DJ Got Us Falling In Love

Honestly I don't even know what just happened. My fingers are freezing to the point where typing feels weird and the rate of words has seriously decreased. We tried doing another bonfire and surprise, it didn't work again despite the amount of kindling and newspaper that we found. All I know is that there are people who don't remember the majority of the night, people who are throwing up all over the place, people who are just too fucking drunk, and people who are just too goddamn cold. It's been a really weird night and I'm ready to just sleep it all off. I got lost in the woods, found tree branches by the light of my cell, texted my friend via someone else's phone, walked an insane amount in the cold, tried to warm up a dumb boy who gave his shirt to someone else, tiredly trudged home barely aware of where my feet were, got really surprised by stairs, lost my ability to literally think and recall, and got drunkenly pissed off at people who decided that weed was more important. I don't even know what to think about tonight, it's just been so odd. And people in my suite are still excitedly yelling things and shit. Really, just go to bed,  I need to pass out and forget this ever happened.

Ixtapa

I don't understand how the Biology department hired so many clearly unintelligent faculty members, at least when it comes to teaching. Maybe they're research is amazing or something. In any case, I have a biology professor who cruises through unhelpful powerpoint slides of pictures in the book at lightning speed, only pausing to add the occasional "yeah?" like we're actually understanding what she's saying to give out pop "bonus quizzes" that are actually part of our grade now and are difficult enough that even if you did go to class, you still won't get both questions right. So instead of rewarding the students who come to class, she's really just hurting everyone's grades. And insists that there be recitation on Wednesday when there's no classes and virtually everyone is home. Really? She sped through her lecture today, ending with an extra 20 minutes of class left. WAY TO BUDGET YOUR TIME PROPERLY. And she actually seemed really surprised when she was done too, like oh wow, I'm done? Such an ineffective teacher.

Then there's the bio lab professor who expects us to write a comprehensive lab report on labs 2 through 11. The labs basically go through creating a mutation, generating protein, purifying it and analyzing it to see what the mutation did, if anything. The thing is, lab 11 is the analysis of the aggregation of the protein, basically the entire point of all previous experiments. And the lab report is due before we do lab 11. So....what am I supposed to conclude? That my mutation MIGHT have worked but I don't have any idea whatsoever since we haven't analyzed it?? What kind of planning is that? No really, what am I supposed to be writing about? WAY TO BUDGET YOUR TIME PROPERLY. Honestly. Yet another reason why I hate biology. I might have to reconsider my double major.

Up & Down I Go

Why oh why...

....is studying for biology taking so damn long?

....has it suddenly got so cold? Hello November.
....did I ever decide to take three simultaneous science classes with the associated labs?
....is academic orgo lab so stressful yet such a joke? Hate hate hate.
....can't I just study in my own goddamn room?
....has sleeping at 3 am become the norm? Going to bed at 4:30am last night didn't even seem so extreme.
....have I lost my ability to concentrate?

....has everything in my mind just gone to shit lately?

....couldn't there be a single Jewish holiday in October or November? I need a break.
....have I become so distant from my suite? Well, more like when?
....have I been studying for three days straight with barely any breaks with another two days to go?
....was Thursday bio lab next semester already full? I don't want Tuesday lab.
....have I never before discovered the wonders of office hours?
....do I get paranoid about things I don't think I should be, but then become paranoid as to whether I should be or not?
....does everything little thing have such an effect on me?

....does my mind become completely consumed and attached every time? There are priorities, Em. Please get them straight.

....is it only Tuesday?
....?

Secrets

Hello Halloween.

Friday

Major outfit revamp. It's going to be an intense night out. No costumes tonight, just skirts and heels. Experimentation with peppermint and chocolate syrup. Squirt, shot, squirt. Stressing. Waiting.

"Are you one of those pretty girls who hates on herself? Because they're so annoying"

Pointless party searching that resulted in awkward parties and entirely too much walking in heels. But there was still smiling, laughing, dancing and the occasional kissing. Mental state: buzzed.

Back to a familiar place with unfamiliar people. The smell of whiskey/bourbon makes me want to vomit. Another drink down the hatch. Retreat. Ride the wave. Then he passes out. Draw back. Draw. Unibrow? Avoid attack. Markers. Cups. Water. Limeade. Retaliation. Wet suite. Mental state: giddy from exhaustion.

Girl talk with a guy. The set up. Walk back. Gum adventures lead to cold feet. Not figuratively, literally. Some water, some gum, a tousle of the hair and he's sent on his merry way. Now, sleep. 4:50 am - hello? so sorry. lets talk later. Waking up results in nausea, restlessness. Eventually, sleep. 11:20 am - hello? so sorry. urgh please, lets talk later. Can't fall back asleep. Out to the common room to make a phone call. Sketchy tour group waves at the suitemates and I through the common room windows. Please, no. Call. Talk. Whatever. Reassurance.


Saturday

Stress. Too much work, not enough time. Breakfast with the suitemates. Food, decent to urgh. Halloween plans - really? Thanks a fucking lot. Corkscrew - obtained. Wine bottle - opened. Off to the library where I have to simultaneously entertain, study, explain, and vent. No halloween costume. No task complete. No motivation.

"Fuck this shit show of a day" 

Hell to all of this. Last minute costume set up. Escapee. Creative. Original. Rush off with nothing but a Nature Valley bar sitting in my stomach. Watch it. Drinks made, aiming down a sight lesson taught, light bulb hit, costumes prepared, and we're off. Here we go. First, Village mojitos. Cozy setting and a warm reception to Dave and Dave. Then, to the real party. Awkward entrance. Lots of standing around casually, then awkwardly. Mental state: lightly buzzed to sober. No good.

As more people file in, Dave and Dave get exponentially excited and cannot wait to show off. Never stop dancing. Dave sandwich. Pictures. Beer. Beer pong. Lots of laughing, kind of a lot of having fun. Ridiculous. Goodbye, Ziv. Dancing around campus. Renfield dorm storm. What posters? Rosie dorm storm makes for an awkward morning with the suitemates. Bumping into people on the trek back. Dancing around everyone and everything that passed by. Failed poster rip. Blood. Really, let's head home.

Get out of your costume, now. Shirt, soaked. Pants, soaked. Water, now. Halloweiner. Nerf gun wars. Lost dart. Ah well. They smoke. I don't. Interesting conversation out in the common room. Grumpy bf.

"It's very much an enigma wrapped in a riddle shrouded in mystery"

Amazingly good mozzarella sticks before calling it a night. Snuggle, sleep. Wake up. No really, wake up. Food prepared by a cutie. Falling asleep. Back to the room, pass out. Time to study. Upset stomach, tired body and tired mind, shit load of work. Fuck. Happy Halloween.

The Forecast

It's surprising how quickly coffee cools. Small coffee from Einstein's obtained at 8:30pm. Small coffee from Einstein's is ice cold at 10:30pm. I guess two hours is a little too much to ask for a little paper cup of coffee to stay nice and warm. But it's cold here and I wish I had some yummy hot coffee to warm me up! Tonight is hell night, the night I have to finish a take-home midterm for tomorrow as well as study for an inevitably ridiculous biology lab exam in the morning. After a week full of intense late nights full of studying for two other exams, last minute orgo labs, and trying to get ahead of the large pile of work that is threatening to drown me so I can properly enjoy freebie week, I am exhausted! My brain is exhausted, my body is exhausted, everything is just. so. damn. tired. Work and studying are two things I physically cannot do at the moment. And it really isn't the best time for that. Exam. Essay. Complications. Death. But I must persevere. Fight through the pain. What doesn't kill you only makes you stronger, right? Though I don't doubt that this monster of a physics book sitting next to me could do some serious damage. I'm a nut in a rut. Doing scut. Under a hut. Sitting on my butt. Got a paper cut. Ouch. Okay, I'm stopping.

Looking at my to do lists week after week has finally hit the concept of taking 3 science classes with the associated labs home in my head. The amount of work I have each week is daunting, and I can never get ahead. If anything, I'm always scrambling at the last minute to get things done. Sometimes it's because I decide to procrastinate instead of work, but other times it's simply because I have so much work. Everyone has always looked at me as if I'm insane when I tell them what classes I'm taking, but I've always shrugged it off and claim it really isn't that bad. Because for the longest time, I thought it wasn't. It was just work, and in the beginning of the year I could be on top of things with just a few choice late nights in the library. But now in October, the holiday-less month, things are really hitting me. I've worked my ass off for these exams this week, as well as to get ahead with work so I can genuinely enjoy my exam-less week without worrying about work, and still I feel like I'm behind. I'm in desperate need of a break. I cannot wait for 1:30pm tomorrow to come around. 1:30 is freedom from this sick cycle of nonstop, ridiculous, annoying, stressful, work work work!

Parliament Funkadelic

Currently sitting in the SCC with sleep in my eyes staring at the person sitting across from me at the computer bay, trying to figure out how old she is. It's really a little sketchy. She's an Asian diligently working (doesn't even notice me creepily staring at her) with glasses and she looks old. Which is odd. Because stereotypically, most Asian women look younger than their years. My mother tells me I could pass as a 16 year-old. I do not doubt that I will be carded when I turn 21. So if she looks old, then how old is she really? Really old? But she's here in the SCC working....she must be a college or graduate student. Confusion. Really a very good distraction from the physics lab I have been half working on for the past three hours. Overuse of the word "really."Mostly because I'm really happy :)

The day started out with the entire suite sleeping through physics class (quite literally, none of us made it out of bed), followed by boring classes, a quick nap and Sun Chips for lunch before orgo lab which was basically torturous. I think my entire bay has agreed that we despise our TA. She really doesn't do anything, does not offer any help, moves very slowly, and then criticizes how slowly we work and kick us out of lab at 5:30, whether you have finished your lab or not. Which really irks me. Because consistently, our entire bay has been getting out later than the rest of the lab. Literally the entire bay. It cannot be that they grouped 10 slow working people in one lab, yet she insists that it is our fault that we stay later than the other bays. Um no honey, I think it would be you and your late, uninformative, ineffective prelab talks and inability to properly prepare us for the lab at hand.

Then I decided to take a nap at 7:00 for a half hour. Probably one of the worst decisions of my life. When I woke up, I was probably the saddest, most depressed person on campus. For some reason, I just felt absolutely terrible and then proceeded to cry my eyes out for a good 10 minutes at my desk. It was so confusing and frustrated because I had absolutely no idea why I felt the way I did. Crying for a reason is okay. Crying without a reason is not. I eventually pulled myself together and headed to the SCC where all the happy people would cheer me up and I wouldn't be able to cry in front of all of them. After grabbing a hot chai (so good!) I met up with S and saw D for a bit, which cheered me up a bit. And now after a good talk, I'm feeling better than ever. It's odd how quickly one's emotions can change. I've experienced the highest of highs, and lowest of lows today in the course of a couple of hours.

Jesus, Etc.

"Death by Jumping Spider"

I don't know about you, but I think that would be one of the worst ways to go. I had just settled at my desk after doing a mini cool down work out on my floor (and got four bug bites in the procees! I really need to fix my vacuum because this floor is in serious need of cleaning). I opened my computer to check my email and do a bit of procrastination before studying for my physics exam, and noticed something crawling up my desk. One of the weirdest, scariest, craziest looking bugs of my life. It seemed like it was crawling backwards and had entire too many legs to be a fly or a spider. Turns out some of those legs were like little mouth flappy things. EW. It was a small spider, but a scary ass spider. I pointed it out to the roomie, who promptly told me it was a jumping spider, and right on cue, it jumped down a little ways on the shelf. I freaked the fuck out. Now, I'm usually okay with bugs as long as they're not really close to me/on me. Creepy crawlies scare the crap out of me, but if its a good distance away, with no chance it'll crawl on me, I can stay calm and execute a plan of action. A jumping spider is a completely different story. We immediately started yelling for one of my suitemates who is not squeamish about killing bugs like the roomie and I are, and after a couple of terrifying hops, the spider was no more. May you rest in peace, but thank god you're dead.

Haven't Met You Yet

Urgh, I feel like a drugged up hamster stuck in a tiny cage with no running wheel to get all this pent up energy out. Except instead of being a drugged up hamster, I'm a stressed out chemistry student with a weekend's worth of work to do in two what should be fun filled days since there are no classes. And instead of being in a tiny cage, I'm stuck in some library or another slaving away at some lab or another while people are watching movies, getting drunk, or just hanging out without a care in the world. Fuck them. So, instead of using this hour before my Just Social meeting, which is unofficially canceled since it's just a party of two again, I'm on Facebook chatting, talking in the SCC, louging around doing nothing. It's my sort of mini rebellion. The amount of work that I have really frustrates me. I've already spent 12 hours this week in the library and have 15 hours in the library tentatively blocked in my schedule for the rest of the week. Which brings the grand total 27 hours in the library this week. And I have a day off. That does not look, sound, or hear right. See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil. The only thing I have to look forward to is a hopefully homework free weekend. BUT instead of doing fun things, I'll be at a two day activist training camp during the day, with nothing to do at night. Isn't that just fucking peachy.

Sick Cycle Carousel

Imagine one of those big, grey trash cans, half filled with used tissues, rotten food, condom boxes, feminine products and food containers. Can you imagine that sickly trash smell? The brown banana peels, white to-go containers, dirty paper towels and who the fuck knows what else. The roomie and I just spent the past hour sifting through the trash located outside of our dorm, receiving curious looks by sketchy boys as we searched for her missing retainer. One little pink retainer in a sea of pure revolting, vile, disgusting, nauseating, foul and just plain nasty rubbish. Despite our efforts, multiple pairs of latex gloves, copious amounts of Glade air freshener, and use of numerous trash cans, we could not find it. The roomie was a real trooper throughout the entire ordeal, literally looking through each paper towel and even turning the trash out onto the pavement for a thorough examination. I'm the squeamish type and lacked gloves, so I mostly was there for moral support and was on Glade duty. The suite was already swept various times; every possible place was explored and re-examined. Sadly, we end the night with little success. The retainer still evades us, but I'm confident that we will find it sooner or later. Tomorrow is a new day! But for now, fuck you retainer.

A Dustland Fairytale

Boredom has taken over my life. Things that I have accomplished with my boredom:

- watched seasons 2 and 3 of Bones
- watched season 1 of Archer
- baked a brown sugar berry cobbler
- organized the shit out of the lab
- learned how to play Captain Falcon on Super Smash Bros 64
- scouted out the sketchiest place to eat lunch in the SCC
- attempted to learn how to play the guitar
- made my own capo
- played every mini game on Mario Party 3
- even attempted Tony Hawk Pro Skater (it didn't go so well)
- began packing for home
- watched videos of kid prodigies on YouTube
- completed all of the interesting quizzes on Sporcle
- read the majority of articles on Digg
- installed ChemBioDraw on my computer
- put all my classes into my calendar for the school year
- called my mother multiple times
- did all of my laundry, including towels, sheets and rug

All pretty much in the span of the last 3 days. SAVE ME.

Mouth Erratic

My weekend in 100 words or less:

walking. biking. busing. canoeing. automatic ketchup dispenser. inside, outside, inside outside - playing with a 3 year old. waking up too early. cream cheese-ing my bagel. sleeping. lack of sleep. storytelling at Boloco. I can't tell stories. attached. whore doubts. party invitation planning. learning at Urban Outfitters. shopping. eating. finding the elusive Steve's. exhaustion. hacking. dome crawling. meeting new faces. making new faces familiar faces. bonding with a Canadian. fretting with B. frustrating breech of trust. awkward meetings. standing on the street corner. not under a red light. so goddamn attached. Facebook stalking. drinking copious amounts. of water. confusion. contemplation.

Kryptonite

Today is the kind of day where I let nothing stand in my way. The recipe that I found for dinner - Chinese Lemon Chicken was no exception. Yes, so I may have almost burned down the house from decimating the frying oil and yes, I almost cooked my chicken in the microwave at a last ditch attempt to defrost it, and yes, I mistakenly drowned my Basmati brown rice in copious amounts of water, but in the end I had a super scrumptious dinner! Let's go through the highlights. The recipe calls for deep-frying the chicken cubes in corn oil. Since I had barely any corn oil left, I used canola oil and put the stove on high. Bad idea. After a couple of minutes heating the oil I decided to do a test piece, dredging the cube in some cornstarch before plopping in the pot. The chicken came out a nice crusty golden brown, so I plopped four more pieces into the pot and waited. Unfortunately, the oil kept getting hotter and hotter so soon I was burning the bejeezus off my poor unsuspecting chicken cubes. Smoke filling the kitchen quickly followed. I quickly opened every single window and fanned the smoke away from the....smoke detector? Oh wait, there wasn't one. Such a safe house, right? So then I said, well fuck it, and proceeded to stir fry my cubes of joy, making a nice pan sauce from the leftover oil. And it came out amazing. Granted the sauce is a bit funky, but I'm not complaining. So to every unwanted thought, difficult pain in the ass chemical reaction, sketchy unseen lunchmate, and early morning roof bangers today I say, fuck you. Not in a mean, go to hell kind of way, but in a hah you are not going to get the best of this girl, kind of way.