Friday, December 10, 2004
As the glowing green numbers continue to count down to 6:30...
I'm having trouble remembering what I did yesterday...typical college student, no? Seriously though, I'm very tired, and I'm pretty sure that everything I did yesterday was the fill-the-empty-time kind of stuff...so that's probably why I don't really remember all of it. I do remember not being bored though, so that was nice. I guess I'll just get started with what I do remember.
I slept in until about 10:30 after having stayed up the night before writing in my blog. It was a nice thing to do, although the consequences of it would be later felt...but I'll get to that. I got up and decided to go to the gym, but to run rather than to lift weights. I haven't done any cardiovascular exercise in a while, so it seemed like a good thing to do on my day off. I ran about 2.25 miles in twenty minutes, which isn't too spectacular by any standard. My biggest accomplishment was jogging for the entire twenty minutes without having to slow to a walk to rest, which I usually end up having to do. I was quite proud. The biggest obstacle, though, wasn't that I was tired but instead was that my leg muscles got sore pretty fast (I did stretch beforehand...but I haven't ran in a while). But I made myself go for the whole time, so hooray.
A little later on I found myself at Sandwich Factory enjoying my usual roast beef and swiss on wheat, and I ran into Jacob (from the third floor) so I finished lunch with him. We parted ways in the music building, where he stopped to pick up his baritone and I picked my favorite baby grand to practice carols on.
Later that evening I ran into Amy while checking my mail down in the main lobby, and she suggested that we drive over to Atascadero for dinner at In-N-Out, as she hadn't been there since last summer. I was all for that, so that's just what we did. It was a good meal, except for the fries, which must have been the bottom of the batch because they were all the little scraps. Oh well...bad In-N-Out fries are still better than just about any other fry.
The people on my floor were in the mood for a board game, and who else would they go to to satisfy their craving? We played Taboo for about a half an hour. Amy called in the middle of it, and the two of us drove down to Campus Market to spend the remainder of our plus dollars on stuff (they have chocolates and honey and coffee mugs and whatnot). They were pretty much sold out of everything, but they had a good selection of poster prints left. I got two very nice ones for myself: a pair of paintings from some secluded beaches in Hawaii. They're on my wall above my bed now, and they coordinate very well with the greens and blues of my bedspread. I'm satisfied with that purchase.
I spent the rest of the night studying for my last final: physics. (I had also been studying at scattered intervals throughout the day.) I remembered everything from the first two midterms pretty well, and I had what I thought to be a good grasp on the new material. I went to bed without much worry.
What follows is a story about the joys of living in a dorm. I was in bed somewhere between 11:30 and midnight, which was later than I probably should have considering I had to be up by 6:30. Still, though, it was a moderately good time to go to bed. Unfortunately for me, the majority of the people on my floor didn't have finals on Friday, so they were already done with fall quarter classes. They decided to stay up all night. And not just really late "all night," but literally all night. I didn't fall asleep until about maybe 2:30. I woke up again sometime around 3:30, fell asleep around 4:30, then woke up again at 6, at which point is seemed pointless to try to sleep anymore so I just got up then. I was pissed. I mean, really pissed. All this week it has been relatively quite around here, but when people finished with their finals, they didn't give a flying rat's ass about anyone else who might have finals the next day at, say, 7 in the frickin' morning. Seriously, all night while I was awake I was thinking about how great it would be to go out there and beat a few of them down with an assortment of blunt objects. It wasn't so much that they were keeping me awake, but it was the fact that after they finished with finals, there was no longer any reason to stay quiet. I mean, who cares about other people, right? People are so self-centered, and it makes me so angry. They knew they were keeping everyone on the floor awake, too, because when I walked out the door to go to my final they asked if I was able to sleep at all. No, I replied. They apologized, which didn't really mean anything to me because if they were truly sorry at all they would have shut the heck up at some point. Another thing that irks me about the situation is that Katie (the RA) walked in while they were playing a movie at full blast in the common room, and she didn't do anything about it. Of all the times to shut down something like that, don't you think finals week, when we're supposedly under 24-hour quiet hours, is the time to do it? Sorry...it was a situation that just made me very angry.
But aside from my being exceptionally tired this morning, my final final went well. I knew most of the new stuff, and figured out what I didn't immediately recognize. The review section was very easy; every problem was verbatim off of a previous exam, with a quantity change or two here and there for variety. I may even have gotten everything right, although I did skip checking over my work at the end in favor of going home that much sooner to try and sleep some more. Being tired aside, I actually did enjoy the final. I have particularly enjoyed the waves and optics part of this course...it's almost sad to see it go. But life moves on.
I came home and slept for maybe an hour, but Kevin got up right about the time I got back into bed. He was working on a collage for Sarah, and the crumpling paper and spray-on adhesive kind of made sleeping difficult. So I got up. Strangely, I wasn't too tired...but hey, I'm not complaining. I walked down to the UU to get a smoothie from Lucy's Juice, and on the way back to the dorms I ran into Amy, who insisted that I help her with calculus before her final. We studied in the UU for about twenty minutes, which was when I had to go to take Julio to the SLO regional airport for his flight home. We had a heck of a time finding the street we were supposed to take to the airport, which was sad because both of us had been on the street before. Whatever...I was tired!
I later returned my textbooks to El Corral Bookstore (save for calculus and physics, which I will probably end up using again in a future course) and made back a handsome $56.25, which is pretty good considering I didn't sell the two largest/only hardcover books. Amy called again while I was in line there asking if I could take her somewhere to eat since all of the campus restaurants/cafes had closed. So I drove her to the downtown Baja Fresh and back.
A little later on, Rosalie, Steven, Heather, and I went out to celebrate Heather's birthday (which is coming up in a week or two). I invited Ben along because I found out today that Courtney broke up with him last night and I wanted to try to cheer him up/take his mind off of it. The three of us drove around looking for a place to eat, but being unable to find anything that we could eat fast enough we decided to eat dinner after the movie at 7 that we had already bought tickets for. We saw Ocean's Twelve, which I enjoyed very much although it wasn't as good as the first. (It's pretty much impossible to beat the first.) Ben decided to walk home at that point despite our insistence on driving him, but we figured he had a lot on his mind so we just let him go. Shortly after that we ran into a homeless man in a wheelchair, reeking of booze, who needed help adjusting his seat cushion. Steven and I helped him as best as we could, although we evidently didn't do a good enough job because the man shouted that we were "queers" as we left. But what can you do? The remaining four of us then went to the Denny's on Madonna Road, because when do you ever go to Denny's and not have a good time. I arrived home at about 11:30.
So tomorrow is going to be a day of highs and lows. High? Basketball game. Low? Six-hour drive. Rosalie forgot to get her french horn out of the music building, which was locked by the time we arrived home from Denny's. She's leaving early tomorrow morning, surely before the music building will be opened up again. So I offered to get her horn for her tomorrow after the basketball game and meet her at some mall in Irvine to drop it off. Theoretically it isn't too far out of my way, but we'll see. So yeah, that's what I'm looking forward to tomorrow.
As for right now, I'm going to bed. Kevin is staying over at Sarah's, and almost everyone else has already left for home. I feel like the only one in the entire tower, which is a welcome change from last night. So right, I'm off to catch up on sleep.
Cheers,
Josh
PS - Thank you to Joanna, whose birthday card arrived on Thursday in the form of a jigsaw puzzle.
mood: tired
music: the silence of the hall and ambient noises coming in through the open window...why would I pollute that with music?
location: dorm, for the last time for the next three weeks
Family Guy Quote-of-the-Day
[talking to the camera on an interview on "The Real Live Griffins"]
Peter: "You know, some people think that dandelions are weeds. But you know...uh...I always think, who the hell decided tulips were so great?"
I slept in until about 10:30 after having stayed up the night before writing in my blog. It was a nice thing to do, although the consequences of it would be later felt...but I'll get to that. I got up and decided to go to the gym, but to run rather than to lift weights. I haven't done any cardiovascular exercise in a while, so it seemed like a good thing to do on my day off. I ran about 2.25 miles in twenty minutes, which isn't too spectacular by any standard. My biggest accomplishment was jogging for the entire twenty minutes without having to slow to a walk to rest, which I usually end up having to do. I was quite proud. The biggest obstacle, though, wasn't that I was tired but instead was that my leg muscles got sore pretty fast (I did stretch beforehand...but I haven't ran in a while). But I made myself go for the whole time, so hooray.
A little later on I found myself at Sandwich Factory enjoying my usual roast beef and swiss on wheat, and I ran into Jacob (from the third floor) so I finished lunch with him. We parted ways in the music building, where he stopped to pick up his baritone and I picked my favorite baby grand to practice carols on.
Later that evening I ran into Amy while checking my mail down in the main lobby, and she suggested that we drive over to Atascadero for dinner at In-N-Out, as she hadn't been there since last summer. I was all for that, so that's just what we did. It was a good meal, except for the fries, which must have been the bottom of the batch because they were all the little scraps. Oh well...bad In-N-Out fries are still better than just about any other fry.
The people on my floor were in the mood for a board game, and who else would they go to to satisfy their craving? We played Taboo for about a half an hour. Amy called in the middle of it, and the two of us drove down to Campus Market to spend the remainder of our plus dollars on stuff (they have chocolates and honey and coffee mugs and whatnot). They were pretty much sold out of everything, but they had a good selection of poster prints left. I got two very nice ones for myself: a pair of paintings from some secluded beaches in Hawaii. They're on my wall above my bed now, and they coordinate very well with the greens and blues of my bedspread. I'm satisfied with that purchase.
I spent the rest of the night studying for my last final: physics. (I had also been studying at scattered intervals throughout the day.) I remembered everything from the first two midterms pretty well, and I had what I thought to be a good grasp on the new material. I went to bed without much worry.
What follows is a story about the joys of living in a dorm. I was in bed somewhere between 11:30 and midnight, which was later than I probably should have considering I had to be up by 6:30. Still, though, it was a moderately good time to go to bed. Unfortunately for me, the majority of the people on my floor didn't have finals on Friday, so they were already done with fall quarter classes. They decided to stay up all night. And not just really late "all night," but literally all night. I didn't fall asleep until about maybe 2:30. I woke up again sometime around 3:30, fell asleep around 4:30, then woke up again at 6, at which point is seemed pointless to try to sleep anymore so I just got up then. I was pissed. I mean, really pissed. All this week it has been relatively quite around here, but when people finished with their finals, they didn't give a flying rat's ass about anyone else who might have finals the next day at, say, 7 in the frickin' morning. Seriously, all night while I was awake I was thinking about how great it would be to go out there and beat a few of them down with an assortment of blunt objects. It wasn't so much that they were keeping me awake, but it was the fact that after they finished with finals, there was no longer any reason to stay quiet. I mean, who cares about other people, right? People are so self-centered, and it makes me so angry. They knew they were keeping everyone on the floor awake, too, because when I walked out the door to go to my final they asked if I was able to sleep at all. No, I replied. They apologized, which didn't really mean anything to me because if they were truly sorry at all they would have shut the heck up at some point. Another thing that irks me about the situation is that Katie (the RA) walked in while they were playing a movie at full blast in the common room, and she didn't do anything about it. Of all the times to shut down something like that, don't you think finals week, when we're supposedly under 24-hour quiet hours, is the time to do it? Sorry...it was a situation that just made me very angry.
But aside from my being exceptionally tired this morning, my final final went well. I knew most of the new stuff, and figured out what I didn't immediately recognize. The review section was very easy; every problem was verbatim off of a previous exam, with a quantity change or two here and there for variety. I may even have gotten everything right, although I did skip checking over my work at the end in favor of going home that much sooner to try and sleep some more. Being tired aside, I actually did enjoy the final. I have particularly enjoyed the waves and optics part of this course...it's almost sad to see it go. But life moves on.
I came home and slept for maybe an hour, but Kevin got up right about the time I got back into bed. He was working on a collage for Sarah, and the crumpling paper and spray-on adhesive kind of made sleeping difficult. So I got up. Strangely, I wasn't too tired...but hey, I'm not complaining. I walked down to the UU to get a smoothie from Lucy's Juice, and on the way back to the dorms I ran into Amy, who insisted that I help her with calculus before her final. We studied in the UU for about twenty minutes, which was when I had to go to take Julio to the SLO regional airport for his flight home. We had a heck of a time finding the street we were supposed to take to the airport, which was sad because both of us had been on the street before. Whatever...I was tired!
I later returned my textbooks to El Corral Bookstore (save for calculus and physics, which I will probably end up using again in a future course) and made back a handsome $56.25, which is pretty good considering I didn't sell the two largest/only hardcover books. Amy called again while I was in line there asking if I could take her somewhere to eat since all of the campus restaurants/cafes had closed. So I drove her to the downtown Baja Fresh and back.
A little later on, Rosalie, Steven, Heather, and I went out to celebrate Heather's birthday (which is coming up in a week or two). I invited Ben along because I found out today that Courtney broke up with him last night and I wanted to try to cheer him up/take his mind off of it. The three of us drove around looking for a place to eat, but being unable to find anything that we could eat fast enough we decided to eat dinner after the movie at 7 that we had already bought tickets for. We saw Ocean's Twelve, which I enjoyed very much although it wasn't as good as the first. (It's pretty much impossible to beat the first.) Ben decided to walk home at that point despite our insistence on driving him, but we figured he had a lot on his mind so we just let him go. Shortly after that we ran into a homeless man in a wheelchair, reeking of booze, who needed help adjusting his seat cushion. Steven and I helped him as best as we could, although we evidently didn't do a good enough job because the man shouted that we were "queers" as we left. But what can you do? The remaining four of us then went to the Denny's on Madonna Road, because when do you ever go to Denny's and not have a good time. I arrived home at about 11:30.
So tomorrow is going to be a day of highs and lows. High? Basketball game. Low? Six-hour drive. Rosalie forgot to get her french horn out of the music building, which was locked by the time we arrived home from Denny's. She's leaving early tomorrow morning, surely before the music building will be opened up again. So I offered to get her horn for her tomorrow after the basketball game and meet her at some mall in Irvine to drop it off. Theoretically it isn't too far out of my way, but we'll see. So yeah, that's what I'm looking forward to tomorrow.
As for right now, I'm going to bed. Kevin is staying over at Sarah's, and almost everyone else has already left for home. I feel like the only one in the entire tower, which is a welcome change from last night. So right, I'm off to catch up on sleep.
Cheers,
Josh
PS - Thank you to Joanna, whose birthday card arrived on Thursday in the form of a jigsaw puzzle.
mood: tired
music: the silence of the hall and ambient noises coming in through the open window...why would I pollute that with music?
location: dorm, for the last time for the next three weeks
Family Guy Quote-of-the-Day
[talking to the camera on an interview on "The Real Live Griffins"]
Peter: "You know, some people think that dandelions are weeds. But you know...uh...I always think, who the hell decided tulips were so great?"
