Last Days of Autumn

Here we are in the last days of Autumn; the rain is coming, the crunchy leaves are getting wet and slippery, there is a definite haze in the air and I had to turn the heat back on in my office. I'm a little sad to see the leaves drop now; they have been so beautiful and resplendent.

Along with fall comes international applicants! I have spent the morning futzing with international applications; the deadline is November 1st so I should be getting a few more at the beginning of next week. My to-do list includes

• cleaning off the old applicant jump drive to make room for the new
• updating the web page title and making sure the admissions committee has access
• scanning the applications, loading them onto a drive, then uploading them onto the UW server so my little committee members can see them with their own beady little eyes
• setting up an admissions committee meeting so they can discuss the newbies amongst themselves

This is just the preliminary wave. Later on there will be loads more to do as the domestic apps come piling in. I have a little rolly cart in which I keep my applicants, all neat and tidy in their little hanging folders, waiting, waiting on a decision, their lives in the balance.

OK well I have 1:15 left before I go home and struggle with my derivatives again. I have barely made any progress in the last 2 days. Oh well. I have this little tutorial I should watch before I leave. Meanwhile, enjoy some more fall color.

I'll Be Better, I Promise

OK so I'm going to try and write SOMETHING in here if not every day, then every other day.

First of all, hooray for a splendid Autumn! The color out there is so fantastic. Look at my fantastic campus. Isn't it wonderful? Let me tell you something about campuses. You know the little squirrels we have? Invasive species, brought here from campuses in Europe to make our campuses look more collegiate. Funny, no?

So I had a little mental meltdown when I found out that I have another calc exam on Monday. I am still behind and trying to figure out derivatives, but think if I can do a section/day from now until Monday I should be fine. I'm stuck at the very basic level but I can leave early today and go in for help. Once I crack these suckers out, I should be golden.

Tomorrow I have a German quiz, and a shitload of homework due. I can do this. Really, I can. I will feel much better when I'm caught up with calculus, this too, shall pass.

OK that's all I can muster for the moment. I'm going to see about rustlin up some grub.

3rd Try

OK so I blogged on Friday, and said "I'll write more later." Ran errands, came home, got ready to edit, and what do you know, no bloggage. I figure I must have closed the window without publishing. Rats. So I decided to blog today. Luckily I didn't get very far cause my browser started freaking out when I was chatting with Bonetti, and gave me 3 windows of g-mail, with 3 windows of chat. It was quite freaky. I had to close out and reboot and, of course, lost everything.

But all I really said is that we are having a gorgeous autumn, that the colors on the trees are simply resplendent and nigh poetic, and life is good, and that's about it.

Now let's try to post THIS, and if I'm finally successful, maybe I'll try to add more later.

The Road to Wellness

OK Enough pussyfooting around with the lazing, and the tiredness, and the whining around . The cough is pretty much gone, the nausea is pretty much gone, and I decided that today I would start walking at least 30/day at least 3x/week. So I did it! I went out to 45th, came back down by Stevens, down to the Burke, up several sets of stairs to the HUB, and back to work, for 31:50. I walked enough to take off a layer and break out in a sweat. I'm feeling accomplished and I do believe there are some endorphins running around in my system. :) Kudos to me for sticking the stairs on there. Next time I should bring my camera cause our campus is so gorgeous, and I travelled roads heretofore unseen by me. :)

I PUSHED THE BUTTON

That's right, I finally "committed" to the deed, I ordered my ticket to LA today. You know it makes me think of all those times I resented the students in my program, cause they were supposed to be "poor students," yet they were ALWAYS flying off to other states. But considering this is my 4th trip this year, I realized that "where there's a will, there's a way." Considering my maternal unit isn't the nuturing type, travel to AK wasn't that important. Now that the OMA is 955 miles away, suddenly travel is much more of a priority. :) Now here's the crazy thing; in case you were wondering why I'm not going for Thanksgiving. Well, the ticket price goes up by $144 for thanksgiving!!!! Isn't that insane??? Even booking over a month ahead! Those damned scamming airline bastards, anyway. Well I'm confident that the OMA will probably be scooped up by his mentor for the holiday. I hope. Either that or he'll stay home and drink beers and play Halo. :) I don't think it's too big on his radar.

OK so this has been a decent weekend. I found a great calculus tutorial last week, so I've been wasting my ink printing it out and going over my limits and learning quite a bit. This Paul guy, while not being as funny as Michael Kelly (Complete Idiot's Guide...) is just as good at breaking it down and explaining what it is you're doing and why you're doing it. Not so much to ask, is it? So I'm now up to the limit laws again, which is where I got last week, and hopefully by the end of next weekend I should be caught up to where I need to be. I'm interested to see my test results though; teacher said the exam was "an embarrassment." Well, dude, if everyone is getting bad grades, what's the common denominator, as it were? Hmmmmm......

So tonight is my study/beer/nachos/pool date with Study Buddy Anna, I'm so looking forward to it. We'll go hang at the College Inn, and I will share my little cheat sheets that I made with her. I need to remember to make copies. If I had any sense, I'd do it right now. But who ever said I had sense?

OK well that's enough of a blog for right now. I will probably edit/add a little more later; I want to show you the color of paint I picked for my bedroom, which I think is too dark. But you know how I like putting pictures in here! :)

Shuffling Down the Road to Recovery

OK you can't see to clearly, but here is my poor, abused toe. If you look very closely you can see some bruising where they stuck the needle in. If you were to see it in real life it also had little puncture marks all around. I actually took quite a few pictures but apparently bruises are really hard to photograph, AND I left my camera at work, so I can't show them to you. Well I have one more picture that shows a couple of pinpricks, below.

Through this process I relearned that Ibuprofen is a miracle drug. It always baffles me how you can have this pain in some part of your body, and you take this pill, and somehow it works its way down to the affected area and makes it all better. Well, actually I know that's not true. Here's what I found:

When your body's cells get injured, they release a chemical called prostaglandin (say: prah-sti-glan-din), which can have a powerful effect on the special nerve endings that detect pain. The nerve endings react to the prostaglandin by picking up and sending the messages of pain and injury through the nervous system and to the brain. Once the brain finds out where the pain is and how much it hurts, it responds with a yelp!

Ibuprofen and acetaminophen, however, prevent damaged cells from releasing prostaglandin. Without this chemical, the brain won't get messages of pain as quickly or clearly. And, as a result, your pain either goes away or becomes less intense.

So anyway, today is my first Ibu-free day, although I didn't REALLY need to take any yesterday. Well, it hurt, but not desperately so. The stiffness is gone and I'm just looking forward to being able to wear my cute shoes. But I'm really not in blogging mode, so I think I'm going to go lay back down. I already had one nap, surely another one couldn't hurt! :)

Nice pedicure, eh? Well it WAS nice in August, when I went to California. I was going to get another one done before I got this procedure done but I ordered a new shirt instead. :)

Trauma!!!

Oh my god the trauma. I got my resection done this morning. The stuck fuckin' NEEDLES IN MY TOE. You know where's a really bad place to stick a needle? IN YOUR TOE. God it hurt. So they gave me 3 shots of whatever they give you, left me alone for awhile for it to get numb. So I called the OMA once I got my nose blown and he is sick as a dirty dog so we just kind of hung out on the phone for a few minutes. Then they came back in to torture me some more. Purple gloves, sharp instruments, they started the cut, then OW!!! I could TOTALLY feel it. But THIS guy, unlike the last one, listened to me. Shot me up some more, left me alone while he helped another client. Once I stopped the big, hiccuping 2-year-old-wholost-her-favorite-toy crying, and I talked and sniffled at the OMA and listened to TV with him while he ailed. Then they came back in after another 15 minutes or so and did the deed, and I was numb, my toe felt like a block of wood stuck on my foot, and they finished. After they did that they cauterized the area with phenol ( a toxic, colourless crystalline solid with a sweet tarry odor, commonly referred to as a "hospital smell". Its chemical formula is C₆H₅OH and its structure is that of a hydroxyl group (-OH) bonded to a phenyl ring; it is thus an aromatic compound.) So very interesting!

So anyway, here we are a few hours later, and I'm a little traumatized and the anaesthetic is wearing off and I'm afraid to move my toe. It's hot, and started to throb a little while ago but I took some Advil so that seems to be working. I have to soak it in epsom salts every night for awhile and make sure it doesn't scab over, which seems counterintuitive but that's what they say to do, so do it I shall. And once the healing begins, I will be able to wear those gorgeous Franco Sarto loafers I laid out $70 for awhile back. :) And whatever other cute shoes I might be inclined to be attracted to. It's making me think that the reason I'm not a shoe girl is cause they all hurt my toe. NOW what's going to happen??? Well I'll take pix later.

Sunday, Sunday

Nice, quite, peaceful Sunday morning. I luxuriated in bed til 11 or so; well, actually I kind of tossed and turned cause my back hurt a little, but I had silly crazy dreams that kept me amused. In one of them I was backstage/in studio of one of the local network TV stations, and met Lori Matsukawa and someone else famous. She was thanking me for getting involved and giving me all the codes to the station, but she was going so fast and I couldn't get a piece of paper so I couldn't write them all down. I kept the silver pen though. In another part, I found a bunch of things I had apparently left there, and packed them all up into a big purse. They made me a badge with my picture on it with JP Patches, and I was so happy that I cried. They were unimpressed. At the end of the dream, I had to catch a boat out of wherever I was, and I had to go up a very steep, very skinny ramp that scared me, then a dock that was SUPER high off the water and also very skinny, and scared the pee out of me. I was just rounding the corner, sure I had missed the boat, when I woke up to KUOW's stupid pledge drive. Then Garrison Keillor sang a funny song, accompanied by Chet Atkins, and then they did a skit about Nathaniel Hawthorne, Emily Dickens, and Melville all meeting and discussing each other's work. Emily was a perky spitfire who wrote silly poems, such as:

I taste a liquor never brewed
A sandwich never cut.
I hope to never see you nude
Cause you're a horse's butt.

and:

Because I could not stop for death
He kindly stopped for me.
His little horse, he thought it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near,
He asked if he could have a beer.
I said, You can't hurry love, no, you just have to wait.
But come on, honey, don't be late,
I'll pick you up about half past eight,
The woods are lovely, dark with dew,
Do-wacka-do-wacka-do-wacka-do
And baby----- it's you.

Yes, I lay in my bed in paroxysms of laughter. I realize now that I used to really love A Prairie Home Companion because it used to be a lot funnier. How sad that it's not so much anymore.

Anyway, crazy dreams and stilly skits aside, I am procrastinating terribly from my calculus right now, so I guess I'd better get back to it. I have a date with Study Buddy Anna and Patrick in 40 minutes to practice our Deutsch.

Later, taters.

Magical Feast

Well somehow I got a crab fixation today. My sister had some, the OMA was talking about getting it at the Fisherman's Market by where he lives, and I just got a deep, abiding desire for it. So this afternoon, I showered off the grime and took my hungover self up to the HT Market where I got a very fine crab with 1 stunted leg, 3 HUGE white nectarines, 3 fairly fat black plums, a mess'0'tomatoes, 5 heads of garlic, a bag of chips, a bottle of selzter water and a sleeve of cashews for the low, low price of $23. BARGAIN. This, my friends, is why I adore Asian Markets. They had shrimpies on sale there, too, and someone bought FIVE POUNDS!!!! I thought that was a might fine idea, and one of these days when I'm flush (like after my Sealaska check or something) I think I will buy 3 or 4 pounds at a time and just have a shrimp feed like no other. Maybe when the OMA comes for Christmas.

That's right, I said Christmas. Last night he said "maybe; maybe" he would think about coming over but I'm pretty sure it's in the bag. I can't frickin wait to have him back in my clutches. It's all well and good going to visit him (which I'm going to do mid-November), but having him in MY house where we have all kinds of good memories from our very second date to just before he left will be bonzer, just bonzer! :)

So anyway, now I have plunged my arthropod friend (C. Magister) into a pot of roiling, boiling, salted water, he's gone claws up, and is just bubbling merrily away in there, having given his life for the greater good of my stomach. It's barbaric, isn't it, how we can just throw a living creature into a vat of boiling water and call it a day. Well, I don't know what to say. Other than "yum." :) Oh here's a little crab info in honor of C. Magister:

Males are attracted to potential mates by pheromones present in the urine of female Dungeness crabs. Upon locating an available female, the male initiates a protective pre-mating embrace that lasts for several days. In this embrace, the female is tucked underneath the male, oriented such that their abdomens touch and their heads face each other. Mating occurs only after the female has molted, and the female signals her readiness to molt by urinating on or near the antennae of the male. The female extrudes the eggs from her body several months later; however, they remain attached under her abdomen for three to five months until they hatch. Young crabs are free-swimming after hatching and go through five larval stages before reaching maturity after about ten moults or two years.

So it's 9:00, and I finally don't feel like dying (staying up til 3 a.m. drinking vats of beer can kind of put a kink in your Saturday plans), so I'm going to have a cup of double bergamot Earl Gray and get together with Mike Kelly's "Complete Idiot's Guide to Calculus" and finish ferreting out my limits and derivatives.

Life is good.

What I'm watching: Battlestar Galactica. (The ORIGINAL, TOO) :)

Giddiness

So the weekend started off with a squash game, which I apparently wasn't ready for, as I was completely sweaty and shaky after 15 minutes, came home and went to bed for 1-1/2 hours with a dull, throbbing headache. Grmph.

After my nap I got up to go find the Complete Idiot's Guide to Calculus, which I did find at Barnes and Noble, along with a Calculus 1 Cheat sheet. I then meandered around the mall and was delighted to find they installed a burbling fountain by Gene Juarez, and I imagined myself sitting there in the sun in springtime. Something to look forward to. :)

I stopped in Eddie Bauer to see what I could see, and found a CUTE knee-length brown skirt, originally $50, which I obtained for the low, low price of $16 (after tax). So I not only reveled in the fact that I'm thin enough to shop at Eddie Bauer, but also delighted in my bonzer savings! Afterward I went to Bath and Bodyworks and got myself a little tube of Tahiti Sweetie (GOOD STUFF) and a baby hand sanitizer in Japanese Cherry Blossom, then took myself to Azteca for dinner and read the first 2 chapters of the calculus book. This dude makes TOTAL sense; he's the one who did the on-line tutorial I found the other day, as well. Mike Kelly, I believe. So anyway, I wasn't as hungry as I thought, so I picked at my Camarones Blances (some delicious shrimp dish) and then packed the rest for a delicious lunch tomorrow (lucky me) and then came home! And here I am, still a bit tired but alive enough to work on some Calc.

Happy days, people, happy days. <3

Question of the Day

So my question for the day is:

Why do men spend so much time digging around in their nuts. WHY?????

Smart Boyfriends

Smart boyfriends. They're really quite the commodity when you're going to school! I have been struggling with stupid transformations of functions, because the equation of the function seemed counter intuitive to what was really happening in the graph, and of course the homework problems in no way related to the examples in the book. So I finally broke down and asked the OMA, and he got out a piece of paper down there in L.A. and went through it with me step by step by baby step and VOILA!!! I got it!!! I was so excited and happy. And now I can do this process, and if I get stuck I can go back to my little notes and figure out how to break it down into something solvable. Still, why do these mathematical texts leave these basic steps out? I guess they figure you learned it in precalc, but when I got back to my precalc book, it had the same damned examples that the calculus book had, and not the problem I was working, nor did it say, as the OMA did that f(2x) means that 2x is an independent variable, and if you break it down and say 2x = k, you can get f(x(k)) and then it makes MUCH more sense. Sheesh. Anyway. Limits and transformations. They're not so hard when someone takes the time to actually explain them in a way that makes some freakin sense and doesn't leave the basics out!

In other news, I forgot my keys at home today. So I get to my building, and there is NO ONE HERE. No one in my department; no faculty, no staff, nothing; no-one in CPHN, no-one in the lab, no one in the suite of offices down the hall! I couldn't even find the janitress!!! So I got to hang out in the hallway; I went and visited the ladies in the Scandinavian Studies department til they got tired of me, then I wandered upstairs and downstairs like Wee Willie Winkie (only not in my nightgown). I was just getting ready to hang it up. I texted the boss-lady to tell her what was up (she's off today) and was getting ready to mosey on over to the bus stop when our fiscal tech FINALLY showed up. And so now here I am at my desk, listening to some Sheryl Crow, having a pleasant day, and thinking about venturing out into the big bad world to do some banking before the lines get too long, and then come back to work and get a few chores out of the way before I go play squash with Maryam.

German was, as usual, a hoot last night. Angelika was all perky and fun. There were only 3 of us in tutoring; CW11 Tucker, Kari-not-Carey and I. I logged into my NSCC account so that we could do the Horen und Sprachen exercise, and then we all just kind of visited more than studied. Angelika was grading papers, and we just chitter-chatted and did a little practice and then off to class. We did a lot of exercises in class, and then made arrangements to watch a movie called "Run Lola Run" which a few students had seen and are all excited for; this is going to be on Tuesday because Angelika can't make it.

And that's the story of my life. :)

The Fury!!!

Oh my, we are having quite a stormy afternoon here at the University of Washington. I went out earlier to take the mail to the drop box; just as I looked out the window, it started to rain just a few, big drops. By the time I got to the other end of the building, it was hailing like a sonofabitch!!! By the time I got back (mind you I just went one building over and back), I had HUGE rain splotches on my pants and my head was wet.

So it hailed for awhile, then it rained diagonal sheets for awhile, then we had THUNDER!!! It's all very exciting and I get to go out in it in a few minutes and take my chances. Pray I don't get struck by lightning or something dramatic like that!

THE STOCK MARKET!!!!

OK so it is no secret that I am new to this "investment" business, and having a portfolio is an oddly strange and new thing that makes me feel grown up in a way I never have before. So I get my statement from TIAA-CREF last night, and open it in breathless anticipation...what IS this big fat envelope? What wonders will it contain? An advertisement...some information...and a STATEMENT! Oooh, proof of my first $15 deposit to my RETIREMENT account (can you imagine?) I unfold the sacred page, and to my dismay, see that my initial investment (that's right, I, Carey Blueberry, am INVESTING, for God's sake) has ALREADY shrunk by $.23!!! That's right, my retirement fund, my first little seed, is SHRINKING. Talk about today's economy hitting home. I mean, you wouldn't think that a little tiny nugget like that would be affected, but affected it is. Sigh. Well, all we can do is batten down the hatches and ride it out and hope for the best, and try to think of more platitudes with which to sooth myself.

Auf Deutsche, Bitte

So I figured out that I can take the 4:10 68 to Northgate, transfer to a 345 to school, and be there just around 5:00. That, my friends is a 50-minute trip. If I were to drive, it would take MAYBE 20 minutes; more like 15. But east west service sucks, so it takes a loooooooooooooong time. Oh well, I got a nappy.

I got there right around 5, and Brandon (CW 11 boy) was there in a beanie, and Jasmine the tattoed girl, Emily #1, Kari-not-Carey, and Carhartt Tucker. We had a great review session, Kari and I did flash cards together, and then Angelika led us through some exercises and I gave her chocolate, much like the brown-noser I profess not to be! :) We had a quiz in class and I think I rocked it. I was only unsure about a couple of genders but I originally put down "die Himmel" and changed it to "der Himmel", and it turns out that was right, so hooray for my side. One of the students brought a Ritter chocolate to share, and Angelika brought a bag of Riesen, so we got treats, too.

So on to calculus, and limits, which I am not really understanding. I mean, I understand the concept that f(x) = L as x approaches a, but what the hell does that mean? Harry didn't explain it. My book doesn't explain it. But I just clicked on an on-line tutorial and they laid it out in the FIRST FREAKIN SENTENCE!!!! It's the freakin height of the function! The y! Why couldn't they just say that to begin with, the bastards??? I spent so much time last night trying to figure that out, and I finally graphed a function and watched how it behaved and then I KIND of figured out that the limit was kinda sorta the height. For God's sake.

So next week is test week; both in German and Calculus, so I need to figure these damned limits out and crack down on the vocab.


Have a great day, peeps. I am going to try to find the debate and see what I can see.

Bizzarly Yours

From Bizarre News:

October

October 21 is Babbling Day

October 22 is National Nut Day

October 23 is National Mole Day

October 24 is National Bologna Day

October 25 is Punk For A Day Day

October 26 is Mule Day

October 27 is Sylvia Plath Day

October 28 is Plush Animal Lover's Day and National
Chocolate Day

October 29 is Hermit Day

October 30 is National Candy Corn Day

October 31 is National Magic Day and Increase Your Pyschic
Powers Day

The Outcome

My whole left calf is sore from lurching around like Igor yesterday. Apparently my doc thinks I probably have arthritis in my big toe. Isn't that a bitch! So she looked at my nice, inwardly curved toenails and I have an appointment next Wed. to get 2 bilateral resections done. I'm pretty nervous but she said they'll actually block the nerves to my toes so I won't feel it this time. I pray, pray PRAY that that is true.

I did get my most annoying skin tags burned off; the 2 on my neck that get irritated from my backpack/necklaces and neckline, and the one under that I nicked with a razor one time and freaked myself out!!! That is the weirdest sensation. I think they use liquid nitrogen (In a Mickey Mouse thermos, no less, hee hee), and then she just dabs it on, and you can hear it hiss, and it's this weird stinging/cold/hot sensation.

And then of course my goddamn flu shot, because with the whole sarcoid thing, she doesn't want me to get the flu and catch pneumonia or something. Although my sarcoid is in remission. This is what I learned this year. It can be in remission but it never really goes away. Doesn't that just suck ass?

"Sarcoidosis (sar"koi-do'sis) involves inflammation that produces tiny lumps of cells in various organs in your body. The lumps are called granulomas (gran"u-lo'mahs) because they look like grains of sugar or sand. They are very small and can be seen only with a microscope.

These tiny granulomas can grow and clump together, making many large and small groups of lumps. If many granulomas form in an organ, they can affect how the organ works. This can cause symptoms of sarcoidosis."

Oh well. We take what we're given and do our best, don't we? OK so I have a german vocab quiz last night, and I need to get crackin on that review because I'm having problems with my gender words; der, die das. I know the sun is feminine, the sky is masculine, and a book is neuter? Why? Who the fuck knows. It just is. Hopefully a little pre-class tutoring will help me prepare, as well. :)

Off to my Doom

OK, well I'm going to use one of my dwindling sick hours to go get tortured. TORTURED, I say!

• Skin tags burned off
• a shot in the arse
• toenail resection (in which they rip off part of your toenail)
• and possibly a flu shot, although I've already had the flu from hell

I'll write more later and send pix if anything good comes out of this. Good thing I have a therapy appointment next week, I'll probably need it for PTSD, dammit!

Peaceful Sunday

So as you can see from this gruesome pre-Halloween picture, I blew out an eye. It's actually clearing up really quickly this time for some reason, but doesn't it look scary? It was redder a couple of days ago, and every time I would go into the bathroom and catch a glimpse of myself I'd gasp in shock, and then my reaction to myself would crack me up. If anyone had been around to see me do that, they probably would have thought I was a crazywoman. Well, most people do anyway, so who am I kidding.

Honestly, if there is a lazier person on the face of the earth, I don't know who it could be. The OMA often teases me about my laziness (a little irony there in the face of how busy I actually am) but today, I think he'd be right. Can you say "serial napping?" It is now 2:15 and I haven't done anything of use besides put down some carpet powder. I still have a bunch of German homework to do, and Calculus to catch up on, and I've just been bad bad BAD! Made myself a fabulous Tuna sammy today though. OK so there's this bakery/deli in the University Village called "Specialty's." They have THE best bread I have tasted in a very long while. Soft, fragrant, and really very similar to my mom's, which is like, high compliments. Well I was at the village the other day and wanted some bread, or some toast, but really didn't want to invest in a loaf of bread that would either go bad, or spend the rest of it's days in my freezer along with the other crap bread I've got in there. So I felt so silly, but shyly and kinda quietly asked the girl behind the counter if I could buy a slice of bread and do you know that you CAN!!!!!!! I am so happy I sacked up and asked her, because a few minutes and $1.40 later, I walked out with 4 thick, beautiful slices of potato bread. I know that in the grand scheme of things that probably seems ridiculously pricey, but for me it's worth it. I could spend $3 on a regular loaf of bread, only to have it go bad after I've eaten about 4 slices, or spend $1.40 on 4 slices that will make me happy. :) So I had 1/2 of a delicious, delicious tooter fish popkin* and my little mouth was just alive with potatoey, tuna-ey goodness. So now it's 2:24 p.m. and I think my serial napping is done. I want something good to drink but I don't know what. I've had a little water, 2 kinds of tea, a diet Dr. Pepper and a nice hot cup of broth, but I'm still thirsty and nothing sounds good. Goals for the day:

• paint my test swatch on my bedroom wall
• clean my bathroom
• vacuum
• return some movies/pick up some movies from the library
• clean and chop my lettuce
• make a cobb salad for tomorrow
• make a batch of hungarian mushroom soup
• do two hours of calculus
• do my 15 minutes of guitar practice

And with those goals set and ready, I think I will get crackin'. Happiest of Sundays to you!!!!

*"Here, for instance, in front of him, was food:
something the woman in the uniform had  called
a tooter-fish sandwich. The gunslinger had no
idea what tooter-fish was, but he  knew a popkin
when he saw it, although this one looked
curiously uncooked."  
 - from Stephen King's "The Drawing of the Three"

Peaceful Saturday

What a peaceful, lovely day. I woke up at 11:30; still catching up on that rest, letting my little white blood cells do their thing. I'm not as snotty and coughy today so that's good. Made a pot of clam chowder that beat any previous attempts, which were few and far between because they always sucked so bad. This one was just great. Could be more clammy, but next time I'll get some fresh clams and steam them first so I get that great brothy goodness. Or, I'll buy a can of clam juice to go with, how 'bout that!?!?!

Spent HOURS on the phone today with the OMA as he looked at pictures of me/us and reminisced about some fabulous times we've had; my friends' wedding reception on the Virginia V, pix of him after he got broken falling off the fire escape, pix of me cooking at his little hole of an apartment in Greenwood, and all kinds of other bits and pieces of our history. It was a very fun conversation, very bonding, very nice, and it just reminded me of how much freakin' fun we have together.

Then I made the absolute best turkey burger ever; although I have to say I wonder if my absolute raving over my food today has to do with the fact that I let myself get WAY too hungry before eating it. I didn't eat my soup until after 1, and that was the first thing I'd eaten all day, and I just now ate my burger and it's almost 7; I was so hungry that I have a headache. So maybe it wasn't the BEST burger but goddamn I enjoyed it. I put onions, mushrooms, garlic powder and worcestershire sauce in there and topped it with a nice slice of cheddar; standard hamburger goo of mayo, mustard, ketchup and sweet relish, and then some nice red onion, termaters, and fresh leaves of lettuce from my little lettuce pot outside. I toasted the bun with butter and garlic, too. A veritable flavor bomb!!!! Oh and a midget pickle...I sliced a midget pickle on there. Now I'm feeling content and ready to face my calculus demon of the previously mentioned rational function/asymptote business. I found the information broken down in my old algebra book, so I'm going to take a stab at it from that angle and see if I have any more luck there. If not, I'll head up to the tutoring center tomorrow.

Anyway that was probably the most boring post ever, but what can I say; today was boring to everyone else but me. :)

Ahhh, that's more like it

Sad as it was, I had to miss the debate last night and go to school (school can really cramp your style, man). But I put a little pep in my step and went early to the pre-class tutoring session, and boy was it worth it. There were 9 of us; Emily 1 (there are 2), Luke of the bandannaed dreads and foot-long soul patch, Dawson's Creek guy (that's what I'm calling the bottle-blond guy who looks like he should be on channel 11 until I can remember his name), the Polish twins who are so cute they even have matching notebooks, Tucker the construction guy in his Carharts, and Jasmined the tattooed lady. It was a good group, and Angelika led us well. She started by reviewing simple questions; Ist das der Buch? Wie heissen sie? (Is that a book? What are you called?). Then she ran us through some conjugation, which is always a good skill to have. We got to ask questions, and I spent the time marking the important parts of my book (it came yesterday, yay!) and it just made me happy, happy happy. On the way to class I got some hot water for tea and muffin, and then in class we moved on to the weather, and questions words like whoher? wann? wo? wie viel? (where from? when? what? how much?). So it's getting a little tougher introducing definite articles and infinitive something or others; especially for someone who never learned the rules of grammar or what words were called (other than nouns, verbs and adjectives). I also got my homework and quiz back...4.0 on both, baby! Yeah! Stick THAT in your pipe and smoke it. It would be nice to make Dean's list ONCE before I graduate. Well I had a whole nother story to tell, but I've taken so long to compose this blog that I have plumb forgotten what it was. So I guess I'll write more later.

OK I'm not so ready to jump into the commitment aspect of the GEE-tar like Bonetti is with her 'bone, but I feel that if maybe I log MY practices in here, I might be more inclined to keep it up. SO. My vow, posted here a few days ago, was to practice 15 minutes/day, 3 days a week for now. So, since my strings are new, they pretty much need to be tuned every day. I found an internet tuner which is just aces; it playes the note on a guitar string, and repeats it until you get it right. I bookmarked it, natch. I know I shouldn't be surprised, given my family history, but I was surprised at how quickly I adapted to beats and measures. I know I was taught that at some point in my life, but it's kind of neat to comprehend that stuff right off the bat. It's like learning a foreign language. So the reasons for the 15 minute practice, as opposed to a longer amount of time are:

• I don't want to overwhelm myself; those notes and staffs and clefs and such tend to intimidate me, and if I try to do too much I'll get frustrated and stop.
  
• I want to give myself time to learn each string (I'm using the Mel Bay book, which starts out string by string)
• I have lots of other real homework that needs attending to, that generates grades and eventually a diploma
  
• If, after 15 minutes, I have not had enough, I will have something to look forward to on my next session. If I get really excited, I think I can up the NUMBER of practices and keep to the 15 minutes. After last night, 15 minutes allowed me to play 2 pages of "music" and learn 2 strings.
• Until I actually learn some chords and stuff, I don't think that more than 15 minutes would be too productive.
  

GOAL FOR NEXT PRACTICE: review my 2 little strings and learn string number 3 and 4, if time permits.
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OK so back to normal life. I found out in Monday's class that the parts of my precalculus text that Steve glossed over and said we didn't really need to focus on, are actually pretty important. That is rational functions, asymptotes, and the graphing of the same. Actually Steve didn't focus much on graphing at all. I couldn't understand when my math teacher friend focused so much on graphs when she was helping me; now I do. Graphing is a very important part of calculus. So I am a little bummed that I have to spend all this time reviewing, but at least I've touched on enough of it that catching up is not a HUGE deal. Just time consuming. I think I'm going to need to go into the tutoring center this weekend though because there are a couple of aspects of the graph that I'm just not getting.

"In the case of one variable, x, a rational function is a function of the form

such as, like, as in example:

where P and Q are polynomial functions in x and Q is not the zero polynomial. The domain of "f" is the set of all points "x" for which the denominator Q(x) is not zero." SO I've figured out how to find the vertical asymptotes, which are just zeros of Q(x), and the y-intercept, which is what you get when you set x = 0, but I am having problems determining how to finish the graph and plot the points in between. And that is that. Dilemmas.

In other news, my Deutsch Klasse is going sehr Gud. Angelika (read "Ahn-ghell-ee-kuh) is a hoot, and she is VERY opinionated and makes no bones about where she stands on any issue, and I just LOVE her. I love her syntax, because she speaks english with german syntax, and slips in and out of german. The lessons are fast paced but pretty easy; well, they're challenging but not overly so; and she uses a lot of props and keeps us engaged. Last week we played bingo and got to throw a koosh ball around when we spoke. We get to practice with each other, and last night I was picked by Patrick, a floppy haired boy with a big hickey on his neck, to be partners. :) He is actually pretty good at his pronunciation, so we practiced back and forth and had a good time. Next to me sits 2 sisters from Poland (ihr seid aus Poland), I think they are twins. We have a very shy 15 year old boy from Turkey who sits in front and answers so quietly that nobody can hear what he says and Angelika has to lean over to hear him. There is a bottle-blond guy probably in his early 20's who looks like he should be on a TV show on Channel 11 like Gossip Girl or Privileged or something. There's a loud, brash, brassy girl who just looks full of life and has the best laugh, long brown hair, and wears funky shoes. There is Anna, my study buddy, who is blond and curvy, has a neat tattoo and is a total art chick, who said that some guy told her once that she looks like Betty Boop. She's very sweet and when I told her my last German class was in 1987, she said "I was one year old then." I managed NOT to do her bodily harm. There is an extremely tattooed girl with unnatural red hair (like, almost plum) who seems pretty nice, and a very giggly opera singer who laughs loudly at EVERYTHING and makes me go "WTF????" to myself. All in all, I am learning some neat people and having a great time and learning to speak German and it just makes me happy. And that is my long, rambly, "I feel better so I can blog again" Wednesday report. Happy October, meine freunde!!!