Busy Weekends

Friday was weird. First off, it was the third double run of the week and I had to start running before 7 so I would have time to get to my 8 am because I had a midterm (what?) that class and it was sort of important that I was on time for it. Just a little bit.

The test is all multiple choice, which is sometimes good but sometimes very, very bad. As soon as we start the test, I sort of fly through all 60 questions and check them all in around 25 minutes. All I can think while
I'm leaving is that the test went either really, really well or horribly. There is no middle ground here.

So now I get to spend all weekend freaking out and shitting my diaper patiently waiting for my professor to either post the grade of to get it back in class, hopefully on Monday.

Unfortunately, there isn't much you can do between classes in 35 minutes. I ended up sitting on a bench by my next class, listening to music and checking my email through my iPod. And drinking coffee, because it hadn't frozen like it usually does by the time I get to my second class.

I was going to ask my teacher questions about our project, but we didn't have our teacher that day. We had a sub. I didn't even know you could have subs in college. Is this a thing? Can they even do that?

Basically all that happened there was that I took a quiz and got out 30 minutes early, and got to sit in the basement of the building as I waited for my calculus class to happen. It was not really all that awesome. Not awesome at all.

The rest of my classes were boring, and I spent my time between my last class and my second run desperately hoping my anthropology professor would upload our test results. (It didn't happen.) Around three I went on a six mile run with my roommate, and I pretty much spent the rest of my night catching up on Castle a bit. Which reminds me; I'll probably be having posts about the TV shows I watch (aka crime shows) soon. Because the people I usually geek out freak out with are now at different colleges, and I need an outlet for this before I start to scare people.

Today I went with my sister Eileen to the bank, because she accidentally deposited around $200 into my account instead of her own and she needed me to switch it back. I ended up staying over at her house for most of the day, working on my computer science project (which I may or may not be doing correctly. I have absolutely no idea right now.) and eating lunch.

Since the majority of the team was away for a meet, everyone else who stayed was on their own for the long run today. I ended up running form my sister's apartment and down to this park that's about 3-ish miles away and doing some loops around there until I ran 11 miles and my sister picked me up. It wasn't that bad, but my legs were still pretty dead from the 400 workout a couple days ago.

As my sister dropped me off, I stole back my camera. But I should have checked it before she left, because while I do have my camera, I don't have my memory card.

Well played.

Tomorrow my sister Meagan and my parents are coming to visit from home and we're all going to Art Prize! Which is cool because I was planning on going this weekend, but it never really happened. So I'll definitely be looking forward to tomorrow :)

Quesadilla Party

Today wasn't very exciting. But I'll try to make it sound like it was exciting, for anybody who feels the need to read this.

Lab was pretty awesome today. The lab assignment was basically doing two programming warm ups, and then five exercises from this website she had. While my partner and I did the warm ups together, we decided it would be more efficient to split the exercises, in part because he had a test and because I wanted food. I did somewhere between three and four of those exercises by myself! Which is good, because our new project is based off of the knowledge used in this lab, so maybe I can get through this lab with my grade untouched. Maybe.

At least I got my Einstein's breakfast. And by that, I mostly mean that I got coffee. But it also means I got a bagel, so yeah I guess it was breakfast.

Calculus is the last class of my Thursdays, which is always nice. Fun fact: I worked for eight and a half hours on a calculus project yesterday. It was the most productive I've ever been in my entire life. Ever.

So I was actually kind of excited to go to Calculus, because I had read ahead in the book, and I had five problems to turn in for feedback. There I am, sipping at my coffee, when my professor walks in with an entire pot of coffee. And entire pot of coffee he intends to share with the entire class. It was sort of awesome but also really sad because I already had my own coffee that I had paid for. I spent most of the class trying to decide if I should grab a cup anyways.

Once I got home I tried to focus on studying for my anthropology exam, but somehow I started searching coffee on Google. And then I was googling world's strongest coffee. And then I was ordering Death Wish Coffee. There are skull and crossbones on the website, and basically the promise to never need sleep ever again (sleep is for the weak). My thoughts were basically "This sounds like a good life choice. Let me go get my credit card." So I may die from overdosing on caffeine, because this has 200% more caffeine than normal  coffee and apparently makes Starbucks coffee look like sissy coffee, which already makes me sort of jittery and kind of crazy. This may be the best idea I've ever had.

Practice was two sets of eight 400s, but there were only four of us doing them because most of the other freshmen are injured and all the upperclassmen are travelling to a meet soon, so they're not working out. Our first set was on the turf/grass, which was weird because I've never done 400 repeats on anything other than a track. The pace was sort of all over the place at first (the first was like an 82 and the second around 95... oops) but the rest in that set were right at 90 like our coach wanted, so that was good. After that we moved onto the track, and ran something like 87, 87, 86, 85, 85, 81, 81, 76 or something like that. Overall a great workout!

Basically as soon as I got home my sister Eileen called and took both my roommate and I grocery shopping, which I was in desperate need of since I ran out of food around two days ago and have been scraping the few things I did have into meals. (Anything and everything is better than Fresh, usually.) Grocery shopping sort of escalated quickly, and my roommate and I decided to make quesadillas for dinner!

Usually I have just cheese quesadillas, but I really liked these! They had mexican shredded cheese, chicken, orange pepper, and black beans. There was also mexican rice and tortilla chips with salsa. I helped by cleaning the dishes in the sink to make room and dicing the pepper. I can't be trusted with stoves.

Everything hit me all at once right after this. The workout, the food, lack of sleep. This is about the time I started crawling around the floor and reading my anthropology notes out loud in an obnoxious british accent while highlighting (also done on the floor, but this time sort of laying there, flopped over).

I also somehow texted my best friend's roommate and convinced her to have a taco party with me.

I need sleep. And coffee. Mostly coffee.

SMASHING

This is the new background of my computer. I love the internet. It enables me.

Why Are All My Classes So Weird?

Guess who's last class of the day of the day was cancelled? That's right; this kid's.

Really all my classes were sort of weird today. Anthropology was just a review day for the test on Friday, and I managed to stay concentrated on what she was saying, while writing it all down, drinking coffee, and eating breakfast. Also while somebody in the room next to us was de-fleshing an animal. At first, I sort of thought it was somebody's phone on vibrate going off while on something metal, except really old so  it was really rattling all over the place.

Nope, the teacher said it was somebody de-fleshing an animal. She also said that the room was about to smell really bad or really good, depending on what it was. I have no idea how de-fleshing an animal can smell good and I really don't want to, so I'm glad she ended up closing the door because of the distraction.

On another note, I'm pretty sure I'm almost ready for this test. Which is good, since it's in two days and all.

After this class I figured everything would be sort of normal/boring. That's how my computer science class started. Eventually, she decided to show us a practical example of the programming, and she goes online to show an exercise somebody made. Which is about cigar smoking, partying squirrels. Apparently, for a squirrel party to be successful during the week, each squirrel needs to smoke at leas 40 cigars. 70 on weekends. And all I can think about during this is how does a squirrel go about lighting a cigar? Where does a squirrel find that many cigars for that matter?

Of course, I end up doodling a cigar smoking squirrel, and then I add a bowler hat. And then I add an eye patch. I'm looking at this and I'm thinking to myself, this is a pirate-gangster squirrel. That smokes cigars. The longer I stare at it, though, the more it begins to remind me of something. It's squirrel Nick Fury. The longer I stare at it after that, the more it begins to look like squirrel Mad-Eye Moody.

Harry Potter and the Order of the Smoking Squirrel

Think I need psychiatric help of some kind.

Calculus wasn't exactly weird. The first 30 minutes of class was spent working on our test. The only problems with this test was  there were only two problems on them. The first had four or five sub-sections, and the second one had three or four, but still. That's not a lot room for error.

The first question is about limits, which I think I did alright on because I'm pretty sure I understand limits. The second part of the test was about derivatives.

I think I spent about five minutes staring at the test thinking to myself, "What the hell is a derivative." It was sort of terrifying. So I began to panic think. Right when I literally was about to give up, I realized that the derivative of a linear equation is the rate of change. I almost danced. Almost.

I'm still not entirely sure I explained everything clearly, but I'm pretty sure I didn't fail. I can live with that.

Before I go, I'd just like to say I got 100% on my first computer science project. That is all.


...I may or not be screaming and dancing around my house.

Mistakes and Shenanigans

Good morning, sunshine.

Obviously I can't handle waking up at 6 am for morning lift. It took me about 5 minutes after I woke up to realize that I had practice, and that I wasn't going to class. This was really confusing to me, and I spent a lot of time stumbling around my room.

The picture was actually taken after morning practice, sometime before 8 am. I'm clearly still riding the struggle bus though.

For some reason today I thought it was a good idea to try to download spotify onto my iPod. Do you want to know how this ends? A song-less, app-less, iPod. Yes, this happened. Yes, I hate everything right now. I wish iTunes would have warned me that my iPod and the app had different software before I deleted everything. You think that would be a built in precaution. Excuse me while I go cry in a corner.

Later on facebook, my three roommates and I have a group where we basically post weird pictures of people we know/don't know and basically just comment. While one of my roommates was posting a series of really attractive guys I compiled this:

Yes, that is a collage of Nicolas Cage. No, I am not ashamed. My favorite is the top right corner; it's my laptop's background.

I can never get back the time I used to make this.

School Time Panic

I'd like to say my classes were incredibly boring. For normal people, they probably were normal. I may have been the closest I've ever been to a melt down today. It started in my Introduction to Cultural Anthropology class, which is an 8 am so I should be having a melt down solely based on that.

I get to class and wait for class to start, listening to my sister's my iPod while drinking my coffee and I sort of start to get this bad feeling. Like I've forgotten something really important. That was quite possibly one of those things I'm not supposed to forget. Before I can pull out my planner and check, the teacher walks in a starts talking about the midterm we're having this Friday.

This is when my almost-melt down begins.

Oh dear God. I'd forgotten to check the syllabus for the test. Usually it's okay if you sort of mess up on one test in a class, because you'll have more and also have homework to compensate. Not so in this case. This class has exactly three grades: the midterm, the final, and an essay.

Eventually I talk myself out of my mental screaming and begin to write down what the teacher says is going to be on the exam. Here is where I realize I have to read and take notes on six chapters, and read several articles to make sure I don't fail this test.

I start screaming in my head again.

It's a good thing that the teacher's lectures are all about the readings from the book, otherwise it would have been real screaming. And possibly crying, too. So I know the majority of the material, but now I just have to take notes to be thorough. I can handle that.

Class is, for once, let out early so I don't have to speed walk to my next class, like I usually do. They slower walk sucked the heat out of my coffee, though, and that was really depressing. But at least I'm not almost late, like I am every other day of Computer Science.

Now, I just turned in my last project and did a lab. I was happy to have the weekend stress free. I think I would have liked to have this news before the weekend.

I have project number two due next week on Thursday (October 4), and the teacher claims this one's a lot harder than the last projects. Which I already had problems with. When she's going over the project, it doesn't sound too bad. Want to know when it does sound bad? When you're back at your apartment, shot up with caffeine and adrenaline, and can't even begin  to comprehend what you're reading. I'm going to be having a lot of questions next time we have class.

My Calculus class, while completely stressful and panic inducing, was probably one of my best classes of the day. I think I've mentioned it in one of my previous posts, about this portfolio I was waiting to get back. The portfolio that's 60% of my grade and is worth 150 points. And is my only grade. That came back today.

149/150 is 99%. Did you know that? Because I know that. Because that was my grade. I think I may have screamed. I know I slammed my portfolio onto my desk and flipped my arms up. The only point I lost was because of in-class participation. I can handle that.

I spent most of that class period just being happy, and understanding derivatives vaguely. I could also feel my adrenaline from panicking over the portfolio mixing with the caffeine from my coffee.

My last class after that is my Speech class. Usually, I sort of like this class, even though I'm a terrible speaker and all I want to do is curl up and die whenever I talk in front of large groups of people. The teacher's nice, she lets us out early a lot, and is really straight to the point. Unfortunately, I had to give a speech today.

It was a speech about a speech, and my caffeine-adrenaline laced self was not about to slow down for this.

I basically sped my way through the speech, and afterwards, I was sure I had missed the minimum time (1 minute 30 seconds, the maximum time being 2 minutes). But I didn't care too much by that point, because I had finished my speech, and I was basically done with classes. It was only as we were filing to get out of class that I realized that I was allowed to check my time with the timer.

Never have I been so glad to be tall. I basically got up on my tip toes and looked over everybody's shoulders.

It was exactly 1 minute and 30 seconds.

I may or may not have strutted out of the room. And out of the building. And all the way home.

This is all became too much for me. I literally bounced into the house, into the kitchen chair at the kitchen table, and danced to spotify in my chair for an hour. It was more of flailing and swaying frantically.

But that's how I dance all the time so...

I sort of stumbled my way through part of my project for a half an hour, before giving up. I made myself some lunch, and left for practice not that long afterwards.

Today was color day at practice! It's exactly what it sounds like; you dress all in one color and run like that. I was yellow (even my socks matched). My right foot sort of hurt during this, but I'm pretty sure that's because I wore my converse to class today, and the lack of arch just bothered my foot. So I made sure to do a little bit extra barefoot jogging at the end of my run.

I accidentally left my phone back at the apartment, though, so I missed my oldest sister's calls and text that she had my bike. So she had to come drop it off at my apartment. Oops! Oh well, I got to see my sister.

The rest of my night was lots of study tables (3 hours of study tables, to be exact) and anthropology notes.

Fun fact though, I found both my sister's blogs! Originally, the idea was for all of us to make blogs so we could see what each other were doing since we can't talk all the time or we'd kill each other because we're all sort of busy.

Oldest -- runeatnurse.blogspot.com/
Middle -- runningon-coffee.blogspot.com

Well, good night to everybody then! Or should I say good morning?

Weekends Full of Procrastination

ROHO wasn't the horrible, deadly workout I thought it was going to be. Basically the workout was 1600 meters at somewhere between tempo and race pace, a 2400 meter (1.5 miles) tempo, back on the track for a 1200 tempo/race, 2400 of tempo, and then an 800 meter tempo/race. It sounds like all different kinds of awful, but it turned out alright. So that means that ROHO didn't murder me, which I thought it was going to do. Unfortunately, my lower back/upper butt started to hurt during this. I haven't really told my coach, but I mentioned it in my running to win and he said he was reading it today, so he should be seeing it soon-ish.

I like food. In fact, I like food a lot. There are some days when I just never stop eating (like today, damn long runs). A lot of my friends liken me to a black hole. So you'd think I'd be able to handle myself during an eating contest, right?

Not as well as I'd like, I've learned.

After the ROHO workout, the team went to Olive Garden and a few people decided to have an eating contest. Apparently the record for the never-ending pasta bowl challenge from the team was 7.5 bowls, and 8 breadsticks. You have to eat one initial breadstick, and then one breadstick for each bowl to count. The sauce has to be different each time, also.

So I'm in this eating contest with only two other girls, and I pretty much destroy the first bowl because I'm so hungry, and the service was slow so we had to wait forever to get seated and served. Then the second bowl comes out, and I feel kind of satisfied, but most still really hungry. So I get a third bowl.

This just so happens to be where my stomach remembers it hasn't held anything for over 8 hours, and that sauce is really rich and not very good at all.

In short, I threw up in the middle of Olive Garden and pretended like nothing happened.

It wasn't a lot of vomit, and I have my doubts on if that was actually vomit and not just a burp that rocketed some food that had been stuck in my throat/mouth.

Anyways, technically got second place with only 2.5 bowls and 4 or 5 breadsticks, but throwing up inside the restaurant is against the rules so I should actually have been disqualified.

But whatever, I'm over it.

Really.

Anyways, that all happened on Friday. Saturday, in comparison was a lot quieter and a lot more boring.

I slept in, which is sort of the first since school started because every day I don't have and 8 am class, I have morning lift, Sundays are long run days, and I've had some team thing on every Saturday (meets, car wash, etc.), so I've been a bit lacking on the sleep department. The caffeine and coffee industries, however, have loved me.

A lot of Saturday was awkward, since one of my roommate's (I have three roommates) boyfriend had come up to spend the weekend, and we all knew they had been fighting recently, but didn't know if they had made up yet. (Spoiler alert: they had.)

Eventually they left though, and the rest of my roommates and I decided to go to the football game. Roommate 1 had invited a friend of her's and their roommates/friends to come with us and it was awkward.

So very, very awkward.

Eventually we get to the stadium, after standing around awkwardly silent at some sort tailgate thing that wasn't even a decent tailgate for about 15 minutes. But we're about 2 hours early, it's already freezing, and some of the guys we were with decided that we had to sit behind the field goal that had no protective net behind it.

Roommate B and I left a half an hour later, when the kicker started warming up and B got hit in the ribs with a football.

As we were warming up back at our house, B and I decided to go over the prank idea that our house has planned. One of our ideas (laxatives crushed up and hidden in food) is apparently lethal. So that's not happening. Instead, we decide to check if the guys actually lock their doors to make sure we can actually get into their house when we need to.

Fortunately for us, they leave their back door unlocked. So B and I walk around the down stairs of their house a bit, before we decide to head back. Of course, as we start to head for the door, we can see one of the boys walking towards their backdoor, with their girlfriend.

B and I start sprinting across the house, rip open the front door, and just keep on running in a dead out sprint. They weren't really paying attention as they walked over, so we think they didn't see us. But screaming to each other as we ran back probably didn't help us very much.

Oops.

Later, Roommate C and her boyfriend come back, and this is where I begin to figure they've made up because he makes them/all of us dinner. Which was delicious, even if it did involve pasta (Fettuccine Alfredo) I shouldn't probably be eating after the Olive Garden incident.

Ah, well. Haters gonna hate, and all of that.

Sunday mornings sort of really suck, because it's the weekend so I should rightfully be sleeping in, but instead I'm getting up a little bit before 7 am so I can go long run. It's also one of the days I don't get coffee until the afternoon, and breakfast consists of only a banana (so I don't get know for vomiting).

It's a really good thing that long runs are usually my favorite workouts, otherwise I'd be unbearable on Sundays. It doesn't hurt when the run goes by really fast, either. As in, 11 miles felt more like 5 miles. Weightlifting was not that nice to me.

What really made my Sunday, was that roommate C and her boyfriend made pancakes for all of us for breakfast/lunch. I had five. Seven if you count the two I just ate as a snack as I wrote this. They're really delicious.

So now I'm just sitting here as I procrastinate.

Excuse me while I dose myself with caffeine and go get sucked into Amazon.

I'm a Hobbit Today

Thursday mornings include morning practice, so guess who got up before 6 this morning? At least I got breakfast in before I had to leave, or I wouldn't have made it through my 8 am computer science lab.

Lab was interesting, in that I had to print off my project before class started and practice seemed like it was going to end late. I swear I had a small heart attack. The printer in the lab was only a black and white printer though, so my picture printed off gray-scale. I really hope it doesn't affect my grade, because I actually tried hard on that, and my grade is switching between and A and an A- right now.

Final design of my business card project

Please excuse the lamest logo ever. I literally just sort of threw that together, because I didn't fully comprehend making graphics on BlueJ (the program I use), and I also suck at designing logos. Otherwise, I think it turned out sort of alright. Adding a picture and changing the font/font size was part of the challenge portion of the project (I can see why, that was annoyingly difficult for me), and it was worth 20 out of 100 points. It took me about 3 to 4 days to get those to work, and I'm still not sure I did all the requirements for the font portion.

Ah, well. It's over now so all I can do is panic wait for my grade.

After being frustrated for about 45 minutes on the first part of the lab, everything went pretty easy and I was starving. And extremely lacking in the coffee department. Good for me, there's an Einstein Bros Bagels right next to my 10 am (calculus) where I got my second breakfast. There's this touch screen thing there where you're supposed to place your order, but the girl in front of me broke it without me knowing. So I stood at this thing, holding up the line, and jabbing the screen with my finger, sort of looking over my shoulder while going "uhhhhhhhhh...." Eventually, somebody felt bad for me and told me just to go up to the counter to order. I mean, I got my bagel and pumpkin latte (which were both delicious, but coffee will always hold a special place in my heart), but it was still really awkward.

Yummy :)

If I lost half my height, I'm pretty sure I could be a hobbit. I'd be actually really happy to be a hobbit, since they get to eat a lot. I wouldn't mind living in holes, or hills. Both are equally okay living places for me, as long as I get to have about twelve meals a day.

Anyways, I took my second breakfast with me to calculus, where I complained with the people around me about how we don't have our portfolios back yet, when we have a test on Monday. Every couple weeks in calculus, we turn in all the work we've been doing, including our notes, and get graded on our participation. It's worth 150 points per entry and is 60% of our grade. I may or may not have been panicking since I turned it in, a week ago. And we still don't have it.  I don't even really care if he gives me my portfolio, I just want my grade back. Because it's going to be my only grade in calculus and I'm freaking out.

I was all prepared to be super annoyed with my professor, but all of a sudden he starts talking about coffee. And about how he was thinking about bringing in a pot of coffee for the class every morning. And was that a good idea? YES IT IS A GOOD IDEA, PROFESSOR. MOST EXCELLENT IDEA.

So now I'm not even really made about not having my portfolio back. I just can't bring myself to be angry. This man is offering me free coffee, Monday through Friday, at 10 am. He could fail me, and I'm pretty sure I still couldn't be mad.

Speaking of coffee, I had about a fifteen minute conversation about coffee with a guy on the team while waiting in line to order a sandwich at the cafeteria. I couldn't really remember his name, but I still was able to be social! See what coffee does? It brings people together.

Later today at practice, one of the freshman boys (one of the ones doing yoga in my house last night) wore this 6XL tshirt to practice, and ran the entire run in it. At one point, he sort of curled up inside of it. That is how big the shirt was. He looked like a little kid who was sleeping in their parents old tshrit.

(Also at practice my roommates and I got to hear about our neighbor's/teammate's date from the day before. The date was perfect, and the guy was perfect, and now I am slightly bitter about my life haha).

Something that was great today was that, while one of my roommates was cooking her dinner, while not wearing pants, and two guys from the team walk in through our back door. I think we handled it pretty well. It was kind of weird when one of the guys admitted he wasn't wearing pants either, though.

Well, I have a ROHO workout tomorrow, and I may or may not die during it, so I'm going to go eat my second dinner and cry myself to sleep now.

PS Also there's a scooter on my roof now, with all the decomposing bananas. Boys need to stop throwing things I can't reach up there.

Coffee Monsters and Other Really, Really Good Life Choices

I went to Java City over in one of your cafeteria's with one of my roommates today in the afternoon, and got a large coffee. Which probably wasn't the best idea, because the caffeine hit me around 8 pm. It also made this seem like a good idea:

You can't really tell, but it has legs made of paperclips that only really work if I pin them down with my iPod or something. But yeah, this is a Coffee Monster. This is what college and caffeine do to you. I sort of want to make an army of these.

On a completely different note, about fifteen minutes ago, some of the guys from the cross country team walked into the house/dorm, plugged their laptop into our TV, and started doing yoga. They don't say anything if we ask them what they're doing, but they sort of whisper to each other about the different yoga moves.

I don't understand. I just can't even understand right now.

I Make Good Life Choices. Really. I Swear.

I'm in the kitchen of my apartment right now, working on my computer science class project, which is due tomorrow. All I have to do, is write a program to make a fake business card, which includes my name, a logo, fake information, a photo, and different fonts.

 I've actually been surprisingly good about this, and haven't left it to the last second. In fact, I got most of the basics done on Saturday, and added a few more things on Sunday and Monday. It was pretty easy for the most part, a few problems (especially with adding the picture), but nothing too bad.

And then the font decided to not function the way it's supposed to.

So now I'm in the kitchen of my apartment, eating red velvet cookies and trying not to cry.

Welcome to college, Amy.