It's Been A While...

Mmm yes. Break. I had my doubts at me actually surviving the end of the semester to actually reach this point in time. Break consists of:
Food
Reading
Family
Adam

and that's juuuuust about it. Yay!

What is with these nightmares?

Dream.

I was in a big group of people rounded up... it essentially was like the Nazis/Jews, except I don't know what reason they were giving. It's kind of blurry until we were all in this big auditorium (with seats for the audience and a stage, etc). They were putting names and the person's status up on a projector, and I saw my name with "D/co" next to it. Apparently that means I was going to be suffocated in a coffin. We left the auditorium in a bus after all the people who were going to be executed in that place were, and we drove to the "coffin suffocating" place. I was looking for a way to escape, naturally, and when the driver pulled too far over to the right next to a steep embankment that led down to a swamp, I yelled "Everyone lean to the right! To the right!" and everyone jumped over to the right-hand side of the bus. The driver lost control, and we all fell inside the bus down about 40ft to the swamp. Crawling out a window, I could see everyone running into the swamp/woods, as did I. At the other end of it, I found this city (seemed Mexican??) and waited to meet up with other people. I met up with one person, and we wandered around because we didn't know where we were. Some officers who were looking for the escapees found us but we killed them and took their suitcase full of money with plans to get passports and run away somewhere. I called my dad (because apparently my cell phone was still in my pocket) and then my alarm woke me up.

One Fine Day in the Middle of the Night -Christopher Brookmyre

One fine day in the middle of the night
Two dead boys got up to fight.
Back to back they faced each other
Drew their swords and shot each other.

One was blind and the other couldn't see
So they chose a dummy for a referee.
A blind man went to see fair play
A dumb man went to shout "hurray!"

A paralyzed donkey passing by
Kicked the blind man in the eye.
Knocked him through a nine-inch wall
Into a dry ditch and drowned them all.

A deaf policeman heard the noise
And came to arrest the two dead boys.
If you don't believe this story's true
Ask the blind man, he saw it, too!

Nightmares

I've been having nightmares the past two nights about people eating me. The first one was Anthony Hopkins as that freaky guy from Silence of the Lambs. Last night's was about this monster/creepy thing in person form, and it needed to eat someone every week or so or else it would go insane and kill everyone... so it was it's feeding time and it was creeping around looking for someone to catch. I hid in this one place but it found me and it started eating the toes of my left foot. I could feel it biting and when I looked at them, the toes were half gone and bleeding really bad.
So. Scary.

Toes

To dream that you lose or gain a toe(s), suggests that you lack determination and energy needed to move forward in some situation.

To dream that you hurt your toe or that there is a corn or abrasion on it, signifies that you are feeling anxiety about moving forward with something.

Graduate School

So I'm just doing this to get my own thoughts in order, no need to actually read if you don't want to!

My List:

University of Maryland $13,815
Program: Cell Biology & Molecular Genetics with a Specialization in Plant Biology

New York University $27,336
Program: Plant Biology

Smith $33,940 (eek!)
Program: Biological Sciences

University of Rhode Island $19,044
Program: Biological Sciences/Molecular, Cell and Developmental Biology

University of Connecticut $5,026 (!!)
Program: Plant Science

Pennsylvania State University $13,948
Program: Plant Biology

And "plant biology" is not horticulture or botany or environmental science... it's plant biotechnology and genetics, as in engineering new species and such.

The Shitshow

Soooo... Friday night was fun. We got all dressed up and went to a Halloween party!
And then one of the girls got upset for absolutely zero reason and went to go cry in the foyer. I went out to see if she was okay and ended up spending the entire time sitting with her. And to make it better, everyone who was coming by who knew her kept giving her nasty looks... why? Because she's been doing this for about 5 months. Every party. Ruining it. I've only been to one or two, thank god, because I really do not want to do that again. Her roommate was super pissed, because she is trying to get over her lameass boyfriend and wants to have a good time and has been taking care of her for those entire 5 months. All this started when the crying girl's long time boyfriend broke up with her really badly, but COME ON WOMAN. It obviously is not about that anymore, or else you would be able to control yourself!! At least sometimes! Straight up... it's pathetic.
So, she wants to leave so I go with her because we are really far away, I was getting kind of tired anyway and of course my mood of partying is completely ruined.
We walk the wrong way for about 10 minutes.
Turn around, follow some other people to the T.
Realize we are going the wrong way on the T for about 3 stops.
Get out, get a cab, drive home... at which time I realize I do not have my wallet. The girl gets into a fight with the cabbie because she's drunk and he won't drive me another 3 blocks to my house without restarting the meter. I push her out of the cab so he doesn't go apeshit. We go into her place, I call the people back at the party to ask them to look for my wallet for me. I'm starting to freak out.
Feel sick, use the toilet.
They call back, say they can't find it. Ok, so I probably dropped it on the T, that is most likely what happened, since it was super crowded and I mostly wasn't in my right mind.
I want to go home, so I make sure the girl is calmed down and wait for her roommate to get back so I can get in the car with friends and one of my suitemates to drive back. We get back, I have to convince the security guard that I do actually live there while feeling like shit. He lets me in, thank god, and I still have my keys so I can get into my room.
I get back, and reach for my phone to call Adam so I can tell him what happened and say goodnight.
My phone is not there.

What the fuck.

I call my phone with my suitemate's, some girl picks up and says she found it in the hallway outside of my friend's place. I tell her to bring it across the hall and thank you so much for finding it. She gives it to my friend, who promises to get it back to me the next morning.
I say goodnight to my suitemate and we both head to our rooms.
At this point I am beyond destroyed and cry myself to sleep, because not only have I lost my wallet and everything ($50 cash, BU I.D., driver's license, new metrocard, T pass with $20 on it, credit card...) in it, but now I cannot even call Adam like I promised him I would.
Wake up at 9:50 the next day, feel a little crappy but due to the late night toilet hug not too bad. My friend comes over to return my phone, I call and wake up Adam to let him know what happened. He is astounded. As am I.
I then am on hold with Bank of America for a grand total of 32 minutes before I snag a phone rep to cancel my card. No one has used it since I did last, thank god, so I'm hoping it is not stolen and just merely picked up and given to the T conductor.
The MBTA has a Lost and Found phone number to call, but oh great! it's only open Monday through Friday, so I can't do shit until tomorrow. And none of my friends found my wallet at the party, so I can only assume it was on the T. Full of strangers. And people ready to make off with my info and cash. Blugh.
So I talk to the crying friend at lunch and she tells me that it's because she's jealous of her roommate and how she's always the center of attention and I say she should tell her to try and smooth things over, because she's obviously angry and frustrated. She agrees to do so.
I see the roommate (the friend who gave me my phone back) for dinner and she vents about the crying girl, which I completely do not blame her for. It gets awkward when the crying girl IMs me right in the middle of it and calls the angry girl to find out that we are hanging out... and sounds pissed/annoyed because she wanted to talk to her but she's not there. So, great, now I'm in the middle of a showdown.

And I still don't have my wallet!!

German Teachers Are Crazy

Schwartz is talking about the whole mother/daughter/stepmother aspect in fairy tales and how usually there is tension between the aforementioned people. He then tells us how they read Snow White in past years and he was saying how mother-daughter tension plays an important role... but how he could not get any of the females in his class to admit that they had tension with their mother.

"I said that there is always mother-daughter tension and they all stared at me like I was from the moon. And I stared at all of them like they were from the moon. And I said..." [jumps on top of table and points fingers wildly like a crazed politician, screaming] "... YOU'RE REPRESSING IT! YOU'RE REPRESSING IT!" [gets down off table] "... of course, they didn't like that much either."

Heinrich von Ofterdingen ~Novalis

"Wenn euer Auge fest am Himmel haftet, so werdet ihr nie den Weg zu eurer Heimat verlieren."

If you firmly fix your eyes on the heavens, you will never lose your way home.

Next Semester

After this semester, I am done with my bio major. I still have three german classes to complete that one, though, so I do have some requirements I need to take - however, they are really small and my schedule looks SO empty.
This is what I'm going to do:
1. Directed Study/Undergraduate Research in Biology
2. Marx, Nietzsche, Freud
3. 19th Century German Culture
4. Undergraduate Research in German

# 1 and 4 do not have time slots, since they are based on the idea that I do the work whenever I want, as long as I get it done.
Therefore, my schedule looks like this:
Schedule
(blogger upload photos thing isn't working at the moment)

Anyway, as you can see, that's gives me HUGE chunks of time! I can only take one more class to overload before I have to start paying extra... so... here are the choices:
Abnormal Psych
American Sign Language
Archaelogy
Nothing at all

Those are the ones I'm interested in... or should I just stick with my four classes and awesome schedule?

Idea Catchers

Take a long drive going nowhere.
Dare yourself until you scare yourself.
Make your own face book of self-portraits.
Collect scraps, ephemera, odds and ends to brew a creative stew.
Mind-map a problem or a pipe dream.
Roam outside your range... explore quarks, reincartions, Louis IV, Louise Brown movies, Siberian nomads, Jungian archetypes.
Don't leave home without a blank page.
Turn off streaming video/tune in to stream-of-consciousness.
Make something with your hands to give your left brain a rest.
Go shopping when you're stuck.
Be a list maker... of memorable meals, what you've lost, all things blue, the best days of your life.
Ignore nay-sayers and they-sayers.
Free associate.
Hang out with outsiders.
Hit mute more often.
Be open to Enlightenment in the driveway, Astonishment at your desk, Inspiration at the supermarket.
Work til it hurts.

Personality

This, obviously, was started off by Meena's last post. I got interested!

Your type is ISTJ

Strenth of the preferences:
Introverted 33%
Sensing 12%
Thinking 50%
Judging 33%

You are:

• moderately expressed introvert
  
• slightly expressed sensing personality
  
• moderately expressed thinking personality
  
• moderately expressed judging personality

From here: http://www.humanmetrics.com/cgi-win/JTypes1.htm

*Shakes head smiling*

It really is strange how you just canNOT predict pretty much anything. In terms of me being apprehensive about pulling strangers into the apartment, the one I did is turning out to be a really great friend. Yay! Strangely enough, the one I knew when I was pulling them in almost never talks to me... oh well. Everyone is really busy with work so no problems.
Apparently whenever I do an imitation of someone, I hold my upper arms against my body and flail my forearms about, making me (and the person I'm imitating) look like a T Rex.
That is all.

Sargent Center

Sargent Center Field Trip Photos

So much fun... check it out.

Lol.

And of course, everything is resolved rather quickly. Dah!

What the crap

New laptop!!

So, Vista is... well... really, really, really pretty. I had to fix a few things and it took me a while to figure out how to move files so it wasn't a ludicrously complicated action, but I overshot the "Vista learning curve," I think. Totally worth it. Wonderous interface. Just make sure you disable the "User Account Control" so it doesn't beep at you and make you "allow" control panel to open. Tarded, I know.
The hardware itself is damn cool, too. The keyboard is insanely quiet, mouse responsive, image quality amazing. Right-clicking is somewhat of a challenge... it thinks that I'm regular clicking still sometimes, I'm sure I just have to get used to it.
I <3 Google Gadgets.
Installing Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2007 by virtually mounting the drive and messing around with different serial numbers proved a quick, but intense, battle. I triumphed in the end (of course).
Outlook presented me with a problem. How do I move the emails in my old Outlook to my new Outlook? I Googled away and poked through the settings and Help Desk... until I tried to take advantage of Window's relatively simple, user-friendly style (in relation to Mac OS X, e.g.) and just dragged them from my Inbox pane into a flash drive folder. Ou la! All the info transferred with it, so the times and attachments were all still there.
Number One Victory of the Day: VPN client works. I get wireless!!

Essentially, really glad I did this... now I can bring my laptop without breaking my spine, in addition to all the little pros that I've mentioned above and more.
Still keeping my old one around, though, at least until I install the drivers for the television tuner. Monday Night Football, here I come!

Classes

It's been about a week. The first night I had homework I was up til 2am. Not a good sign. Since on Tuesdays and Thursdays I only have two classes but they are both taught by the same professor, it is extremely confusing as to which handouts go where (something I have to be VERY careful about to not lose/misplace any). Do I rrrrrrrreallly have to buy the 3rd edition when I already have the 2nd??
Mammalian Ecology - graduate level, challenging, fun, good professor, field trip to new hampshire!!
German Cinema - friends with professor, get to watch movies, in english
Romanticism - friends with professor, semi-interesting material so far... (jedoch, auf deutsch)
German Civilization and Culture - totally insane professor (still cool), interesting material, got to listen to 25 minutes of bach last time (auf deutsch, wieder)
Directed Study - labbies as crazy as usual!! all my free time gone :(... publish articles?? :D

Move-in

Well, that went relatively painlessly. It was really fun to help Mark into his room, and we met someone across the hall already (who speaks German! ahhh!) and he says he's meeting more and more exponentially. Always a good thing yay.

None of the three mattress pads I brought fit the bed... granted, I thought I was only bringing one, so I did in fact grab the wrong bag. Doesn't make it any less annoying, though. So after walking all over campus I had to go back down to the Bed Bath & Beyond behind South and snag a mattress pad (and a foamy thing which feels soooo good!).

Don't forget!

I need to make a list of things not to forget to bring, since I can't pack them yet because they are still in use. I hate making lists in Notepad - although it's the easiest, it's... ugly. And Word takes up too much memory and is too complicated and the page is too big blah blah blah. Anyway.

• Water boiler
• Toaster
• Wastebasket
• Printer

I'm being depended on for the first two, so I have to remember to bring them.

Edit: Just found this article in The New York Times, "Lobes of Steel"

"In the late 1990s, one group of mice at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, near San Diego, blew away the others in the Morris maze. The difference between the smart mice and those that floundered? Exercise. The brainy mice had running wheels in their cages, and the others didn’t.

Scientists have suspected for decades that exercise, particularly regular aerobic exercise, can affect the brain. But they could only speculate as to how. Now an expanding body of research shows that exercise can improve the performance of the brain by boosting memory and cognitive processing speed. Exercise can, in fact, create a stronger, faster brain."

Read the full article

Well, that's good news! Let's hit the gym more often, shall we?

O mitwa...

I saw Lagaan in the library yesterday and just had to take it out. I have songs from it that I can sing along to but hadn't seen it until today. It was pretty good, although the main guy, Amir Khan (right?), needed a haircut bad. I really liked the whole suspense during the cricket game, which I learned a LOT about - going from knowledge 0 to at least a semi-understanding of how things worked.
And oh, was Mitwa that much better when I knew the context and saw all the people singing it... :)

List of Essentials

Things to bring back to school. I am really bad at only packing things I will need/actually use, so I am going to write everything down here and try to par it back a little bit.

Clothing:
2 pairs of jeans (they're the best ones, and the only ones I actually wear, so why bother bringing the others)
3 pairs of dress pants/khakis (will be needed for career fairs and interviews)
button-down shirts (see above, and add in lab presentations)
shirts that I will ACTUALLY wear (no more of this bs "but what if I want to wear it someday" crap)
shoes (blue sneakers, white sneakers, brown leather, a few heels, flip flops and that's it)

Electronics
laptop
speakers
external harddrive
wireless mouse
camera
phone & charger

Miscellaneous
desk lamp
clock radio
pens/pencils/highlighters (all just one pack of each)
textbooks I've already bought
desk chair

Basically, just trying to cut back on a bunch of things I always bring and just seem to never use. I can cut most out of my clothes and shoes, which weigh a lot, although there is a bunch of random junk I always bring, too. My strategy is to go through everything at least 3 times and keep cutting stuff out.

Reasons for this? Parents (Dad, really) always complain that I bring waaayyy too much stuff, and even though I definitely help with the moving in bit, there still is a lot for them (him) to lift and transport. Also, an even more important reason: this year's move-in comes complete with the transportation of little brother Mark, who is living in the same dorm that I was assigned to as a freshman. (Sooooo exciiiiiteeeddd!!!) We are renting a box truck (haha) that will fit all of our junk into one place.

Up to Boston on August 30th, hopefully get a bunch moved in that day, and finish up on the 31st. That's pretty damn early, considering classes start on the 4th of September... I remember not wanting to get there early because it's always so awkward when you don't know anyone - and it's in classes that you meet your friends, for the most part.

Summer's Gone

Well, not quite yet, but almost. Yesterday was the last day of scheduled work, still two more warranty jobs for next week but they will only take one day each, so it's no big deal. I just bought a laptop! Dell Vostro 1400... specs:
Intel Core 2 Duo T5470
14.1" WXGA w/ TrueLife
2GB Shared Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM
128MB NVIDIA GeForce 8400M GS
80G SATA Harddrive
Vista Business
6 Cell Battery
etc. etc.
All for a grand total of $791, which is pretty good considering the deal was "get $339 off purchase of Vostro 1400." So it would've been over a thousand dollars (eek), meaning I saved a bunch. Now I'm casually browsing new cameras, since mine, although working quite well, is still about 6 years old and as big as a brick. We'll see about that...

A little bit of support

My mom thinks it's a better idea to try and get a job and experience real life first before graduate school, which I can always do (and hopefully even have my company pay for). Although she did semi-threaten me about living with someone before being engaged.... hmm...

Kind of shocked...

I visited Adam in the city this weekend (he's working for Morgan Stanley, has an awesome apartment on the Lower East Side with his friends) and he was talking about his friend who lives in an apartment with his girlfriend - and said something to the effect of us doing that at some point, too. I was pretty shocked that that thought had even crossed his mind, since he's quite skittish at the mention of anything close to marriage (not that this is, but it's a big step towards it).

Starting to get pretty confused about what to do after school... graduate school right away seems like a waste of money, although I will probably end up doing it at some point. Get a job, have them pay for it if I need it? That seems like a more prudent decision, although it's a little frightening to jump right into a career. I guess that's what everyone says - graduate school is for those who are afraid to face real life (no offense Larissa, Steve, Monica, Aram... everyone else I have ever known... who are grad students... ahhh!)


History will be kind to me, for I intend to write it.
Sir Winston Churchill