Heh... that was one of the skits at the Shenanigans show tonight, which was actually really funny (I had mixed feelings on the previous one; there were some very funny parts, but others were just... eh. This time, though, they cut down on "eh" parts so almost all of it was just funny. Which I'm guessing was what they were going for. XD) But anyway... yeah, they had random silliness (see above), a plunger, goofy video clips of people running and jumping in strange places (sometimes with a plunger), and poop jokes. And though it was absurdly crowded I managed to find a seat that wasn't too bad; only problem was that sometimes I couldn't see what was going on, though it worked better this time since they actually had a stage (so everyone was higher up off the ground, and thus easier to see over other people's heads.)
Also helped out a bit with Michelle's story, reading over a little and finding random typos. I'm guessing Ruth helped a lot more, what with her entire sentences worth of notes along the edges and circled words and such... but my natural typo-sense picked up a few things that even she missed, so me being there wasn't completely pointless even though I hadn't actually read any of it until right then (and I still haven't finished reading through it, since Shenanigans was at 9:00 and it was getting pretty close before we went over the whole thing.)
Earlier today, my mom and Julia randomly decided to come up here and visit me at school (well, okay, not completely randomly--Julia had text-messaged me yesterday asking if tomorrow would be a good day for them to visit.) We went to eat at the Palms in Lexington (which had really good food, as usual--I had an Italian sub, fries, and a salad, while Mom got a burger and Julia got a portabello mushroom burger. Yep, with a giant mushroom instead of beef. I should probably try that sometime, it sounded pretty good... and it would let me say I'd eaten a burger even though I don't eat beef), then looked around at the little bookstore right around the corner... and I ended up randomly buying a bug book. And it just happened to have more information on Grylloblattids (apparently also known as "ice insects," as they are used to super-cold temperatures due to living up in the mountains and can die if exposed to 98 degree temperatures--like your hands--for more than a few minutes) than any other bug book I've ever seen; usually they just get a two-sentence blurb about being related to cockroaches and crickets, and the fact that they're rare and live in mountainous areas only. I had never heard about their tolerance for extreme cold (or death at any significant amount of heat) or the fact that they actually have a common name before. They even had a picture, so now I know what the things actually look like! Afterwards they brought me back to school, with my new bug book and also some snack food, drink mixes, and money (all three of which I had been running low on before.)
Also, I think I finally figured out something I could do about the Iliad/Odyssey essay... reading over the syllabus description again and hearing from the teacher himself, it seems it doesn't necessarily have to be "compare X event from Iliad/Odyssey to Y event from your life" so much as "what can we today learn from them." Which means I may actually have an idea. Y'know how Achilles had two lessons he had to learn? (to give way--basically, that he shouldn't keep being super angry all the time and let his anger consume him--and that death is relentless--basically, everybody dies and you can't really avoid it, only delay it.) Well, I'm thinking that will be the thing I base my paper off of, with examples of how they apply to my own life (mostly for the don't-stay-angry-all-the-time one, since I have no experience with death just yet) and just life in general, instead of trying to fit one event in and vaguely match it up to something from one of the stories. Not sure if I'll have it ready by 8:30 tomorrow, of course... but I should maybe be able to get it done before too long after that.
Wednesday, February 29, 2012
Sunday, February 26, 2012
Well, I guess there'll be no Nauvoo trip for me.
Yeah... I got an email the other night and apparently the guy running the Nauvoo travel-study trip removed me from the trip roster already. I hadn't asked him to take me off of the trip, I only let him know that I was worried about how it was going to work and asked if it was possible for me to get my money back if I decided not to go. I'm guessing since I was in such a crappy mood Friday, I might have exaggerated my concerns a little bit and the guy may have taken that as a definite "I don't want to go on this trip" rather than what it actually was (an "I might not want to go on this trip after all, but I haven't decided for sure yet.") Still pretty annoying, though.
The good news is, I will be getting my $400 back (or actually, my $237 and the rest from financial aid... though I'm getting all of it anyway)... so I'll have plenty of money to pay for the Busch Gardens trip later in March, which I definitely am going on. And also other important things, like food, paper towels, flossers, and (if I ever get around to asking anyone again) taking girls on dates. The bad news is, just when I finally calm down about the whole thing and decide "okay, maybe it's not entirely bad that I won't be going on this trip, even though I was removed from the roster against my will" it seems like every freaking person that I tell about it starts trying to get me to get myself un-removed from the trip and go anyway. Including people who were, just a few days ago, asking why I was even going in the first place, as if they wanted me to not go. And of course there's still the concern of what the heck I would even do during spring break if I don't go on the trip... I know Ruth and Elizabeth will be around here somewhere, but aside from those two I don't know how many of my friends (if any) will still be around during that week. And being stuck by myself with nothing to do for a whole week would be pretty horrible.
I actually do sort of have an idea, though, if I don't reconsider the whole "not going on the trip" thing--since I'll have a good-sized chunk of extra money and Ruth has a car, maybe we could get a group of friends together and go on several "mini spring break trips" throughout the week. I remember Ruth mentioning that she wanted to go and see the zoo at Natural Bridge, so maybe that can be one thing; if the zoo's not open there's always the bridge itself, and the caverns, all of which I doubt many people here have ever seen (not being Virginia residents and all.) Another "mini spring break trip" possibility would be getting some people together to go and visit the area where I live; I think it'd be kind of funny to give people a tour of Clifton Forge and the surrounding area (and maybe eat at Victor's or San Juan or one of the other various yummy restaurants while we're there), and also to see what kind of reaction Mom would have to a carful of Mormons (...and Eddie) unexpectedly showing up at the house. Going to Roanoke (to watch a movie again, or possibly to go other places) could also be a possibility, since we managed to get there without any problems the last time. Heck, maybe even Lexington could make a decent trip--it's close by, so we'd end up with more "trip time" that way than if we went somewhere far away. And there's lots of historical stuff to see and lots of good restaurants to eat at, which are always good things to have on trips.
I guess I'd have to ask around and find out who's going to be staying here over the break to get this kind of thing to work, but hey, at least I actually have ideas for stuff to do! That doesn't happen very often at all.
The good news is, I will be getting my $400 back (or actually, my $237 and the rest from financial aid... though I'm getting all of it anyway)... so I'll have plenty of money to pay for the Busch Gardens trip later in March, which I definitely am going on. And also other important things, like food, paper towels, flossers, and (if I ever get around to asking anyone again) taking girls on dates. The bad news is, just when I finally calm down about the whole thing and decide "okay, maybe it's not entirely bad that I won't be going on this trip, even though I was removed from the roster against my will" it seems like every freaking person that I tell about it starts trying to get me to get myself un-removed from the trip and go anyway. Including people who were, just a few days ago, asking why I was even going in the first place, as if they wanted me to not go. And of course there's still the concern of what the heck I would even do during spring break if I don't go on the trip... I know Ruth and Elizabeth will be around here somewhere, but aside from those two I don't know how many of my friends (if any) will still be around during that week. And being stuck by myself with nothing to do for a whole week would be pretty horrible.
I actually do sort of have an idea, though, if I don't reconsider the whole "not going on the trip" thing--since I'll have a good-sized chunk of extra money and Ruth has a car, maybe we could get a group of friends together and go on several "mini spring break trips" throughout the week. I remember Ruth mentioning that she wanted to go and see the zoo at Natural Bridge, so maybe that can be one thing; if the zoo's not open there's always the bridge itself, and the caverns, all of which I doubt many people here have ever seen (not being Virginia residents and all.) Another "mini spring break trip" possibility would be getting some people together to go and visit the area where I live; I think it'd be kind of funny to give people a tour of Clifton Forge and the surrounding area (and maybe eat at Victor's or San Juan or one of the other various yummy restaurants while we're there), and also to see what kind of reaction Mom would have to a carful of Mormons (...and Eddie) unexpectedly showing up at the house. Going to Roanoke (to watch a movie again, or possibly to go other places) could also be a possibility, since we managed to get there without any problems the last time. Heck, maybe even Lexington could make a decent trip--it's close by, so we'd end up with more "trip time" that way than if we went somewhere far away. And there's lots of historical stuff to see and lots of good restaurants to eat at, which are always good things to have on trips.
I guess I'd have to ask around and find out who's going to be staying here over the break to get this kind of thing to work, but hey, at least I actually have ideas for stuff to do! That doesn't happen very often at all.
Friday, February 24, 2012
Wow, today really sucked.
That doesn't happen often on a weekday... but yeah. Today really, really sucked. Basically everything that could have (realistically) gone wrong did, not counting the middle part of the day (lunch + Spanish class) which actually wasn't that bad.
First, I find out that I have a paper due pretty soon (by the end of next week?) and on top of that, it's a freakin' requirement to make a first draft and bring the thing in to the writing center before you turn in the final version. I really hate it when things I have little or no use for are made mandatory by classes; Spanish tutoring being part of your grade isn't too bad since you only need to be there for 10 minutes a week and it's a good time to do homework, but being forced to not only write multiple versions of my paper but take one in to the writing center... that's just stupid.
And then, of course, there's another paper due in the same class sometime later, and I still need to do the second half of the exam (the online part,which will probably involve having to memorize the first few lines of the Iliad and Odyssey... and I can't memorize stuff. Turns out it wasn't that bad--no memorizing lines involved at all. Whew...)
And then, it started raining randomly right after Spanish, just in time to prevent me from taking my huge drawing board and paper over to my drawing teacher to try and figure out how this weird rectangle thing we're supposed to be doing is supposed to work.
And then there was the Doctor Who Club meeting. Hey, that should turn my day around, right? Nope! Well, it kind of did, just in the opposite direction from what I was hoping for. I got there early (which means sitting around with nothing to do and no idea where to sit since hardly anyone's there and I don't want to just plop down in some random place.) Everyone else, minus a few, got there 6 or 7 minutes late, which made getting there early even worse. And then when the stuff actually starts... it's some quiz thing full of random little "only people who memorize every random little thing will get half of this stuff" questions. And we're forced to work in groups. Yeah, that was a bad idea. The whole thing wasn't a great idea, but... yeah. Someone randomly gave me candy for some reason, but--going along perfectly with my luck today--it just happened to be mint/chocolate candy... in other words, inedible. Which I didn't find out until after the meeting was over, so I couldn't even give it back since she'd already left. And of course, I had to leave early since the travel-study meeting for the Nauvoo trip was at 5:30.
Unfortunately, I didn't leave early enough, and ended up getting to that meeting late. Just my luck that nobody else was late, so I was walking into a full-ish classroom with hardly anywhere to sit and stuff already started. I hate showing up late to stuff, so of course, this was a really bad thing. And then I found out that the food on the trip, contrary to what we were previously told, is going to be exactly the kind of crap that I was worried it would be. No eating at restaurants after all, apparently. Yeah. Not really what I need to hear right after finding out that they plan on somehow cramming five people (me and four total stranger guys) into a building with only three beds. On top of the problems the trip already has (needing to wake up in time to leave by 5:00 am, and a very long trip possibly going through lots of West Virginia mountain vomit-roads in the earlier parts.) I'm now no longer sure I even want to go on the trip at all... but I don't want to drop out of it if the school won't refund me the money, I'm not going to pay $400 for absolutely nothing. And even if they do give me the $400 back, what the hell am I going to do during spring break if I won't be on the trip?? Half the school is going to be gone and there won't be classes or anything else to do at all... I'm not sure what I'm going to do there. It really depends on whether they'll give me my money back or not.
And by the time I get out of there... hardly anyone is left in the dining hall, including pretty much nobody that I would feel comfortable talking to when I'm in such a crappy mood. And guess what, there's no food left either! (Which means I missed both pizza and pasta. And those cheese-filled breadsticks.) Went to Jonzzey's, but that's also abandoned (I'm guessing everyone's going to the play or something...), so I just get a giant pretzel and a drink and then leave.
I guess it's possible that today will stop sucking at some point, but going by how it's been so far (and the fact that it's a Friday night, which is not generally a good time to get in a crappy mood due to a severe lack of anything going on that could possibly un-crappify things due to everyone being off doing other stuff or just locked up in their rooms doing homework), that doesn't seem very likely.
First, I find out that I have a paper due pretty soon (by the end of next week?) and on top of that, it's a freakin' requirement to make a first draft and bring the thing in to the writing center before you turn in the final version. I really hate it when things I have little or no use for are made mandatory by classes; Spanish tutoring being part of your grade isn't too bad since you only need to be there for 10 minutes a week and it's a good time to do homework, but being forced to not only write multiple versions of my paper but take one in to the writing center... that's just stupid.
And then, of course, there's another paper due in the same class sometime later, and I still need to do the second half of the exam (the online part,
And then, it started raining randomly right after Spanish, just in time to prevent me from taking my huge drawing board and paper over to my drawing teacher to try and figure out how this weird rectangle thing we're supposed to be doing is supposed to work.
And then there was the Doctor Who Club meeting. Hey, that should turn my day around, right? Nope! Well, it kind of did, just in the opposite direction from what I was hoping for. I got there early (which means sitting around with nothing to do and no idea where to sit since hardly anyone's there and I don't want to just plop down in some random place.) Everyone else, minus a few, got there 6 or 7 minutes late, which made getting there early even worse. And then when the stuff actually starts... it's some quiz thing full of random little "only people who memorize every random little thing will get half of this stuff" questions. And we're forced to work in groups. Yeah, that was a bad idea. The whole thing wasn't a great idea, but... yeah. Someone randomly gave me candy for some reason, but--going along perfectly with my luck today--it just happened to be mint/chocolate candy... in other words, inedible. Which I didn't find out until after the meeting was over, so I couldn't even give it back since she'd already left. And of course, I had to leave early since the travel-study meeting for the Nauvoo trip was at 5:30.
Unfortunately, I didn't leave early enough, and ended up getting to that meeting late. Just my luck that nobody else was late, so I was walking into a full-ish classroom with hardly anywhere to sit and stuff already started. I hate showing up late to stuff, so of course, this was a really bad thing. And then I found out that the food on the trip, contrary to what we were previously told, is going to be exactly the kind of crap that I was worried it would be. No eating at restaurants after all, apparently. Yeah. Not really what I need to hear right after finding out that they plan on somehow cramming five people (me and four total stranger guys) into a building with only three beds. On top of the problems the trip already has (needing to wake up in time to leave by 5:00 am, and a very long trip possibly going through lots of West Virginia mountain vomit-roads in the earlier parts.) I'm now no longer sure I even want to go on the trip at all... but I don't want to drop out of it if the school won't refund me the money, I'm not going to pay $400 for absolutely nothing. And even if they do give me the $400 back, what the hell am I going to do during spring break if I won't be on the trip?? Half the school is going to be gone and there won't be classes or anything else to do at all... I'm not sure what I'm going to do there. It really depends on whether they'll give me my money back or not.
And by the time I get out of there... hardly anyone is left in the dining hall, including pretty much nobody that I would feel comfortable talking to when I'm in such a crappy mood. And guess what, there's no food left either! (Which means I missed both pizza and pasta. And those cheese-filled breadsticks.) Went to Jonzzey's, but that's also abandoned (I'm guessing everyone's going to the play or something...), so I just get a giant pretzel and a drink and then leave.
I guess it's possible that today will stop sucking at some point, but going by how it's been so far (and the fact that it's a Friday night, which is not generally a good time to get in a crappy mood due to a severe lack of anything going on that could possibly un-crappify things due to everyone being off doing other stuff or just locked up in their rooms doing homework), that doesn't seem very likely.
Saturday, February 18, 2012
Random trip to Roanoke, ahoy!
Yep... I've now randomly gone to Roanoke with a bunch of friends for the first time ever. Apparently this was something that people I knew in high school and community college did pretty frequently, but of course I always missed out on those times... good thing I actually have friends who remember that I exist now!
But yeah... me, Ruth, and a whooole bunch of other people (really, we had two cars crammed full, the only way we could've gotten more people inside of either of them is to put someone in the trunk or learn the ancient secrets of the Mexicans) went over to a movie theater in Roanoke to see The Secret World of Arrietty. Which I had actually never heard of until earlier this week when it was mentioned during lunch that people would be going to see it later in the week. On the way there (and back) I was in the passenger seat, in charge of the Google Maps printout that was the only way in hell we'd ever manage to get all the way into Roanoke without getting hopelessly lost. Apparently I did a pretty good job with that despite me usually having a terrible sense of directions--we never made any actual wrong turns, not even the one time we thought we had (what actually happened: the other carful of people went the wrong way, and since we hadn't seen them in a while we figured we had gone the wrong way instead. Nope!) Anyway, we managed to get to the theater (the Valley View Grande) with at least 15 minutes to spare before the movie started, plenty of time for bathroom breaks, popcorn buying, and assorted silliness. I've actually never been to such a big movie theater before, so it was kind of a surprise to see so many hallways with tons and tons of different movies playing... didn't get lost, though, and we were all in the right room before the movie (or even the previews) started. And ran into a random lady who just happened to be a Doctor Who fan, as we found out when some of our group randomly mentioned Doctor Who-related stuff. The movie itself turned out to be pretty good--I had no idea what it was about going into it, but it turned out it was about tiny people who live under someone's house (it was based on The Borrowers.) And there was a huge fluffy fat cat that reminded me a lot of Teekee. XD
Afterward, we (the carful of people in Ruth's car) ended up standing around talking to a random dude in front of the movie theater for probably about an hour, by which time the other carful of people had left and were probably most of the way back to school already. Apparently, Michelle's random fangirl squeals and evil laughs freaked the guy out a bit--he kept backing away every time, and eventually he ended up 5 or 6 feet from where he started out standing. XD And when we finally did head back home, we listened to Doctor Who-themed music (Chameleon Circuit) pretty much the whole way back. I would've thought songs based on a TV show would be horrendously cheesy, but some of them were actually pretty good as songs. And we decided that Ruth is at least part vampire, due to three different people all suggesting it to her in one day, in addition to being part reptile (and I think there was a third part, but I can't remember it off the top of my head.) I also picked up someone's ticket stub from a movie called Contraband and a package that once contained 3D glasses, in addition to my own ticket stub, as souveniers from the trip.
But yeah... overall this ended up being a really good day. Aside from the Roanoke trip, I also walked to Subway for lunch (because it's February, when all sandwich r $5.00 footlong), ate a bunch of mozzarella sticks for dinner, and went to the second meeting for the Nauvoo travel study trip, where I found out that food probably won't be anything to worry about (we'll mostly be eating out for dinner, breakfast is cereal and lunch is lunchmeat sandwiches.) And there's a good possibility that I won't have multiple roommates, which is always good (one of the guys' rooms will be a 3-person room, the other a 2-person.) Now the only thing to worry about is the drive over, and having nothing to do but wander aimlessly if all the Mormons decide to go into the temple during the trip (being a non-member, of course, I can't go in at all. Of course, I guess there's the possibility that some of the others don't have temple recommends, so there may be other people locked out of the officially-approved-Mormons-only zone along with me.)
But yeah... me, Ruth, and a whooole bunch of other people (really, we had two cars crammed full, the only way we could've gotten more people inside of either of them is to put someone in the trunk or learn the ancient secrets of the Mexicans) went over to a movie theater in Roanoke to see The Secret World of Arrietty. Which I had actually never heard of until earlier this week when it was mentioned during lunch that people would be going to see it later in the week. On the way there (and back) I was in the passenger seat, in charge of the Google Maps printout that was the only way in hell we'd ever manage to get all the way into Roanoke without getting hopelessly lost. Apparently I did a pretty good job with that despite me usually having a terrible sense of directions--we never made any actual wrong turns, not even the one time we thought we had (what actually happened: the other carful of people went the wrong way, and since we hadn't seen them in a while we figured we had gone the wrong way instead. Nope!) Anyway, we managed to get to the theater (the Valley View Grande) with at least 15 minutes to spare before the movie started, plenty of time for bathroom breaks, popcorn buying, and assorted silliness. I've actually never been to such a big movie theater before, so it was kind of a surprise to see so many hallways with tons and tons of different movies playing... didn't get lost, though, and we were all in the right room before the movie (or even the previews) started. And ran into a random lady who just happened to be a Doctor Who fan, as we found out when some of our group randomly mentioned Doctor Who-related stuff. The movie itself turned out to be pretty good--I had no idea what it was about going into it, but it turned out it was about tiny people who live under someone's house (it was based on The Borrowers.) And there was a huge fluffy fat cat that reminded me a lot of Teekee. XD
Afterward, we (the carful of people in Ruth's car) ended up standing around talking to a random dude in front of the movie theater for probably about an hour, by which time the other carful of people had left and were probably most of the way back to school already. Apparently, Michelle's random fangirl squeals and evil laughs freaked the guy out a bit--he kept backing away every time, and eventually he ended up 5 or 6 feet from where he started out standing. XD And when we finally did head back home, we listened to Doctor Who-themed music (Chameleon Circuit) pretty much the whole way back. I would've thought songs based on a TV show would be horrendously cheesy, but some of them were actually pretty good as songs. And we decided that Ruth is at least part vampire, due to three different people all suggesting it to her in one day, in addition to being part reptile (and I think there was a third part, but I can't remember it off the top of my head.) I also picked up someone's ticket stub from a movie called Contraband and a package that once contained 3D glasses, in addition to my own ticket stub, as souveniers from the trip.
But yeah... overall this ended up being a really good day. Aside from the Roanoke trip, I also walked to Subway for lunch (because it's February, when all sandwich r $5.00 footlong), ate a bunch of mozzarella sticks for dinner, and went to the second meeting for the Nauvoo travel study trip, where I found out that food probably won't be anything to worry about (we'll mostly be eating out for dinner, breakfast is cereal and lunch is lunchmeat sandwiches.) And there's a good possibility that I won't have multiple roommates, which is always good (one of the guys' rooms will be a 3-person room, the other a 2-person.) Now the only thing to worry about is the drive over, and having nothing to do but wander aimlessly if all the Mormons decide to go into the temple during the trip (being a non-member, of course, I can't go in at all. Of course, I guess there's the possibility that some of the others don't have temple recommends, so there may be other people locked out of the officially-approved-Mormons-only zone along with me.)
Monday, February 6, 2012
Sick...
Yep... for pretty much the first time since I've been here, I've gotten sick enough that it actually gets in the way of things (such as sleep and going to classes.) Basically the same cold/flu thing I had for a day last semester, except this time there's no dizziness or nausea but there is a ton of runny-nose and coughing and a sore throat. So instead of making it easier to get sleep, it makes it borderline impossible--I woke up three times in the middle of the night Saturday, and tonight I haven't managed to get any sleep at all. The weirdest thing, though, is that I somehow don't really feel all that tired... I doubt I'll actually be able to go to any of my classes today (even if I do somehow manage to stay awake that long), which means I'm going to be absent on the day of my Western Lit presentation on the ancient Greek afterlife. It also means I've got another couple of days to finish my assignment for Drawing class, but with my luck we'll have another assignment due by then, and unless I get better pretty quick I probably won't even be able to get one of those done.
At least this extra time I've had tonight (this morning?) has meant that I've managed to get most of my reading for the Odyssey finished now. Just one more chapter and I'll be caught up, assuming I get it all read before 11:30 today.
At least this extra time I've had tonight (this morning?) has meant that I've managed to get most of my reading for the Odyssey finished now. Just one more chapter and I'll be caught up, assuming I get it all read before 11:30 today.
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