Listen to the "mustn'ts", child. Listen to the "don'ts." Listen to the "shouldnt's," the "impossibles," the "won'ts." Listen to the "never haves", then listen close to me. Anything can happen child, anything can be.-Shel Silverstein

Boston, friends, "friends," and a really weird book.

I bit the bullet and bought some bus tickets up to Boston for this coming weekend. It's Jen's birthday (along with Maddy's) and they're having a big snazzy going out party. I'm getting excited now after Jen msged me with a "ARE YOU SERIOUSLY COMING UP TO BOSTON?!?!" which is an abnormally large amount of emotion for her to put into an instant message. I went to Express yesterday to get myself amped up after so many months of lassitude.
Example: last Saturday, we were supposed to go bowling with "10-12" people and all but 2 others ditched. We ended up trying out Dave & Buster's, only to find that it's not as cool as the commercials imply (bunches of older, attractive-enough-but-not-to-the-point-of-intimidation guys fist-bumping and waving pitchers of beer) but rather it's stuffed to the brim with little children screaming and running around trailing buckets of tickets. Also, it's like 95% video games, with only one air hockey table, three basketball hoops and four skee-ball ramps, all of which were surrounded by a 4 body-thick layer of people waiting their turn. Not fun.
The high point of the night was some little kid whose face was absolutely covered in cake asking us where the bathroom was. Couldn't help him.
So, I hope that serves to underscore my growing irritation with friends who ditch and don't want to do anything. Thank God I'm returning to the promised land with reliable friends, if at least for one night.

Ink Exchange, by Melissa Marr
I get the feeling like I'm totally missing something here. Like this is not the first one in a series, even though it is. Nothing is explained and I'm struggling to keep up here. She's going too fast anyway, and missing some parts that have very good descriptive potential.
Troubled teen Leslie gets a tattoo which somehow links her to Irial (how?), Faerie King of the Dark Court (what's the Dark Court?). Her friend Aislinn was already changed from mortal to Summer Queen of the Summer Court (why did they pick her? how did she change?) and has a mortal boyfriend Seth but also hangs with Keenan, King of the Summer Court (why is Seth okay with it?). Leslie likes Niall, who used to belong to the Dark Court but changed to the Summer Court (why?). She is now a gateway for Irial and his court to "feed" off the emotions of mortals (why only the Dark Court? is that only what they subsist on? how can Irial feed his court through Leslie?). She'll die soon because.... why?? Wtf! EXPLANATIONS PLEASE. I won't be reading the second one to this... too annoying.

Cassandra Clare

I'm reading Cassandra Clare's "The Mortal Instruments" series right now, and I've got to say, I haven't felt this excited about reading a series since Twilight. It's a bit different, but it has the same tension and angst that made the other so good. Love triangles, surprising twists, lots of "oooh's" and "oh no's!" One thing that's different is that I slogged through Twilight, re-reading and savoring everything, whereas with this I'm speeding through it because I can't stand not knowing what'll happen next. That makes it go quite a lot faster, which I'm not too happy about, especially since she's still writing the series and I know I'll have to wait for it... agh! I hate that!

Costa Rica Countdown

Today is Wednesday, February 17. The flight is on Saturday, February 27 at 5:30am.
I am and always have been the person who doesn't count the current day or the day of. Therefore, there are 9 days left before Costa Rica!

Random Spanish phrase of the day:
¿Desea algo más?
Would you like anything else?

Right now it's 93 degrees and partly cloudy at our hotel. I know it's going to seem deathly hot when we're actually there, but right now it sounds awesome for the beach. We're also going to do a ton of stuff at different altitudes, so it won't be THAT hot all the time.
Ex. ci. ted.

Somewhat embarrassing dream.

I'm used to having dreams whose key players are people I've known since childhood but haven't spoken to in years. There have been many weird ones along the way... but last night's was just... laughable and kind of embarrassing.

There were only a few boys I've liked in my years in the Ridge, mostly due to horrifically tragic populations in our grade. Most of them I'd known since elementary. One kid in particular was always pretty cute, but he was so above me status-wise that the only time I ever was around him was at soccer camp (wooo! that place was good for something, I'll tell ya). For the people who know Ridge kids, this is Steve Fenty. Let me spell it out: one day at lunch he completely out of the blue came over to ask me something about history homework. After he left, Andrea did a perfect imitation of a jaw-drop, eye-bugged mask that said, "How the ^&@% do you know HIM?!"

Whatever. You get it.

So in my dream, it's after the reunion, which in real life I didn't go to but in my dream I did, and I get this letter from him that basically professes his undying love to me and how it tore him up that he had to hide it, etc. etc. Then there's this whole thing where all the North Side of town kids are up at Ridgebury on the hill (BEFORE they mauled it with that parking lot!) doing God knows what because the only things you can really do on it are sled (but no snow) or roll down it, which we weren't doing. Anyway. He does his smile at me and it's all gooshy and grade-school and it's exactly how I remember him. I wake up and feel depressed that it didn't actually happen.

That's the lame part.

All the other ones were silly or stupid or unbelievable, but this one was nice. Damnation.

Dun dun dun...

School, food, work. Wah!

I can never tell if I like the craziness that school demands or hate it. I like the variety, the different people, the SOMETHING I have to attend or finish or otherwise engage in. I hate the weekend work that steals funtime away, and the fact that by the time I get home, exercise a bit, eat dinner and relax for a few minutes it's already 8 and I don't want to start on anything that's going to take hours and hours.
Working on my presentation has been at least a little more fun, since PowerPoint is better than writing a paper or answering problems. Pictures and graphs, yay! It's taking forever though, and I only have tonight to rehearse. Gack. I also got up at 6 this morning to get a bit done, and it's the first time I've been up before the sun in quite a while. Ah, change in routine. Probably good.

It's restaurant week here in the city and, knowing that no one else would have the initiative to set up a reservation, Jessie and Rob informed us of our dinner at Smith & Wollensky. Very smart of them. It also was at 8:30 so everyone could make it.
We got about $120/person worth of food for $50/person. Definitely worth it. Wouldn't go if there wasn't a huge discount like that. It was all snazzy, with the waiter darting in to pour your wine when you set the empty glass on the table. Filet mignon, delicious - although next time I'll listen to Rob and get something interesting. He got corned beef and it was SO good!

I also just changed the media in our dishes and saw something moving in there. A little cyst with some beating cells... so. rad.

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.

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+

MOST STRESSFUL DAY EVER.

And it's not even 12:00pm.

I'm doing a trip reimbursement form.

1) Found out I'm not reimbursed for food: -$50.00
2) Found out the f-ing hotel charged me for a night that I didn't stay. -$207.00
3) Found out the lady who does billing at the hotel doesn't get in until 3:00pm. F*** YOU, ATLANTA PEOPLE WHO GET INTO WORK AT 3:00PM
4) Had to get employee ID #, went to find it on pay stubs. Found out that the last three paychecks I've received are about $750 short. The tax witholding jumped about 8 million percent for no reason. -$2,100.

Oh my god my head is going to explode. I'm somehow out of about $3,000 and I have to more or less depend on other people to secure it for me. I'm taking a break for some tea before I kill someone.