Hmm.... Right.

So much for blogging every day...
I skipped out of collegiate life last Wednesday and went back to my hometown. It was fantastic. My friends and I dyed our hair purple, which was interesting... It was purple when we first did it, and the next day, but now, a week later, the color has evolved into something closer to cotton candy pink. I still like it, though.
After that we drove into creeper-ville, aka East St. Louis, to attend the Family Force 5 concert, which was AMAZING. I like mosh pits, even though I am far too small for them and creepers like to move me around. But it was Family Force 5, and their live show outscores Skillet's live show, which is saying something. Perhaps it's because they have their own company dancer... No, I'm pretty sure it's just because they are through and through amazing.

It's Easter!

I like Easter as a holiday. I like hunting for eggs and Peeps and other Easter activities. I also like going to church. Easter is fun!
But Easter is a largely social holiday. On any typical Easter day (at least in my family)we go church in a big gang. We always go to the sunrise service, which involves waking up way before the sun comes up, sleepily eating scrambled eggs and toast in a kitchen crowded with aunts and uncles and cousins, fighting for use of the bathroom, having some sort of crisis over what to wear to the super special Easter service, piling into several vehicles and arriving at church in a massive convoy, and then standing outside in the chilly pre-dawn weather for the sermon. It's good times.
After church the convoy moves back home and the Easter dinner preparations begin. The adult females crowd into the kitchen, the adult males pack into the living room for some kind of sports television, and the social outcasts from both of these adult groups take the children outside and conduct a massive Easter egg hunt in the backyard. Prizes are awarded, candy is eaten, and at least one child will cry over finding hardly any eggs.
After the children have been exercised enough to allow them back in the house (and after dinner is ready) everyone crowds around the massive dining room table and eats a fantastic dinner of ham, rolls, salads, asparagus, mashed potatoes and other delicacies. After dinner everyone collapses into various positions of fatigue and reminisces over slides of old photos projected onto a sheet hung on a wall in the living room.
You'll notice that throughout this description of a typical Easter in my family, I frequently used adjectives such as "packed," "massive" and "crowded," which were chosen for their ability to describe large groups of people.
This Easter, however, I was alone.
I did not go back home for Easter, and as such I spent it in a very different manner than that to which I am accustomed.
I woke up at approximately nine thirty and decided to sleep until ten. At ten I got out of bed, showered, and took a multivitamin for breakfast. I then sorted my laundry and started it through the long cycle of washing. I even decided to wash my sheets and bedding. After everything was in the washer I took my rug outside and shook the dirt out of it. It was hard to lift my desk up so that I could pull the rug out from under it. I swept my floor, but because I couldn't find the usual broom that is in our floor closet I had to use a small hand held sweep. It was awkward. I put my rug back in place. I transferred my laundry to the dryer, washed my dishes, and cleaned off my desk. I disinfected the doorknobs and cleaned our microfridge. I brought the laundry up from the basement, remade my bed, and put away my clothes. I ate lunch. I took a nap. I awoke from my nap groggy, confused, and hungry again.
As you can see, this Easter has not been particularly noteworthy for its feelings of community and family bliss. In fact, it's been a bit lonesome. I haven't even eaten any peeps.
I am, however, going home on Wednesday. I expect this to be very exciting and will report on its results soon, as in Thursday, when I get back.

Grammar Fail

Missed a day yesterday. Feel much shame.
Went to mall. Made purchases. Am happy.
Now eating Poptarts, which I suspect are the original manna.
Going to read East of Eden tonight. Very excited!
This is a short post.
Goodnight.

It technically is Thursday, so...

I've been organizing my music player for the past half an hour or so, and to my great surprise I discovered Gold- 80's British Hits on it. I did not put this music on my player. I do not recall owning this album. I almost deleted it, but then I opened the folder to see what constituted 80's British Gold. I really wouldn't have any way of knowing, seeing as I missed the 80's by a whole three months.
And funnily enough... I actually like most of the music on the album. I even was looking at buying a few of the songs online. How funny that I actually owned them without ever realizing...
And after a few minutes more reflection on this, I realized that my parents own this album, and that it somehow must have been transferred onto my player at some point. I even recall that we listened to the album on our recent family vacation, but I scorned it for my own personal player. How very foolish I was. The songs, sensing my initial scorn for them, must have entered my subconscious and forced me to search them out on YouTube. A very subtle revenge, I must admit.
In the morning, I am going to wake my roommates up with 80's British Gold. They are going to hate me. I am going to love it.

The Meow from Above

And now for the parachuting cat story.
In southeast Asia (I am inclined to say the Bangladesh area, but then again I confute Tibet and Nepal, so don't trust me on my geographical accuracy), malaria was highly prevalent and also widely considered to be a bad idea. So DDT (the wonder drug) was brought in and sprayed liberally EVERYWHERE. And malaria pretty much disappeared, which is good.
But everyone in this area has thatched roofs. In these thatched roofs are wasps that build their nests there and eat all of the other bugs that would otherwise be eating the thatch. The DDT killed all of the wasps and the other bugs went on munching until all of the thatch roofs started collapsing into the houses, carrying the bugs with them. The geckos that live in the houses (in order to keep the bugs out) were then treated to an enormous feast of DDT laced insects. The DDT slowed the geckos down enough so that the local cats were able to catch them, and the DDT in the geckos killed all of the cats. The abundance of dead cats lying about in the streets actually led to an outbreak of the PLAGUE. I'm really not kidding.
So the UN looks at this situation, scratches their collective head and says, "Huh. I really thought that DDT stuff was going to help. Now what do we do?" Their solution? Parachute in more cats.
I really like the UN.

Tibetan Latrines

This is the second post for today, because that first one was just me being really excited about sleeping and didn't really count.
Topic of the day: Normally I would put some sort of topic here, like Tibetan fertilizer or why parachuting cats into Bangladesh is a good idea.
Actually... those aren't bad topics.
Okay, item one: Tibetan fertilizer.
Tibetan's use a fairly basic latrine set up, much like I experienced at Girl Scout Camp: Dig hole in ground, place seat on top, and do your business into the hole. Tibetans design these outhouses so that they're built into the side of a hill with a stone and mortar enclosure making up the outer edge of the hole. They place a door into this wall because come spring, when they are tilling and planting their fields, they have access to an entire winter's worth of manure. This is what Americans sometimes fail to recognize as good economics because we're too busy going, "Ewww."
This is interesting/significant, though, because in this area of Tibet/Nepal the people were suffering from a lack of iodine in their diets, causing them such complaints as goiters and other iodine deficiency related illnesses. People in developed countries get their iodine from using iodized salt, which works because humans only need trace amounts of it in their diets. The solution in Tibet, though, was to go in once and give every resident of the various small towns a single shot of iodine. This solution is still working today (years later) because the excess iodine passed through their bodies and into the manure they use in their fields where it is absorbed by the crops they eat. Self sustaining system! Eventually the population will need to be re-iodized, but because humans need such trace amounts this won't be for many years.
I think I'll save the parachuting cats story for tomorrow.

Wow!

Did you know that if you actually sleep for eight hours... you wake up in the morning feeling good? I think I used to know this. It would explain why I used to go to bed at nine thirty. But wow! I went to bed at eleven thirty last night, and now I feel great. This is amazing. I want to try getting more sleep again tonight...
I know that this is a very obvious thing that I have discovered, but it nonetheless has improved my mood by about 109309238 times today.

For the Love of Music

Today I feel like discussing music, so here I go.
Music holds a lot of power over my mood. For example, I really do not like country music (or overplayed radio hits. These are really the only two genres that I can't stand to listen to.) The cleaning lady on my floor, however, really seems to enjoy listening to the country radio station VERY LOUDLY in the morning as she cleans the floor bathroom. This occurs at about eight thirty in the morning, which is not an ideal time to have country music blaring up and down the hallway, so needless to say if I wake up to country music, I'm automatically set to have a bad day.
But after having had said bad day, if I come back to my dorm and put on some music (I find the Beatles' Abbey Road to be particularly soothing), I'm almost instantly healed of my unhappy day. I like this effect. It is useful. For example, if I'm not feeling motivated about writing a paper, Family Force 5 will remind me that it can be exciting to write. (Actually, Family Force 5 just puts me in a go-getter mood, which is much better for writing papers than a Janis Joplin "please let me ignore this world" type of mood.) If I feel like giving the world the finger, I put on Cold War Kids. If I'm feeling spiritual I listen to George Harrison. Japanese pop, as a rule, makes me feel like giggling and wearing neon colors. I could go on, but there are a lot of artists/music genres and a lot of moods to catalog.
What I'm wondering- is everyone affected by music in this way? How differently do people feel about the same songs or artists? How universal is music?
I feel like these are old questions, but still. I'm curious.

Epic Fail

Well, I've already failed at BEDA. Sorry. I feel shame at this, but will continue to attempt frequent updates here... because perhaps then I can atone for this failure? We'll see.
So yesterday was officially the worst day of the semester, and possibly my entire college career as it exists at a length of 1.5 semesters. The story goes like this. (There is actually quite a bit of backstory to this that is necessary to explain why this was the worst day ever, so please bear with me.)
So spring break was last week, and as I have previously mentioned this was very fun. I had a great time. Over spring break I had quite a lot of work to do in the form of reading and writing papers, and I diligently hauled about 50 pounds worth of books out to Colorado with me so that I could diligently accomplish my works. However, all I really used the books for was endurance training as I hauled them up several flights of stairs to get them into our apartment for the week, and then back down again as we left.
This meant that at the beginning of this week I was faced with completing four papers by Friday. I was still confident. I had plenty of time. On Tuesday I woke up early and wrote the first one, which was a wise choice on my part because it was due at 11:00 later that morning. So no problem. The next paper wasn't due until Thursday afternoon, and the last two weren't due until Friday.
So I took a break. I watched some television, watched some movies. I painted a few pictures. And this brings us to Wednesday night, when I was starting to feel a bit twitchy. I did some mental math and realized that I needed to write 10 pages of writing within two days. "Okay," I said to myself. "You can do this. You don't have class tomorrow. You can just write all day." After which I promptly stayed up until two in the morning watching more television. Good thinking, right?
On Thursday, the epic day of writing, I did start out well enough. I finished one paper by noon, and another by 2:30. "Look at that!" I said. "I'm doing amazingly well! I only have one paper left! This will be easy!" What I did not tell myself was that the paper that I had left until the end was a 5-page paper tying Hegel's and Rousseau's philosophy on societies into the utopian societies presented by Swift and Voltaire. I'm really good at ignoring the elephant in the room.
And so, yet again, I took a break. I watched some television, watched some movies. I dithered around on the internet. I went to the library under the pretense of picking up research books and looked at DVDs instead. I chatted with friends online. This continued until 10:30 that night, at which point my current situation hit me in the face like a brick. I might have hyperventilated a bit.
"Okay," I said to myself. "Stay calm. Start writing." And I did. I wrote and read and wrote some more, and it went pretty well until two in the morning, at which point my brain said, "Nuhuh. I'm done," and put up its away message, which goes something like this, "I want to take you to the gay bar, gay bar, gay bar..." Not very helpful, so the plan at that point became getting up early in the morning and writing my introduction and conclusion before going to class. Cue worst day ever.
My alarm goes off at 7:30. I am angry. I punch it off. I go back to sleep. At 8:30, I wake up, freak out, and run to take a shower. There is water on the floor (so strange in a shower, right?) I slip. My ankle hurts very badly now. I am angry. I rush to finish my paper, and am only able to write my introduction before having to go to class to turn in another paper. "Okay," I say to myself. "I will finish the conclusion over my lunch hour. No problem." I go to pick up the completed paper from the printer... which is inexplicably not working. Great. I run to the honors house (I'm now running late for class) so that I can print my paper out and turn it in. But wait... I have no stapler. We can't turn papers in unless the sheets are attached to each other. Crap. But wait, I do have a paper clip! Crisis averted. (This is a lot more epic when it's all going down as I'm running to class on my badly hurting ankle, trust me.) Paper is turned in. All is well. I rush back to my room so that I can finish my last paper. As I am running up the stairs, my very angry ankle chooses this moment to go on strike and I plummet to the ground and slide down several stairs. I am angry. I finish my paper anyway. As I run to the printer (pleaseletitbeworkingnowpleaseletitbeworkingnow), my ankle inexplicably knows that I am once again unwisely running on the stairs and gives out. I plummet down the stairs again, this time with witnesses. I am angry. My ankle is angry. My stomach is angry because I haven't eaten anything today. It is a very angry day.
(The conclusion of this story involves me turning in my paper (properly stapled) and returning to my room to fall asleep, pajamas and all, only to forget that I have an engagement at 3:00, of which I am reminded when I receive a call asking me if I am at the Union. Commence further running.)

Blog Every Day in April

So...
As the title suggests, this is the (slightly early) beginning of Blog Every Day in April (or BEDA), where I shall attempt to write a blog post every day. Initiated by author Maureen Johnson (who happens to write hilarious and highly entertaining blog posts), BEDA is supposed to be an exercise in writing consisantly (sort of like NaNoWriMo). Her explanation of the event boils down to learning to write even when you don't have anything to say. I don't have issue witht this. I think I'm quite capable of coming up with something to say every day for thirty days. What I doubt about myself is my ability to REMEMBER to write them down here. But I'm going to try. Really really hard.
It is Monday, and I am back at school. I spent the last week in Summit County, Colorado, which is kind of like the Mecca of skiing in the Rockies. Summit County contains Copper Mountain, Keystone, Breckinridge, Arapahoe Basin (my personal favorite- where I learned to ski and, until recently, the purveyor of the highest lift service in the Rockies), Loveland and likely a large number of others that I am omitting through gross oversight. Sorry. I spent this ski trip at Copper Mountain, which is a very nice ski resort witht the best village I've stayed in and a very large range of trails and terrain. It snowed EVERY SINGLE DAY that my family and I were there for a total of 23 inches of snowfall. 23 inches! The skiing was fantastic, but in order to stand the weather conditions I had to be completely covered in protective snowgear. Only the tip of my nose was left free of covering in order to allow me to breathe, and sometimes this didn't suffice and I would have to pull my mask down from my face a gasp for air. This results in a lot of awkward looks from the other skiers, but it's okay. It's part of Colorado's charm.
Like I said, I am now back at school. In an attempt to get back into my fighting condition I went to the gym this afternoon, but I have yet to discern a noticeable change. (This is an attempt at humor, yes?) I suspect that I will be quite sore in the morning despite my extensive post-exercising stretching. My body is really not meant to run for forty minutes. It's sad that the solution to this is to simply go and do it again tomorrow. Curse you, you delicious scones. Curse you.

We're going to party, party...

Birthdays are fun.
Yesterday marked my 19th year upon this good earth, and I must admit that I'm enjoying being back among the land of the prime numbers. Everything feels better when you are divisible only by one and yourself.
The weather was beautiful yesterday, and I had a picnic lunch of sushi and apricots outside on campus. This was very enjoyable until I noticed that evening that I had gotten quite sunburned in the 45 -45!- minutes that I had spent outside. Curse you, my Scandinavian heritage. You have thwarted me once again.
I received lots of birthday wishes yesterday, for which I am grateful, and several new photos and songs of Spring Awakening fandom, which will cheer anyone up. On Friday one of my classmates, who also has a birthday this week, and I are going to celebrate in our discussion section. We haven't notified out TA about this yet, but oh well. It's almost spring break.

Spam!

I always enjoy checking the spam folder of my junk email account. I have two email accounts, one for serious business like school, and another one that I've had since the seventh grade and I use for filling out the email requirement on things like free online IQ tests (I know, I know- you can't really measure intelligence). Needless to say, it doesn't really surprise me when I get seventy or more spam messages a day. I think it's fun to look at the subject lines and see what spammers are trying to lure me in with these days. I am often propositioned to become a nurse or police officer, but I have to admit that I'm concerned about anyone who becomes a nurse or police officer because a spam email told them it would be easy.
Today, while looking at my spam folder (a meager 24 messages, but the day is young) I happened to look at the date the messages were sent. The oldest ones were very expectable- March 17, 2009. But the newest messages had actually been sent from dates like March 20 and March 21. That's right- I've been getting spam messages FROM THE FUTURE. I find this all very exciting. It's like they brought their game to a whole new level, and I've been invited to play along. It's just too bad that the mystery of the dates doesn't keep me from emptying the folder without opening a single message. Keep trying, spammers, keep trying...

Victory!

I got the internship!
I received the email today from the Writer's Workshop congratulating me on my acceptance in the Peer Consultant Program for the 09-10 year. I've been obsessively checking my email all weekend, even though we were only supposed to find out by the end of the week. When I saw that I had an email from the director of the program I was incredibly nervous, because I didn't want to find out if I'd been rejected. Luckily, though, I was in. Immediately after reading the email I acted like a total dork and called my mom. Yeah, I know, not exactly the coolest thing to do, but it was big news and I wanted to tell her. I wish that I could start the program now, but I have to wait until next semester. Sigh... I suppose I really shouldn't be anxious to start more work, but this internship is almost exactly what I want to do for the rest of my life, and I'm really excited to start.

Magical Scones

Scones are delicious.
I really just want to point this out and get it out of my system. One of the late night dining services on campus has absolutely amazing scones. They're so good that I have dreams about them. Seriously.
In other news, it's Friday, which is a good day of the week. It's a busy Friday, as I have a luncheon with the Dean of Honors and an interview for a position in the Writing Workshop, but I'm looking forward to both of these events, so it's okay. And then it will be Saturday, which is my designated day for working on my illustrated book detailing the history of abortion. It will be cheerful, yes? I need the illustrations for a presentation I'm doing for the Undergraduate Research Symposium, which is a really serious sounding name but apparently you're allowed to use drawings in your explanation, so it can't be that serious. However, it may turn out that when I get there I'm the only one who isn't taking this completely seriously and I will look like a fool. At least I'll be a fool with pictures, though.

The Phantom Administrator

This is probably going to be a very short post, because the dining hall just opened and I am very, very hungry.
Having said that, now, I'm probably going to prove myself wrong.
I downloaded Windows Media Player 11 yesterday, and now my music player is all shiny and new. I can now also get my computer to recognize my mp3 player and add new music to it. This is very important, because a friend of mine recently sent me the soundtrack to Spring Awakening, which is an amazing musical that won the Best Musical Tony this year. My friend and I are going to run away to Chicago this summer to see it.
Downloading the music player has been about the only thing that has gone well with my computer lately. A week or two ago it started up with the blue screen of death, which caused me great anguish and made me torment the other dorm residents with my wails of anguish. It recovered, though, and started, but from that point on a small bubble has been popping up on my screen saying, "Your computer is infected! It is recommended to start spyware cleaner tool." The first time I saw this I was genuinely alarmed until I clicked on the bubble and it took me a website in order to purchase anti-spyware software. I said no. "No to scamming trojans!" (That was me.)
But from that point on the bubble has refused to disappear, and it repeatedly makes this little, "I have appeared noise!" even though it's there all the time. And, from time to time, an Internet Explorer window will randomly open on my computer with about 1175023500 tabs that I must individually click closed before I can close the window. And sometimes my computer will tell me it is shutting down, and that the administrator has authorized this. Now, this sounds legitimate, but I happen to have it on good authority that I am the administrator for my computer, and I authorized no such action. This mysterious administrator has also made impossible to change my desktop, and he has disabled the task manager. Whenever I try to access it an angry little box says, "This function has been disabled by the administrator." No! It hasn't been! I am the administrator! It's not disabled! Help!
In good news, however, I have applied to a peer consultant program with the university's Writing Workshop. If I'm accepted I get to work for independent credit helping other students with thier papers. After I work there for a year I can even get paid for it!
That at least, is exciting. The haunted computer, not so much. But it does keep me on my toes.

Time Keeps on Slipping, Slipping, Slipping...

So... time goes really quickly. I'm continually surprised by the date. Why can't I seem to keep track of how much time is passing? In a way, this is good, because it means that I'm not bored or otherwise poorly entertained by my lifestyle. But at the same time... it feels as if I spend all of my time doing nothing. I know that this isn't actually true, but yet I can't help feeling that I'm wasting absolutely all of my time.
However, after speculating for some time (further time wasted?) I reach the conclusion that if time is passing quickly it's just an indication of being happy. If I don't need to dwell on what I'm doing or continually look forward to the future, then I'm happy and that's good.
So temporal disorientation is actually good. Who would have thought?

Hello, January... Wait, February.

February? Really? As in, well into my second semester of college and necessitating that I begin writing again? No, sir, you are surely jesting.
My temporal sense has become very disoriented. Today is the the third of February, a Tuesday, and yet I somehow managed to convince my self that it was both Monday (yesterday) and the fourth (tomorrow) at the same time. Wednesday is going to throw me for a loop. At times like these I feel very much like Arthur Dent. Just as he could never get the hang of Thursdays, Wednesdays will forever be my bane.
I've returned to college to find that it is much the same. I spend my time pursuing various intellectual interests. I still haven't become much of an athlete, but I do enjoy walking around campus. I've started to take purely recreational walks in the evenings.
My newly acquired turntable and I are getting along famously. Our bond is going to become the stuff of legends.
I've begun reading The Moral Property of Women: A History of Birth Control in America. It's fascinating, if dry.
My thoughts, at this point in the evening, have become less than focused. Methinks I should take myself off to bed, if not off to sleep.
Hello, second semester.