Wednesday, January 27, 2010

Classes, books..

My classes are as thus follows:
BioChem II - Big lecture. Professor records it and puts it in iTunes University, so he threatened us to listen and not take notes. He's got an insane New York accent and makes jokes about how we're all "anaerobic" (aka fat) and got extremely upset that nobody knew the molarity of water (56.5M). The recitation consists of a trying-to-be-funny-but-isn't girl who's about 1 year older than me try to load up TED videos while her Macbook eats itself and then just emails us the link. We're expected to finish about 20 paragraph-answer questions each week to go over. The exams are just handpicked essay questions that he's already given us.
Verdict: Cake-walk.

Endocrine Physiology - Tiny tiny class. About 8 people. Professor is a million years old and tells us stories about experimenting on living dogs' hearts and gives us papers from the '50s to read that have his name on the byline. He's in love with endocrinology... probably not good for us, because he's going to ask impossible questions that someone without a 60-year career in medicine wouldn't know. The grading is like this: you get assigned a topic, you present on it the next week and you hand a paper in on it the week after. Then you get a break week, and it starts over again. When assigning topics, he just grumbled things like "Acromegaly," and "Hepatic portal" at us. I had a nightmare last night that I gave my presentation and he growled, "Just so you know, you got zero points."
Verdict: Worried.

In other news:
I gave my cousin Jillian (12) the Alanna books and The Circle of Magic books. I found out last night that she loved loved loved Alanna and couldn't get past the first 20 pages of the Circle books - exactly how I felt. I'm giving her Kel and Daine the next time I see her, yay! Direct quote: "Tortall kicks some butt!"

Jack - she said she was really upset that Alanna broke up with John. She didn't want to read the end. Lol.

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

3 months later...

Yeah, that day really did suck. I couldn't sleep for a good week afterwards, which of course fueled my insomnia with stress. But I did well on the midterm, did well in my classes, had a good Christmas - even though I didn't have time to see ANYONE at home, sigh - and even went skiing! Gasp!

I just signed up for a racquetball class Tuesday nights and I'm kind of excited. Yay Dad for getting me the stuff for Xmas! Yay for new things! Never done it before, but apparently it's really fun and a workout. All I ever knew was organized groups sports and now I really miss it. Going to the gym by yourself just isn't the same and my knees are killing me so soccer is out *sniffle*.

My birthday is coming up in a few months and along with it the impending potential renewal of my cell phone contract. I'm still on my family plan, which is pretty awesome because I don't pay anything, but I should probably be an adult and get my own. Apparently you can have plans with non-family members? Adam has a 20% off discount from MS so that would be super helpful. I went to check out the new smartphones, not expecting too much, but they were really pretty and.. better than mine. I'm not sure how much I'd use the data, like web and email etc., but it'll be a lot better than my phone now, whose touch screen is stuttery and doesn't have a qwerty keyboard. Dad'll probably like me getting off the plan, too.

Also, on a sad note: my beloved water boiler, that I've had for 6 years, is finally dead. RIP Braun 200W. I've looked for other ones and they are so expensive!! What the hell! They're at least $80, and going up to like $150, which is totally ridiculous. It boils water, for chrissakes. Although I guess since I really need one, they can jack up the price and make me pay more. Grumble. Maybe I'll switch over to my cappucino maker and just have it boil the water. Hmm...

I'm 35% of the way through "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" and it is extremely boring. I don't know why everyone raves about it. It might get good later, but in my opinion, if you have wait for over 100 pages to get to the good part, it's not worth it at all. It's a mystery, too, which is not my cup of tea. Just placating Autumn. It's a C- right now. We'll see if it improves.

The Mistborn series by Brandon Sanderson had its moments. He used "..." WAY too much to show pauses in dialogue, and he asked way too many rhetorical questions. Why was she doing this? What could she do to help the world? What if what she was doing wasn't helping the world? What if she was hurting the world? What could she do about that? ARGH! Get on with it! Also, the action scenes were just confusing.
But on the other hand, inventive concepts and pretty good villains and surprise! endings. I'll give it a B.

I've also read the first book in the Dresden Files series by Jim Butcher. More modern, more mystery, but the writing was concise and funny and there weren't a billion characters to try and follow. Good! B+