Wednesday, October 27, 2004

Holy Moly!

I actually did homework today! I worked on two separate projects, writing about two pages for each, and neither of them are actually due tomorrow! Maybe I've gotten over my procrastination problem. Or maybe I had five hours between my last class and volleyball tonight, and didn't feel like going home. Yeah, I think it was the second one. But still! Go me. Now to reward myself by ignoring all work for a week. Because we learned in sociology today that if a person isn't rewarded according to what they believe they should be rewarded, productivity is lowered, and you end up doing less work than even before. But perhaps I should study for that pesky italian exam tomorrow... nah. Too much work. Did any of my 1 (one) readers pick up on my decision to use capital I's? We'll see how long that holds up.

oh- and I'm still annoyed that Myst IV won't install onto my computer. Stupid Ubisoft.

Tuesday, October 26, 2004

ouch

hail hurts. it's especially annoying when the five minutes you pick to walk from class to class are the same (and only) five minutes the sky decides to shoot ice at you. i mean, seriously, after i entered the building and sat down in class, i looked out the window and there weren't even any clouds. it went from STORM! to sunny in five minutes.

Sunday, October 17, 2004

the internet knows my name

okay. thanks to cookies or IP addresses or whatever, when i go to certain websites, the page calls me by name. this is okay when it's a site i use often, when i'm on my own computer. but i have had two odd experiences concerning the internet calling me names. Amusing Anecdote #1: i took a year's worth of PE during one summer a few years ago, mainly because i hate getting myself all sweaty during the middle of the day, and i have an aversion to bathing in front of people. so. during this summer school, we went to the computer lab a couple of times to type stuff up, and since i'm a superstudent (ok, not really), i got done early. so i decided to check my email. typed in the address of my email provider, and the page came up greeting me by my name. how in the world does the internet know it's me? i wondered. i still don't know, but i assume i'd checked my email earlier on that same computer some other day, and it just remembered me. creepy, nonetheless. Anecdote 2: i just followed a link from lileks' site that led to an error screen from expedia (old bookmark). no biggie. but as my eyes followed the cursor up to the "back" button, i came across two words, slightly bolder than the rest of the page: "Welcome, Melville." my name is not melville. i never use expedia. why is the internet calling me melville? because my dad (who isn't named melville either) once used expedia to purchase plane tickets for my uncle. i never knew that uncle wes isn't really uncle wes, but uncle melville. i guess you learn something new every day.

Thursday, October 14, 2004

yarrgh

ok. so i haven't posted in a while. so sue me. i'd just like to say that i'm only posting now because i somehow woke up too late to get to my only important morning class, so i'm staying home this morning, and going to school for just my italian class this afternoon, cause italian is so cool. so now i've got a bunch of free time that i can write in, but i probably won't say much. anyway, after complaining to my friend that her college (read: within the university, not a different univ.) was way more friendly and active than mine, i got an email announcing the sociology picnic. yay and hoorah! i shall go. and maybe they'll have tshirts like my friend's college picnic had. one can only hope...

and on a completely different note, i woke up this morning not able to move my neck for fear of EXTREME PAIN, and my shoulder's kinda achy, too. i guess when one plays volleyball after a year of nonactivity, one should start out slow. but it was fun, and i'm going to keep going each week. hopefully after a while it won't torture my body to do it.

Saturday, October 9, 2004

there's the rub:

the guy i dreamed about marrying is a real guy. he goes to my church, and is the older brother of one of my friends. he is also already married to a girl that was very nice to me in high school. creepiness of creepinesses.

to sleep, perchance to dream

i've been having some really oddly themed dreams lately, and it's getting a bit disturbing. the theme of several of my dreams of late has been this: marriage. i am not married. i am not engaged. i am not even in a relationship. but for some reason, i've been dreaming about being married, and i'm getting a little freaked out. they're not particularly nice dreams, either. i had one last night that i agreed to marry some guy that i barely even knew, and that it was the day of the wedding. i was frantically trying to get ready, trying to find someone to do my hair, and freaking out because i hadn't bought a dress yet. and during all this franticness, i realized that i didn't even know this guy, much less love him. but i had already agreed to do it, and i was running around in some wedding dress that i somehow got at the last minute, trying to figure out how to keep myself from making this mistake while at the same time not being horrible to the guy by breaking it off on the day of the wedding. i eventually decided that since he was of my faith, and since he was generally spoken highly of, i should just marry him. my dream ended just as we got to our new home. i awoke all sweaty and upset, thinking, "how could i mess up my life like that, take such a big step in life without even dating him first, getting to know him, seeing if i was even attracted to him?!" i was stressed all today, still feeling that i had totally messed up my life, and not realizing that this horrible feeling was due to the dream, which SO DIDN'T HAPPEN. i still feel shaky just thinking about the dream. it was stressful and disturbing and upsetting. all this about something that's supposed to be such a great and wonderful thing. i don't want to dream about marriage again.

Friday, October 8, 2004

my neighborhood

here's a little story to give you an idea of the type of people living in my neighborhood:

about two weeks ago, i went to check the mail (we have those annoying group mailboxes, like a little extension of the post office sitting on the sidewalk). i noticed that on top of the mail structure, there was a rather nice pair of glasses. i went to get the mail the next day, and they were still there, untouched. day after, still there. and so it went for about a week. then one day, they were gone from the mailbox. i thought, wow, it sure took a long time for some kid to finally steal them. but no! on the way back home, i saw that they had only been moved to the top of the corner house's brick wall. and so they've been for a week now. my neighborhood is dead.

Wednesday, October 6, 2004

blueprints

the building that my major department's offices are in intrigues me. doesn't look like anything much from the outside, a hundred years old, maybe, but... brick, and, you know, a building. four corners, a couple of stories, big old front doors. it's no Winchester House, BUT. it has just enough staircases, in just enough slightly unexpected places, in just enough nonstandard sizes and directions, to make me want to spend the rest of my life walking around in it. this building is cool enough for me to major in sociology even if i wasn't interested in the subject. i wonder if i ask them if i can see the blueprints if they would call the police. it's that fun. if i ever have the opportunity to build my own house, it'd have staircases in the same vein as this building. the hallways are tiny (except for when they're huge), and when you make three righthand turns in quick sucession and open the door you're faced with, you're totally surprised to see a staircase there. how did they fit it in such a small space? i thought i was already on the top floor? and why is there another staircase directly across the tiny hall? truly great. total lack of respect for regularity, symmetry, and general laws of physics. i think most architects would agree that whoever designed this building should be shot, but i hope i can talk to him before that, so he can design my house.