The life and times of a normal university student

27 December 2010

Forty Fifth Post

I'll be upfront. This is a rant post, almost related to Fortieth Post (I think). If you don't want to read a rant about Hulu, just hit the little x on the tab for this blog. I do feel a little bit bad about ranting. I mean, I can rant to real people; I don't need to full up the internet with my anger.
Oh, well.
I have a bone to pick with Hulu Plus.
As a rule, Hulu provides me with free television. When a show ends, the whole thing ends up on Hulu. Free and whatnot. All seasons. All. Of. Them.
My obsession with Legend of the Seeker will be on standby for a while, at least until I can afford season 2 on DVD.
F***ers. I adored that show (*coughCraigHornerisreallyhotcough*) and now a small joy that is rather too large is gone.
Gone!
Those f***ers stole my television show! It should all be on there! ALL OF IT!
I'm not paying a cent, and I should get to see all of these episodes! The show is over! WANT!
Oh, Hulu Plus has it?
Newsflash: I HAVE NO MONEY!
Well, not literally since I got some for Christmas, but that's all going to my jan term class.
No. Money. Hear me, Hulu? I don't have the money to pay for these television shows! Your job is to provide me with free television shows, not to make money!
Oye. All of Heroes is online -- all freaking four seasons -- but only one of the two seasons of Legend of the Seeker is up for free?
What.
The.
F***.
What the f***, Hulu? Why do you deprive me of my Craig Horner? This might force me to find a hot guy in real life! How can I function like that?
In real life, I'm not very interesting. I can make any situation awkward, and I never know what to say to people.
Television shows are an escape for me.
This might make me face real life. And I don't want to deal with that now.

19 December 2010

Forty Fourth Post

Hello, y'all.
I'm not actually from the south, I'm just high on sugar again. This is how I spend my time -- I get home with great plans for what I'm going to do over break (figure out why I can't sleep), and then I go over to my friend's house and eat sugar until midnight.
It may be a very long night. I plan to start my little sleep journal thing tomorrow.
In the meantime, I had a cuddly cat leaning against my arm until my watch fell off the other side of the chair and distracted him. I have a sugar buzz, good friends that like me and laugh with me, and a really freaking nice computer (which needs cleaning. I kind of rest my left thumb on the space bar all the time and shift my right hand around a little more than I do the left, so there's a large grease spot under my thumb. This is not okay with me.). I also have Jack Sparrow socks and stripey magic socks.
My sugar buzz comes from my friend's house, since he wanted a gathering of all his friends that he's known since middle school and hasn't seen since they left for their freshman years this September. Unfortunately, one of his closest friends is kind of my ex-boyfriend. I have some very bad memories from that, and the guy is kind of insufferable anyway. I dread hanging out with him. He's not depressed any more, and I don't hate him any more, but it's still rough on me. I don't enjoy his company.
Hence my socks. I believe that socks make or break the day, so I have several pairs of what I consider to be "awesome socks" (I stopped calling them "fabulous" after I had some disturbing mental images of men flipping their hands). There's a pair of black and light grey stripey socks that remind me inexplicably of Harry Potter and magic. These are for everyday wear, since they are sturdy, fairly good quality, and come up above my hiking boots that I wear everywhere.
My favourite pair of socks EH-VER is my Jack Sparrow socks. I can post pictures if the demand is great. Below the ankle, black with grey pattern (Jack Sparrow's face) and a random Chinese-ish character in metallic yellow (gold isn't the right colour; these are from Walmart), they make me really freaking happy. They are, unfortunately, falling apart, so I wear them only at the utmost end of need.
The utmost end of need involves ochem, as a rule, stress, Fridays, finals, and people I can't stand.
With my Jack Sparrow socks, I am invincible. Ochem can't get me down, finals can't break my spirit, and nothing my ex can say will get under my skin, because I am wearing Jack Sparrow socks.

16 December 2010

Forty Third Post

It is... getting late. I have one final left, at 15.30 Friday. And then I am done with Fall Term 2010. Done with 2010, really.
And then, of course, I go home Saturday before 0700. I am not pleased, but I'll get home quickly, I guess.
I don't remember if I mentioned it, but I can't have stimulants in the hours between waking up and falling asleep. Otherwise, I'm up until 0400 wanting to be asleep so badly, but totally unable to shut down my brain. I also don't remember if I told you all about the time I unwittingly drank green tea with mint in it the night before a german exam, but mint is the one thing I've found that never fails to knock me out mentally. It turns my brain to mush (green tea makes me hyper, so I was tripping pretty badly that night) and allows me to sleep.
I have a small hoard of mint tea now. Just mint, nothing added. It does the job.
I had to have three cups of it last night. First, I just couldn't fall asleep, so I had to make another around 01.30. Then. Oh, then what.
There was a f**king fire alarm at 3 f**king AM.
By the time I got back to my room at 03.30, I was wide awake from standing out in the sub-zero (Celsius) weather in pyjama pants, tank top, jacket, and hiking boots without socks for half an hour. Obviously, I started texting my friends angrily about how I was planning to kill whoever woke me up before an 0800 final. Then I made another cup of tea, grumbling angrily, and eventually fell back asleep.
I'm also a bundle of nerves from the odd behaviour of my course handbook. I'm planning to study abroad next year, but that's tricky as a science major. I need specific courses, so I'm fitting my schedule around those that I would prefer to take. Sure, it wouldn't be the end of the world if I had to take Developmental Biology instead of Advanced Cell Biology, but as someone who wants to go into disease research, I care more about the cellular and molecular level of things than the thing itself. Advanced Cell is far more interesting to me that Developmental would be, I think. I'd still graduate, and I'm sure I could take all the cell biology I wanted in graduate school, but I'd rather take it now and be able to know for sure if this is really what I want to do with my life.
My handbook lied to me. It's been giving me the wrong semesters for classes, and that's really important. So I've been emailing some biology professors, usually around bedtime, so I get nervous about whether I have the prereqs or the proper semester picked to travel.
Whoo. We'll see how this all pans out.
In the meantime, I'm going to ignore the fact that I have a final tomorrow (for the time being) and go to bed.
Goodnight.

P.S.
I've taken to wearing my pyjama pants to every final, and I definitely had a "I'm wearing my purple plaid flannel pants to class and you (the world at large) can't make me change!" moment. I love these pants.

12 December 2010

Forty Second Post

Three posts in... two days? I think my perception of time is pretty screwed up. Anyway.
This is a for real post. No "Hey, you lot should check out this stuff that I think is cool!" nonsense.
This is a post about my bathroom.
So. My dorm is unique on campus in that people live in "pods" composed of six to twelve (thirteen this year, actually) people living normally in one to three-person rooms (possibly four, depending... I don't really know). Each pod has a main room and a bathroom. It's a pretty swank building, other than the whole hot water thing, with nice tall ceilings and, hey, your own bathroom. Except the bathroom kind of needs to be cleaned. So the price we pay for swank rooms and not enough hot water is cleaning the bathrooms. My pod just goes by room each week- pod C started because we volunteered, then pod A, then B, then C, then A...
My roommate hates sweeping and mopping, so I do that. In return for not having to sweep, mop, or take out the trash, she does the rest -- toilets, showers, counter, mirror.
The trouble with a girls' pod is that, while we're pretty good about not peeing on the seat, we leave a lot of hair on the floor.

That's a picture of the dust and hair that I swept up this week. Please note that the trash can has no liner.
But I don't really mind sweeping. It's easy enough, and the broom is okay. Actually, we have two brooms.

So you can't actually see both brooms, but there's another one hiding behind the big yellow one. You can kind of see the grey handle lurking around back there. The black handle is the next thing I'm going to cover.
That black handle belongs to a mop.


This is the mop from hell. It is the stupidest design for a mop in the history of mops. See how all the hair and dust that the broom misses can not get picked up, but rather shoved around the floor?

That handle thing is for squeezing the water out of the mop. That much works pretty well.

That's the thing that's supposed to make the mop longer. Unfortunately, it's breaking. It didn't work anyway. Any pressure applied to the elongated handle would just shove it back down into itself.

Shortest mop ever. I hate it so much. I'll blame my back problems later in life on it, since I have to bend almost double to use it efficiently. See how it's much shorter than the brooms? Yeah.
I did mention that the mop is not optimally designed for mopping up residual dust and hair, but it actually grabs a surprisingly large amount and deposits it in the mop bucket.
Sorry, roommate. Now you have to clean this out of the shower...

All that black stuff wasn't there before.
Speaking of showers, they're pretty neat.

See? Very similar to the showers that grown ups in the real world use. Unfortunately, our showers have just one curtain. I'm really not close enough friends with my podmates to be okay with them walking in on me stark naked. We all seem to feel the same way, so there is a general caution about opening the bathroom door.
Actually, I'm really not very close to any of my podmates, which makes using the sinks a bit awkward sometimes.
Here's why:

We have this giant counter, with two sinks. Two sinks is plenty for six people, make no mistake, but we only have one soap dispenser. As you can see, it's right in between the sinks, just out of reach for both.
In case you're wondering, the writing on the mirror is a note from our RA telling us to sign up for the "end-of-semester deep cleaning" involving all podmates, or else.
And that's my bathroom.


Forty First Post

This is just a quicky edit for the Fortieth Post.
I came across Alex Day (a.k.a. neriman) via "Reasoning With Vampires", a tumblr by Dana that picks apart Stephanie Meyers' grammar and relationship ideals.
Also, you should most definitely look up "charlieissocoollike" on youtube. Charlie is, interestingly enough, in a band with Alex Day, and his videos are hilarious. Also, the band, Sons of Admirals, is very good. Look 'em up on iTunes.
God, now I feel like an advert for all my favourite websites. Oh, well.

11 December 2010

Fortieth Post

First, I have discovered a few things on the internets.
1. Records of a Mad Scientist. JW, a biochemistry graduate student from Indiana, winds up teaching (which she never wanted to do) at a state school in America's Midwest.
2. Alex Day ("nerimon") on Youtube. Just a guy with a camera and internet access who is also a skillful singer-songwriter and a hilarious dude. Also, I have to say as an American that his accent is fascinating. I sometimes suspect that I have an unnatural obsession with British accents, but I think it might just be one of those "American things". Anyway, enough about my obsessions. Look up nerimon's channel on youtube. (the people to whom he links are also pretty cool)
Oh hey, you know that I'm American now. Oh, well.
3. The Legend of the Seeker. A scifi/fantasy television series about a normal guy thrust into another life by a prophecy. It's absolutely amazing, at least thus far, with good acting and a worthy script. See if you can guess who played the Mouth of Sauron from the extended version of the Return of the King (from Lord of the Rings, and if you really didn't know... I have nothing to say to you). All the episodes are up on Hulu because it ended, but why should I care? I don't have a television, not to mention cable/satellite/whathaveyou.
You may or may not know (I can't be expected to remember all I've told you, can I?) that I'm also obsessed with two other television shows- Heroes and Sanctuary. I think Heroes might be over, so all the seasons might be up on Hulu. Sanctuary is not over, Gott sei Dank, but it's on a very weird upload schedule.

I recall saying at the beginning of this blog that I had no interest in Harry Potter or Twilight, two things that seem to drag other sites down.
That is now a lie. I have read Harry Potter, and I enjoyed them immensely. Check out Mark Reads Harry Potter if you want a chapter-by-chapter review of all seven books; it's hilarious and enjoyable if you've already read the books. I have also-

I don't really want to tell you. It's kind of embarrassing.
Actually, I've told no one. Not roommate, not best friend (who I text because he's at another school), not close girl friend. I think I might even have the library people in the dark about it.
...not that I check it out, I just lurk back to my little study cubicle with no power outlet for my laptop (the darling thing) and then leave it there when it's time to go.

Nope, not telling. If you guess, more power to ya. You can win 10 internets.

Okay. So a funny thing that happened was I was in the Target near my school looking for... I think I was looking for chocolate, socks, and shampoo. Oh, and a Christmas present for my roommate. Anyway. My best friend is a freshman in college and an overachiever. I mean, the man wants to be a surgeon, so he kind of has to be an overachiever, but I think that high school was too easy for him. Now, however, he is in college.
I was just going along, browsing through random stuff, when I got a text message that made me laugh so hard that I had to sit down under a clothes rack.
Here it is, exactly as it appeared on my dumbphone screen.
"Ohmygoodnessit'sthu
rsdayandfinalsarene
xtweekpanictimei'mgoi
ngtofailatlifeandendu
pasabumonthestreet
sellingcracktokidstos
upportmyselfuntilthe
mexicanskillme"
(character limit)
"becauseidon'tspeaks
panishandallbecausei
failedmycalculusexam
firstquarteroffreshm
anyear!"

Picture me, sitting under a clothes rack in target, laughing at a text from my friend who is worried about becoming a bum selling crack to kids until mexicans kill him, all because he failed a calculus exam.
Well, you can't picture me because you don't have my picture. Okay. Picture a 20-year-old girl, er, woman now that I'm over 18 (and have been for two years...), with long brown hair, blue jeans, a green shirt, hiking boots, and a black jacket sitting under a clothes rack in target, laughing at a text from my friend who is worried about becoming a bum selling crack to kids until Mexicans kill him, all because he failed a calculus exam.
Poor guy. I gave up worrying about finals when the kids in one of my high school classes discovered that one would need to totally fail an exam worth 10% of the grade to really affect one's grade that much. Oddly, I do much better when I'm under pressure, so I'm not too worried.
Well, I am worried about the fact that most of my finals are at 0800 next week. I am not pleased one bit.
And now it's well after 0400 -- more like 0500 anymore -- and I was trying to reset my sleep schedule so that I won't die during my 0800 finals. Oh, well... So much for that. I'm still getting up at 1000 tomorrow to study for my hell classes.
Also, if you get a chance and you're as unfamiliar with German Christmas (or "Winter Holiday Season") traditions as I am, look up "Krampus" in Google Images.
Just Do It. You will never see Santa Claus the same way (get your filthy minds out of the gutter. I didn't mean it like that).
Okay. Goodnight. I do not even remember why I was writing this. But it's awesome.

05 December 2010

Thirty Ninth Post

Hey, gang.
Sorry. One of my professor's email style is rubbing off on me.
Anyway, guess what!
That's right, I have a measly week until finals! They are all at 0800 except for the last one, which will be at 1530 on Friday 17 December.
Naturally.
In other news, I have a nomination for "sexiest thing (not person) ever"
Ready?
German accents.