Fun Weekend

This past weekend has been pretty awesome. On Friday I went on a belated shopping trip and got myself a *present* for being traumatized by exams/MCAT/etc. Don't worry, it was less than $100... Then we went to sushi(ya) and had an awesome dinner + gelatto. And I found parking right next to the place, too, even though PA was ridiculously crowded.
Then on Saturday we got up at 5 am and drove to Sacramento with some people from my dorm to go white water rafting! I'd never been rafting before, and it was really cool. Sort of scary, but I didn't fall out of the boat, even when we almost tipped over going into this one rapid. The water was really cold, so they had us in these funny wetsuits and jackets. Great experience, and I'd definitely want to go again!
Now I'm back on campus and doing work, boo. I have tons of crap to do, but I'm not complaining because since MCATs are over I feel a lot less stressed out and laid back about everything. I think it's because I don't feel like things that I'm doing now will directly determine whether or not I can go to my top choice med school, which was the case with the MCAT.
The one thing that's making me worried is my roommate: she's been having some issues with her health, and even though she's been in the hospital twice in the past month, she's refusing to stop out and take the quarter off. I've been talking with the Residence Dean for the past few weeks, and I hope they can convince her to take a leave of absence, because I really do believe that's what is best for her. It makes me sad because she's a really nice, motivated, bright person, but a lot of the time people can't do what's best for themselves.
Alright, back to work.. have to finish my part of a group presentation for this paper reading session on Tuesday...

Allergies

I used to have horrible allergies when I was little. They sort of went away as I got older, but they've shifted from runny nose/head cold feeling to really really itchy, irritated eyes. It's hell wearing contacts right now, but I can't decide if this might be a little better than having to blow my nose constantly for three months.

Nothing!

Ha ha, a post to brag that I have nothing looming over my head! No worries other than the usual school work. I don't think I've felt like this since.. the end of sophomore year. And it's sunny. And I'm going rafting on Saturday!

Edit: Ok, I don't have anything looming over my head for at least half a month. But that counts for something.

MCATs are over!

So I'm finally done with my MCAT! I've decided I'm never taking it again, even if I did dismally, because I think I'd rather just apply to grad school and get a straight PhD then bother taking it again and missing the rolling admissions and stuff. As to how it was, it wasn't that bad, but it wasn't that fun. It really did reaffirm my belief that doctors/biologists have a poor sense of the more mathematical sciences. For example, one question asked if the Lorentz force varied with sin of theta, cosine of theta, tangent of theta, or theta. Now, I had no idea what the Lorentz force was, but I was pretty sure it was a cross product equation (all E & M equations are). But the funny thing is that since premeds aren't expected to know calculus past simple derivatives and integrals, in the (patsy) premed science classes they give them cross product equations in the form A x B = A*B*sin(theta). So of course the answer they wanted you to give was sin of theta, although they didn't realize that sin increases as tangent which also increases as theta. So really the answer was all three of those, but with different constants. Hmph.
So now that I'm done being stupid and superior (which I have to stop doing, because it makes me sound like an ass), I get to worry about a physics midterm tomorrow! Which I haven't started studying for because of MCATs! Dammit. Time to get back to my life, which has been on hold for the past three months or so.
Oh, and also, I had the worse scare EVER yesterday.. on Friday I felt a little off, and my stomach felt really bad. I thought it might have been just nerves, and on Saturday (test day) when I felt worse I didn't think much of it. But today when I woke up, I felt super terrible and had signs of either a little food poisoning or a gastrointestinal virus (you fill in the details) which lasted all morning and a little into the afternoon. Thank GOD I didn't have this yesterday, that would have been pretty disasterous.

Shoot

Oops, today I lent someone a pen in physics and I didn't realize that it was dead and the person I lent it to was too nice to tell me that it didn't work!

OOooOOOo MSG

Oh my! What a wonderful bunch of crackers you have there!

Whatever will you do with them all?

I will... EAT THEM!

I am Clearly Awesome

Today in physics lab I was grappling with some junky, mid-90s era technology. We were making these beautiful graphs in this b-s lab where we were (very badly) measuring Coulomb's constant, and we needed to print them. I tried to print, but after the printer reluctantly spit out a few pages it gave an error message: "Load Letter".
I immediately thought: OFFICE SPACE. And I quote:

Michael Bolton: "PC Load Letter"? What the fuck does that mean?

Hahahahahahahaaaaa
And of course I was awesome enough to have read the IMDB trivia that this error message means that the letter-sized (legal) paper tray is empty. Go me.
Oooh man. And there was this totally mean annoying girl I was working with (we were in groups). She was SO bossy when she THOUGHT she knew what she was doing, and then when she didn't know what was going on she would be whiny and constantly ask us what we were doing, and THEN when we did some stuff wrong and clearly needed to redo it (plus it was like, easy stuff to redo) she'd be like "*sigh*....ok... I GUESS we can redo it", as if she had any say. And she kept harassing the TA about EXACTLY what we needed to do on our lab reports, like how many words it should be and which diagrams we should include and how we should format our data. I admit it: I looked her up on facebook, and she's a PREMED BIO MAJOR! Yuck yuck yuck, I knew it! I hope she FAILS BioCore... and I actually do mean that. She was f-ing annoying, man.
Hmph, anyone who rolls their eyes at me .. sucks.

I am a mess!

I'm TERRIBLE at judging how much work I can do.. and how much sleep I need.. and oh, I also suck at making myself go to bed. I was supposed to be asleep an hour ago, and look at me, I'm on Blogger.

On the Way to Physics..

I saw this funny guy who was convinced it was raining even though it wasn't. He had his umbrella up and was like, totally involved in using it when he was in uncovered spots--holding it over his head, then folding it up when he walked under an awning or something. Problem was, it was completely dry outside, and no one else had an umbrella, so I really don't know why he was bothering. Finally I walked next to him, and I guess he saw me carrying a folded-up umbrella because then he sheepishly folded his up. I guess 10 am is still too early for some people to act intelligently?

Third Post in One Night?

Ok, I was weird and I didn't put all the pictures into one long post. But I felt like they didn't belong all mashed together. I'M OCD, OK, SO DEAL WITH IT!

Today was me & Matt's 2 year anniversary. Um, at least we think because we actually don't remember if it really is. And maybe we should change it, because it's also his PARENTS' anniversary, and that's really creepy. But we celebrated by going to In & Out, which should be one of those official anniversary presents. You know, like 25 is silver and like, third is paper or some crap like that. Well, I wouldn't want paper. They should make it In & Out instead of paper.

On a completely unrelated note I got this bag of weird asian snacks that had rice crackers and honey cake things (those little potato starch balls) and cookies and one pack of this chip thing called "Lonely God". I'm serious, look at this:

What the hell? That's weird. And who the hell is that weird kid in the picture? And is he flying over some European town or something? I can't handle it.

Also, I went to Old Navy and got some tank tops, and I swore I was a size extra-small, because that's the size I get every time I buy these tank tops. The extra-smalls were like, tiny though, and, to cut a boring story short, I still bought them because I didn't want to get the smalls because that would make me feel "big" (ok, I admit I bought a smaller size to make myself feel better) and after a day of wearing one, it stretched out to double the size. So I got the right size after all, and Old Navy should put some disclaimer on their clothes to buy a size smaller because it's gonna stretch like (insert bad your mom joke here).
If you're still caring, here's a picture of "before" and "after":

I dunno, it makes ME weirded out.

FRIENDS

Me & Matt got some new "friends," or stuffed thingys.

This is Sea Otter. He's awesome and.. ambiguously mammal. I had no idea what he was when we first saw him. Matt hates him because he's jealous of all the attention he gets!


And this is Sweetie Pea. This one is my best friend! It's part of a late birthday present because the weird hick that Katherine bought it from on e-bay accidentally sent it to her instead of me, so she just waited until she came up here to give it to me.


Both Kath and Matt (and everyone else, I guess) think it's scary. IT JUST WANTS TO BE YOUR FRIENNNNNNDDDDD


Speaking of more early birthday presents, Matt got a cake and a knitted pea pod from Kath. Good stuff.


So many stuffed things! I have like, one weird little stuffed animal/plush thing in every purse. Matt's starting to be like me, keeping Katherine's plush things in his car (and in his purses, ha ha).

Spring Break and More

On Wednesday, we went to see the elephant seals at Ano Nuevo. We missed the end of the season when the males fight and the females take care of their pups.. Right now there were only about 2000 (sounds like a lot, but it looked like there were about 100) seals on the beach, and they were the few-month-old babies that were lying around after their parents left. They were pretty funny though, sleeping in piles and making weird snorting sounds.





And then we went to see the "pig farm" (Rancho San Antonio Park) on Thursday and they had baby animals! Sheep and pigs. They were cute. And it stopped raining just enough for them to come out of their houses and play for a little while. The lambs were funny because they didn't know what to do with the grass, and they tried to copy the mother and eat the grass also. And one of them started eating the dirt.

little sheep:


little pigs:


And then on Friday we (me, Matt, Will, Edwin, plus entire family) went to Hotaru for a ridiculous dinner. Ate a lot of food.. we had like five of the #1 combo specials at our table! Everyone liked the place a lot, and we got to sit upstairs. Apparently they fixed the upstairs up and put a few tables there, to expand when they're really busy. Except they had this door to an "office" there that was sort of sketchy.. at one point this guy came out of it with what Edwin said was a bucket of white powder. Hmm.

EDIT: OOOHHH! One of my Mexican jumping beans just hatched! The moth came out of the little bean! Neat! I tried to take a picture of it, but it came out all blurry. So I just let the moth go outside. He left behind a lot of funny dust, and a bean with a round hole in it, and the skin/shell of a little worm.