve managed to just totally lose track of time because it’s 3:30 or so in the morning and I’ve still got to clean up stuff from dinner and the popcorn I made after eating dinner (hard to reach into a bag of popcorn with wet nails, btw). So I didn’t hit bed until a good 4am. Which hurt me in English today, because we were just reading an pseudo-epic poem aloud, thus not very engaging, thus sleep provoking. And now I’m just bored, because my econ quiz took all of 3 minutes (literally—and then the next person didn’t finish for another 7 minutes or so, which freaked me out a bit in that “did I skip a page?” kind of way) and now we’re doing nothing (they’ve turned on one of the college basketball games, and as basketball is one of those sports that I care absolutely nothing for, as with collegiate sports in general, the all-but-three in the class male population’s enthusiasm is extremely annoying), and as I have nothing after this, there’s no purpose in my being here and not being home eating my last grapefruit and getting ready for nappage goodness.

I really want that grapefruit now. The econ teacher’s got popcorn out that she said we could have, but it’s that kind that comes in a bag like a bag of chips and is fake!greasycheesybuttery and not worth the calories, so I’m not hitting that.

They’re shouting about the basketball game again. *le sigh*

LOL at how I just (or, you know, half an hour ago when I originally wrote this) spent a good 2 hours cooking stir fry-ish goodness to eat for dinner. The veggies got sort of double steamed because I forgot to drain them before dumping them in the pan, so it took forever for the water to boil off, and that was after ages of boiling some of them, chopping others, opening cans of stuff and deciding it was old/gross etc. And then I ended up throwing it in with my salmon and rice anyway (those being what I was cooking the vegetables to eat instead of) because it was too salty by itself (fail, Alexandria, at remembering soy sauce is saltttastic), so I could have totally just saved the time and blown off the veggies and simply had more salmon and rice. But it's really good when rice/salmoned up to cut the saltiness, and it turned out to be enough for two batches (even without the fish/rice), so I've got some for tomorrow too.

Plus, my celery root was in the microwave trying to get soft enough to be mashable for more than an hour. It kept boiling down, I'd add more water, it'd boil down again, and no mushyness like I expected. I finally accidentally let it boil down too far so that it scorched in the middle and I had to give up, or I'd still prolly be messing with it. So that didn't work so well, but I'd never tried it before, so there may be some trick to getting it mashtastic that I'm missing or I may be expecting it to behave too much like potatoes and cauliflower when it won't actually mash up any farther than it did or some such.

But yay, cooking. I've been doing a lot more of that lately, which is good. Before, I tended to get into the habit of soup or salad for dinner, made almost the exact same way (can of soup with possibly extra broth added, salad of lettuce and italian salad dressing with mild variation of extra stuff--cheese, chicken, other veggies, etc--depending on what we had), every evening when I came home from the gym. I wasn't cooking until 12:30 am, though, which was a plus for that side. And it's not like much of what I'm cooking is all that varied (I can sum it up in one word--vegetables), but still. I've got a bunch of recepies I pulled off of the internets that I want to start trying--usually I just make things up as I go along, so it'll be interesting to actually try some different stuff.

The whole cooking thing is really due to the fact that I realized that I'm at a point in my life where I need to try as many different things as possible, because I feel like something about nowish with my brain is making me really open to trying new foods. Idk, I realized that not that long ago (while roadtripping for that scholarship interview with my dad, to be exact). Does anyone else ever get like that? It's odd, but not unappreciated.

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