You all will be so proud of me.
Yesterday I was sick and stayed home from church and I was flipping through channels and Signs was on TV. Now, I have an extreme phobia when it comes to aliens. Aliens just really scare me. Granted, I am easily frightened, but aliens put me on the verge of hyperventilating and having heart attacks. It's right up there with my fear of having an office job for the rest of my life and Hilary becoming president. The mere mention of ET puts me into a panic.
I have watched Signs on two other occasions. The first was in theatres with Jenna and Sarah. I sat between them and watched a total of 13 minutes of the actual movie. The rest of the minutes were spent with my hands over my face or burying my head in Jenna's shoulder moaning, "Why did I pay money to come see this? Why did I pay money to come see this?" Sarah and Jenna were dumbfounded at how I could be so petrified.
The second time was at Janelle and David's house one night. I of course did not pick the movie; it was chosen beforehand. I had the misfortune of sitting on the floor directly under a skylight. When Joaquin Phoenix looks up at the ceiling and says, "We didn't board the attic door," I threw a blanket over my head and prayed for morning.
So with that background you all should be so proud that I kept the station on 54 and watched Signs all the way to the end. I didn't even turn my head away when you can see that alien's reflection in the TV screen. I hate that part. Of course, the scariest part is when you see the alien on the Brazil home video, but fortunately we'd already passed that part when I started watching.
I feel like I'm making progress with my fears. I've almost gotten over my fear of Larry King completely. His creepy suspenders still make me uneasy, but I don't dive for the remote when he comes on the TV. And with me being able to watch Signs now, who knows when I'll be able to make it through Alien or ET? That will be a glorious day. But it will likely take a bit more therapy.
Monday, April 30, 2007
Wednesday, April 25, 2007
My butter has touched another food. I need new butter.
I was sitting at the front desk waiting for the phone to ring when I noticed a new newspaper on the side table. The Chronicle of Higher Education. On the front page was a Chinese scientist with a huge smile on her face. The title read, "China Lures Scientists Home With Stem Cells. Untroubled by the use of human embryos, the country vies to become a world leader in research." That's good. Untroubled by the use of human embryos... It's said so flippantly, like, "Untroubled by her husband's decision to wear brown shoes and a black belt..." or "Untroubled by the fact that his mashed potatoes were touching his meat loaf..." I mean, really? Granted, we shouldn't be surprised that China, with some of the worst human rights violations on record (and far worse off), is excited about experimenting on people. But the fact that American newspapers are also excited about this is a little disturbing. Of course, where do I find this newspaper? Oh, that's right. FSU.
Onto more frivolous things, the chick with the fake leg got voted off Dancing With the Stars last night. You know, the one that took a bunch of Paul McCartney's money. Sorry, I mean, I'm glad she was on the show and all, but it seemed like all they ever talked about was her fake leg. The Associated Press had this to say about her, "She [Heather Mills] was the first contestant with an artificial limb to compete on the ABC dance-off." What? The first person to dance on Dancing With the Stars with an artifical leg!? I had no idea! I definitely thought that Drew had a robotic arm and Billy Ray a fake hip. Well, I can't say I'm sorry she was voted off. I wasn't a huge fan. I can only take so much of PETA people. Personally, I'm going for Apollo.
Onto more frivolous things, the chick with the fake leg got voted off Dancing With the Stars last night. You know, the one that took a bunch of Paul McCartney's money. Sorry, I mean, I'm glad she was on the show and all, but it seemed like all they ever talked about was her fake leg. The Associated Press had this to say about her, "She [Heather Mills] was the first contestant with an artificial limb to compete on the ABC dance-off." What? The first person to dance on Dancing With the Stars with an artifical leg!? I had no idea! I definitely thought that Drew had a robotic arm and Billy Ray a fake hip. Well, I can't say I'm sorry she was voted off. I wasn't a huge fan. I can only take so much of PETA people. Personally, I'm going for Apollo.
Tuesday, April 24, 2007
How do I loathe thee, Bill? Give me a diet pepsi and I shall not count the ways...
Today was book sell-back day for me. For those of you who are not familiar with the U.S. university policy of book buy-back, let me explain it for you.
1. At the beginning of the semester, professors give you a list of textbooks that you must purchase for their class. These textbooks usually are not used for anything but taking up backpack space and the occasional paperweight, but they are essential for answering answers 3, 17, 25, and 47 of your 50-question multiple-choice test and therefore must be had.
2. You go to the bookstore and spend an exorbitant, unfair amount on these books. Having the cheaper 6th edition of your international affairs textbook is of no use to you. Only the $150 7th edition will do.
3. At the end of the semester you are allowed to go back to the bookstore and "sell" your books back. You are basically getting the amount you would get if you sold the book to a recycling center for the paper. They buy your book back for $20 dollars and then sell it for $90. Great deal for them. But there are very few other options.
So, today I took my 3 textbooks and got a whopping total of $17 for them. That's lunch for Jenna and me at One Stirfry. At least I didn't have to pay for them in the first place. I was just thinking to myself how much I hate Bill's Bookstore when my little cashier person said, "There's candy up on the counter for you. And you get a free drink. Mountain Dew, Pepsi, or Diet Pepsi?"
Suddenly, my hatred of Bill's dissolved into nothing. How sweet are they? They're giving me a free drink. My head tried to argue.
Free drink my foot. They just made probably $75 dollars off of you. It's like someone giving you the CD player out of the new car you just gave them.
You have tootsie rolls!? And the vanilla ones. My favorite.
Go ahead. Give them your Polish history book for $1.50. You just bought $1.50 worth of bluebooks this morning. They haven't lost anything. Except their souls. Those punks.
I'll definitely be shopping at Bill's in the fall.
Somehow my italicized conscience was overcome by the diet pepsi in my hand. It's sitting in the fridge at work. That thing made my day. I can do nothing but praise Bill's marketing skills. That is until the fall when I curse them again. They'd better keep those pepsis stocked.
1. At the beginning of the semester, professors give you a list of textbooks that you must purchase for their class. These textbooks usually are not used for anything but taking up backpack space and the occasional paperweight, but they are essential for answering answers 3, 17, 25, and 47 of your 50-question multiple-choice test and therefore must be had.
2. You go to the bookstore and spend an exorbitant, unfair amount on these books. Having the cheaper 6th edition of your international affairs textbook is of no use to you. Only the $150 7th edition will do.
3. At the end of the semester you are allowed to go back to the bookstore and "sell" your books back. You are basically getting the amount you would get if you sold the book to a recycling center for the paper. They buy your book back for $20 dollars and then sell it for $90. Great deal for them. But there are very few other options.
So, today I took my 3 textbooks and got a whopping total of $17 for them. That's lunch for Jenna and me at One Stirfry. At least I didn't have to pay for them in the first place. I was just thinking to myself how much I hate Bill's Bookstore when my little cashier person said, "There's candy up on the counter for you. And you get a free drink. Mountain Dew, Pepsi, or Diet Pepsi?"
Suddenly, my hatred of Bill's dissolved into nothing. How sweet are they? They're giving me a free drink. My head tried to argue.
Free drink my foot. They just made probably $75 dollars off of you. It's like someone giving you the CD player out of the new car you just gave them.
You have tootsie rolls!? And the vanilla ones. My favorite.
Go ahead. Give them your Polish history book for $1.50. You just bought $1.50 worth of bluebooks this morning. They haven't lost anything. Except their souls. Those punks.
I'll definitely be shopping at Bill's in the fall.
Somehow my italicized conscience was overcome by the diet pepsi in my hand. It's sitting in the fridge at work. That thing made my day. I can do nothing but praise Bill's marketing skills. That is until the fall when I curse them again. They'd better keep those pepsis stocked.
Tuesday, April 17, 2007
The Ballad of the Bunkbed
Okay, so last night I was memorizing Russian articles about this guy who bit a police officer because his pitbull couldn't do the job for him. It was about 3 o'clock when I finally climbed into the top bunk of my bed. My alarm clock was set to go off at 6:45 right at the end of my bed. It couldn't take the pressure, though and attempted to commit suicide by diving off the edge of my headboard. Instead, it landed safely on a pillow on the bottom bunk.
Now:
I had two options. A) I could simply climb off the bunkbed, grab the phone and go back to sleep or 2) I could attempt an elaborate display of acrobatics, grab the phone from my top bunk, and never have to leave the comfort of my bed. Guess which one I chose.
Notice exhibit A and the calm before the storm. Nothing but thoughts of Cardiff, Enya and the Brecon Beacons there.
Notice as my suicidal cell leaps off the top of my bunk.
I reach for it, but to no avail. It's time for drastic measures.
In a moment of pure glory, I decide that the best course of action is to pull my right hand off the railing and place both of my hands on the bottom bunk, leaving me no hands to pull myself back up with. This is brilliant. The phone will never expect it.
At least I have been able to get to my phone. I throw it back onto the bed, but it flies over the back edge and crashes to the floor. I wait for about 5 minutes to see if help will arrive. And then I remember, "It is 3 a.m. All the inteligent people are asleep. Bleen." So I realize that the only way to get down is either to fall straight down on my face or atempt to flip over. I'm a fan of my face, so I opt for the latter.
I attempt a daring back-flip type maneuver...
And land on the ground. And there's the alarm...
Now:
I had two options. A) I could simply climb off the bunkbed, grab the phone and go back to sleep or 2) I could attempt an elaborate display of acrobatics, grab the phone from my top bunk, and never have to leave the comfort of my bed. Guess which one I chose.
Notice exhibit A and the calm before the storm. Nothing but thoughts of Cardiff, Enya and the Brecon Beacons there.
Notice as my suicidal cell leaps off the top of my bunk.
I reach for it, but to no avail. It's time for drastic measures.
In a moment of pure glory, I decide that the best course of action is to pull my right hand off the railing and place both of my hands on the bottom bunk, leaving me no hands to pull myself back up with. This is brilliant. The phone will never expect it.
At least I have been able to get to my phone. I throw it back onto the bed, but it flies over the back edge and crashes to the floor. I wait for about 5 minutes to see if help will arrive. And then I remember, "It is 3 a.m. All the inteligent people are asleep. Bleen." So I realize that the only way to get down is either to fall straight down on my face or atempt to flip over. I'm a fan of my face, so I opt for the latter.
I attempt a daring back-flip type maneuver...
And land on the ground. And there's the alarm...
Monday, April 16, 2007
Thursday, April 12, 2007
A Farewell to Chemistry Lab
Today was Jenshka and I's last day of Chemistry Lab. To celebrate we went to 1 Stirfry. Or maybe we just went there because we go there every Thursday...regardless, there was some serious celebrating going on. I have taken some useless classes in my day- Positive Living, Liberal Arts Math, Freshman Comp - but this one beats all. I would like to share with you all the things I learned and did not learn from Chem Lab 1020:
Things I did not learn from Chem Lab 1020:
Interactions of matter
The molecular structure of compounds
The First Law of Thermodynamics
Reaction Equations
What water is made from
The names of the elements
What is an atom
What is a molecule
How to identify protons, neutrons or electrons
The states of matter
Anything that might be useful on Jeopardy
Things I did learn from Chemistry Lab
Some chemicals show different colors on a spectrograph. This probably means something.
Silly putty is stretchy.
Food coloring can stain your hands. Red more than others.
Some places in the world get acid rain. This probably means there's pollution in the world or maybe it has something to do with the Ozone layer.
If you put a glass plate on a burner it will break.
You should always wear closed toed shoes in the lab. A skittle may fall on your foot.
Candy can be used to represent radioactive materials. It is a great match because it has nothing in common with radioactive materials. You can pretend it does and then you don't get widespread carnage and death when you accidentally fling it across the room.
Our chemistry lab TA was seriously hot. Jenna agrees.
If they asked me to do a blurb for the FSU Chemistry Quarterly, I would be happy to oblige.
~~~I am so glad that Chemistry Lab was one of my required courses at FSU. I feel that it really helped me understand my major of international affairs much better. Besides the fact that I took Chemistry 3 years ago at TCC and only had to take this lab so that they would hand over my diploma it was right before Extinct Anthropodal Biology and right after Intermediate Norweigan II on my list of priorities. So it was up there. I think my favorite chemistry experiment was when we shook skittles in a bag for 10 minutes to see how long it took for the "S" to rub off. That was a great one.~~~
Things I did not learn from Chem Lab 1020:
Interactions of matter
The molecular structure of compounds
The First Law of Thermodynamics
Reaction Equations
What water is made from
The names of the elements
What is an atom
What is a molecule
How to identify protons, neutrons or electrons
The states of matter
Anything that might be useful on Jeopardy
Things I did learn from Chemistry Lab
Some chemicals show different colors on a spectrograph. This probably means something.
Silly putty is stretchy.
Food coloring can stain your hands. Red more than others.
Some places in the world get acid rain. This probably means there's pollution in the world or maybe it has something to do with the Ozone layer.
If you put a glass plate on a burner it will break.
You should always wear closed toed shoes in the lab. A skittle may fall on your foot.
Candy can be used to represent radioactive materials. It is a great match because it has nothing in common with radioactive materials. You can pretend it does and then you don't get widespread carnage and death when you accidentally fling it across the room.
Our chemistry lab TA was seriously hot. Jenna agrees.
If they asked me to do a blurb for the FSU Chemistry Quarterly, I would be happy to oblige.
~~~I am so glad that Chemistry Lab was one of my required courses at FSU. I feel that it really helped me understand my major of international affairs much better. Besides the fact that I took Chemistry 3 years ago at TCC and only had to take this lab so that they would hand over my diploma it was right before Extinct Anthropodal Biology and right after Intermediate Norweigan II on my list of priorities. So it was up there. I think my favorite chemistry experiment was when we shook skittles in a bag for 10 minutes to see how long it took for the "S" to rub off. That was a great one.~~~
Sunday, April 08, 2007
Happy Easter
Here is love, vast as the ocean
Lovingkindness as the flood
When the Prince of Life, our Ransom
Shed for us His precious blood
Who His love will not remember?
Who can cease to sing His praise?
He can never be forgotten
Throughout Heav'n's eternal days
On the mount of crucifixion
Fountains opened deep and wide
Through the floodgates of God's mercy
Flowed a vast a gracious tide
Grace and love, like mighty rivers
Poured incessant from above
And Heav'n's peace and perfect justice
Kissed a guilty world in love
William Rees
“For if, when we were God's enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life!" Romans 5:10
Lovingkindness as the flood
When the Prince of Life, our Ransom
Shed for us His precious blood
Who His love will not remember?
Who can cease to sing His praise?
He can never be forgotten
Throughout Heav'n's eternal days
On the mount of crucifixion
Fountains opened deep and wide
Through the floodgates of God's mercy
Flowed a vast a gracious tide
Grace and love, like mighty rivers
Poured incessant from above
And Heav'n's peace and perfect justice
Kissed a guilty world in love
William Rees
“For if, when we were God's enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life!" Romans 5:10
Wednesday, April 04, 2007
"My The Cheat Wants to Know What Kind of Crappy Toy You Have Today"
Today would be one of those days when they would be out of the blue ones.
To my two faithful fans, I am sorry for the lack of blogging going on. In an effort to push all blame from myself, I will say that Blogger has been incredibly aggravating lately, and the past couple of times I've been inspired to write a post, I get some crap about needing to create an account. But, today is a good day and evidently they saw fit to let me post.
Today is April 4th. Besides being Senegal Independence Day, it also happens to be Lori and I's shared birthday. Lori was born on the 3rd and I on the 5th, so today is the traditional date that we celebrate each other's birthdays. Normally this includes ingesting large amounts of seafood, but, alas, my friend lives in a place where fish are likely to have two heads, so seafood is not the best option. However, stars are fortunately unaffected by nuclear disasters, so tonight me and Lori are going stargazing. And we will be able to see the same stars. This will spark some sappy nostalgic memory of watching Fivel when we were kids and busting out into the "Somewhere Out There" song, but I will make sure no one hears me and no one knows that song in Ukraine anyway.
Okay, moving on. People, I have an incredible announcement to make. I am only one episode behind on LOST. I am learning that someone on that show must really hate Tallahassee. I have my theories on who this "man from Tallahassee" is, but regardless, they say his name so ominously you have to think he's bad. Poor Tallahassee. What did it ever do to anyone? It's so much more than stripmalls and Wafflehouses. One of the writers probably dated someone from here. And she broke his heart.
Well, I am going to go heat up some lunch. Happy Birthday to us, Lori. May is almost tomorrow.
To my two faithful fans, I am sorry for the lack of blogging going on. In an effort to push all blame from myself, I will say that Blogger has been incredibly aggravating lately, and the past couple of times I've been inspired to write a post, I get some crap about needing to create an account. But, today is a good day and evidently they saw fit to let me post.
Today is April 4th. Besides being Senegal Independence Day, it also happens to be Lori and I's shared birthday. Lori was born on the 3rd and I on the 5th, so today is the traditional date that we celebrate each other's birthdays. Normally this includes ingesting large amounts of seafood, but, alas, my friend lives in a place where fish are likely to have two heads, so seafood is not the best option. However, stars are fortunately unaffected by nuclear disasters, so tonight me and Lori are going stargazing. And we will be able to see the same stars. This will spark some sappy nostalgic memory of watching Fivel when we were kids and busting out into the "Somewhere Out There" song, but I will make sure no one hears me and no one knows that song in Ukraine anyway.
Okay, moving on. People, I have an incredible announcement to make. I am only one episode behind on LOST. I am learning that someone on that show must really hate Tallahassee. I have my theories on who this "man from Tallahassee" is, but regardless, they say his name so ominously you have to think he's bad. Poor Tallahassee. What did it ever do to anyone? It's so much more than stripmalls and Wafflehouses. One of the writers probably dated someone from here. And she broke his heart.
Well, I am going to go heat up some lunch. Happy Birthday to us, Lori. May is almost tomorrow.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
