My “Christmas 2005″ photoset is finally up. Click on the picture below to see the rest. Not gonna lie, most of the pictures are about Sam.
I’ve been working on it for the last three hours. I should have gone to bed a while ago, but I didn’t want to leave it half done. So there you are. Enjoy.
Oh my god oh my god OH. MY. GOD.
I love this more than, I don’t even know, more than anything. I’ve listened to it about ten times, and I just keep loving it more and more.
It’s acapella. It’s good acapella. It’s good acapella ABOUT MATH. And it’s so clever it hurts. I love it I love it.
*Disclaimer: If you’re *not* a huge math nerd (the other 99.5% of the population), you might find this song rather boring and unfunny. That’s fine by me. I love it, and I don’t give a hoot what you think.
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P.S. Ok, so while we’re on the topic, who else remembers all the words to 2gether’s smash hit U + Me = Us (Calculus)? Because I do. I even have the CD. I’m losing my hair…my vision is shady…last night I dreamed…
UH is frustrating me right now. It’s mostly not their fault, just an unfortunate bureaucratic pile-up, but it’s wreaking havoc on my class schedule.
I got my acceptance letter (yay) in the mail about a week ago. Registration for returning students started in November, so many of the classes I wanted to take were already full, but there were still enough open seats out there for me to flesh out a decent schedule. When I tried to enroll, however, the online enrollment thingy cheerfully informed me that there was a stop on my enrollment: I didn’t have test scores on record that would exempt me from the Texas Success Initiative.
This is apparently some sort of requirement you have to meet before you can enroll at a public school in Texas. There are a million ways to get an exemption, like having an (old) SAT score over 1070 (easy enough, except that the score must be less than five years old; I took the SAT in 1999), or having a TAAS/TAKS score above some mediocre number (those tests are taken by public school students; I went to private school). There IS an exemption for transfer students from private or out-of-state colleges who have completed college-level work. I have completed college-level work. Two years’ worth. They obviously know this*, since they admitted me as a junior. There should not be a stop on my enrollment.
I tried to call and correct the problem, but the office was closed. All the university offices are closed, in fact, until *January 2nd*. I’ve left them a message, and I plan to call back at 8 AM on the 2nd, but in the meantime classes are closing left and right. There is exactly one Classics course still open (Epic Masculinity—yuck), and it has three seats left. Who wants to bet there’ll be *no* classes left at all in my major when I finally get to enroll a week from now**?
Fortunately the Latin classes, which I absolutely need to take, are only about half full. Besides that, though, my schedule will probably be a mix of whatever scraps I can cobble together. Grrrrr.
In short, classes are filling up quickly, and I’m being prevented from enrolling for *two weeks* because of a stop that shouldn’t be there in the first place. I’m trying not to be pessimistic, but this isn’t a great start to my relationship with UH. I’m hoping this isn’t an indicator of worse messes to come. Grumble grumble.
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* What I’m guessing happened is that no one has done an official “transcript review”yet, as my seventy-some-odd transfer hours aren’t showing up either. Grumble.
** If then. I have very little faith in the system.
Woo family, woo presents. Woo tree and lights and luminaries and neighbors and food and wrapping paper. Woo tradition. Christmas is pretty much the same as it’s always been, which is lovely.
New this year: Samson, empty-nesting parents, new neighbors, opening presents *after* dawn, and no videotaping. I’m ambivalent about that last one, though I took lots of pictures to compensate. We’ve videotaped every Christmas since I was a baby, and those tapes are some of my (our) most prized possessions. I agree that we’ve sort of outgrown it, and now that we’re not kids anymore, no one changes as much from year to year. Still, I think video captures memories so much more faithfully than photographs do.
Someday one of us will have a digital camcorder, and then maybe we’ll do some more videotaping. A couple years ago my dad had all our old Betamax tapes converted to VHS, and soon we’ll have to convert all those to some digital format. Dad tells me it’s relatively easy; we’ll see how that goes.
We’ve had a good morning so far, none of us so much as Sammy, who was so overwhelmed with all the new toys and boxes and ribbons that he looked like he might explode. Once the unwrapping began, we only saw him occasionally, when he would tear across the living room, trying to shake two or three toys to death at once. Right now he’s conked out on the couch, exhausted.
Sam’s taking pretty well to the house. He’s learned how to jump up onto the furniture, where the food comes from, and where all the trash cans are. Needless to say, he’s also found plenty of ways to get into trouble. Last night when we were sitting around the fireplace, Sam came trotting out of my parents’ room with a present in his mouth: “To Natalie from S. Claus.” Oops. And this morning during present-time, Sam disappeared into the kitchen, only to come flying out a minute later chewing on a piece of pumpkin bread snatched from the table. I chased him down and cornered him on the staircase, but he started chowing down on it so frantically that I let him have it. Silly puppy.
I don’t have much to say right now—I figured I ought to post something, so I turned on the computer and started writing, which is rarely a predictor of quality output, but whatever. You’ll have to wait to see the pictures until I get back to my apartment and my own computer. This has been a wonderful Christmas, not really because of the presents (although I did get some good ones), but more because of where I am in life. These are good times. More on this in my “year in review” post, coming up in a few days.
I hope all your holidays have been cheery and cozy, that your families are doing well, and that your favorite seasonal gift-bearing figures brought you all the crap you asked for and more. Three cheers for vacation!
Relive the fun and eye-poking of kindergarten with this little diversion (via Beancounter): it’s a virtual refrigerator with a bunch of those colored magnetic letters. The idea, of course, is to drag them around to form words, just like you would on a real fridge. The catch is that everyone gets to play at once.
It’s an exercise in group creativity, really. Once you tack up a few cusswords and get your giggles, it’s fun to see what you can put together before someone else tears it apart. The best part is when you can get someone else to share in your vision. I tried for a while to arrange a complete alphabet in the top right corner, but people kept snagging random letters before I could finish. Just as I was about to give up, some of the letters started flying back into place, all by themselves. I had a helper! Between the two of us, we held back entropy long enough to finish the job.
It’s not just about words, either—later in the game I contributed to a massively multi-artist drawing of a naked lady. (Someone was making an orange circle, so I put a dot in the middle, then someone else started drawing another circle, and all of a sudden the whole world came running to help.) As soon as a drawing or set of words becomes recognizable, someone else will try to complete it. Sometimes the original artist and the “helper” don’t see eye to eye and try to go in different directions, with amusing results. Symbol recognition, cooperation…I’m sure there’s a sociology paper in here somewhere.
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P.S. This reminds me of a project I saw a while ago in which visitors to a website were allowed to contribute one pixel each to a picture. It started out being a bunch of random dots, but eventually turned into something resembling a cute little park scene with a tree, a lake, and a sun (that’s what I see in it, anyway). I thought I saved the link somewhere, but I can’t find it. Does anyone know what I’m talking about?
Bad news: There is a steaming pile of dogshit in my apartment.
Worse news: I don’t know where it is.
I can definitely smell it—the stink just about knocks you over when you open the front door—but I CAN’T FIND THE TURD. Believe me, I’ve looked and looked. Fortunately, most of my clothes were in the closet with the door closed, so I don’t have to worry about them. Still, it bothers me that my apartment reeks of poo and I can’t clean it up.
The tricky thing is that I stop being able to smell it after two or three minutes inside, so I can’t follow my nose to the poo-bomb. Sam refuses to tell me where it is, though I’ve probably asked him to “show Mommy your poo-poo” like fifty times. Brat.
In other Sam news, we went back to the vet today for a retest, and we’re Giardia-free! (Sammy is, at least—they weren’t sticking one of those things up *my* ass.) Finally, Sam can play with other dogs again without fear of them shitting their brains out the next day. Dog park, here we come!
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P.S. The change I made earlier was to align the main column of text “ragged right” instead of justifying it. It’s technically the way you’re *supposed* to align ordinary webpage text in the first place, and so far I like it better anyway, so I’m keeping it. It gives the page a tiny bit more of a casual feel, plus it makes those lines with ridiculously long words look less wonky.
I’ve changed a typographical setting in the stylesheet for this site, and I’m trying to decide which style looks better.
Can you tell what’s different? (Hint: It’s not the font, though I might be changing that in the near future.) If so, do you like it better now or the way it used to be?
Also, my puppy is crying and I can’t figure out why. He wants to sit in my lap, then he wants to be on the floor, then he wants to be in my lap again, and all the time crying crying crying. We just went for a walk a little while ago, so hopefully he’s just pissed that I haven’t gone to bed yet.
At 3:30 this afternoon I was on my way home from a lesson when I thought, “While I’m out, maybe I should start* my Christmas shopping, seeing as how there’s less than a week left until Jesus Day.” So I stopped by the B&N down the street. I was looking for one particular (and sometimes hard to find) book, so it took me all of three minutes to ascertain that it wasn’t there. Bummer. It’s funny, though: it took me a good hour and half to find my way back out of the store. Somewhere along the way I came into possession of a completely different book and a mocha** frappuccino.
Next I tried Old Navy***, but they didn’t have the book either—imagine that! While I was there, I figured I might as well do some Christmas shopping for my family—the members of my family who wear size 8 women’s pants, that is.
Finally, I trekked the quarter-mile across the parking lot to Borders, which *did* have the book. You’d think, since they’re in the business of selling books, that Borders would make it easy for potential customers to find those books, but this is not the case. The Mathmatics*V section is one side of a bookcase standing under a sign reading Business and Computer Technology. OF COURSE. Why didn’t I think to look there? Silly me.
Even when I was standing in front of the bookcase, there were no clues as to where my book might actually *be*. The section claimed to be in alphabetical order by author, but there was no such order. Not “a book or two out of place,” but NO ORDER AT ALL. It wasn’t clear whether these books had *ever* been in alphabetical order. I thought that maybe the signs were wrong, and that they were instead arranged by subject, but a quick glance proved this hypothesis false as well. The shelving was completely random. If I hadn’t known what the spine of my book looked like, I would’ve had to read every title in the section to discover that it wasn’t there.
According to the handy-dandy computer (the only thing I like about Borders) , the book was in the Philosophy/LinguisticsV mini-section, which turned out to be in the Religion section. Really? Okay, so maybe there wasn’t anywhere else to put it, but then you should call the section Religion & Philosophy. You know, in case someone were looking for a philosophy book. Better yet, how about a Humanities section? You have Literature and Social Sciences; how is Humanities (or Natural Sciences, for that matter) not an equally logical designation? Grumble. This only deepens my conviction that Barnes & Noble rules all and Borders is the seventh circle of HellV*.
In the end, I came out with two books, a tummy full of whipped cream, and…some amount of clothingV**. Can I stop now? What’s that? No? I have to go out shopping again? Several more times? Aw, shucks.
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* No presents bought, no cards sent, and only a couple people’s gifts even figured out. I should be a party planner.
** No more pumpkin spice! Humbug.
*** It’s been so long since I’ve been clothes shopping (in Houston) that I didn’t know the location of the nearest Old Navy and had to drive around until I saw one. I’ve lived here since February.
*V I shit you not. On several different signs.
V I’m going give Borders the benefit of the doubt and assume I misunderstood the computer. If someone really did think these were particularly similar…I don’t even know what to say to that.
V* Oh, and the salesfolks’ job descriptions seemed to consist of little besides standing around the info desk flirting with each other. At first I thought it was a salesguy sucking up to two female customers, so I waited patiently in line…until one of the girls turned around and asked if she could help me. B&N employees don’t have time to flirt, as they’re busy doing things like shelving books properly.
V** Note to self: This was on your Old Navy CREDIT CARD, which means you haven’t paid for it yet. You need to pay that shit off before the end of the month, like maybe TOMORROW.
I’m going to become one of those people who use their blogs as nothing more than fancypants photo albums for their pet pictures, aren’t I, snoodlywookums?
Until I pop out my first mini-me, at least. But for now I’ve got a Flickrload of pictures of nothing but puppy, puppy, and more puppy. He’s much cuter in real life, I swear.
Sam FINALLY got his first post-surgery bath Tuesday night—he was getting to be a bit…rank. I was prepared to wrestle him into the tub and mash shampoo into his fur as he flung dirty water across the room, but he was suprisingly unruffled by, and maybe even bored with, the bath experience. He let me put him into the tub with no struggle, then stood quiet and still as I poured water over him, scrubbed on the shampoo, and rinsed it off. Have I mentioned that Sam is the chillest dog ever?
When I got up this morning (i.e., just now), the red “alert!” banner across the top of CNN.com read
> BREAKING NEWS — President Bush today accepted responsibility for decision to go war against Iraq based on faulty intelligence.
When was that, again? Two years ago? Two and a half?