laaame

i kept putting off the physics pretest until i missed the deadline. and i haven’t got a clicker, so i’ve missed three days of clicker questions. whyyy am i so laaame, missing the easy points… fack.

i can see how aprons are sexy

today during work, a girl came into the store to hide from a man who was harassing her out on the HUB lawn. i was told that the man was a DJ who wanted her to vote for him, and when she refused, he became threatening and started swearing at her. my supervisor encouraged her to call 9-1-1 to report the incident, so she did. the dispatcher kept asking her for her address, since apparently, “university of washington” and “hub / husky union building” wasn’t a satisfactory location description. come on, who the hell knows the street address of the HUB? (btw, i’ve been told that i swear too much at work. could get zinged for that) i don’t know why the dispatcher had such a hard time figuring out where the university of washington was, but it was about a full 10 minutes before the police officers showed up. that was pretty discouraging to see. they didn’t find the guy, of course, so they just gave her a ride home. note to self: this happened in broad daylight with lots of people around, so what the hell am i doing walking home alone after dark??

it would be pretty sad if i had to pay albert to walk me home… it would take him 20 minutes to find a building on campus after dark.

i’m really bad about eating square meals… i ate breakfast at mcmahon with my roommate and went back to sleep. a small soup for lunch, a muffin around 4, and a scone around 8. now my stomach is grumbling and i can’t focus on python no more.

chronicles of my first day of sophomore year, college

pretty awesome. i made two friends. the first of which is in my geology class, and i’m going to split and copy a coursepak with him. during my 2-hour break, i went to the on-campus bookstore and started reading the rape of nanking, which i’ve been wanting to read for a very long time. needless to say, this is some heavy shit.

i only read about 40 pages or so, but reviewing sino-japanese relations in the early 20th century made me miss history class. i thought that it was ironic that i was being distracted by spoken japanese in the bookstore just as i was reading about how the japanese government continued to delude its population that the rape of nanking even happened. the juxtaposition made me wonder if these japanese-speaking students were even aware of such an event. it occurred to me that this was the very language that instigated the war, masterminded the rape of nanking, and brainwashed the soldiers to carry out these crimes, and is still the language that fails to recount the crimes by its prior speakers in japan’s history books.

in other news, i made a friend at the salad bar of mcmahon 8 today. she’s the sister of a physics TA i had last quarter. very cool. i also caught up with some of my buddies in physics today.

work was good, but it’s so slow it’s practically the graveyard shift.

cool music: LiTaL

solo trips

how come it takes forever to cover ground at uw compared to new york? i feel like running between places. i might actually do that on my way back from work when the campus is dark and allegedly unsafe. i have no idea if squeezing in jogging that way is a good or bad idea.

solo trips into the city are enjoyable. getting my ass out of the dorms is so difficult, but once it’s on the move… it wants to stay on the move. bumpity bumpity vroom.

i bought an 800-paged book for only $10 today. “wraththu” by storm constantine. really awesome so far.

disappointing

good friends are hard to come by. at least for me.

…

on to writing music!

girly hips finally getting to me

i can feel exactly where my thighbone meets my hip bone. it’s grating and sore at the moment. female anatomy, i will never understand you. i think my right leg must be longer than the other one. this must be happening because i’ve been walking a lot more recently. uw is so expansive… there’s a lot of ground to cover between north and south campus.

i like playing in the music building’s practice rooms. there are no windows, so you lose track of time, and you don’t care about what’s going on in the outside world. unfortunately, with the commencement of the school year, there will be more students using the practice rooms in the evening.

i was pretty productive today. finally made some progress on two pieces.

haggett makes me miss mercer dearly

i guess it’s the lack of amenities that disappoint me. unlike mercer, haggett lacks (ordered from most to least severe):

- lighting
– a ceiling light (haggett has this one puny thing on one of the six walls; mercer had a bad-ass rectangular thing in the middle of the ceiling)
– separate desk lamps (haggett has none; mercer had a long fluorescent tube for each person)
– well-lit hallways
- communal microwave/kitchenette
- loftable beds
- practice rooms
- separate closets (haggett is shared)
- dressers
- screens on the windows
- window blinds (i prefer blinds over curtains, especially since people can see into your room from the floor above)
– this means that privacy is all or nothing
- carpeting (though i could live without it)
- vending machines (i could also live without this)

mercer indeed resembled a dungeon, but i believe that it was due to the utilitarian design — now i can certainly appreciate its rigid simplicity. mercer also had all the additional features that a residence hall might benefit from — a kitchen downstairs, practice rooms, bright lighting, and cleanliness. haggett has the two basic amenities: a place to sleep and a place to shower. that’s all. it also has a funny smell. i mean, you can smell it in the hallway when someone has done a number two! both the hallways and the rooms are really dark. it’s hot, and opening the window invites large winged insects to come in, since there is no screen. i mean, a screen!

with that said, i think the bareness of haggett will push me to take advantage of the well-endowed features of the two neighboring dorms, mccarty and mcmahon. they have way too many perks. i am happy with what i’ve got, despite the lack of features.

with all things considered, especially after concerning myself with the matter of finding a roof over my head in new york city, i can certainly appreciate the fact that haggett serves well as a home base. i’m not complaining too much. mercer was just simply better. it suited my tastes better, i know that now. and man, the bus stops are so far away… = (

the freaking triangular corners were a designer’s nightmare to deal with, but i think i’ve conquered it.

snl: palin vs clinton

did everybody catch this? tina fey as sarah palin and amy poehler as hillary clinton. awesomeness.

waiting for the day to end

it’s only 8:30 pm, what… the day before i felt like the day passed too quickly, and now it’s passing too slowly… my crazy sleeping schedule.

my work schedule is insane

topic 1: my work schedule is insane

3.5 hours on mondays, tuesdays, wednesdays, and thursdays. mostly 5:30 – 9 pm. like, when the hell am i going to study? i admit, i was asking for a certain amount of masochism when i signed up for this job. my training is an hour before my first shift. how the hell am i going to learn how to make all that shit in that amount of time???

my dawgs volunteering stint starts at 6:50 am next week. dude, i’ve been *going to bed* at 6 am for the past three days.

topic 2: observing experience at MRO

a. the scenery around the observatory was beautiful. excellent sunsets. the one sunrise that i saw had green in it, due to the yellow and blue. the night sky was amazing. this was the first time that i’ve seen stars on a truly dark night, and i must say, it was so amazing that i felt a little agoraphobic. the milky was really something. the quietness out there was a little creepy.

b. no showering for four days… my hair felt pretty gross on the third day. spiders and cobwebs were everywhere and set me on edge. no internet. that’s about all that i can complain about.

c. we had a lot of spare time, since this observing run consisted mostly of checking on the computer, checking the sky for clouds, and checking the dome to make sure it wasn’t obscuring the telescope. during the run, we watched the first and only season of a show called ‘firefly’, which is really great. space western, funny, and heart-warming. i also watched ‘minority report’ and ‘return of the king’.

d. right now, i have been awake for 23 hours. i woke up at 2 pm on thursday, stayed up the whole night, cleaned up and closed down the observatory around 6, and arrived at UW around 11 am. i don’t think i’m going to sleep until tonight.

e. working with nick has made me realize how alienated i feel from the uw astro department. it’s not like the amnh reu, where the group was smaller, everybody was in the same boat and out to make friends, and there was no experience hierarchy. nick and i are definitely not on the same frequency, so interacting with him was often tense. for example, i felt stupid for saying “thanks for… showing me around and stuff” instead of the pre-meditated “see you later” when he said “thanks for coming along”. what was i supposed to say? when people say thanks and you don’t expect it, it throws you off!

topic 3: because there has to be a topic 3

interesting story: the front tire of the truck destroyed itself shortly after we got onto paved road this morning. this was sometime before 9 am when i was sure i’d be sleepy like i was on dope. after some searching, we found a spare tire under the back of the truck. we changed the tire. more accurately, nick did all the analyzing and brute work, while i assisted. for example, i found rocks on the side of the road to wedge around the tires and un-rotated the jack to its original position. i’m so useless when it comes to physical work. not being a strong girl sucks. sometimes i blame it on the fact that my body weight doesn’t provide enough leverage to, for example, unscrew a nut from a car tire (seriously, i’ve sat on the lever and nothing happened). sometimes it’s because my hands are so thin that the required force would peel my ligaments apart. it took me an embarrassingly long time to re-erect the crude fence. this involved getting my finger stuck between the loop and the post which resulted in a pretty bruise on my knuckle, and slashing my pants with barbed wire. good job, me.