Happy Halloween

I'm going as a stressed-out undergrad with a midterm this afternoon. After that, I'm going to be one of Satan's little helpers.

Typical day, really. ;-)

I Have a Dream

Had a dream, that is. Last night. I dreamt I was dating a midget (what is the PC term for midget?), and we went out to lunch and enjoyed the privacy of a booth under a hollowed-out, upside-down pumpkin.

All seemed to be going well, until we were back at his place and listening to Bon Jovi music. He said he still wanted to get closer to me, but that he felt differently about me since learning my house wasn't a mansion and that I dared to challenge the curriculum of one of my classes. Which, by the way, wasn't even one of my real-life classes, but was Aristotle's interpretation of what education should be. My retort was that a book on farming was useless if it didn't tell you how to plant and harvest a field. And then I woke up.

Who knew I was such a detractor of the liberal arts?

Who knew midgets were such snobs?

Kickball Champion!

It's not a bad time, playing kickball and teaching kids to do the same...and kicking it up on the roof a few times just for the heck of it. Reliving the childhood moments, as it were, but being an adult and knowing you won't actually get in trouble for kicking it up there. Plus little kids are impressed when you can kick a ball onto a 2nd story roof. I'm all about the show, man.

My nephew can now stop a ball with his foot, dribble it with his feet, and control the placement of his kick. It's important to know these skills, and if I have to be the one to teach them, so be it. Game on.

Lucy in Chicago

Sometime in the next few years, Lucy will be in a city near you. One of the planned stops is Chicago, and assuming I don't make it to another city (and still live near Chicago), that will be my next hot museum date. I'll make a point of seeing her somewhere, because she is a fossil I have studied at some length and it's just too awesome an opportunity to pass up.

For those of you unfamiliar with Lucy's importance, here is some information about her.

My Team Was Out in May

Apparently the World Series is going on. I thought it was still the playoffs. Obviously, I don't have a dog in this hunt.

Plus I'm busy. Yeah, busy, that's the ticket.

Selfish Little ****

This is not a suicide attempt. Pulling in front of a semi truck at full speed is a suicide attempt. Pulling in front of a compact car is a selfish play for drama by a spoiled, thoughtless brat used to getting her own way...a suicidal gesture, if you will, but not an actual attempt to kill herself.

She deserves to spend the rest of her useless life rotting in prison, alone with herself and the guilt her lawyer claims she feels.

Yaaaa! Aliens Landed on Soldier Field!

So, Chicago was awesome, as usual. Here are the requisite Sue pictures...
(clicky to enlarge any of these)

No pics of the Tut exhibit, as pics are forbidden in the Tut exhibit. You have to pay to see it yourselves, or order the exhibit catalog and avoid the crowds. You know, whatever.

I do, however, have pictures of something that can only be described as "hideous". You see, the last time I was wandering around the Soldier Field neighborhood was when they were renovating it. That was, what? 2003? Since then I have seen the "improved" Soldier Field on television, but it doesn't look so bad from the blimp's-eye view.

From the front (meaning city-side rather than lake-side) at street-level, it looks like a giant UFO landed on top of Soldier Field. I didn't get pics of the front, as I was too horrified to think quickly enough to pull out the camera and kill the flash setting to take a picture through a vehicle window. I did, however, take some of the side from the Field Museum steps.

This one is the entire side view as seen from the Field Museum. You can see they preserved the front and back stone columns that were so iconic to the building, but the new addition does not resemble or reference the old architecture in any way that I can see.

This is a closer look at the front (city-side) part...you can see the rounded metal abortion hovering over the old stone facade.

This is a closer look at the wings of the spaceship in back (lake-side), which may or may not be less horrifying than the front. I never went on that side to see it.

And lest you think I'm just generally opposed to change, you can go here to see a stadium that was renovated yet maintained its original character and avoided the unfortunate UFO-landing-on-the-field look of Soldier Field. The original brick arches of that stadium were worked into the design instead of just kept around in a detached manner near the new construction.

Feeling Pretty Good

Took a quiz this morning, got an "A". Got a midterm back from last week, got an "A". Took another midterm this morning, think I got an "A".

Now the only thing between me and Chicago is a few hours of work and a night's sleep.

Life is not bad. Not bad at all.

How are you?

Pure Joy

This is the weekend of my hot date. After the midterms...after the soul-stealing work...I get to be driven to Chicago and dropped off at the Field Museum, where I can spend the whole day. Perhaps I'll go next door to the Shedd Aquarium, too...it's all good.

One of my favorite places in one of my favorite cities. Yay, me.

Brain Cramp

Been working on a Midterm Exam (take-home variety, lame*). Got the first part done...let's just say my former accounting life was helpful. I'm all about ripping budgets apart and finding the excess expenditures. I'd be ideal for government if voters actually rewarded that sort of behavior.

Now it is break time until I tackle part two. I want to get this done tonight so I can move on in life. It's due at the end of the day Thursday, but I have another Midterm (in-class variety, not lame) Friday and a quiz Friday as well.

* It's essentially a 10-page paper, and that's why it is lame. An in-class exam would never be this ridiculous.
_____

Sometimes I really feel like a college student. Times when I am in my pajamas in the middle of the day and eating nothing but instant mashed potatoes for lunch, for example.

I *did* get dressed for my morning class, but then I came home and changed right back into my pajamas. And my afternoon class was cancelled, so...pajamas forever!

Nosedive Into Oblivion

I saw a t-shirt today that said, "Ann Arbor is a Whore."

Hilarious. But I think she'll make us her bitch on Saturday.
_____

Here's a couple questions for you. Where in the United States would you never live and why?

Where in the United States would you like to live (can include your present locale) and why?

So Worth It

I haven't watched WWE wrestling (or any other kind) in many, many moons, but tonight on Raw (USA, 8 central, I believe) Kevin Federline supposedly gets his ass kicked by some wrestler I never heard of. He's apparently a former marine and one of the current champs, John Cena.

So yeah, it might be time to tune in to wrestling again. For a few minutes anyway. Because the only thing that could top a marine pretending to beat K-Fed would be anyone actually beating K-Fed. In my opinion.

Save Spork

(This is categorized as "Family Matters" because Munuvians are one, big, hard-to-keep-track-of family.)

Sporky needs our assistance. He was let go from his job a few months ago, and although he is working again, he is still playing catch up. Most of us have been there, struggling to keep our heads above water. So throw him a line in the form of a few dollars.

UPDATE: Looks like he reached his goal. If any of my readers helped him out, I'd like to include my thanks with his.

Music Update

It pays to be occasionally reasonably pleasant to people. Pete sent me an mp3 of "I Love Rock N' Roll". Unless that is illegal, in which case it was someone named Pierre.

I took Paul and Keith's recommendations. Keith's Scissor Sisters recommendation was particularly good. I already liked them from "Take Your Mama"...but he was right about the BeeGees falsetto. I am now fighting the urge to see if the BeeGees Greatest Hits album is on iTunes. Must. Fight. BeeGees.

Paul's Dave Edmunds recommendation was also good. Shank...I'm not sure if you actually recommended anything. I'm not spending 99¢ until I'm sure.

Still have room for more...

Initiate Hibernation Phase

With the coldness and the dreariness upon us, I suddenly want to do little more than nap. Inadvisable, what with a midterm and a quiz tomorrow.

Sigh.
_____

I have an iTunes giftcard thingie from the birthday. What I need are song recommendations. If you could recommend ONE song, what would it be? I already know Paul will recommend Justin Timberlake's Sexy Back...but what about the rest of you? Peppy is a plus, btw.

UPDATE: Hmph. How much is it to ask for a little Joan Jett I Love Rock and Roll?! It's not on iTunes. But her Bad Reputation is. Small consolation.

Where Are My Gloves?

It was, what? A week ago that I posted about it being hot here?

Tonight we're supposed to get snow flurries.

If I wanted to have two seasons, I'd live in northern Wisconsin...where there is winter and July.

I'm Nearly Modern Now

I'm finally off dial-up. Gots the supah-fast high-speed internet. Now I can watch Best Week Ever all the time.

Overachieving to Underachieve

Aaah, finished my last history paper of the semester. Now I can relax.

Actually, I didn't even have to write this one. I could have waited to do one in November or early December, but I don't want to torture myself by unnecessarily piling work onto my plate for the end of the semester. I'll have enough to keep me busy then.

To the former New Jerseyan (Jerseyite? Mobster? Whatever they're called there)...you're right, I only have class for a few hours a day. However, every hour of time in class translates to roughly two hours of work outside class.

Let's look at my weekend and see how much fun I'm having...
Saturday: Worked 7 am to 6:30 pm. Studied for about 90 minutes, went out for about 2 hours, went to sleep.
Sunday: Studied for about 90 minutes, spent about 5 hours on paper, going to study for another hour or two, will go to sleep. Took three breaks: watched a movie for one, ran some errands for another, blogging now.

Besides, I'm not looking for sympathy when I post about my crappy schedule next semester. Just telling you the minutiae of my life. I share like that.

Work of Art

Ugh, what a long day. Thursdays are rough because I have a 9:30 class, then a class in the early afternoon, followed by my one evening class this semester. And usually I can't justify going back and forth from home each break. Tomorrow I have an exam, so I stayed on campus all day today to get max study time in.

In my evening class, I started noticing a girl kept looking back in my direction. She didn't make eye contact, so I started looking behind me to see what she was looking at. Turned out she was sketching me. She's an art major. Weirdo.

It was a fair likeness, though.

Oh, and get this. Normally students' cell phones are going off and earning them nasty looks and occasional comments from professors. (Justifiably, I must add.) Today I had a professor whose cell phone went off while she was lecturing. That was a first.

Okay, back to studying.

Responses

Spam Subject Line: "Want to make your wife happy?"

Hell, no. I hate that bitch.

Spam Subject Line: "Spend the Night With Someone New!"

A whole night?! Screw that. A couple hours, tops.

Spring 2007=Lame Schedule

The school released the course offerings for Spring on Monday. So obviously I have charts and graphs mapped out with the classes I want to take.

I mean, who doesn't?

Anywho, consulting my colored schedule, it's a veritable checkerboard. Meaning I have classes, I have breaks, I have more classes, more breaks, and more classes. It's very choppy, instead of having all my classes in chunks and then being done for the day. Assuming I get into all the classes I want, I will be in class from 9:30 to 3:45 on certain days and 9:30 to 5:10 on opposite days. Not continuously in class, but with lots of breaks.

This sucks. For one thing, being on campus all day just sucks in general. You have to pack a lunch or go broke eating out all the time. For another, there is the parking-by-the-hour payment system to consider. So I may be going back to the bus next spring. Which sucks because of the time wasted. I can't read in a moving vehicle without getting motion sickness, because I'm weird like that. So sitting on a bus is a huge waste of time.

But there's really no way to improve the situation. I have to take almost every class that I'm taking in the spring because they're not offered every semester. Not much wiggle room. But hey, at least they're not overlapping with each other!

And I'll change my mind on a couple of them between now and January anyway. Because then I get another chance to make pretty charts and graphs.

What Else?

It's not all football and...football.

I've been doing pretty well in my classes this semester. One of them is a little sketchy, but I can pull that one up. I have the potential to get As in everything but that one, in which I will be satisfied with a B.

Work is work. Been busy with all the football craziness, and Christmas is coming up. Find my happy place, find my happy place, find my happy place...

The social life is pretty boring, as usual. Been hanging out with an engineering (!) grad student I actually met while out of town in August. I was wearing a school t-shirt and he sat down by me and we started talking. When I had to go, I told him since he was in engineering I'd probably never see him on campus and to have a nice year...totally blowing him off without meaning to. I didn't even think about him being interested in me*, so didn't think anything of it until he e-mailed me a few weeks ago to get together. He's super-nice, but both of us are too focused on school right now to be of much interest to anyone but each other. It's very laid-back.

I have a pre-paid date with King Tut in a couple weeks. Love the Egyptology, so I am extremely excited. It will be one of the high points of the year, for sure.

And...that's about it, I think. How are you?

* I have less ego than you might think based on this blog. ;-)

Neverending Excitement

Aaah. After the craziness of last week on campus, it's nice to get back to the sedate normalcy that surrounds...Homecoming Week?

Mmm, kay. Maybe not.

In the "Good News" department, I got a "check-plus" on an in-class assignment. Because I went above and beyond the assignment. How, I do not know. Seriously. No clue. Thought it was pretty half-assed, actually, but maybe I was more insightful than the average bear.

I also got an "A" on a glorified book report, ripping apart a historical source. Yay me. I just might get the grades for grad school after all. (Have my eye on one in particular. Think Big Ten and the state I was born in and the B******* of the midwest and if you still don't know which school, just nevermind. We will not mention its name because I don't want to jinx myself this early in the game.)

Aftermath

Say what you will about hippies, they don't like to litter. The campus looks as clean as usual today, even in the park with the pep rally and all that.

Unrelated...And it's like 90 degrees today. WTF?

I Have Proof

Well. That game blew goats.

But I take some small consolation in having seen this (and paid the lesser amount) on Saturday night...

I never thought I'd see that sort of thing again.