seiberwing

Today has been mostly useless. I've been sitting on Kate's couch eating takeout, drinking K-cup coffee and watching a Grey's Anatomy marathon since about three. Yes, the medical drama. With people having romantic entanglements and dark secrets and deep ethical dilemmas. I feel like such a girl watching it but it's ridiculously addictive and with certain exceptions the characters are entertaining and likeable. And George O'Malley is the most adorable woobie ever, his life sucks but when he gets his few shining chances to be awesome he shines like the sun. We're about midway through the second season now, and I've apparently got about five more to go through. It's horrifically decadent but hey, I'm having fun.

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Also I submitted my thesis proposal draft. I present tomorrow. Science help me.

I haven't had the chance to sit down, relax and actually write an LJ entry in a very long time. Things have been..tumultuous. The word 'thesis' is still causing a Pavlovian panic response, although I like to think I'm doing a better job of repressing it than I was. At least I'm getting to do some work I like, just before the break I turned in a literature review on the sociopsychological effects of video games. Can't speak to quality, of course, my professor will have to be the judge of that, but it was kind of nice to actually research the matter.

I'm at alanahikarichan's house now for Thanksgiving break. It's the first chance I've had to really relax since the term started, or at least that's how it feels. Alana's family is very nice and amazingly geeky, and the food is really, really good. At some point I'll get on a plane and go back and there will be finals and labwork and being alone in my apartment but right now I'm going to pretend it doesn't exist. I have a girlfriend and spiced whipped cream. That will be reality right now.

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Also the first part of Transformers: Prime was meh. Arcee was badass but nothing else is grabbing me. We'll see how I feel when plot starts happening.

I think last night was the first night since Friday that I've slept through the night. It's been...a week.

Yesterday, my first day of class, was particularly harrowing. I woke up at 3am, went to sleep at 6:15am, woke up again at 8am...Interdisciplinary Social Psychology is at 9am. Yeah. It's a good class, professor's great, Pretentious Kilt Guy is in there but I can't imagine the professor will put up with his idiocy forever so that's a comfort, and I had a good talk with him about my potential thesis ideas after class.

(Ohgod my thesis--breathe, settle, it'll be fine.)

Cultural Psychology was also pretty good and I did my very noble best to stay awake through all of it because by that point in the day I was basically the walking dead. I made a few friends too, which should help keep me on my toes because I need all the support I can get.

Bought my books. Haven't done any readings yet, I'll do cultural and MAPSS (that would be the mandatory class everyone in our program takes) tomorrow. Laying everything out in neat little meetings and lines seems to help, if I try to think of it all at once I don't think I'll ever sleep again.

As does breathing.

And Google Calender to help me keep up with the massive piles of stuff I need to remember.

And kittens.

Did I mention my friend got a new kitten?

I am awesome. I am more awesome than you.

I don't care what you were doing Tuesday night, I was in Asheville listening to and getting hugged by and sharing a sundae at IHOP with Philip Zimbardo, quite possibly the most renowned psychologist currently living. There is nothing more awesome than this.

( Photographic proof of awesome beneath the cut. )

When I left Cambridge the city was practically begging me to stay. I got nice warm weather, a wonderful sendoff in the form of a fair with fireworks shot off right as we got to the top of the Big Wheel, and then I missed my plane because the bus got stuck in traffic.

Asheville, on the other hand, not only prompted me to leave as soon as possible with cold gray weather but apparently wanted me to actively stay out. The one day this year that the city gets a Winter Storm (well, by our standards--it's predicted to be about 5-10 inches) Watch is the day that I'm supposed to go up for commencement. Even if they hadn't canceled it we would have had to stay home, driving through the mountains in heavy snow would have been suicidal and Dad wouldn't have let us go. So now we're stuck here at home, where it's cold and icky and raining because we couldn't even get consolation snow here. Bleh.

On the other hand, Hannukah presents!

--From lonescorpion, a copy of Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks, a game I've been wanting for a while as well as gracing me with his presence and being helpful in general.
--From Granma, clothing funds. I've spent them on a new winter coat and a bare of bitchin' boots.
--From Mom and Dad, a new fedora (squee!), a little movie!Bee keychain, and...a copy of Spirit Tracks. We've agreed to exchange it for funds necessary to download Psychonauts for the PC, as I am doing right now.
--From David bugger all, but it's about what I expected. He seemed to really like the birthday present I got him, at least. Apparently David got me a movieverse Optimus Prime (in Jetfire armor, blech) keychain, he just forgot to give it to me.

(Also: For those to whom I am sending presents and cards, they'll probably get there a bit late--I'm not sure when I'll get them out and how fast they'll get there, especially the international ones. But they will get there!)

I have had crowning moment of awesome. And it was awesome.

I have a nice outfit now (Dana Buchman amethyst velvet jacket--serious snazzy, my mom picked it up at a second-hand store) and despite my general dislike of fashion I became rather fond of it when Mom gave it to me at Thanksgiving. I felt like dressing up today and wore it with my pretty-but-discreet corset underneath despite the fact that it's windy and freezing outside and really not much better inside the classrooms.

This was also my last day of Physics of Sound and Music with the epic Dr. Ruiz. Now, for most of class he's been rocking out on his keyboard as Ruizes are want to do and now he's getting into MIDIs and similar computer programs. It's five or ten minutes until class ends and he wants a volunteer. Someone who doesn't know much about music.

Of course my hand is up instantly.

He gestures for me to come on down (not that far, I'm in the second row). I try to take my big coat off before I go down, because it's bulky and ugly and I only wear it because the front of Robinson Auditorium gets really cold. However, velvet is fond of friction and instead of just sliding off my black down parka I accidentally remove my jacket as well. This lands me in an inadvertently dramatic moment of standing up, setting my shoulders, shedding everything down to my corset and striding down the steps to the computer podium.

Ruiz is excited about whatever he wants me to do, but then again he's excited about everything and he's been playing electric keyboard all lesson and is doubly hyped up. He does...something with the computer and announces I'm going to be the conductor for today, demonstrating this by pressing the H key repeatedly. I give it a few pokes and understand that the faster I press it, the faster the music goes, somewhat akin to a conductor waving his hands to keep the tempo going. I press and keep pressing.

And I find I'm conducting Les Toreadors from Carmen with my index finger.

I get into the rhythm after a few moments, Ruiz is waving his arms about and the music's going faster and faster and slower in the slow bits and then up to the big climax all perfectly and on the bloody dot the music ends EXACTLY at 3:00. The final second of the final minute of the final lecture of the final class. Class applause. Ruizflail. He put my name up as today's quiz question/answer quizzes basically being proof of attendance, since the answer's always obvious but you have to have been in class to know what the question was) and basically claimed to be 'blown away', although I'm sure most of it was just his natural glee at music.

I need to wear my corset more often.

Today I am, in all but officially, orally competent!

...not remotely what I meant. I did the Erikson presentation I've been spazzing about and while I doubt I did it in the fifteen minutes we were alloted the teacher didn't seem to care. Between me and the other girl presenting she said we'd "set the bar pretty high" for the rest of the class. Everyone else seemed to like it too when they went 'round and said what they liked about our presentation. I seemed to get points for not reading off any notes because I did actually practice some (and I knew the material because come on, Erikson's Stages of Psychosocial Development? That's kiddie stuff) and I managed to have eye contact and talk in a non-monotone manner.

So if Dr. L liked it that much I'm almost certainly cruising for an A, and with my oral competancy taken care of I've pretty much fulfilled the last of my necessities for graduation. So huzzah!

EDIT: And it's official now, so more huzzah!

I have the best Physics of Sound and Music teacher ever.



I shot this picture while he was describing a Star Trek episode in which Kirk and Spock are running away from the bad guys down a mountain when they get an idea to use their communicators to hit the resonance frequency of the mountain and cause an avalanche. Except there's no way that could have worked because the communicators use radio frequencies, but it might work if the communicators had some ultrasound function and they turned them all the way up. He's not sure if they do but he wanted to find a way of making it work.

I'm not sure if it's more or less awesome than him showing a clip of "Herbie Goes To Monte Carlo".

I just banged out a 3+ page essay on "Frankenstein", written in Romantic style, in the span of an hour and a half. Cool. ...now on to the other two. I really need to work on my timing.

Anyway, t'is my birthday today. I'm officially out of the teens, although drinking's still a year away. But still, is a milestone or whatever. ^_^

Kiss me down by the broken tree house
Swing me upon its hanging tire
Bring, bring, bring your flowered hat
We'll take the trail marked on your father's map --- excerpt from "Kiss Me" by Sixpence None The Richer.

Considering this song's sung by a woman, I'm starting to get shades of Sapphos here. Which in my books is actually a good thing as it makes the sweetness just...a touch more personal. Only I don't have a tree house.

It snowed quite prettily today and I went around taking photos of the gardens and of the snowstuffs people built (and yes, there was a snowpenis and if you are surprised you haven't been a teenager). I'll do a writeup once I get them all on photobucket.

Thing is, my computer's ethernet port's copped out. I've got plenty of wireless access in the library and student union, but none up in my room. Ideally I'll find a way to fix it, or at least bring our old desktop up to school to use while mine's in the shop (again).