Back to school

First off, I would like to start this post by thanking Jamba Juice for putting one in on campus because they are truly amazing. I, of course, decided mine could use an "energy shot". I had a delicious Pomegranate Pick Me Up. Amazing. And I only had my usual energy drink on lunch at 3:30 and I'm not really tired despite having been up for nearly 20 hours now.

Evolutionary Bio involves dissecting a rat. This saddens me. I like rats. I have had rats as pets. He seems like an interesting guy and the class shouldn't get to boring as a result. He also informed us that if we miss a test we are missing the experience of taking a test.

My intro to computer science course has a very disporptionate number of guys and girls, unsurprisingly. And I'm sure I am probably the oldest person in the class. He seems rather energetic and makes attempts and jokes.

Discrete structures, the class I magically got put into, is in a similar predicament, although there seems to be a few more girls. He started teaching within the first like 10 minutes of class. We learned that there are infinite number of decimal numbers.

Tomorrow brings bio lab and calc...I still need to offically determine which recitation I am going to for discrete structures, but we aren't starting those until next week.

Plants

So I love plants. In fact I have several more than you will even see in this post. Eight more to be exact, although in all fairness I am giving a couple away, they are ones that I have rooted for a friend who has a bad habit of killing plants so spending money on them seems wasteful. However she's kept her palm tree alive all summer so I am shocked and impressed. If I remember to take her her plants next time that I see her I will have at least two for her.This is my China Doll plant, which I think is one of the most beautiful plants I own. Well, except when it's going through an awkward phase like it is right now. I turned it but the

growth is still fairly one-sided. Apparently these can grow into good-sized trees if you plant them in your yard.

Next up is a picture of a good portion of my plants. I have some herbs, a pathetic strawberry plant, a prayer plant clipping I took from my mom, some China Doll clippings that are rooting, a ficus clipping off of my bonsai, a hoya, African Violets (with no flowers, just buds right now), and an avocado seed that will soon be ready to plant.

Now I present to you Edward, my Cape Sundew. He does not have much goo right now, but a new flower stalk is starting to grow, you can see it all curled up. Also my camera randomly decided to put the time and date stamp on. The very top of his pot has just perilite, which has turned colors from the stuff he's in. (They don't like regular potting soil.)

He attracts cat hair as well since Belle has taken up hanging out around the plants, but the only plant she still eats in my spider plant, which is now hanging in my kitchen.

I hereby declare this the worst summer ever

Today certainly felt like summer is ending, what a way to start my weekend before classes start. I mean it really is coming to a close, it was only a few years ago that roughly 6 weeks from now we had that wonderful October snow storm., a night that remains clearly etched in my brain. Having a snow day off from work after being up until like 3 am talking is never a bad thing. Today was quite cool, I shut some windows for the first time in awhile due to cold. The last few nights on breaks at work have required a hoodie. I don't think I have seen the sun other than this morning.

This summer has been the most awful that I can remember. I haven't been happy for most of it, there has constantly been something pretty rough looming if not happening. Many of these events are deeply personal and since many people I know in real life can easily get to this blog I am not willing to share them here. I'm rather glad to see it come to a close to be entirely honest. Of course my nerd side can't wait to be back in school.

I bought a new monitor today. I just went from a 19" to a 22". I'm going to hook both of them up, but I am super-lazy today. My 19" monitor used to look big. I also got a new video card, I just had the onboard one and Sims look so much prettier with a better card. Not that I'll be playing much now. Actually I went through like a 2 week phase where I played earlier in the summer and I haven't touched it since.

I've been keeping up with working out and whatnot. I lost 6 pounds this week! If I could pull that off every week I'd be done losing weight in a matter of weeks, but I'm realistic. I also managed to pull a Wii Fit age of 20 today, those days always make me happy.

Roommate Horror Stories, Ironically Twitter's Trending Topic is #fatpeoplearesexier

In light of everyone returning to school and Organic Meatbag's recent post I decided to talk at you about one of my roommates back when I went to college after high school before "taking a year off" (in my defense my dad was diagnosed with cancer in that year, then he kept getting sick, then he passed and I was going back and then I realized that I would soon find squishing my belly behind a desk would be near impossible so I decided to wait). We shall call this girl "Bertha" for privacy purposes.

Bertha seemed nice enough on the phone, I was transfering to a new school and despite my friend from high school being there, I was taking on a new roommate. I'd heard too many stories about high school friends hating each other after being roommates. When I met Bertha the first obvious thing about her was her size. She was a big girl, just remember this, it makes the story more appalling later on. She was nice and seemingly normal, she didn't appear to be anyone I'd be OMG BFFS 4-EVA with, but a nice girl still.

Things were not that great for me that semester and I started it off with some pretty bad insomnia. I slept every 3 nights for about 3 hours. I'd take walks, I'd waste time on the Internet, but I'd keep to myself during the late night hours and I'd keep quiet. She began to mimic my schedule, only she couldn't make it so she slept during the day. Now maybe the glow from my laptop bugged her, and if it did she should have said something, I don't know. We barely ever talked. She started sitting in the TV room lounge. She'd take her books and just live there practically. I'd come home from class to find her asleep in her bed, more often than I like to remember in a t-shirt that was riding up and underwear with the blankets thrown off of her.

Then she quit showering. At first the smell was just in my room, but it spread, soon the entire floor could smell her. People kept complaining to our RA. The TV room where she spent evenings and nights was in the middle of the floor, right in front of the elevator. Our RA was such a sweet girl and I can't imagine her talking to Bertha, she was too nice. She said she did but it didn't make too much of a difference. I think Bertha took a shower that day but continued on with not showering after that. It was awful, one night my friend and I took the elevator down to the mail floor to get some food from the desk. It reeked in there, the girl at the desk said that Bertha had been in there a half an hour or so ago, but it had been awhile and some people had been in it since, allowing the doors to open and air it out a bit.

Needless to say, I was making plans for a new roommate ASAP. I was trying to figure out a cordial way of saying good bye you stink, I'm finding someone else who showers when she announced that she was leaving.

I guess my new roommate and her mother spent quite some time scrubbing the walls on her side when they got there. Their rags were black with dirt.

I don't think anyone ever kept in contact with her and the following semester we even dared watch TV in the TV room! My new roomie was awesome and type of person whom I happily called roomie and left away messages on AIM to entertain and agreed that boys were really dumb.

I am making a huge commitment to myself

This commitment I am making starts now.

It's okay to have unread things in Google Reader.

It's even okay to unsubscribe from things that I don't usually read or enjoy reading. I can unsubscribe from the SharePoint stuff since I am not working on the site at work really, it's okay. I will save that tiny bit of time that I spent clicking mark all as read or scrolling down.

I will make it a point to exercise as much as possible. I realize that not every day may be possible, I lead a busy life, especially once classes start, which is only a week away now.

I will bust my ass this semester and surprise even myself with my grades. Or at least do very well with a tough professor.

I will make it a point to try and eat better, I know with my life it isn't always easy but I can try. We don't eat too badly now but I tend to indulge too often.

I will try and meditate every day.

I will be calmer.

I will assess situations and remain more rational before reacting. I will think first.

I will try and have more creative time for Joey, we haven't really been doing many projects lately.

I will fix everything that is broken right now and make it right again.

My sister scared the crap out of everyone last night. I went on last break at 5:30 this morning and I saw my step mom had updated her status about 15 minutes before that to say she was still up. I assumed my baby sister hurt herself and it was a night in the ER or something because she tends to do that regularly and it has been awhile again. She text me before break was over saying it was important and she needed to talk to me. I told my friends to let them know there was a family emergency and I'd be a few minutes late.

She apparently never came home after getting out of work at 11:30 last night. There were numerous texts and phone calls which went ignored. They called her employer to confirm she left, she did, her car was gone. They called the police who said there were no accident reported and drove down the road to check. Nothing there either.

Since she's 19 nothing further could be done until she didn't show up for work.

She arrived home around 7 this morning, she left her phone to charge in her car and stopped at a friend's where she fell asleep.

I can only imagine what she walked into after my step mom had been up all night. I am certain she was livid.

I mean really, in that situation I don't know if I would want to hug or hit my own child. Honestly that has to be what is going through one's mind at that moment, relief that they are safe but anger at their inconsiderateness.

More job stuff and orientation

So I haven't heard anything on that other job...which is sort of depressing but they might just be dragging their fight.

However, I do have an interview on Friday someplace else. I occasionally check out the postings on craiglist, but I'm looking at Buffalo's and let's face it, Buffalo's job market is not all that super when the economy is doing well. But I saw this one the other day and I figured why not and now I have an interview.

Orientation was, as predicted, boring. I was falling asleep after the first 2 hours of being talked at, I worked all night before that, so I decided to skip the next being talked at thing and put my money on my card and go buy my books now. Super-cheap this year, I bought a new bag, a few school supplies, and a hoodie for Mini-Geek too and still spent slightly under $300. I forgot to ask them about the lab fee for Evolutionary Bio though so I have another $30 to go still. I bought Mini-Geek the hoodie because he's very sad that he isn't going to school with me this year. The last 2 years he went to the child development center at the community college I was going to. Now I've moved on and although they have a daycare there are no grants here and the site makes it seem like space is sort of limited so I decided to leave him with family. The child development center was a small place and the school was all in one building so I was right there, UB is nothing like that at all so I feel more comfortable this way. And they are just a day care, I don't know how much they work with the children like they did at NCCC.

But yeah, the total nerd side of me can't wait to get back to school. The adult with responsibilities part is wishing for more time because once school starts I won't have any.

I have a new issue with Mini-Geek. He has decided to begin shouting "Look at this! Look at my *insert body part here*!" which is great until it becomes a body part that is less than appropriate. We've had several talks about things that are and aren't appropriate and bad touches and alone time and blah, blah, blah. I'm not sure how to make him get it. We were at my friends and he so kindly was pulling it out of his diaper and letting it hang. Of course with 2 little brothers she has seen it before but I put pants back on him and quickly after that and when we got home we had another nice talk.

Yeah, the potty training isn't going that great by the way.

New job soon? I can hope!

I saw the perfect job posting up on craigslist for me the other day, not a bunch of experience, not a Bachelors since I'm still only working on that yet, and in my field. It had been posting a day earlier. I bookmarked it and said I'd get to work on a cover letter after Mini-Geek headed to bed. It was gone from the main page and although my bookmark still worked the email did not. I felt a bit dejected, especially since my horoscope had oddly enough discussed this great job opportunity and although I don't really follow them since they are so general, I occassionally read them for amusement.

Also I Internet-know a psychic and had spoken to her recently about the dark cloud that keeps ominously hovering over me in life, The Thing I previously mentioned in my last post, and thought I'd bring up career stuff. I don't hate my job, but it's far too easy and I'm sick of third shift and it just is enough to put a person to sleep. She mentioned a new job at the end of this month/beginning of next. I can only hope she's right. She's said some pretty detailed things about my friend's ex when she spoke with her and she knew nothing about my friend.

Then the other morning I was dozing on and off on the couch and my phone rings. It's a good friend of mine but we typically talk at work, on AIM, and in texts. I thought that was a bit strange, he wanted to know if I was still interested in a possible job where his friend works doing exactly what I want to do right now. Yes yes yes yes yes! A million times yes! I had just spoken with him not that long ago about it and he said that by the sounds of things they didn't want anyone else.

So I'm keeping my fingers crossed tightly that all of this works out for the best, the job and The Thing.

Last week was also been depressingly hot. I've had no desire to do much of anything and really I've had more chances to sleep and less chances to be at home. This heat needs to break so I can accomplish something.

This week won't be fun, I'm chaning my work schedule around. We were able to go down to 4 days and still maintain hours nearly a year ago. With my life I need at least 2 of those days off in a row. Our department works every night except Saturdays. Previously I had Monday, Tuesday, and Saturday off. Well now I have Evolutionary Biology at 7:30 am on Mondays and Wednesdays once classes start and I sleep normal on my nights off so getting up super-early to get Mini-Geek off and all didn't seem fun. They don't want to add people to Mondays since the work loads are low. This left me with Monday, Friday, and Saturday. Obviously there is a fight to get Fridays off amongst those who do not have children and want social/drinking lives. Many of those people left to work on the new project that is only just barely starting to run on 3rd shift. So I asked for Fridays and thankfully I was rewarded with them. Now I haven't had 2 days off in a row since Monday and Tuesday and won't get them until Friday and Saturday and I have school orientation Friday from 9 am until 4 pm. I'm going to try and sneak out early. I know how college works by now. I went for 2 years out of high school for some completely unrelated stuff, and I just spent 2 years going to school. Give me my ID, let me buy books since I'm there, and let me go home.

A number of not-so-great things have been happening lately and they've sort of occupied my mind a bit, decreasing my blogging and whatnot.

But things will be better soon. I know this.

On a lighter note school starts in a few weeks and I would be lying if I said I wasn't excited. Yeah, go ahead and say it, "Nerd." There's just something about new notebooks and textbooks, or the carelessly tossed around ones with yellow "USED" stickers that make me snicker as I get this urge to stick them on people.

On Sunday I was stuck in the Worst Storm Ever. I met Joey's grandma so that she could play with him for a bit and I decided to stop and get some Panera and then get some sleep since I had to work that night and I went in the night before until 2 am for some Continuity of Business testing. Well a few minutes after I left from our meeting place it began to rain. Pour isn't even the word for it once it got started, I had my wipers on full blast and I could not see. I arrived at Panera to find the parking lot flooded. I never see that lot flooded, in spots it was to the bottom of cars. I became very thankful that they just fixed my parking lot's drainage issues a few months ago because the slightest rain could cause those conditions, this probably would have had water pouring into the basement apartments' windows. I wanted to take a picture of the lot, particularly the Mini Cooper, but it was still raining and my phone isn't a big fan of rain.

The awful weather continued the rest of the day, I went into work at 10 that night and watched the non-stop lightning on my drive. Apparently there were several tornadoes throughout the Southern Tier (the southern part of Western New York for you non-WNYers).

For years I've been wanting a carnivorous plant. As I previously mentioned, I picked up a Cape Sundew on eBay for $10 a couple of weeks ago. Since these plants tend to produce a "goo" that sparkles in the sun. I came to the conclusion that the only reasonable name for such a plant would be Edward. Not to say that I am a Twilight fan, but it amuses me nonetheless. I have actually neither seen the movie nor read the book and I probably never will. Give me old school vampires, not this fluffy nonsense! The shipping stressed dear Edward a bit and he quit producing goo for awhile, but he is acclimating well to his new home and has began to make this goo again.