commotiocordis

Oh, and didn't mention. I'm home.

Heat blanket, how I've missed you. Except I think I may be having some kind of sensory issue, because I've noticed this several times lately: I don't feel heat. In my entire body. My mind registers the signal and cognitively knows that it's warm because I get those pinpricky bits of sweat under my eyes. But my limbs, torso, etc. are not transmitting the warm sensation. I'm not cold, but I should be quite toasty; I'm under the heat blanket (OMG, how I've missed you) that I've used and been uncomfortably warm under before (though of course there's the chance that it simply no longer works) and it's cranked all the way up and all.

The family bought cake as a sort of welcome home + sorry last time you were home it sucked (beause of the whole 'everybody being somewhere else' thing), and it's 5 pounds of chocolate deliciousness. Holy shit, this is a large cake.

Ride home was uneventful, save that I got to play with Ray's (friend of bleakone who was along for half the ride) iPhone for a few minutes, which was cool as I'd never gotten to mess around with one before. And it was rainy and wet, so Rachel's wipers got a workout.

I left my keys in Springfield, though, so I'll have to bum a set if I wish to go anywhere. Including to the gym, which we've got to get my sister's membership to transferred to me (as dad canceled mine before we knew that I could go to the one near school, and even though he tried to un-cancel it before it technically ran out, they couldn't do it) tomorrow so I can work out. Because Alexandria on no workout? Something no one wants to see.

Got a 50/50 on my last genetics paper, which is win. Got used as the example for the class, as well (which freaked me out a bit, because he pointed out one bit as "the bare minimum, here" and I was all "OMG, IFAIL.") which is impressive--I'm all about looking good in front of this guy, as he's both my advisor and I'm fairly certain on the pre-med committee. So I'm a little less worried about the test that I took in there today, which I knew absolutely nothing on. Or, you know, in that way in which it felt okay early on, but then you mark the ones you're not sure about and then go back to those and spend the last however much of your time on the ones you absolutely can't figure out, so you leave feeling like an idiot because the hard ones are last in your mind. So idk. But from a sheer how much time I put into this section perspective, I'm going to suck. Spent Thursday night fighting off a migraine instead of studying (I was more concerned with not letting it progress into a full blown migraine that would carry over to the test the next day and thus prevent me from performing at all as I'd be too busy, you know, puking) and managed to miss 3 lectures since the last test from the residence hall conference once, getting hung up upstairs in lab once, and just being a lazyarse once; therefore, good chance it won't be pretty.

Watching the October 21, 1984 presidential debate in Kansas City, MO on CSPAN.

Reagan's talking about believing that biblical Armageddon is coming? Seriously? Wow. *cough*Palin*cough*.

Though he's using it as support for the Star Wars Missile Defense system, which I support purely because it's got a cool name.


Finishing up a lab for my genetics class. I'm required to have an addendum with my partner's lab data, and dipshit hasn't yet sent it to me. WTF. It's due in less than an hour, I'm supposed to be able to evaluate her results (as if they're wrong, that's points off of mine), and she's had not just my data but the analyzed results of my experiment since yesterday. I'm pissed.

Going home at 4 or so, though, which is going to be interesting. I'm dreading it, actually, because I know that it's going to be impossible to come back here. For as much as I bitched about home life and clashed with the family and whatever, I was satisfied with the overall situation. Here, it's an uncomfortable living situation as well as my not liking the people. And me = a failure at accepting change.

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.

I have been mucho pissy all day. And I know the exact reason. Dumb ass cohab types who've decided that my room is the place to hang out now. I mean seriously. I related the conversation from last night about how everybody could just keep hanging out in here playing loud YouTube videos because she only had dance in the morning. I got maybe 3 hours of sleep. On top of a similar amount the night before. And now I'm ready to bite someone everyone's head off.

Doesn't help that at my genetics lab today, my "lab partner" just sat there and looked dumb for the entire thing. She'd only do something when I explicitly gave her instructions/handed her the micropipette and said "Suck. Drop." And of course, somehow even that got screwed up, because our titrations were not the right color. Too much of the serum added, we think. (Guess who did the micropipetting for that part? Not me, let's say.)

But I ran back to the room in my 30 minute gap or so before my non-West Wing class (we're finally starting to watch it next week, he says), and Chelsea's in there taking a nap. I was fucking furious. I really wanted to be a bitch and "accidentally" wake her up, but that thought only occurred to me after I'd left. She keeps me up all hours of the night (okay, not past 1 really, but kept me from getting any work done for those same hours, so I had to force myself to stay up even later for homework), saying that it's okay because she doesn't have classes, and then has the nerve to take a nap in the middle of the afternoon. When, of course, when I want to take a nap after being in class from 8 until 4, no such luck because the freaking party's back in my room.

Add that to the fact that when I got in today, she accosts me about there somehow being some of my hair on the edge of her bed. Umm, yeah. Because I decided to pull out some of my hair by the roots and rub my feet along the carpet until I'd amassed enough static cling to maliciously place the hair right there on the edge of her bed. WTF? What does she expect me to respond to that? "Umm, sorry?" is what she got. You know what, whatever. Maybe she'd get a different response if it wasn't her fault I've had maybe 7 hours of sleep over the past two days she'd get more. . . idk, sympathy (though prolly not), but for now? Fuck you, ma'am. It's not like there's even any purpose to you or your cronies (currently Breanna, one of our suitemates) being in here atm--you're not even talking to each other really, just looking at people's Facebooks. Don't you have homework? God knows I do, and I can't fucking get any of it done when I'm having to live my life by your goddamned social schedule. I knew I loved it when she left for the weekend like she's done twice so far, but I didn't really realize how much until she came back this week. It's pretty obvious the roommate honeymoon has worn off.

Must remember to bring my gym class pre-test lab worksheet by the grad student teacher guy's mailbox, as I'm losing points for forgetting it on Wednesday. I meant to bring it by that day, but didn't. I've still got to find the thing, actualmente.

Stupid weightgainage means mucho leg pains of late. Hips, mostly. And now my left pinky, though probably unrelated--it only started when I began typing this, so I think I'm just holding it strangely.

If anybody feels like doing me a favor, I've got to write a paper on a disease for genetics. Problem is, most of my good choices (I wanted Huntington's, as that one's freaked me the hell out ever since I first heard of it when I was. . . prolly in elementary school) have been taken as I made the mistake of wanting to do some prelim research first to figure out what would be a good candidate to write on and thus letting half the class sign up before me. It's basically a summary of recent genetic research for your chosen disease "or recently discovered human gene" and only 2-4 pages, so not hard at all.

I kind of want to write about homosexuality, because that's a really interesting one to look at the genetic research for. But I'm not crazy about the implied label of disease, you know, especially down here where half the students would probably agree with said label? Opinions?

Anyway, any suggestions of fun ones that aren't on the below list? Anything you've got or know someone who's got that there is -- and this is the biggie -- enough genetic research on to allow me to write a decent paper?

( The list of taken diseases. It's annoying and caps-locked and with several typos because I copy/pasted it from the teacher's list, and he apparently can't figure out how to turn caps-lock off--the entire syllabus is the same way. )