Alphabet time!

A-Z

A
Available: rarely
Age: 22
Annoyance: those who cannot read social signs
Animal: wolf

B
Beer: Schneiderweisse, Franziskaner, Reissdorf...
Birthday: April 12
Best Friend: Adam
Body Part on opposite sex: dark hair, must have
Best feeling in the world: falling asleep watching the summer sky in a leafy tree
Best weather: 75 and sunny, jeans, t-shirt and sandals
Been in Love: once
Been on stage?: oompa-loompa in 5th grade, clarinet and guitar in middle school
Believe in Magic: with what I read, I should, but no
Blind or deaf?: obviously not the former

C
Candy: skittles
Color: green, brown
Chocolate or Vanilla: vanilla
Chinese or Mexican Food: i can't decide
Cake or pie: pie... strawberry rhubarb
Continent to visit: Australia/New Zealand
Cheese: can't have enough (ate feta by itself for dinner last night)

D
Day or Night: day
Dancing in the rain: if it's warm enough

E
Eyes: hazel, apparently evil-looking
Everyone’s got: to do the best they can
Ever failed a class? yes!

F
First thoughts waking up: yay, what's for breakfast, which book should I read, what's the weather?
Food: sometimes a necessary annoyance, sometimes a delight
Full name: Christine Elizabeth Rice
Flaws: motivation for things I feel are trifling, not calling people back, temper

G
Greatest Fear: death - I like my life too much
Goals: be happy
Gum: makes me feel icky
Get along with your parents? great. they feed me. I entertain them.
Good Luck Charm: don't believe in luck - everything happens for a reason, not because you're lucky
Hair color: medium brown, reddish tint
Height: 5'8.25"
Happy: usually
Holiday: when?!

I
Ice Cream: vanilla bean, coffee heath bar crunch
Instrument: not musically inclined, but played viola, guitar and clarinet

J
Jewelry: watch for work, earrings sometimes
Job: launchpad

K
Kids: disliked them before, getting better at it
Kickboxing or karate: kickboxing (not that I've ever)
Keep a journal? had a diary in elementary... what do you think THIS is?

L
Letter: exchange with grammie and cousins; grammie's has $$, cousins have cute drawings
Laugh so hard you cried: four nights ago about some kind of animal noise I involuntarily made

M
Milk flavor: ugh, regular, plz
Movies: animated, old school B&W silent
Motion sickness? never until college
McD’s or BK: BK, food seems more substantial

N
Number: 3

O
One wish: make it count

P
Pepsi or Coke: die-hard pepsi until high school, coke now
Perfect Pizza: three-cheese. mm fontina feta
Piercing: 7 in ears... don't like em for guys

Q
Quail: eggs are next to the emu eggs in whole foods... who'da thunk?
Quiet?: unless with family/close friends

R
Reason to cry: books
Reality T.V.: I refuse to acknowledge its existence
Roll your tongue in a circle: can do
Ring size: looked it up, promptly forgot
Radio station: Top 40, rarely though

S
Song: Layne - Staind
Shoe Size: 9.5
Salad Dressing: balsamic or just lemon juice
Sushi: atlantic salmon with cucumber
Skinny dipped?: no, but would... lakes up north are too cold
Strawberries or blueberries?: strawberries for desserts, blueberries for freezing
Slept outside: too many times to count
Sing well: *snort

T
Tattoos? no, never - like them on guys, though
Thunderstorms: love them... thundersnow is even better
Time for bed: 11:15

U
Unpredictable: not at all

V
Vacation spot(s): Europe, outdoor things like camping, hiking

W
Weakness: socially awkward
Which one of your friends acts the most like you? Danielle
Worst feeling: guilt
Wanted to be a model?: no - career is probably over at 25
Worst Weather?: freezing cold but yet raining - how does this happen all the time?!
Where do we go when we die? don't know, but I hope we stay ourselves

X
X-Rays: have had them, discovered my broken toe
Ex’s: nonexistant

Y
Year it is now: cow or something?
Yellow: "The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman; short story, read it: http://womenshistory.about.com/library/etext/bl_gilman_yw.htm

Z
Zzzzz’s: only 7.5hrs, kthnx
Zoo animal: monkeys

Last
You fell asleep next to: Adam
You went to the mall with: Mark and Adam for xmas shopping
Went to dinner with: Jia, Steph, Debbie (yey!)
Talked to on the phone: Adam
Made you laugh: Adam
Hugged you: Adam
Said they loved you: Adam
Held your hand: Adam
Spoke with online: Jimmy

(ok, that's... overboard. even I'll admit it.)

Weird day.

I had class yesterday so I had to wake up about an hour earlier than I normally do. On the first Thursday of every month, we get this free breakfast at work - bagels, muffins, fresh fruit, OJ, coffee, egg wraps - that is quite good, even though no one knows who brings it (which is actually better for us, because there are laws against trying to sway organizations to buy products with bribes). So I had a good breakfast, a busy-enough day and studied a bit for my quiz. For lunch I had a sandwich that Adam had gotten me the night before, turkey and swiss and cranberry sauce (like Thanksgiving) and even though the cranberries had soaked through the bottom of the bread, it was really good.
I got a cinnamon dolce latte for class from Starbucks and felt totally fine... until the break in the middle. The girl sitting in front of me came back smelling like cigarette smoke and that just turned my stomach. I felt yucky throughout the rest, and although I didn't think of it at the time, it was a blessing that the professor finished a half hour early. I had to concentrate real hard getting back home, and the weird subway smells didn't help, either. The cold air did, thank goodness.
I got home, feeling really dizzy and lasted about 10 minutes until my roommate and his girlfriend left (to spare them the grossness) before seeing some of my lunch for the second time. I drank some water... which just made it easier to do it again. Adam called, I told him I was feeling sick, and he asked if I had anything other than the turkey... which made me have to hang up and run to the bathroom again. I finally forced some soup down and it stayed, but it was a struggle, since my friends came back and watched a Scrubs episode entirely about coffee (after having some and being sick, not a good association now) and flipping through the tv stations with an amazing knack for finding things that grossed me out; "Click" was on with Adam Sandler, and the only line we heard as we flipped by was, "...have tons of jello shots and puke our brains out!" along with some other reference to that in "The Office" or "30 Rock".
Not a fun night.
But Adam was sweet and brought me some ginger ale. :)

Daily quotes

So I have an iGoogle webpage and one of the gadgets is the daily quotes. I'm going to record the ones I like because I know I always like at least one but then I forget them. Here we go!

"Talent hits a target no one else can hit. Genius hits a target no one else can see." Arthur Schopenhauer

"There are three rules for writing the novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are." W. Somerset Maugham

This makes me smile... nostalgia.

Either way, I'm extremely proud of my brother.

http://www.purevolume.com/lowfiy

The songs just make me smile!! Maybe it's because I know it's him, and I've seen him bent over his guitar in front of his computer messing around with song clips for the vast majority of his adult life and it just reminds me of home.... or do they really make YOU smile?

Notable notes.

So, I guess you could say it's been an interesting last week.

I got hit by a bicycle. This woman was on the sidewalk (illegal, first of all) and she was coming straight at me, making eye contact. I was pressed as far over to my right (the correct side) as I could be, being that there was a building right there. The sidewalk was at least two blocks wide, and she could have easily fit. She continued to make eye contact and came right past me, smacking my arm with her handlebars. I should have kicked her wheel. Idiot.

Just had an impromtu discussion/vent/comradely conversation at work with labbie-on-the-other-side re: a certain confusing yet superior entity. She asked me if I could show her how to get the liquid nitrogen out of the tank, and I would love to. It's not hard, good to know, etc., but I told her that I probably couldn't/shouldn't/wouldn't due to the strange definition of work and somewhat hysterical tendencies that come from this certain entity when I help others out. She understood, laughed, and shared a bit. It's good to know we're on the same page - that being a state of bewildered consternation in opposition to above said entity.

I'm using a Christmas gift for the first time today! It's a vacuum-sealed food jar, meant to keep cold things cold and hot things hot for up to 24 hours. I made some pasta this morning, and it always sucks to reheat pasta because it gets all dry, so I'll check it out at lunch.

I've narrowed down some of my favorites in my rather large box of tea that I also got for Christmas. <3 the strawberry and lemon spice, the raspberry, orange, green and apple cinnamon are good, too. The english breakfast is normal, along with all the others (which still means acceptably good). I might waste some time and make a spreadsheet... ahhhh what my employment has done to me!

I do believe that since my last post, I've read at least through the entire series of The Protector of the Small, which is a quartet, and also "Ender's Game." The former I'd read before and really liked, while the latter was a new read for me! (Doesn't happen often.)
I really liked "Ender's Game", which brought me a little closer to the science fiction genre that I normally tend to steer a bit away from. There are spaceships, aliens, wars, laser guns and null gravity fight scenes, all of which are somewhat separated from my favorite genre of fantasy, with the good vs. evil, sword battles, archery, clever animals, and most importantly, magic. (Laugh it up now, har har har.) Anyway, I loved the beginning of "Ender", where Card forces you to figure out what the monitor is, why it was there and Ender's relationship with the members of his family and with himself. The middle was still good in a different way, with the whole part about Ender finding out that he is horribly clever and a natural tactician, but I started to dislike how bad he began feeling about his whole situation. I know that is the ENTIRE point, but still, didn't like it. Also, the fake-ending is a complete (and for anyone other than me, extremely obvious) anti-climax and I hit myself over the head because I didn't see it coming. It was not nice to see how deteriorated he was, and how he now was useless, his entire difficult puppeted life meant for some event that was now over, etc.
Which is why the real ending was fantastic. And I really don't think ANYONE would see THAT one coming.
Minor note: Didn't like how his No. 1 enemy wasn't ever punished; did like how he died in his late seventies when Ender is still in his twenties (figure that one out!).

I'm now reading the first book of a completely unknown (to me) series by Jonathan Stroud called the Bartimaeus Trilogy; the book is "The Amulet of Samarkand" and of course you can probably figure out the main components of this fantasy book. Non-surprising details: it's kind of Harry-Potter-ish, being that there are magicians and non-magicians, it's modern times in London and there's a lot of sneakiness going on under the noses of the non-magicians (read: Muggles?). Couple of twists: all magic is done by various demon individuals and not through any power of magicians at all (which leads to a LOT of nasty critters running around in the book), the little kid (Harry? No. Nathaniel.) is actually the bad guy now... or as far as I can tell. It's also written in the first person from the point of view of.... a demon! Ha! Turnaround there, huh. I guess Nathaniel isn't that bad, but he's only 11 and he's bent on revenge against another magician who humiliated him. Just cause, poor anger management. Have yet to discover if he's going to actually be a bad person or not.

After these ones, there's an already-read but still wonderfully exciting two-book miniseries in the same... um... "universe"? Literary geographical and time-setting? as the Protector of the Small quartet, which were oh-so-surprisingly delivered to me by mail from my wonderous former roommates. Can't wait!

Oh, holidays were good, saw Meena (yay! :D), relaxed with Adam, immediate and extended family, brother included, got a kickass new desk/bookshelf (and I'm going to need it, I think...), started working out more diligently and feel good (although my right bicep is KILLING me right now, I've had to shake it out about 10x since starting this post) and ate enough cookies for a small herd of ponies.
All in all, a good mishmash of excitement and relaxation to round out the days off from work.

Duprass, assassins, golf umbrellas and course evals

Here is a collection of all the random thoughts I've had this week.

I don't know why, but lately I've remembered/been thinking about that concept in Cat's Cradle by Vonnegut about the karass and duprass.

Karass: a group of people who, often unknowingly, are working together to do God's will. (-Wikipedia); If you find your life tangled up with somebody else's life for no very logical reasons that person may be a member of your karass. (-www.cs.uni.edu/~wallingf/personal/bokonon.html)

Duprass: a karass that consists of only two people; the two members of a duprass live lives that revolve around each other. Never die longer than a week apart.

In the book, there's a married couple on the plane to the island, Horlick and Claire Minton, who are such a strong duprass that they die in the same millisecond.

Sounds nice.

A friend's cool away message:

"Though Bond and Bourne dwell in the same cloak-and-dagger genre, they are diametrically opposed. Bond is self-assured; Bourne doubtful and troubled. Bond is a seductive womaniser; Bourne a monogamous novice. Bond takes pleasure in killing; Bourne feels only guilt and seeks redemption for his past. Bond serves a moral authority: Bourne a corrupt establishment. Because Bond’s license to kill is justified, his films avoid questioning means and ends. Because Bourne’s license is phoney, in his films ends vs means becomes the central moral issue. Bond is a modern version of the hero with a thousand faces. Yet in an era of debatable identities, distrust of governments, and dysfunctional agencies, the faceless Jason Bourne may be just the right stuff to represent the times." I don't know where it's from, but knowing both Bond and Bourne, interesting to read.

It's been rainy almost this entire week, and I have to vent about something. Golf umbrellas are meant to shield two people from rain, one of whom is supposed to be swinging a very long, heavy, metal, end-weighted club. The golf umbrella hypothetically has enough room for this crazed bludgeoner to swing the thing and for the second person, the umbrella holder, to be out of the rain and also not get hit in the face with the club.

With that in mind, does it sound like the kind of umbrella others would appreciate you using in the intensely crowded, very small little alleys of the Financial District? Where most of the sidewalks have tiny stalls of mini-bamboo, guys hawking illegal DVD rips and fake Gucci purses from plastic bags? Where you WILL hit someone in the face with the pointy end bit of one of the umbrella spines?

No?

THEN STOP USING THEM.

As a reference to my last post, they did give us some course evaluation forms, and oh did I rip the snot out of that "professor". It felt good.

Not funny.

Like, seriously. Come on. Get a life.

* Do not cheat, I have computer automated advanced robotic geosynchronous satellite guided fully self aware methods that can read your mind and your homework to verify that you are not cheating or copying. If you the method thinks your cheating it will automatically send cyber-modified part-cheetah ninjas raised in bad neighborhoods to your house to “take care of the problem”.

Sigh. I wish they had student feedback for professors...

Unavoidable.

So, not to badger this subject to death, but...

As I may have mentioned before, my lab is technically a single room with a narrowing in the middle that serves as the barrier between the two sides. Actually, it's two labs... I don't know and have nothing to do with the things that the other side is doing and vice versa. As a side note, I don't think anyone outside of the research lab knows this little fact, since everyone assumes I know exactly where the other girl is, what she's doing and how to reach her - an assumption that is actually the exact opposite. The girl who works over there is really nice and I would love to talk to her more, but since the boss can hear everything I'm doing, I can't really just go over and start up a conversation. She's rarely there, anyway. Since she's rarely there, their phone rings over and over (I KNOW I've mentioned this before... *smiles wryly*) and this morning was none the different. But alas, their phone rang a bunch of times and then my phone immediately rang. So I knew it was the receptionist from downstairs, who I love dearly and is very amusing. I pick it up, extremely hesitant, because I know she was trying to get in touch with the other people and will now ask me about them. She says that there's a box downstairs and is the other girl there? I say she's here today, but not in the room. She asks me if I could just tell her that there's a box downstairs when she comes back in. Now, I know my boss can hear what I'm saying, and as we've been through this, I am NOT ALLOWED to do ANYTHING for ANYONE else. "It's THEIR job, not yours." So... I grit my teeth and say no, that she'll have to keep calling the other side. There is a silence, and she goes, "ok" and hangs up. Sigh.

Later, at lunch, I sit with her and some other people and she immediately brings it up, saying, "I should tell you not to be so rude!" in a sort of joking voice, mostly for the mixed company, but we both know she wasn't joking. Since I was sans boss, I apologized and told her the jist of it. She understood my position, but still couldn't understand why - a feeling I am very familiar with. I guess she still felt a little put-out, because she kept mentioning how an embryologist even brought up the package to the other girl, and he was so helpful, and yadda yadda. I could only look down at my food.

I'm really stuck between a rock and a hard place in that situation. Damned if I do, damned if I don't. I guess in the long run the most important thing is doing what your boss tells you, but I hate being snobby/unhelpful/"rude"... there is just really no reason.

I should just tell everyone beforehand to please, please don't ask me to do anything, because I won't do it and not because I don't want to.

I can't believe I'm writing about this. Government majors, eat your heart out.

Usually I steer away from discussing politics and would really never find anything that I felt strongly enough to write about. This, however, is just maddening.
I love the New York Times for its interesting pieces and how it manages to keep me in touch with what's generally going on. Their "World" section is great. But this is the first time that I've seen something that's really angered me.
The article is called "Election Night Guide (Popcorn Included)" by Katharine Q. Seelye
This is the link to the online version, which is where I read it: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/04/us/politics/04guide.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

Obviously it's completely impossible for any media organization to be purely innocent in terms of non-bias. I acknowledge that Fox News is undoubtedly right-leaning, but while I admit that, I would ask that people also acknowledge that CNN, NBC, etc. etc. are as equally left-leaning. No need to argue which is more radical or which is more detrimental. That's just the way it is.

Now, I just started reading this article to see what to pay attention to, since election night does come around only once every four years and I'm a bit rusty. Some tips about which states to watch were appreciated, but I began to notice a trend. About halfway through, I was so shocked that I went back to the beginning and began reading through again, giving tally marks to a certain side when I saw a reference come up.

References to "Obama winning" or "McCain losing" appeared 10 times.
References to "Obama losing" or "McCain winning" appeared 1 time.

Of course these statements were all speculative, but that does not excuse blatant preference.
It begins with: "So many have predicted a lopsided victory for Senator Barack Obama over Senator John McCain that you might wonder why even to bother watching the returns on Tuesday night." Which is followed by a little stab of journalism, "The fact is, there is plenty of mystery" to keep the reader reading.
What follows is a veritable deluge of "if Obama wins" and "if McCain loses" that threatened to overtake all hope of getting anything else useful out of the entire article. All I wanted were facts of which states to look for (which it did attempt to break down nicely, which would have worked better had I not been fuming at the lopsided-ness).

Pro-Obama
1. "So many have predicted a lopsided victory for Senator Barack Obama over Senator John McCain that you might wonder why even to bother watching the returns on Tuesday night."
2. "If Mr. Obama wins it, Indiana could be the canary in the coal mine predicting disaster ahead for Mr. McCain"
3. "If [Obama] succeeds in the former capital of the Old Confederacy, he will most likely do exceedingly well the rest of the night."
4. "Subtracting Virginia from the Republican column would give Mr. McCain very few routes to 270 electoral votes."
5. "But it would be a bad sign for Mr. McCain if he cannot capture these [New Hampshire] mavericks"
6. "Again, if Mr. McCain loses [in Florida], his path narrows."
7. "If North Carolina votes for Mr. Obama, the map is likely to bleed blue for the rest of the night."
8. "If [Obama] wins [in Colorado], watch for chatter of a Democratic realignment."
9. "An Obama win would signal an important shift by Hispanics away from the Republican Party."
10. "Conventional wisdom suggests that if Mr. Obama wins, he will do so early"

Pro-McCain
1. "If Mr. McCain wins Pennsylvania, it would keep him alive and scramble the picture for Mr. Obama."

That's it.

I'll let you think about that.

As for the section entitled "Main Course", I have a whole different issue.
This is the only, single section where a pro-McCain reference can be found, which is immediately followed by this:
"And it would lead to grave pronouncements about racism and the so-called Bradley effect of whites not being honest about their preferences to pollsters. Surveys of voters leaving the polls in the April primary found that 19 percent said race played an important role in their decision (as they delivered the state to Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton by nine percentage points over Mr. Obama)."
That, if nothing else, is a blatant statement that if Pennsylvania votes McCain, it basically doesn't morally count because the people there are racist and that is the reason why they didn't vote Obama. Which is followed up by a nice demonstration of how they didn't vote for him in the primary. Give me a break, people. Just because some white people didn't vote for Obama doesn't mean they didn't because he's (half!!) African-American! And don't even get me started on how unreliable "surveys" are. I'm sure the race issue is a reason for some people, but not every single Caucasian person in this country, or in Pennsylvania for that matter.

There's also a little comment about Missouri being important and "usually...the winner" takes it, but that it has had voting problems in the past. This directly follows the racism accusation of Pennsylvania, insinuating that if it seems like McCain is pulling ahead in Missouri, it's a "voting problem" that will be sorted out later.

Also, I am so sick - almost to the point of screaming - of hearing tales about how Floridians were "cheated" out of their votes in 2004. I know the machines messed up. I know that it was a whole big controversy. I also know that there is a teensy tiny chance that somewhere, an INSIGNIFICANT portion of the votes may have been compromised. Do these "cheated" Floridians number more than 380,978? I really don't think so, as that is the official number by which Bush won the popular vote. "Oh, but, obviously those votes were cast for the wrong person!" How can people even think that anything that far-reaching is even possible? They can't even stick a rod through a piece of paper fully, much less construct a conspiracy to that scale! Isn't everyone sick of this already?? I don't get it.
Which is why I wanted to stab my computer screen when I saw this snide remark:
"The drama in [Florida], which has become synonymous with electoral dysfunction, may be in the new and creative ways in which voters might be foiled from casting their ballots."

"Creative ways" and "foiled" all insinuate some proactive, all-consuming organization behind the matter. You know what I say? Shut up, already. I know that's an immature and basically useless remark, but that is exactly how I feel about the people who are bringing it up - so, in that case, I feel it's just as legitimate to respond my way as it is for Katharine Q. Seelye to write about it as such.

Now, there will be some "but what about...?" questions regarding some other points in the article to prove that it is less biased than I am taking it to be. Things like "there is plenty of mystery" and "But the real record was set a century ago, when 66 percent voted in a race that no doubt warms the heart of McCain: 1908 was the year that William Howard Taft, the Republican, defeated the golden-tongued Democrat, William Jennings Bryan". And I will go ahead and preemptively dismiss those, for the former comment is merely an old journalism must-have to ensnare readers doubtful about how interesting this election will be and the latter is more of a underhanded, hidden jab at how McCain's heart is cold and empty.

I know this is going to cause some controversy, mostly because I haven't really ever made clear my political intentions, at least to the majority of my friends. But let me just say that when I think about either candidate today, I can't really see either as the worse or better choice. I wouldn't mind either one. They're both going to have to do the same things to get this country out of the hole it's in right now, (e.g. raise taxes... yes, that's going to happen, and for a heck of a lot more people than everyone originally thought... whoops!) and therefore I couldn't care less.

And thus, I open the proverbial can of worms.