My Journal

Amanda ACTUALLY updated her page! It's amazing! But she wasn't on IM when I discovered this, and she doesn't have a guestbook (yet) so I couldn't congratulate her on that. So I must put it here for now- way to update, Manda!

Oh yeah, forgot to metion... a few days ago, my poster from MegaTokyo came. It is SUCH a kick-ass poster, it's incredible! Here's a picture of it. It's so awesome!

22:39 So Jenny called Kejia and got all that squared away, and all I need to do tomorrow is call her and confirm. Definietely doing something with all Stillwater people tomorrow evening, which is also happy and good. Just e-mailed Professor Alghren, in the middle of e-mailing Germans and have looked for my glasses. Still haven't found them, of course, (sigh), but I looked. Feeling rather accomplished, if I do say so myself. Yay happiness.

Still no luck with the clock yet, although I haven't been trying very hard. What with Christmas and having new presents to play with and all. Got a lovely book from Jenny for Christmas called Uncle Shel's ABZ Book. It's by Shel Silversiten and sounds exactly like the kind of book I would write if I was a) talented enough and b) able to get away with it. It really is a terrible book, all about what little children should not do. Tee hee.

When I get back from the orthodontist's (annual check-up) I need to call Kejia, e-mail professor Alghren, send out Christmas cards (oops), find my glasses and fix my page clock. WSS what I get done.

24:23 IM'd Jenny. Less depressed, though still. But that's not what I wanted to put here. Such is:

Now that I think about it, it's kind of odd how much of an anime/manga fan I am (which is to say, really not all that much, but moreso than most) even though I don't have cable, have only ever seen a few videos (translated, all) and several seasons of Sailor Moon in German. Well, and Pokemon seasons 1 and 2 and about 5 episodes of Card Captor Sakura. And the first 8 Ah! My Godess manga, and 4 Record Of Lodoss War: Chronicles of Flaim (both in German). And Megatokyo is my favorite webcomic of all time. Now that I think about it, that's quite a bit. But still not a lot. Is it? Ah, well.

Got out of bed at ten to four and headed over to the library to tutor Lisa. It was nothing really bad, but the weird thing was that they were doing optimization, which we had been talking about just last night. Strange. As soon as Lisa left I headed all of ten feet over to where Ann was sitting and studied Latin verbs for an hour, then went to dinner. We met with Mollie and had yucky Downer food (this was really yucky- Ann had two bites and then got a salad, I had slightly more and then got some Kix, 'cause they were out of honey nut Cheerios). We had a really great conversation once we had given up on eating, too. I really enjoyed it.

After dinner Ann and I went back to the library, and after a while Cole joined us. At five after nine I couldn't help myself and ran over to Plantz to pick up my package. It was the other book I had ordered, yay! So I took it up to my room and paused long enough to check my e-mails and drop it off. There was an e-mail from my dad asking if I wanted to babysit on Saturday. Right as I sent the reply saying I would, the phone rang. It was dad, calling to ask about the e-mail he had sent and asking if I had been to the business office, like I should have done. I also wrote back to Kaarina, which I desperately needed to do. Then I figured I'd take a little time to read my new book, so I did. It was good. At ten I finally went back to the library and studied a bit more, but gave up at 11:30 and went back to my room. De-stressed and will soon go to bed.

After a bit of sun-warmed stats, I went to lunch with Naomi and Meredith and Birch, but ended up sitting with Mollie and Ann (surprise, surprise). After lunch I went off to the Youngchild/Science Hall atrium and sat there studying until I decided I had time for a nap (about an hour for a nap, in fact). So I dozed for a bit, which seemed to help more than going over my notes again. At ten after I went downstairs to our classroom, dozed a bit more, studied a little more and then the prof arrived. Test wasn't so bad. I had to go back and think a bit about a few problems, and there was one weird probability problem that took me forEVER (I actually wrote out the bloody probability of getting 5 heads when a coin is flipped 5 times), but mostly I think I did well.

After the test I went back to Plantz, where Katie had my book for me (yay! books) and an anklet, which a friend was using for a project. So she came and took a picture of me wearing it, and then I sat in the lobby and read for a really long time.

Had dinner with Mollie and Ann, and we were joined by Ann's friend Andrew. We ended up staying until 7:45 because Andrew wanted me to explain optimization to him. Afterwards I went back and asked a couple people if they wanted to go to the coffeeshop and hear some poetry readings, but no one did. Mollie was feeling lousy so she went to bed and I ended up studying math in my room for a while. Ah, well. I also read a lot. Tee hee...

Got my first paycheck ever today, and went to a Latin study session and had a talk with my advisor which went fairly well and went to my math prof's office during office hours and asked her what I needed to ask her. Had dinner with Ann and Mollie, surprise surprise. Did a little light studying for math, and heard bedtime stories from the president of the university. He did read some Dr. Suess, but he wasn't that good at it. Didn't show any pictures, didn't have that great of a reading voice.

We got to the basement and followed the music (and the smell of latkes frying) to the room where everyone was- there were 30 or so people sitting at six or so tables, and a band was playing on one side of the room. It looked like some people were eating, some just talking and a few playing the dreidl game. Since one of the two people I knew there were playing the game, and it was something to do, Naomi and I went over there and joined them. The two people with the most chocolate coins were nice enough to give us each four, and we sat there playing for about half an hour. Once, someone brought a plate of latkes over and Naomi and I split one- not as good as Christina makes, but not bad at all. After a while the game got boring and some people left, and Naomi and I just sat there for a while listening to the band and spinning dreidls like tops and talking. We left at roughly four and came back to Plantz.

When I got back to my room I found Katja had gotten up and left (good thing, since it was already 4). I sat down and started downloading music, typing this up and looking at how to get tickets for LOTR at midnight on the 19th. At 7 I'm going down to the lounge for pizza and a movie with my floor (pizza dinner, yay!) and after that I think I'll stop in at the LCF/Swing Dancers Christmas dance/party. Funness today.

25:25 So. Went to have pizza- Pizza Hut, not my favorite. But it was pretty good. And we watched Forrest Gump, which I had seen many times before but is a good movie, so I didn't really mind. After the movie Mollie and I went to the Swing Dancing Club/LCF Christmas Dance. There were a lot of people that were really dressed up, and almost all of them were dancing. Fortunately after the song the band left, Ann arrived and they began the annual "Bing Sing"- where people try to do their best (or worst, or funniest or whatever) rendition of "White Christmas". The boy who is a voice major (bass) and sang it like the bass section would during a choir concert (long stretched out words, ending in singing all the rest of the words in a declinging run really quickly at the end) won, because his rendition was both well sung and amusing.

After the singing contest, they read the Christmas story from the Bible and another thing about Jesus (it was co-sponsored by LCF, after all) and then we sang carols. After that they turned the canned music on and some people went back to dancing, but Mollie, Ann and I left.

When I got back I had two lovely, uninterrupted hours of downloading Barenaked Ladies MP3s and IMing Stefan and my sister about tix to LOTR (only 10 more days!!!). Then Katja came in.

Really don't get my roommate. Don't really try, either. But I'm not the only one, it seems. Apparently she walked into Liz's room tonight (after 12) and demanded that they practice Christmas Carols for the German Christmas party tomorrow. Liz was (understandably) upset at Katja's demands, but she apparently didn't think what she was doing was unreasonable. Just another indication that she's used to getting what she wants back home, i.e., she's a spoiled brat.

Still have to find a hot Indian guy for Prachi... though she hasn't come through for me on that cute asian yet, either, so I don't feel that bad.

25:56 So my computer had to be totally redone yesterday, which means that I spent quite some time redownloading stuff. But it gave me an excuse to change the wallpaper from the Fredart I had to a LOTR desktop! It's sooo cool! And I might get a screensaver, though those are a bit overrated, I think. Also started downloading MP3's again, stole a few from Jenny and am waiting on like 50 Sailor Moon ones. Tee hee. I think that was partly influenced by the fact that Manda was on while I was downloading.

Hmmm, what else did I do today? Went to classes (36/40 on a math midterm, 29/30 on Latin quiz), a Christian Science meeting which was alright, I suppose, and dinner with Ann and Mollie, and I tutored Lisa... Maybe I'll linearize this later. Doubt it, though.

Got up at 11 to go to lunch with Mollie. Stopped off at the admissions office first so a) she could drop off her employment card and b) I could fill out my time sheet from a month and a half ago. Then we went to lunch, after which I went to lab.

In lab Professor Jordan showed us how to do T-values (and Z-values, really), which took half an hour to do everything she had planned for us, so I got to go early. When I got back to my room Erin was all of ten feet behind me, so I spent a few minutes complaining to her about how I disliked the room and how miserable it was to live with Katja. She came in as I was telling her I had no space, and asked me what the problem was. I told her it wasn't working, and she got all bitchy and said the other way didn't work for her, and I said that we had a problem then, didn't we? I told her that I had nowhere to sit aside from at my computer and no space and she said that was my own fault for wanting the top bunk and she didn't have that much space either (you should see how much floor space this girl takes up). She also said that she felt I was being unfriendly and that whenever she tried to talk to me I wouldn't respond. I told her that I had tried to be friendly in the first few weeks but she hadn't responded, called Mollie and left. What I didn't tell her, though what I meant, was that because she had been so cold and unfriendly, I had decided by a month in that she was just a mean person and made up my mind that I disliked her.

24:52 When I got to Mollie's room I slouched down on her couch and told her the whole sordid tale, after giving her the weather report- 61 degrees and sunny. That's insane for December in Minnesota. (After I told her this, Mollie checked- it was 45 there which sounds much more reasonable.) I guess it's just because we're in eastern Wisconsin now, plus Lake Michegan or Superior or both are affecting the climates more or something. All I know is that it's only snowed here twice, and once was that drizzly kind of sleet-like snow that doesn't really count.

After I had told her what was wrong, and asked what she thought I should do (she had no real suggestions) and was almost in tears, then got better, I borrowed Noton Antivirus from her and went to go install it on my computer. Four hours and a few big mistakes later, I knock on Cole's door and ask if he has a copy of Windows 98 that I can reinstall on my computer. Oops. He told me he could get one after dinner and would even install it for me, which was terribly nice of him.

Since I had some time to kill I went to Mollie's room and hung out for a while (she and Barb were both out, but one of them knew I was going to be in there) and read Chuang Tze and occasionally listened to some of Mollie's MP3s. I miss my Newsboys CD. Chaung Tze... sometimes he makes soooo much sense, and sometimes I just have to put the book down and go "huh?" Sigh. Taoism sounds kind of like a good idea, though, and with Professor Vorenkamp being the East Asian Religious Studies teacher, I'm thinking a few courses in that department would not be a bad idea at all. I think I wouldn't mind exploring a few of the asian religions, or at least brushing the surface of them at the very least.

At around 5:30 Ann called looking for Mollie, wanting to know if she wanted to come to dinner, and was planning on asking me too, so she got us both in one phone call. Sort of... I told her Mollie wasn't there and might not be going to dinner even, but said I would be happy to meet her in five minutes. I restored Mollie's room to rights and went off to Downer, which was doing a pre-Christmas dinner with egg nog and punch (good punch, very cinamonny) and carved ham and gingerbread men and cheesecake and candy canes and pumpkin pie and rolls and... Ann brought the girl across the hall from her, Bridgette, with, and we sat upstairs and admired the seasonally colored napkins and tablecloths. Dinner was nothing extra-special, but it was good ham and everything else wasn't bad by a long shot. Of course, I did't have any of the vegetables, steamed or in pies or whatever. Still, it was fun, especially when I ate the legs off of my gingerbread man and acted out the scene from Shrek. 'Twas fun. And the cookies were so good I wrapped two in a napkin and took them home with me.

Oh.... between dinner and going back I helped Ann a bit with her calc. When I got back Katja was in the room and I was still upset at her so I dropped my jacket off and left for Mollie's room again. I stayed there till Mollie came back, when I relinqueshed the computer to her. That was around 8:30. Oh, and around 7 Cole told me he had the discs and would come and install it for me, which he did. I went off to Baskin Robbins with the other girls on my floor (had a scoop of cookies and cream in a waffle cone). When I came back he had it almost finished, and when he did finish I thanked him and sat down to reload a few things. I also managed to enter in the mutual fund codes on My MSN so I can track their progress, though I don't know how often I'll check that. But at least it's there. I also borrowed Mollie's Chuang Tze and read that occasionally. When Katja came in at 12:30 and asked me to leave I came down here and wrote most of this, and at some point I think I'll go off to bed.

At 6 I left the room to go to dinner with Ann. It wasn't very good and I was feeling kind of lousy afterwards, that is to say, moreso than I did before although in a different way. My ear was hurting less, but my stomach didn't feel so good and I was still sniffling. Colds suck. Went back to my room and lay down, studied Latin a bit and took a shower. Bedtime soon.

Got up at 7 bloody thirty, got dressed and went downstairs to Cole's room so he could drive us both to some high school in Appleton for a debate tourament. I judged one kinda sucky round and two fair ones. Then we waited through awards and had to see if either Cole or I were judging quarters. He wasn't but I was, which meant we both had to stay an extra two hours. Sigh. But at least I had something to do, I suppose. OMFG, but the 2A was fast.

We left at about 6 and got back at about 6. I went up to my room and turned on my computer (ah, my computer). Katie was on IM, and I talked to her for a bit, but really I wanted to either go to the coffeehouse, take a nap or take a shower, all of which would make me feel less sleepy. I ended up apologizing to Kate and saying I needed a nap, since neither a shower nor caffeine would really make me feel less sleepy, they'd just make me more able to pay attention, which wasn't really an issue anyway. So I took a nap and set my alarm for 9.

I woke up at 10:30 and got on the computer, but Katie was off by then. So I amused myself in various ways until now, when Katja came in wanting to sleep and asked me to leave or go to bed.

28:19 Just got done going over all my pages, making sure the links still work and checking backgrounds/color schemes making sure everything is visible. All okay now, at least. (I was doing other stuff before, screwing around and such, checking code didn't take the full two hours.)

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