Favorite song playing on the radio
It has come to my attention that some people (hi, Mom!) are annoyed at me for not posting on LJ in the last...six months. Oops. So here's kind of sketch of how I'm doing, now that I'm getting enough sleep.
~At UNC seniors with a high enough GPA are allowed to try to write an honor's thesis in one of their majors. Mine is about a tenth of a point too low, but my excellent sci-fi/fantasy professor from last semester was really encouraging, thinks that grades keep us from true learning, and is going to be my thesis adviser. So, if all goes well, by next spring I'll have written a very long (40-60 pages) and detailed paper about the satire of conflict in the works of Voltaire and (drumroll please)...Sir Terry Pratchett. That's right, I get to read Discworld books for research.
I've had problems with procrastination and coasting through schoolwork for almost as long as I can remember, so the thesis is a chance to both see how interested I am in hardcore academia/ eventual graduate school and to try to break the pattern and get things done on time.
~I'm working at the Bull's Head part-time over the summer. It's not too bad, but we have to wear somewhat itchy uniform shirts four days a week and I have never seen so many stupid people. Seriously, the store has three floors. At two out of the three main entrances, you walk in facing giant escalators that are in the middle of the store. At the third, you must pass these escalators to get to my desk. Got it? Good. I have had to tell a truly astounding number of adults "that's upstairs/downstairs" only to be met with a blank stare and "there's an upstairs/downstairs?" Fortunately for me, I have the self-control to not scream "of COURSE there is because there are HUGE ESCALATORS that only BLINDNESS could excuse you from missing and I hope that your prospective student offspring is more intelligent that you are."
There are also way more super-old people paying for stuff with checks. Hint: retail workers hate checks. Use them for gifts and landlords, not for shopping. The rest of the line hates how long it takes you. Seriously, not even the departmental charge stuff is this much of a pain.
~Living rent-free to catsit is excellent. Ian's parents are out of the country and they hate boarding their cats, so I get to feed them and pet them and keep an eye on things. The adorable blind cat is trying to kill me by running between my legs all the time, but overall they're pretty sweet. Extra-happily, the house is within a ten or fifteen minute walk from the nearest bus stops, so I get some extra exercise and don't need to pester people for rides unless it's very late at night.
~The publishing internship I wanted didn't pan out, but I have sort of a mini-internship for advertising. Jason, my martial arts instructor and hilarious GM, teaches the classes mainly for fun but wants to make some money. He teaches mainly college students, many of whom go home for the summer, so he wants more to fill the gaps, which is where I come in. His MD-PhD program cuts into his free time, so I'm in charge of flier-attacking Franklin Street, designing signs, helping out....I just got done making a nice six-panel brochure to hand out to interested people at the MMA demo this weekend, and I'm proud of how it turned out. He liked it so much that he suggested I take a graphic design class and turn this sort of thing into a part-time job, but I'm not so sure. :-P On the bright side, I'm kind of a ninja with MS Publisher now.
~This may gross some of you out, but I finally punched my knuckles open last class. They had split open a little bit last Thursday and I'd skipped class Sunday, but on Tuesday during the punching warmup they were bleeding madly after about three right-hand punches. It didn't hurt anywhere near as much as I thought it would, the splatter pattern was somewhat epic, and the look on all the larger dude's faces at my cheerful "check out my blood splatter!" was priceless, especially on Greg (Ian's housemate.) He specializes in sarcasm and not showing non-scorn emotions, but I freaked him out a little. Points for me!
~I was watching Mythbusters the other night and they set out to test the myth that redheads are more sensitive to pain. As it turns out, redheads can actually withstand pain better, for reasons unknown. I picked up a book on redheads at work when I was organizing the Sex-tion (yes, we call it that) and on the back it mentioned that redheads require, on average, 20% more anesthesia to be sedated than other people. This is pretty cool. I only went from strawberry blonde to full-out ginger in college, which is odd, but I like it. I may start putting up "awesome redhead fact of the whatever" to motivate myself to post a little more.
~A few weeks ago I finally got around to making cream cheese brownies because Ian was having an awful week, and they were absolutely gone within a week. That's what I get for leaving them out around Greg and Ian, I guess. Next up: oreo balls (which are delicious and which Greg has never had before) and the little molten chocolate cakes that Ian's mom makes. It's a bit odd, but both Greg and Ian are more adventurous cooks than I am, so we're going to take advantage of the huge counters at the house to have gaming and dessert parties later this summer.
~Gaming (non-nerds, feel free to skip): I've been playing a lot of League of Legends lately with Ian, Jason, and Greg. It's very similar to DotA, if anyone has played that, and I'm having stupid amounts of fun with it. If you want to learn, if you play, or if you're curious, look me up: my in-game name is Damiane. We're looking for a fifth player so we can do the 5v5 map in-group, so try it out!
The gaming group has been playing Mage recently, which rocks. Our last mission was hunting down a bunch of zombies and then burning out the zombie plague, and on the mission before that we went into an alternate timeline and got to dive-bomb Redcoats in a flying rowboat while my character magicked "Ride of the Valkyries" out of the air and dropped little fireballs. The mission before that, Ian's raccoon familiar slapped him for being stupid. (Anti-gaming nonsense, go shove it.)
~Ian and Greg have really been wanting a third for poker because they know each other too well, and they finally wore me down. As it turns out, I'm not very good yet, but I am unpredictable enough to occasionally win a large hand when they aren't expecting it at all. I don't bet aggressively enough, but it's fun. Except when they stacked the deck.
So, when I was out of the room before the first hand, Ian stacked the deck so I would get a flush but they would both have full houses. After I lost the hand, Ian had to persuade Greg that no, they couldn't keep the chips and they should tell me it was a prank. It was horrible at the time, but in retrospect it's hilarious.
~I've been sleeping a lot more than I thought I would. The eighteen-hour semester really took it out of me and I wasn't getting enough sleep at all. I don't regret any of the classes except statistics (which was required), but I don't think I can do that kind of schedule again unless I want to have a nervous breakdown. I'm still sleeping nine to twelve hours on days when I don't have work just to catch up.
~My parents are coming into town on the nineteenth to whisk me away to the Outer Banks for vacation, which out to be interesting; we've never been before, and I'm really looking forward to getting some swimming in. I'm enjoying the summer, but it's been really strange to not see my family, so this should be fun.
So. I'm not going to promise to update more, but I will try to think about it. Cheers!
~At UNC seniors with a high enough GPA are allowed to try to write an honor's thesis in one of their majors. Mine is about a tenth of a point too low, but my excellent sci-fi/fantasy professor from last semester was really encouraging, thinks that grades keep us from true learning, and is going to be my thesis adviser. So, if all goes well, by next spring I'll have written a very long (40-60 pages) and detailed paper about the satire of conflict in the works of Voltaire and (drumroll please)...Sir Terry Pratchett. That's right, I get to read Discworld books for research.
I've had problems with procrastination and coasting through schoolwork for almost as long as I can remember, so the thesis is a chance to both see how interested I am in hardcore academia/ eventual graduate school and to try to break the pattern and get things done on time.
~I'm working at the Bull's Head part-time over the summer. It's not too bad, but we have to wear somewhat itchy uniform shirts four days a week and I have never seen so many stupid people. Seriously, the store has three floors. At two out of the three main entrances, you walk in facing giant escalators that are in the middle of the store. At the third, you must pass these escalators to get to my desk. Got it? Good. I have had to tell a truly astounding number of adults "that's upstairs/downstairs" only to be met with a blank stare and "there's an upstairs/downstairs?" Fortunately for me, I have the self-control to not scream "of COURSE there is because there are HUGE ESCALATORS that only BLINDNESS could excuse you from missing and I hope that your prospective student offspring is more intelligent that you are."
There are also way more super-old people paying for stuff with checks. Hint: retail workers hate checks. Use them for gifts and landlords, not for shopping. The rest of the line hates how long it takes you. Seriously, not even the departmental charge stuff is this much of a pain.
~Living rent-free to catsit is excellent. Ian's parents are out of the country and they hate boarding their cats, so I get to feed them and pet them and keep an eye on things. The adorable blind cat is trying to kill me by running between my legs all the time, but overall they're pretty sweet. Extra-happily, the house is within a ten or fifteen minute walk from the nearest bus stops, so I get some extra exercise and don't need to pester people for rides unless it's very late at night.
~The publishing internship I wanted didn't pan out, but I have sort of a mini-internship for advertising. Jason, my martial arts instructor and hilarious GM, teaches the classes mainly for fun but wants to make some money. He teaches mainly college students, many of whom go home for the summer, so he wants more to fill the gaps, which is where I come in. His MD-PhD program cuts into his free time, so I'm in charge of flier-attacking Franklin Street, designing signs, helping out....I just got done making a nice six-panel brochure to hand out to interested people at the MMA demo this weekend, and I'm proud of how it turned out. He liked it so much that he suggested I take a graphic design class and turn this sort of thing into a part-time job, but I'm not so sure. :-P On the bright side, I'm kind of a ninja with MS Publisher now.
~This may gross some of you out, but I finally punched my knuckles open last class. They had split open a little bit last Thursday and I'd skipped class Sunday, but on Tuesday during the punching warmup they were bleeding madly after about three right-hand punches. It didn't hurt anywhere near as much as I thought it would, the splatter pattern was somewhat epic, and the look on all the larger dude's faces at my cheerful "check out my blood splatter!" was priceless, especially on Greg (Ian's housemate.) He specializes in sarcasm and not showing non-scorn emotions, but I freaked him out a little. Points for me!
~I was watching Mythbusters the other night and they set out to test the myth that redheads are more sensitive to pain. As it turns out, redheads can actually withstand pain better, for reasons unknown. I picked up a book on redheads at work when I was organizing the Sex-tion (yes, we call it that) and on the back it mentioned that redheads require, on average, 20% more anesthesia to be sedated than other people. This is pretty cool. I only went from strawberry blonde to full-out ginger in college, which is odd, but I like it. I may start putting up "awesome redhead fact of the whatever" to motivate myself to post a little more.
~A few weeks ago I finally got around to making cream cheese brownies because Ian was having an awful week, and they were absolutely gone within a week. That's what I get for leaving them out around Greg and Ian, I guess. Next up: oreo balls (which are delicious and which Greg has never had before) and the little molten chocolate cakes that Ian's mom makes. It's a bit odd, but both Greg and Ian are more adventurous cooks than I am, so we're going to take advantage of the huge counters at the house to have gaming and dessert parties later this summer.
~Gaming (non-nerds, feel free to skip): I've been playing a lot of League of Legends lately with Ian, Jason, and Greg. It's very similar to DotA, if anyone has played that, and I'm having stupid amounts of fun with it. If you want to learn, if you play, or if you're curious, look me up: my in-game name is Damiane. We're looking for a fifth player so we can do the 5v5 map in-group, so try it out!
The gaming group has been playing Mage recently, which rocks. Our last mission was hunting down a bunch of zombies and then burning out the zombie plague, and on the mission before that we went into an alternate timeline and got to dive-bomb Redcoats in a flying rowboat while my character magicked "Ride of the Valkyries" out of the air and dropped little fireballs. The mission before that, Ian's raccoon familiar slapped him for being stupid. (Anti-gaming nonsense, go shove it.)
~Ian and Greg have really been wanting a third for poker because they know each other too well, and they finally wore me down. As it turns out, I'm not very good yet, but I am unpredictable enough to occasionally win a large hand when they aren't expecting it at all. I don't bet aggressively enough, but it's fun. Except when they stacked the deck.
So, when I was out of the room before the first hand, Ian stacked the deck so I would get a flush but they would both have full houses. After I lost the hand, Ian had to persuade Greg that no, they couldn't keep the chips and they should tell me it was a prank. It was horrible at the time, but in retrospect it's hilarious.
~I've been sleeping a lot more than I thought I would. The eighteen-hour semester really took it out of me and I wasn't getting enough sleep at all. I don't regret any of the classes except statistics (which was required), but I don't think I can do that kind of schedule again unless I want to have a nervous breakdown. I'm still sleeping nine to twelve hours on days when I don't have work just to catch up.
~My parents are coming into town on the nineteenth to whisk me away to the Outer Banks for vacation, which out to be interesting; we've never been before, and I'm really looking forward to getting some swimming in. I'm enjoying the summer, but it's been really strange to not see my family, so this should be fun.
So. I'm not going to promise to update more, but I will try to think about it. Cheers!