I thought the last day to add classes was TODAY. Turns out it was SATURDAY. I am currently not enrolled in Greek. I need to be. I will talk to someone about this tomorrow, but it’s highly unlikely that this is at all a “soft” deadline. Fuckity fuckity fuck fuck. Why do I…gah…this…I…I have no words. Fuck.
When you absent-mindedly leave the dome light in your car on when you park it for the night, living with a critter who enjoys a trot around the parking lot every couple hours gives you at least two more chances to notice and turn it off, thereby avoiding being horribly late to the first session of a new class you’re teaching at 10:00 the next morning.
It’s 6:30. In the morning. As in, it’s more or less dark. I’m awake.
Not only that, but I’ve been awake for an hour now, tossing and turning, thinking good back-to-sleep thoughts, but to no avail. I don’t feel sick or anything, I’m just…awake. Having gone to bed at 1:30, I can’t possibly be well-rested. And yet. The awakeness, it persists.
I guess we’ll go for a walk. Then, gosh, I dunno, maybe I could eat breakfast? And do some homework? This is all very new and strange to me.
[UPDATE: So I went to the gym for the first time in at least a year. Then I figured I’d make pancakes, so I headed to the grocery store for pancake ingredients. But get this: I had to go to TWO different grocery stores because the first one I tried WASN’T OPEN YET (at 7:45-ish). Honestly, I never considered the possibility that I could get someplace TOO EARLY to be allowed in. I mean, I know all about those frustrating times AFTER many of the stores are closed (usually 9:00 in these parts, no kidding), but it still seems strange to me that there would exist a time BEFORE all the stores were open. Does that make sense?
Anyway, then I went home, took a shower, made and ate pancakes, and called a couple of tutoring parents. Sad but true: even though I got out of bed more than three hours before my first alarm went off, I was STILL late for school. How’s that for ridiculous?]
My schedule today was the same as Monday’s: long. I’ve been running from place to place with nary a minute to spare. Tonight all I’ve done since getting home a little after 10 is take Sammy out on a two-mile walk (he’d been cooped up in the apartment for almost twelve hours), get caught up on email, and check out a couple videos (literally, like two)…and it’s already past midnight.
Being so busy, and all the things that are changing right now (new classes, etc.) have made me super-tense these last few days, but also super-energized. Adrenaline something something, I’m sure. There’s much less self-loathing now that I’m actually *doing things* during the day, so that’s a plus.
I don’t have time to be writing this, as I still have to prepare for tomorrow’s physics lab before I go to bed. So, um, I’m gonna go now. Just wanted to pop in and say hello. Have a good night, everyone!
My school day was blah—more or less what I expected, in other words. It reminded me of all the things I don’t like about UH. I muddled through it in a vlog that’s twice as long as it ought to be, but I don’t care because it’s past my bedtime.
I’ve had a long day: five hours of class, then four hours of training* for work. Usually when I need to destress I come home and bang away on the piano for an hour or so, but I’ve left most of my music** at my parents’ house. I made cookies instead.
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* I’ve already been doing the job for which I’m currently training for a year and a half. It’s a long story.
** I’m fairly good at reading music, but I can play very few songs from memory. While I enjoy music, I don’t think I have any natural talent for it.
There’s really not much else to say; I thought you should know. I’m not ready for summer to end, but then I don’t think I ever would be. Endings suck.
I’m taking some classes. I should find out more about them and I guess pack my backpack. I’m working all afternoon, then going to dinner with my parents, then going home . . . and going to bed? I suppose. Gotta get up bright and early for that first 11:00 class. Hum di dum.
Over the last hour or so I composed a moody, introspective post about a long drive I took to nowhere in particular this evening, with vague references to the emotional-but-unsatisfying rant I raged through to my camera* on the way there.
Then I thought better of it and deleted the whole thing. It was a random trip and a random rant, not related to anything going on my life right now, and I don’t want to give the wrong impression. I’m fine; life is generally okay at the moment.
In lieu of emo-ness and for the sake of updating on a somewhat regular basis, I’m snatching the following semi-randomly from my ‘to-blog’ stockpile.
My ex-school is nerdtacular. Sometimes I’m glad I left, sometimes I’m indifferent, and sometimes I miss it a whole bunch**. Now, where’s my sidewalk chalk?
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* It shut off about five minutes in. I sympathize with the camera.
** I tried to come up with a clever analogy here, but I got nothin’. You know, something like “I miss it like a fat kid misses candy,” except that it would make sense. Everything I can think of (formerly fat folks, criminals, soldiers in Iraq) is mildly offensive and not clever enough to be funny. Whelp, guess I’d better cross ‘comedy writer’ off my list of career options.
It’s about time I put another Holland video up, isn’t it? I made myself get out of the apartment and go sit at a coffee place until my battery died so I could work on this one.
Here, we accompany my aunt on a trip to the furniture store. It’s not much of an “adventure” video, just some local flavor.
Here’s a direct link to the video on YouTube.
As far as I can tell, all of Europe is one big IKEA*. Which is to say, if you’d like to travel to Europe but are short on time and/or cash, just drag someone with an accent down to your local IKEA complex on a slow shopping day. Pretty darn close.
But seriously, everyone in Holland seems to have such clean, sleek, design-conscious furnishings. Or at least my family does. Maybe we’re (they’re) exceptionally stylish. Yeah, that’s it. Anyway, Mattress Mac** would be run out of town.
Another thing I’ve noticed is that almost no one has carpet in their homes. Anywhere. There’s especially no plush, squishy carpet. The hard floors do add to the sleekness, but gosh, doesn’t it get cold in winter?
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* Every Chronicle subscriber in the whole dang city got a shiny hundred-page IKEA catalog with their paper last week. Now THAT’S some impressive marketing. Day-um.
I don’t get the paper, but my mom gave me her copy. Mmm, Swedish furnip0rn.
** Wow, I expected Gallery to have at least a decent website. I guess the crowd they cater to and the crowd that believes in computers don’t overlap much, but still. With all that money (non-Houstonians, the man is a gazillionaire) you’d think he could at least hire a web designer.
EDIT: Fixed the Gallery link.
This updated phase diagram rofls my waffles.
Here’s something that might interest the scientists and/or creative folk and/or XtR33m puzzlorz out there. The World’s Fair guys over at ScienceBlogs* posted their first Puzzle Fantastica several weeks ago. They put up five ‘clues’ (three images, a video, and an image of text) and challenged the world to discover “something not to reveal.” That’s it—no rules, no hints, just five clues. When you get it, you’ll know it, apparently.
I saw the puzzle when it first went up, idly thought about it a bit, read through the comments (wild-ass guesses and conspiracy theories, mostly)…and then went on vacation and forgot about it.
Interesting to see, then, that as of today, the puzzle remains unsolved (hat-tip to BoingBoing for the reminder). Readers have collectively uncovered piles and piles of ‘evidence,’ but the community as a whole doesn’t even seem to be moving in a coherent direction. The puzzle’s creators promise there’s a solution; it’d be a dirty trick if there weren’t, wouldn’t it?
The puzzle explains itself better than I can. Links: the original post, adding the final clue, the most recent update.
This style of puzzle is a little too hardcore for me, but I love the idea of it and watching people try to untangle it, and of course I can’t wait to see the answer. I do hope it’s elegant.
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* If you’re looking for quality science blogging, or even if you’re not, I highly recommend ScienceBlogs: great writing on fascinating, relevant topics by variously-flavored Ph.D.s and other smart people, plus a friendly community of commenters. The site has grown a bunch since I first found it a few months ago (47 blogs as of this writing), and I have to exert a measure of self-control to keep from just subscribing to all of them and spending my whole day reading. (Right now I’m subscribed to three or four…or five. I think.)