Well, I’m back…Now Leo can putter around here and procrastinate all she likes. 😉
And now for the Way to Have a Stressful Weekend; or the Way to Make All Emotions Related to Money Flash Across Your Face in an Instant; or How to Feel Wonderful About a New Purchase But Dread the New Number on Your Bank Account.
So, last friday night (after seeing Constantine all by my lonesome, which wasn’t a bad movie, as far as that genre of movies goes…) I was working on the part of my orgo lab that was due the next day. (Boo saturday lab. :O ) I realized that I had to print it out (which, really, I discovered, I didn’t have to, but it made more sense to have it printed out) and not having a printer at the apartment, ran over to work and printed it out (and faffed about, of course). Now, I left the computer on as I normally would, as it has a nice Phantom of the Opera screensaver which works as it should. The monitor has been flickering a little bit, but it always goes away. I fully intended to get a new computer soon…I realize I’ve been saying this for quite some time now, but the flickering really got to me. So it wasn’t quite a surprise when I came back and the screen was dark. Not dark like the computer was sleeping…so dark it was like the brightness had been turned way down.
lookie, I did it!
StandardI finally upgraded MT to version 3.15. Hopefully with the increased functionality of Blacklist 2.0 I can get a handle on this crazy spam. We’ll see.
I brought back the ‘ask me anything feature…has a snazzy little layout, it was, how you say, a quickie. I kill me with my little J-C reference. Check out the link at the top of the entries and ask a question! Perhaps I’ll have an answer for you 😉
I feel a draft
StandardWhile on a camping trip, Holmes wakes Watson in the middle of the night and asks “Watson, what can you deduce from looking at the sky?”
“Well,” says Watson, “I can see the North Star, so I know we’re in the Northern Hemisphere. I see Orion, so I know it’s not summer. And that line of clouds approaching tells me that the temperature is dropping.”
“What can YOU deduce from looking at the sky, Holmes?” asks Watson.
“That someone has stolen our tent,” answers Holmes.
a silly sort of proud
StandardSo I changed my windshield wipers this weekend, which was a big deal for me, even though they’re very easy to change. It took me a while, of course, because while they tell you how to put them on (which is, indeed, easy) they don’t tell you how to take the old blades off, and looking in the manual was no help. So yay for fiddling around with machinery and making it work. And I’ve never seen my windshield so clean. It was definitely time for some new ones, as there were two cracks in the driver’s side blade (right where you look through the glass, natch) and the passenger side blade decided to come completely out of the casing and had started to scratch the windshield. Not a pleasant experience to have metal screeching across glass. So unlike the bike, I can go to Target and buy replacement blades (thanks for clueing me into that, Kate) and install myself and fix things! Yay for cheaper.
I went climbing with Doug from Friendster :rolleyes: on Friday night. It was a weird experience, not that I didn’t like it, just that it’s a little odd to meet someone for the first time at a climbing gym. And unfortunately I didn’t ever make it to the top…after three tries I could barely grip anything, much less pull myself up a wall. That’s a little disappointing, being that I used to be in pretty good shape (I swear, forces are conspiring against me getting back in shape, namely winter and voracious squirrels) but I did make it about halfway. It’s a very weird feeling to not be able to fist your hands. Doug’s a nice guy, a chemical engineer for a company in town. I felt kind of bad because he had to do all the work…since I wasn’t ‘certified’ to belay he had to use an autobelayer to climb, which isn’t as good as another person. Perhaps one of these days I’ll be able to do that…we’ll see. I’d like to go again, Doug knows what he’s doing (he’s very tall, though, so it makes it a lot easier for him to climb!) but I don’t know when that will be.
Kate and I were talking about things to do before we die, and I have to admit, I really want to get out and do more outdoorsy stuff. I really want to do whitewater rafting again, gallop on a horse, that sort of thing. One of these days, I swear. I’m not going to be like the people Richard Gere’s character talks about in ‘Shall We Dance’ …the ones that don’t change, that don’t go and do the things they talk about in their will (he’s a lawyer of whatever type writes wills). Just gotta get out there and do it.
and since for some reason I couldn’t upload it yesterday (silly site downtime)…
the squirrels ate my bike
StandardSo, Happy Valentine’s Day! Kate and I had very good dinner-n-a-movie-or-two last night in our Anti-Valentine’s Day celebrations, and it was good. It would have been nice had it not rained all day and thus quashed our hopes of going ice skating (which I WILL do this winter! I swear!) but we had a good time anyway and did lots of chatting. Yay. Good luck on your test, Kate. And Daddy, I love you. Happy birthday, again. I’m so happy you made us crab rangoon 😉
( whee! Kingdom of Heaven international trailer! )
And onto the true story of the squirrel-eaten bike…
So, my bike is locked up on the deck behind the apartment, has been ever since I moved in, because there’s not really a good place to store it inside, esp. if it’s at all icky outside. Still isn’t, but there might be some more room for it now that the Christmas tree has made it out of the sunroom. (The tree didn’t go far…it’s still sitting on the back porch, kindly being a fire hazard, as Kate pointed out, but it’s a pain to get down the stairs and right now it’s too wet to be carried…) Anyway, the bike sat out all last winter to no ill effect, and all last summer, and most of the fall, since I didn’t get to do much biking while orgo was going on. Alas. And so on Saturday, when the weather was just too nice to stay indoors before I headed over to my parents’ place for my dad’s birthday, I decided to lug the thing down the stairs and bike some Forest Park. I hadn’t looked at the bike in months, and what do I find? Almost every piece of plastic that was even remotely near the railing had been gnawed or eaten totally. I mean, teeth marks everywhere. They even got the zipper pulls off my seat pack. And they ate some of the stuffing out of my (relatively new) saddle. Bah.
My aunt says there is nothing good about squirrels. While I like the way they can hold their tails in the air, now I’m inclined to agree with her.
I knew this, you probably did too
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So, in case you missed teh pretty graphic over at my main site yesterday, go check it out. And party yourself Chinese for a few days…after all, CNY lasts for several days, after all.
The Sandman Vol. 1 by Gaiman, Kieth, Dringenberg, III
This book, along with the other books of the Sandman series, looks pretty good. If I ever got into graphic novels I assume this is where I would start, as I like the stuff that Neil Gaiman has written, and I would think the comics would be much better…one of these days, perhaps when I’m rich…
Welcome to the Year of the Rooster
StandardThus ends my year, the year of the Monkey, and so begins the year of *ahem* all those other wonderful people who were born the year after me 😉
Happy Chinese New Year. Eat a dumpling 😉
(I realized, after I typed Leo’s name that she is, in fact, a young’un, and is *not* a Rooster…but she got to it first. So now you’ve got me all confuzzled. Ah well. Here’s a shoutout to my buddies Alex and Leo and Kate, since they’re all around somewhere and will, eventually, have their year, as that is the nature of time…
laissez les bon temps rouler!
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Hope you’re wearing your green, gold, and purple. I’ve got the green and purple, but not a lot of gold…too bad. Have a drink for me!
PS: I think the orgo exam went ok, I finished early. It was one of those where you worry that you finished so soon, because was it that you really did know the stuff, or you just thought you did and ended up getting it all wrong? at least other people left early as well. And I checked a couple of answers with one other girl afterwards and we had gotten the same thing…hopefully that bodes well. There was one reaction that I just could not get…I knew what it was called, but I could not for the life of me remember what it did. I put down an answer that I knew was totally wrong but I didn’t want to not have anything there…ah well. That’s the way it goes.
Have a good time tomorrow…and don’t forget, Chinese New Year starts tomorrow!
jour d’examen
StandardWhen orgo texts try to be funny while warning you of the dangers of working with organic substances:
Like most heavy metals, thallium is highly toxic and should not be used on breakfast cereal. Wow. I would never have guessed.
there’s an orgo test today. not too much more in my life other than that. well, other than the team I was semi-rooting for last night in the Super Bowl once again lost. Seems like whatever team I pick loses, except for that one year when I couldn’t watch it because I was a good girl and stayed in my room to write a report or paper or somesuch stupid computer program. Then the Rams won. My grandmother thinks it’s horrible that I think I might have such a power over things, which I know I don’t, but it’s sure the way it seems like…
so, wish me luck on the orgo test. I’ll need it.
I can’t wait until I can start knitting a matching scarf for my hat…perhaps I’ll get it done before it starts getting truly warm around here, lol.