commotiocordis

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

Watching this week's ER episode.

DOCTOR COBURN FTW. I love her anytime, but when she gave that look to the intern that asked if she was sure that it wasn't a twin? Priceless. And idk if it's just me, but something about her hair or makeup or whatever and she looks even prettier than usual. I wish to read Coburn slash. Come to think about it, I think I wrote the beginnings of a Coburn/Cuddy fic pre-first hard drive crash. Ahh, techfail.

Also, Kirsten Vangsness and Paget Brewster are friends on Facebook. LOL. That's far more fun than it should be, looking at who celebrities are friends with. Allison Janney and Melissa Fitzgerald (Carol on WW), for example, as well as not only Janel Moloney but her sister Meegan (who's an LA lawyer, I've found). And how Joshua Malina's profile picture is a comic.

And now I'm watching the Psych Christmas episode (again) rather than study for my 3:45 polisci final. (Seriously? Saturday final? At least mine's not at 8, like my roommate's was. Jeeze.)

When you're logging into someplace that you don't log into very often (bank stuff, residence hall stuff, etc.) , they should tell you "this password called for at least 6 characters, at least one each of lowercase, capital, and numeric" so you don't have to spend ages going through and trying every combination of passwords/passwords + numbers/passwords with capitalization you have. Grr.

Edit: So okay, I got this thing to work. Now . . . wishing I hadn't. I don't have a problem with conservative people. If you're decent, we can get along fine. Same with religious people. Three suitemates (out of three--every one of them) that list "Jesus" as one of their favorite things, however, and we may have a problem. As in, I marked on the request form that I wanted people that were okay with "alternative lifestyles", but I also requested a specific section/floor--the honors bit--of one of the dorms, and I'm afraid that the latter overrode the former. I suppose I should have anticipated this, going farther south in Missouri, but I didn't. Shit.

A bit worried there, then. Anybody down there wanna give me a different place to live?

Edit again: And LOL, two/three of them are from Peculiar, MO. (I can't find anything much on the last one. The third, the one I'm actually rooming with, is from Arkansas.) This is hilarity.

Moar: It's interesting that most of these (for lack of a better word) hickville schools don't seem to have as strict of age requirements for entering school as the more urban ones do. I've always been the youngest in my grade forever, simply because my birthday is a week before the kindergarten registration cutoff of August 1st--if you weren't 5 by then (and mum tried to get me in at 4 because I could read and do maths and communicate better than half the people who live in my city and such and they were like "Yeah, we would, but county rules say no," so this is a no-exception type thing), you had to wait another year. I think I'm the oldest of all my suitemates. Tis odd.

Dog is worse today in that he won't shut up. When he's in the kitchen and I can hear him all the way from my room in the back of the house with the door closed, it's gotten to the point where it's intolerable. He finally ate something today, though, after a bunch of days of not. And then threw up. But none of the food seemed to come up in the puke (LOL, tmi), so hopefully he's getting some nutrition down. Unless, of course, it actually is one of my earlier theories from when I was just throwing stuff out there and is a gastrointestinal issue, in which case we're probably just compounding the problem. Ehh, though, in that he's a good 30 pounds over the upper weight limit (for labs, at least; the fact that his mutt side is even larger breed gives him a tad more leeway, but the failvets said 80lbs and he's at 113) means he's got a while to go before he starves to death, as horrible as that sounds.

Tis not good that the weather's starting to suck again (it was really nice for a few days) because that means we can't throw him outside much when he gets like he is right now (whining just to hear himself whine--it was bad when I was back in my room, now that I'm out by him it's 10x worse because he thinks I can do something about it).

Idk. I can't fathom how my mother is staying asleep through this, because he's making more noise than a woman in labor and her bedroom's the closest one. I would have woken up and thrown him bodily out the back door, pain in his hips/wherever or not, the amount of fuss he's making right now. (I notice that he calms down when I turn to look at him, LOL. Drama queen.)

And in other news. Before, I don't think I ever got around to mentioning, I was like "Oh, semi-good--school has offered me tons of money, I now don't have to agonize about where I'm going next year because the decision has been made by the cashygoodness." (I say semi-good because I was going to feel miserable either way--pressured to make the decision or confined that the decision was made for me--but at least this way, there's not agonizing about having made the wrong choice, at least at this stage, because choice was made by notme.) And then on Thursday, mail comes. Other school offers similar amounts of cashy money (not all of it, like the first one did, but enough that another scholarship that I've already got would cover all but a couple of hundred a year). Decision once again put on my shoulders. Made harder by the fact that I've visited neither of said schools. So I spent last night trying to compare programs and acceptance of test scores for advanced credit and such. Not nearly done doing so, however. *sigh*

I am far too tired to still have done none of my homework for the day.

I spent today running around, like I mentioned yesterday, to 70 bazillion places. More than I intended, actually, as some bitch cut me off and forced me onto the highway on the way to my dad's school, which meant I had to go two exits past nowhere in order to turn around due to construction. And I had to stop by and make up a test for medical terminology. Final was this evening, though, after being rescheduled from this morning (which I had forgotten about last night, and was why I missed the first two hours of school today--okay, first one. The second was just me being a horrible horrible person and not wanting to go yet--until I found out that it got changed due to it being in a weird time in the first place or the ice or something), which means it's over now. Ahh, ridiculously easy class where I got to read fanfiction whilst keeping one ear open as the teacher talked about things that I mostly already knew. I shall miss thee.

I think next semester I'm going to take physics over the internets (coming in on 4 or 5 Saturdays for labs and tests), but the one that's online is marked "consider not taking this online if you didn't get at least a C in algebra". As in, you can still take it, but do the regular class instead of the distance one. The "engineering physics" class is labeled calculus-level, which probably means that that's what I should take (minus the engineering part--I think it just denotes that it's higher level, but idk), but I think it's only offered during the day, so I can't. I'm a little wary about the first class, "college physics", though, because it specifically says all over that there are no make-up labs, and that essentially, if you miss one of the Saturdays, you're going to have a damn hard time passing the class. Plus, there's this Saturday medical program that I'm applying for that I have to look up the dates for to see if they conflict (and, like the physics, that thing says that you won't be accepted if you have to miss any of the dates), and that's minimum two mock trial meetings I'm going to have to miss. Edit: Or maybe not on the latter, as I forgot we just changed our meeting times to earlier in the morning. I'd have to skip out a tad early, but methinks it wouldn't be a problem.

Plus, the book is goddamned expensive. IH college in that regard.

Re: Mock Trial. I'm half witnessing again. I'm both happy and not with that. Happy because it's pretty fun when you get a good crosser on your back to, putting it delicately, kick the living snot out of them, but not because it was so damn hard for me last year to have to sit there on the witness bench as my team missed and flubbed objections that I knew the response to. I get. . . idk. I'm like the kid who doesn't like to share the ball because they're afraid the other kids will make them lose, and now that I've made that connection I feel horrible, but it's somehow different (and yet not) because it's an intellectual pursuit? I don't know. I'm a bad person, hell, I've poached objections from people before because I knew that they didn't know what they were doing (though semi-legitimately, because it was a rules-debate and I was both more or less captain and more affected by the decision than the person whose examination it was raised during) but I'm really good at mock trial and speaking extemporaneously and such, and though that doesn't mean anything and normally I'm content to sit and maybe slip a note to a fellow lawyer if there's something they're missing, but it hurts me when it's simply because they don't know the rules. LOL, control issues.

And I've been meaning to fix my Criminal Minds icon. I didn't realize that the border was left transparent and not white, and though it looks fine on my journal because of the white background, on others' it does not.

Plus, I need suggestions for Christmas gifts. Both for myself and for my friends (particularly Katie, my plans for which fell through and now must be started from scratch).

( Mini 4-sentence cut for prolly TMI about acne. )

And to conclude this lovely 20 minute extension of my several hour procrastination, alkdhgfiouqwjenadflkj KEYBOARD HATE. Start working better, sir. (Points to keyboardmash. Notice how there are no 's's in that? THIS IS MY DILEMMA.)

From the people that brought you "Sentence Combining: The Class". . .



This makes me wish I lived closer to there. And that these classes were free. Because I'd be interested in learning about that. Vaguely. If it involved eating ice cream.

At class now. Been done with both the in-class work and homework for an hour now, and I've got another hour to go, *headdesk*. It's neurological stuff today, which has never been my best subject (mostly when it comes to memorizing the different nerves and types of nerves and such), but now we're doing disorders, which I know. So yay, Birds of Prey fic.

Me: I might take Educational Psychology this year, mum.

Her: Why? It's boring, don't take it. I've taken it, it's horrible.

Me: Well, it sounded okay. And I might need it. I'm thinking of minoring in education.

Her: *looks at me somberly* Don't go into education, Alexandria.


LOLOLOL. That from a teacher.

I can seriouslyseriously see myself doing it, though.

But idk if that's because I'd actually like it (I'm pretty sure I would, because I like kids, but it would always not be my first choice thing, I think) or because I'm afraid of going for medicine and failing and just want to take the easy way instead of risking that. Prolly a combination.

I set a package of shredded cheese out on the counter to thaw (because it was being stored in my freezer) a hour and a half ago. It's still lots frozen. Which means that I still haven't had dinner. And it's 10:30. Grr. And now it's too late to eat, really, so grr again. Not that that will stop me from making a salad as soon as it thaws, but still.

We had this theatre showcase thing on Friday, with the Chekhov plays and such. It went okay, I guess. We needed more work. I didn't get to see any of the bits, though, that I wasn't in, and I've heard they didn't go as well as the two I did. Which is nice/somewhat flattering to think about, that the people liked/understood mine better than the others. I have heard from audience types, however, that the actors weren't so much doing what I directed in the one scene as not. Which is sad.

There were prop issues, namely that in two scenes, people forgot to bring out/bring over the water glasses that were needed. The time I did it, it screwed things up because the lines assumed water was there and though I had the presence of mind to change the blocking to make it look like I was directing somebody towards the water instead of pouring it down their throat, I only slightly changed the wording when there was a way I could have made it make better sense by changing the lines more. But it was on the spot and such, so I didn't think it was too bad. The other time was in the scene that I directed, but it was fine because the only real mention was one actor's line "Give me some water?" and the other one was just like 'Urm, sorry, don't have any.'

And the light girl kinda sucked it up a lot and missed cues and such. Which was bad for us because it was like "And. . . scene. Lights off now. No, now. No lights. And we're still frozen here. Lights off!" etc. And between the second and third scenes, she didn't turn the lights up at all for set change, so I bumped into things. Twice. It was embarrassing. Made me more nervous than I was before, because I was all rattled from stumbling.

And lol at the communal white shirt. There was one white shirt that got passed between three of us for a bit of costume. Which was funny, because you've only got a tiny bit of time between scenes, so we've got the shirt tucked in while we're on stage, but everything that you couldn't see was unbuttoned because as soon as you got offstage (we were using the local middle school's stage because it was small and cute, so 'backstage' was really just the teacher's room that adjoined it) it was like *strips* *passes shirt*.

There was improvyness, which made me happy. In the first excerpt from the Seagull, there's this twisted love thing going on. Trigorin (me) is with Arkadina (Katie). Arkadina sort of flirts with the doctor (Kerry), and so at that bit, I'm all "Um, no. Back off, old doctorman. She's mine." And then Nina (Melissa) comes on and Trigorin's all "Umm, yeah. I'll hit that," and very flirty with his hand on her arm, and then Arkadina comes down between them and is like "Yeahno." And at that part? Best line delivery of the entire show, IMO, on Katie's part. She does the splitting Nina and Trigorin up thing, and is all very fake forced civil to Nina with her "Oh, don't talk like that. When you embarrass him-" and it gets even more forced and obviously angry and she turns to Trigorin "he wishes he could simply disappear." And she hit the last two words with a "Oh, you are so not getting any for the next week for that little stunt," thing and this look that was just amazing. I heart my Katie.

Hee, cheese is more or less thawed. *eats salad*

The director of that scene totally didn't figure any of that out; the whole bit about there being this love quadrangle and how we needed to play it up because it's funny was me. Which made me smile, because people got it and laughed. But at one part, I had mentioned earlier in a rehearsal that I wanted Trigorin to do/say something to Nina (or vice versa) as she's leaving, but the director (being just one of the other people in the class, as we all took turns directing a scene) sorta just blew me off (she's kinda annoying in that manner). And I figured out sort of what I wanted to do and so then when Arkadina's like "Oh, dear, Nina, someone must take you home, darling!" I (being Trigorin, he-who-wants-to-hit-that) was all *steps towards her in a 'oh yes, please let me take you home, sweet!' manner*. And then Katie (being Arkadina, she-who-is-hitting-Trigorin-and-not-liking-Trigorin's-flirting-with-Nina) grabs my arm and pulls me back by her and gives me another look. The first thing that popped into my mind was 'OMG. She just broke character like whoa in order to tell me that I wasn't supposed to exit then or something.' But then I was like 'No, Katie wouldn't do that, she must have just gotten what I was trying to do and played along.' So I was happy that our brains worked together like that because that bit ended up being really funny.

And then there were pictures and I was like "umm, no. I'm wearing a dress. And said dress is sorta tight. Meaning I'm not into the whole 'let's have photographic evidence of how Alexandria has no waist to speak of and annoyingly large boobs' thing" Because even though I had been a man for the second to last scene, I had to give the communal white shirt of doom to somebody else for the last one (the final scene being the one I directed and as such wasn't in), and as such needed to put something back on for curtain call and it would look strange if I was wearing my costume pants and a t-shirt. And I was carrying everything off stage while everybody else (meaning the other five) was talking with friends and stuff in the audience (which kinda really annoyed me, because it was my sister and I who got it all carted to the dressing room/backstage/german classroom.) But then Katie was like "Oy! My da wants pictures." And I was like fine, only because I love you. So there are pictures of me in a dress floating around somewhere. I doubt they're good, because I managed to not bring makeup because I was sick that day. And all week, really, but I actually stayed home on Friday because I had been not getting sleep because of the sick and I knew my acting would be all suck if I tried to make it through an entire school day and stay after until 9:30 (meaning being away from home and not sleeping and instead doing schoolwork and prop carting work and dumb stuff for like 15 hours straight) when I hadn't had more than one hour of unbroken sleep all week. But back to the makeup. I didn't bring any, so I ended up using Katie's for the foundation and rouge and lip stuff (because with the stage, you know, you're all washed out and not fun and so yay stage makeup), which is fine because her foundationy makeup is exactly my color (twins, I say) but I didn't have any eye stuff and I'm already rather pale, so I imagine from the back it was like "Oh, look, there's some floating lips. And rouged cheeks. But no eyes." So I dunno if the pictures are any good because of weird no-makeup on eyes, makeup on rest of face thing. But maybe. We'll have to see when they get developed/whatever.

But I managed to leave both my school ID and my glasses there, I think. Which is sucksucksuck. Because we used my backpack bag thing as a prop, and as such I dumped everything out from the main section at home, but my glasses and ID were still in little front pouches and so they got taken out (or in the case of the ID, fell out) and I didn't realize it and they're still there. (The ID usually is in a different spot where it wouldn't have fallen out of, but I moved it to a bigger holdermajiggy right before the show because you could sorta see the edge of the card in its actual pocket.) Bad because I had to take one of those big standardized test things the next morning, and I didn't have my school ID, so I couldn't. Even though I'd already paid and everything. And then, I go and find out today that since it was at my school, if one of the proctors had ever taught/known me (which would be likely, as there would be several there and I've been at that school for like forever) they could just have identified me and let me in. I didn't know that, so I didn't go, because I figured it'd be a waste of gasoline because they wouldn't let me in. Also found out today? Of the four times that a girl in my english class has taken it, this was the easiest version. And I missed it. Unnecessarily. Damn. $40 someodd bucks down the drain because my dumb ID card fell out of the pouch it was in.
And then my glasses were there too (which is what I'm more worried about) and so I had to borrow my sister's to do volleyball (as we have virtually the same prescription and all) but she had to have them for school, so I couldn't see anything all day today. Like math notes. Or chem notes. Or bio notes. (Though bio is dumb and easy.)

So yeah. Had a dream a week ago or so that basically made me go "Huh. So, whatever crack I was doing in my sleep that night was a bad idea." It involved two people from my school, a sesame street muppet in military clothing, and Bill O'Reilly. Yeah. I'll have to talk about that one later.

Hee at me starting writing this two hours ago. That's what I get for writing three things at once. I jump back and forth and it takes hugely long to finish any of them.

(Hee again at new icon. The coloring is weird because as I don't have that episode, I capped it from a scene in a fanvid. But it makes me smile. I've been all into the Star Trek of late, particularly the guyslash, which is rare for me.)

I've been seriously considering graduating early. (Actually, what I really was considering was dropping out of standard schooling and just doing it all myself, but I realized that if I wait until after the end of the Christmas semester, I could actually just graduate.) Before, I didn't even think about it. But the reason I was staying was pretty much to get the IB diploma, which I've since realized that I have virtually no chance of getting, as I'd have to postpone taking at least two of the tests for classes I'm taking this year until the end of next year, one of them being history, which is not my forte.

I always have these 'I hate school' things early in the year, but never before have I felt that the actual schooling was just getting in the way of doing the homework that we've been assigned. Nobody's really teaching anything, it's just homework, which I'd rather they just emailed to me or something and didn't waste my time sitting in class.

I've always been somewhat of a non-traditional student, and for some reason this year the schooling system is really clashing with me.

I've become disillusioned with the whole thing. No one believes that a student can be intrinsically motivated to learn anymore, and those of us that actually are motivated as such are getting taught out of it and/or screwed over. Example: my grades aren't the best, mostly because I tend not to care about them. I learn what I need to learn, and once I've got it, I'm not going to do the extra homework. I know the material just as well as the person who's getting an A, but I'm only getting a B or B- because I don't believe in forcing myself through the extra busywork. (I know that I really need to, but a lot of it is a 'when am I ever going to use this' thing, and some of it is the fact that I'm taking all 7 hours filled with AP and IB classes, and if I tried to do everything for every class, I'd burn out even faster than I do with my system now.) And because of this, people a lot less smart than I am are going to get into better colleges, even though I beat their SAT scores when I took the test in 7th grade.

I really wish I could just take classes with no thought to what kind of grade I need to get, because I think I'd enjoy them a lot more. Because even though I 'don't care about grades', I have been trained to do so, and as such have the same anxiety as anybody else over them. And probably worse, as I'm basically in this program in my city for the exceptionally gifted (their phrase, not mine), and everybody expects these PEGS kids to get straight As because they're freaking geniuses, and then they look at me over here, and I'm not doing the work (because as I did all last year, I can look at the book for 5 minutes before a math test and learn it all, usually without doing any examples or anything) and I feel like everybody's measuring me up to them when I'm not the perfectionists that they all are (actually, I'm what I consider to be the worse kind of perfectionist: the procrastination kind. I leave everything to the last minute so that in case I don't do well, I can blame it on the fact that I had only 45 minutes of sleep or I started it at 3am the night before. It's a fear of failure thing, one which bites me in the ass more often than not.), and I have a different learning style than most of them. So basically, though I'm probably quite a bit smarter than some of them, I do worse in school, which makes me look not as smart.

Anyway. Nobody's going to read all the way through this anyway, it was really just me bitching about why I don't do well in school. Coming up next, me bitching about the first episode of House.