The flashing lights have got a hold on me.

Well I feel like a slacker. Or actually, no I don't. I feel productive. But my productivity is making me not very blog-ish. Sad. But I'm still alive! And planning on doing math soon to figure out what all of the new scores for all the restaurants we've rated are. And then we'll start up burger-rating adventures again. Mmm. I miss those...

But classes are going well!

I've got psychopharmacology, which is really interesting. Drugs are still awesome. I have to read up on the drug GHB (date rape drug) for a presentation and paper. If anyone has ideas for sources, that'd be fantastic.

I used to have intro to philosophy, but the teacher seemed to have one goal for the semester: to piss all of us off. Super lame. So I dropped it and picked up intro to music, which will fulfill the same gen ed requirement. It's really cool, I enjoy that class. It's a lot of classical music, which I don't usually listen to but it's interesting anyway.

ASL is also really cool. I quite like it. There's actually a new girl we just hired at work who has 2 deaf kids, so she knows sign language and we practice when we talk at work. So fun.

Analytical chem is pretty cool, too. It seems like a lot of review of things from gen chem, just in more detail, but that's a good thing, because I had no idea what was going on in gen chem two.

Intro to sociology is interesting? I really like the textbook and reading it. It's really interesting. But I'm not in love with the actual class. The teacher is kinda cool, but the textbook is waaay more interesting than the lecture material. Which is confusing, because shouldn't it be the same material?

And my last "class" is analytical chem lab, which is mostly waiting for things. Like, waiting for the crucibles to be heated (a process that takes several hours) and waiting in line to use the Atomic Absorption thing. It's not too bad, though, because there's some cool people in my class, and I like talking to them.

Work is also going really well. I've already been there for 6 months, which totally blows my mind. It's the longest I've ever held a job before, actually. And I plan to stay forever! We've been really busy this year. The beginning of the year is usually the busy season for rec centers/gyms because everyone has New Year's resolutions to go to the gym more, but my boss has actually shown me the numbers, and this is the busiest year we've had in like 5 years or something. It's been a little stressful, but in a good way. I love all the people I work with, too. They're all really cool and easy to talk to, which really makes the day go by much faster. And it's still way fun to teach the climbing classes I'm in charge of. I love it. Such a great job. :)

And climbing is going pretty well. I've finally persuaded one of my friends to come climbing with me 2-3 times a week, which has been really fun, and I can see that I've improved already. I can climb 2 of the 5.6's we have at work, and there's just this one spot where I get stuck on our last 5.6, but I'm working to get around it. I think when Ally (the friend I convinced to climb with me) and I go climbing tomorrow, I'll try one or two of our 5.7's (there's four of those, and one of them is on the same wall as the 5.6 that I'm getting stuck on, so I don't think it'll be the one I try).

That's about it for my exciting news. Still looking at moving out in May/June with a couple roommates. I turned 21? That's kinda exciting I guess. But yes, that's my life for the past couple months. Everything's well, just busy! I'll try to get up new restaurant ratings soon, possibly this weekend. My schedule doesn't look too ridiculously busy. Yet...

Are you ok?

Can I just say that I think this is probably the best music video that was ever made?

But I also think this is a close contender.

New phone!

I can't really remember if I mentioned that I bought a new phone on Thanksgiving, but I did! Ordered it online (I switched plans, so I'm not on the family plan anymore, I've got my own. It's like I'm an adult with a paying job or something :) ), and it came like ten days after that maybe?

It's really cool, my service is through Virgin Mobile, and I have unlimited text, unlimited data, and 300 minutes for 35 a month. And now I have a smart phone! Very exciting. I have apps! And games! And the ability to check facebook on my phone! And check my email! And basically never need the computer again. Ha. Except to play Warlight, because my phone does not have adobe flash on it, which apparently I need. I'm not actually sure, btw, what I'm supposed to be doing on that game. So I'm just trying to take over Australia, Antarctica, and Canada. I've been mostly successful.

But I actually only just started playing Warlight sometime in the past 5 days, maybe. So for a month, there, I had no reason to get on the computer! Which means I haven't blogged. Clearly. (As a side note, with my phone I can actually convince myself that it's time to go to sleep when it's still a reasonable hour. Whenever I break out my computer, it's like I think I literally need to be on it all the time. I mean, here I am, really tired with nothing I need to do, yet refusing to get off the computer. Like I really need to check slowrobot one more time, because what if there's something new that I haven't seen in the past three minutes?)

So, Merry Christmas! It was lovely, I got some nice luggage, and a zen garden, and a necklace. And since I have a job this year, I could actually afford to get all my friends and coworkers nice stuff that I thought they would like. That's actually probably my favorite part of Christmas-- giving away presents. Chaelomen always tells me that when you give someone a present, you should make sure it's something that you like, because it's lame to give someone something you don't even like yourself. So it was cool to think about what my coworkers and friends might like, and how it compares with what I would like to get. It was lovely.

And Happy New Year! One of my friends is serving his mission in Belgium, and he's been asking everyone about their New Years Resolutions. Most of them reply by saying that they didn't make any since they don't reach them anyway. Haha. I love that. But I still made a resolution. I want to be able to climb a 5.9 by the end of the year (which also means that I'll be able to learn how to lead climb, which would be cool). I think probably the biggest challenge to that is going to be finding someone who will climb with me. I can't do this thing anymore where I switch between my friends, asking a different one to come climbing with me every couple weeks. I actually need one person who I can teach how to belay, and then we can go climbing together like twice a week. And then we'll get awesome at climbing and take the lead climbing class together.

The only other cool thing I've done in the past month is that Sara and I did another burger review-- we went to Carl's Jr-- and while we were there, we decided which categories would be rated on a 1-5 or 1-3 scale, and which would stay on a 1-10 scale. I put the pictures we took from my phone onto the computer, and I have both of our burger-rating-notebooks with me so that I can recalculate our new ratings. Then I'll tell everyone what the changes are. And post about Carl's Jr. All of this is something I intend to do before school starts on the 22nd. :) I think we're going to slow down a little with burger rating, though. Tuition and Christmas and birthdays have made money a little tight, so maybe we'll rate another burger in a week or two, and go once every 3 weeks from then on, instead of once every other week.

Oh, actually, there is another cool story I have. Unfortunately, I am allergic to Leonard the hedgehog. I get all sneezy around him and my eyes get all irritated and itchy. I also get a really ridiculous (and kinda funny) reaction whenever I pick him up and he actually touches my skin. I get all itchy wherever he touched me, and it looks like I suddenly get 30 mosquito bites all concentrated to where he had been resting on my arm.

This isn't actually news to me. I knew I was allergic to him. That why, while he's been in my bedroom, I've been sleeping in the next room on my couch. Since like, March. Maybe February. I just realized that he doesn't really have a super awesome life with me. He doesn't get attention like I want to give him, and he's stuck in his cage most of the time. So I gave him away to a friend who is not allergic as far as we know. But I still wanted to have a rodent. Around the time I took Leonard in, actually, I was considering getting another pet rat. I got my first one for Christmas in 5th grade, and between then and my 18th birthday, I had 6 rats (a couple at the same time). So now that I don't have Leonard, I decided to get a rat again! Number 7.

She's awesome, very shy and timid, but also very sweet. She's white with a brown hood, and I named her Billie Jean. :) Yes. I'm awesome.

Though, in hindsight, I should have named her Sally, that way I would have had Jack (my dog) and Sally!

Well, tough.

Haha. I was reading blogs just now (because what else would you be doing when it's two in the morning and you work tomorrow? I mean, I already looked at my schedule for next semester again and tried to figure out where all my classes are), and I think my favorite quote so far is:

Hey, ever wanted to see a duck with human feet that only walks backwards?

Well, tough. You're going to see one anyway.

And then the picture, but I don't actually want to save it to my computer, so everyone has to settle for a link instead. Here's the whole post if you want some context.


Speaking of working in the morning, I love my job still. It's awesome. I especially love teaching climbing 101, which I don't get to do very often. It's just a class that people sign up for so they can learn how to belay, and we offer it every Thursday from 7-9. But I don't teach it then, Adam does. I only get to teach the climbing 101 class when it's part of another class I'm doing, like the parent/tot class on Saturdays or women's climbing if enough girls sign up for that.

Even though I don't teach it often, I like to, and I'm pretty good at it. In fact, the parent/tot class we have runs for one month at a time (only three weeks this month because of Christmas) and it just started last week. The basic layout is on week one of the class, we only have the parent show up and go over all the climbing 101 material, then for the rest of the weeks, the parents bring their kids and we play games. So last week, I had 3 dads (out of 4 possible parents, but I didn't think the last parent would show up) all come and take my class, and they were all cool and excited about learning things. One of them was already belay certified, but he still enjoyed the class because he got to learn a lot of new information about why we belay like this and not that, why this is important but that doesn't matter, etc.

This particular dad was so impressed with my knowledge and how I presented everything and just that class in general that he told me today, "You know, I've been thinking about it all week, and you really did a good job instructing the class last week."

It was so cool! I'm usually told that the class was really good, and thanks for teaching and all, but usually only immediately after the information is presented, or if one of my students comes back with a friend and they're introducing us. This was even cooler though, because it was a full week later, and nothing really brought it up, he just wanted to tell me that I'm a good teacher. :) Love it. I have an awesome job.

Oh, and even cooler, my boss is hoping to give me the Thursday shift, which means I can start teaching climbing 101 every week! Yay! And then I'll have my Saturday shift, which will include the parent/tot class, and that's it for the week. I'll have Sundays off again! And still get in at least 10 hours a week! Hopefully the base schedule that she set up for everyone will work out, and I can officially just have those two shifts a week. I would be so happy.

Education is the kindling of a flame

not the filling of a vessel. -Socrates.

Blogger just asked me to make a new blog. Like, not a new post, a new blog. I barely keep up on one, as it is. But thanks for the offer, blogging gods.


You know what's really exciting? The classes I signed up for next semester. Yes, it's official, I am a full time student again. I was actually supposed to take this semester off, but I've somehow managed to instead end up with 17 credits. This can't end poorly, right? Right. Especially since I'm taking the summer off. And all my classes are going to be awesome.

Not only do my classes all sound awesome, but the teachers for each of my classes have really really fantastic scores on ratemyprofessor. Except my chem teachers. They have scores that range from average to pretty good. But I have a friend who's taking classes with them, and he says they're awesome, so that's hopeful.

I'll be taking analytical chem and its lab and sign language, as mentioned before. Additionally, though, I'll take intro to philosophy, intro to sociology and psychopharmacology.

Analytical chem goes toward my major, intro to philosophy will cover a couple of the gen ed credits I need, ASL is because I love foreign languages, and intro to sociology is to help persuade me to not ditch analytical chem. And psychopharmacology should go towards my minor. The psych department does this thing where they're really open about what classes you can take to get your degree. With most programs, you have to take x y and z classes, but with psych, you can choose whatever classes you want to take, depending on what you want to do with your degree. If you want to do research, then you take classes that you think will help you learn about that-- probably you'll want stats and a bunch of research methods classes. If you want to do clinical work, you'll probably end up taking clinical theory, and abnormal psych, theories of personalities, etc. The point is that you choose which classes you want to take, and so many of them have to be upper level classes, and there's two that you must take-- intro, and stats.

Psychopharmacology sounds like such a cool class. Really perfect for me-- drugs were always my favorite part of health class, and for a couple years when people asked me what I wanted to do for a living, I told them I wanted to be a forensic toxicologist. I still have not ruled out that possibility, just now when people ask, I don't try to pretend like I know everything about the area I'm going into and I give them a more general answer. The thing with this class, though, is that it's not on the list of classes I can take for my psych minor. But I don't know why the psych department would offer a class that doesn't count toward their minors, so I think it should probably still work out for me. I'll talk to one of the advisers there and see what the say. And if it won't go toward my minor, then I'll just be taking it for fun.

It's a pretty sweet schedule. And pretty early. I go MTWR. MW, I start off with psychopharmacology at 8 am, then intro to philosophy 15 minutes after, and sign language 15 minutes after that. On Wednesdays I also have analytical chem lab 45 minutes after sign language-- enough time for a lunch break!

That, for a while, left only analytical chem on TR at 8 am. And Metro is about an hour commute away. So I had a two hour commute for a one hour class. Which would involve me leaving at 7 am. I could already see the problems I would have convincing myself it would be worth it go to, and since analytical chem is not really a class I want to find myself ditching, I decided to add a second class on TR that starts 15 min after chem is over, and that would be my intro sociology class.

On Mon I get home by 1, on TR I get home by noon, and on Wed I'm home by 6. Not a bad schedule, if you ask me. I think it will go much smoother than last time I tried to take 17 credits because 1- my class times don't change drastically from day to day (it was hard having day classes on MW and night class T and then all afternoon and night R), 2- I'm really really interested in all of my classes; none of them are classes I'm grudgingly taking, and 3- Foreign languages come pretty easy to me, and I'm already semi decent at sign language, and since this is sign language 1, a lot of things we'll be going over I already have a head start on-- alphabet, numbers, colors, family members-- so it won't be like doing 17 credits of work every week. Maybe it'll be closer to 15?

Yay for classes and being excited to take them!