celebrating

i'm done! i took a few minutes on the way to work to enjoy being alive and officially school-less. now i'm packing, packing, packing, getting ready to go home for a few weeks and ready to leave the dorms. exciting stuff, people!

tuesday morning

and so ends what could be the most unproductive night of my life. I attempted to study for my 8 am chemistry final. We'll see how that works out.

Hopefully I will have something interesting to say when I go home. I need some recharging in all aspects of leahland right now.

peace out.

today

is a pretty good day. For starters, this arrived in my little p.o. box:

There are several reasons why this is good:

1. Wired appears to have finally gotten their junk together regarding my subscription. I bought it in January, which apparently means I start getting issues in March. My March issue was waaay late, and I called and asked about it. All they could tell me was to sit tight (of course, I don't really know what else I expected.) So I did, and luckily, it showed up at the end of March. April's issue never showed at all. I called, and they added a month onto the end of my subscription. My hopes for May were not high. But look! Here it is, on time AND
   
2. with Hiro on the cover! If you're not familiar with the tv show Heroes, I recommend you familiarize yourself as soon as possible. Created by the same dude who did Lost, Tim Kring, it's got the same sort of crazy, interconnected plot lines that Lost does, but without all the bazillions of bizarro questions that never get answered. With Lost, I got tired of never finding any answers. Heroes always answers just enough to make me dying for next Monday to rapidly approach. Mondays at 9 on NBC. Or you can catch back episodes online at nbc.com. (I sound like I've been paid. I haven't, I swear!) It is so worth your time. But you probably do have to watch some back story to know what is going on. Especially last night's episode. Let's just say it's a good thing that (as far as we know) parallel universes are only a sci-fi plotline because if they were real I'd just sit in my room in a perpetual state of confusion. Anyway...
   
3. Not only is my favorite Japanese time traveler on the cover, but so is Ahnold. Over Easter weekend I was introduced to the amazingness that is Arnold Schwarzenegger. Kindergarten Cop, Predator, and Total Recall. All I have to say is, "Get to the choppa!" Well, that's not really all I have to say. I am now a huge Arnold fan. I don't know if that's weird or not. I don't really care. Not only am I now a huge fan of his movies, but seriously I think he rocks as California governor. I wish he could run for president. I'm in favor of changing the rules to say only US citizens and Austrian bodybuilders who once played a killer robot in not one, not two, but three pieces of cinematic treasure can run for president. In fact, I think I'll write my Congressman about that today.

Speaking of California, did you see the collapsed freeway? And how no one died? And only one person - the driver - was slightly injured? That's just insane. Crazzzy.

Other good things that have happened recently:

• I got a raise! I now make an extra 25 cents an hour, baby. Which works out too about...20 extra bucks a month. Oh yeah.
• My battleship program that I slaved and cried over ended up not doing too shabbily in the tournament! I placed 13th out of 43, which as far as I'm concerned, is something to celebrate!
  
• Chris is borrowing Lauren's GameCube now that she has a Wii and doesn't need a GameCube. That is stellar news because I love GameCube. On the flipside of all of this:

All I want to do now is sit and read my magazine and play Super Mario. But this is Dead Week. I think for the first time I actually understand the true meaning of this. When I was taking euphonium lessons, Dead Week was good news because it was Jury Week. After juries, nothing really big happens. A couple easy finals, maybe. Now, Dead Week is when I cram and read and study and do all sorts of academic things and try to last without actually becoming dead through next week when I prove that I learned something over the last four months. In some cases, easier said than done.

So unfortunately, the GameCube waits for me at Chris's apartment until I take what will be well-deserved brain break on Saturday. The magazine stares at me from my desk, waiting for me to find a few minutes here and there to squeeze in an article or two. And I go to memorize a speech in German, relearn chapters 1 and 2 of my chemistry textbook, and read about von Neumann computer architecture.

peace out homes.

the one where she starts to pull her hair out

It's going to be a long three weeks. Finals might kill me this year. Actually, if I manage to make it to finals, that will be the easy part. It's the two weeks leading up to finals that will end me.

even though it's late,

and I'm stressed, I feel an excited determination about school that I haven't felt in a long time. I'm working on a project for computer science - a "Paddleship" game that will play my classmates' games in an AI tournament for a free 100 on the final. It is hard and I am stuck and I have no idea what to do next, but I'm having fun. I might be having a little more fun if I actually knew what I was doing (ha), but this feeling of "I WILL find something that works even if it kills me" is great. Even better is when I have a mini-lightbulb moment and solve a problem: for a short second, I feel like the most brilliant person in the world. Unstoppable. Then I realize that my solution only illuminated seventeen more problems I still have to work out, and I'm back to this-is-going-to-kill-me-but-I'm-having-fun-anyway.

I'd choose this kind of crazy frustration over "Vincent Persichetti and the Development of the 20th Century Wind Band" or "The Development of Meideval Polyphony and its Effect on Later Music" anyday. You can quote me on that.

and also, we don't need it.

"That seems redundant and unnecessary."

So said a student in my calculus class. He was complaining about having to write lim repeatedly in an equation. I don't blame him. I could really have used those two seconds to do something worthwhile.

Happy day! It's 70 and sunny here. Gorgeous. :)

christmas decorations :)

maggie and i had some excellent little kid fun the other day putting together foam christmas decorations for our room. i bought these kits for five bucks each at michael's almost a month ago and we were just waiting for the right day to do this. last weekend, we had just the day.

it was quite an ordeal. the packaging on these was deceptive: it made these seem like they were going to pieces of cake to put together. maybe if you were betty crocker! we ended up feeling pretty stupid but having a lot of fun. and we got some rockin' decorations for our dresser to boot!

school is finally starting to wind down now. all i have left to do is study, study, study. i finally finished that research paper (AND got an a on it, thank you very much) and did my jury on monday. two big stresses out of the way. now it's just a few little tests (ha) and i'll be home! i can't wait to chill out with my family and my dog and relax. a lot.

happy december, everyone!

best boyfriend ever.

my list of reasons could go on for a while, but here's the one on my mind right now as i sit here at half past midnight working on a research paper:


he lives ten minutes away and he left the warm comfiness of his apartment on this very yucky day (night?) to bring me a gigantic chai latte. that i didn't even ask for. twenty minutes and five bucks just for me. :) he totally rocks.

midterms and research papers

that's all i'm doing right now. i mean between going to class and work and concerts and lessons and having a life and...i can't wait for thanksgiving break.