Hunger Games

Has anyone heard of it? It's a book by Suzanne Collins, and I really like it. I was talking to my friend Wally about it, and he told me I should read it, so I went to the library to check it out. All their copies were checked out, though, so I requested it. Then I decided I didn't want to wait that long to read it, and after school the next day I went to the bookstore to start reading a copy there until the library got mine in. I read to chapter 4 and, ironically, had to go home because I was so hungry. Haha.

It was really good, though. I got some money (thanks Dad) and went back to the store and started reading again. This was on a Friday. I read another chapter, then bought it and went home to read it until I had to leave for a Branch Barbecue, then we had CJ's bachelorette party, and I got home around 10:30. I continued reading until I finished it at 4:30.

But it's a really good book. There's 2 more in the series, but they aren't on paperback yet, so I'm gonna wait before buying them. Maybe I'll stop by B&N tomorrow to start reading the 2nd one, though haha.

And, side note, I had a test today in math. It was pretty easy. I may have missed the question about distance, but I think I'm ok on that one. And I didn't get the bonus, but it doesn't matter because our grades can't go above 100%. I was the first done, and it only took me about 30, 35 minutes, and when I turned it in the teacher asked if she made it too easy. I just smiled and left.

A Monster in My Car.

I went to the bank last week to try to figure out how to get them to stop charging me 3 dollars every month. Something about not having the correct account, because I'm a college student and I had an adult account or something. I don't really know, but I got it all taken care of. Hooray!

The funny thing happened when I was leaving. It was a fairly warm day, and so I had my windows cracked while I was inside. I usually do in the summer. Now, I don't actually know if everyone knows this about me, but I have an awful fear of bees/wasps.

I was trying to think of why I'm so terrified of them, and I'm pretty sure it comes from this one time when I was playing outside with my friends. I might have been in 3rd grade at this point. We had been riding our bikes around, and so we all had our helmets on and we were sitting in the shade. A wasp flew over to us, and Ashley and Tyler jump up out of the way, but I recalled Scooter telling me once that if a bee comes near you, you shouldn't run away, just hold still and it'll go away. So that's what I did. Which, for future reference, is not the thing to do with wasps. Anyway, the wasp was crawling around all over my face and by my mouth and eyes, it was truly one of the scariest experiences of my life. It would crawl into the holes in my helmet, and I've since decided that it was looking for a place to nest. I had to tell Ashley and Tyler what to do, too. I tried having them go get Scooter, but the doors to the house were locked. So Tyler got his mom, and she came out and got the wasp off me. To this day, I still have not been stung, and I do everything I can to ensure it stays that way. I have more scary stories, just ask if you ever want to hear any.

But back to the present. After I was done at the bank, I got into my car and put on my seat belt, and started to drive away. I had just breaked to exit the parking lot, and I heard a buzzing coming from right by where the driver's seat belt feeds into the car. Since I was already stopped, I looked over to see what it was, sorta assuming it was a fly. It wasn't, and you guessed it. It was a wasp.

I flipped out. I was kinda screaming in a hysterical way that wasn't very loud. But I'm proud to say that I had the presence of mind to put my car in park, I put the parking break on, and I took off my seat belt, probably hitting the wasp in that process, and then crawled over to the passenger seat. I turned on the hazard lights, because I was RIGHT THERE, blocking off the exit to the bank, and if someone needed to leave, I wanted them to go around. I tried opening the car door, but it was locked. So I hurried and unlocked it, nothing on my mind except trying to untrap myself and get away from this monster.

I finally made it outside, and I walked around to the driver side of the car. I can see the wasp, it's at the bottom of the window and trying to escape, but my window was only cracked like maybe 2 inches, so it was hopelessly confused. I tried helping by opening my door, but at that point, it had settled in nicely and didn't look like it was trying to leave anymore. So I started tapping the other side of the glass trying to get it to leave. I even yelled at it. "Get out of my car!"

I stopped, clearly that wasn't working, and I looked around. And there's this guy and this lady standing there, they were previously talking while he smoked before going in to the bank, but they had just sorta stopped and were staring at me. They're just staring openly, and I can't blame them when I think about how ridiculous I must have looked, and they don't even see anything in my car from there. So they're both just staring at me open mouthed and confused.

So I called over to them, being pretty friendly. "Hi."

The guy answered. "Are you ok?" haha.

"Yeah, I'm fine... There's just a bee in my car."

The lady starting laughing lightly, and I can't honestly say I blame her. But the guy asked if I wanted help. I told him that would be great, if he wanted to. So he came over and hit the wasp with his glasses until it flew away. I said thanks and told him that I'm just really scared of bees, and he said it was fine.

Let me tell you, that experience really restored my faith in the kindness of strangers. I would have probably stood there for hours waiting for the wasp to fly away on it's own if they hadn't been there.

And, needless to say, my car windows have since been completely rolled up. I'd rather deal with the heat.

Another Year

Now that I've got a few weeks under my belt, so who wants to hear about school? (btw, what a strange expression-- under my belt. Where'd it come from?)

My schedule is really nice. My earliest day starts at 10, and my latest day gets out at 3:45. I'm taking 4 classes, 14 credits, and in between each of my classes, I've got at least an hour break for lunch. And, as a nice bonus, I know someone on the buses to school! On M/W I ride with my friend Jon, and on T/R I ride with my friend Luke! It's pretty awesome.


On Mondays and Wednesday, I have college algebra and then freshmen comp. I don't really like my algebra teacher. She doesn't really understand our questions when we try to ask them, and then she doesn't really know how to answer the questions. So one girl couldn't figure out how to factor something that had a coefficient before the x² (ie 2x²+3+1) and so the teacher tried to explain it a few times. None of the things helped this girl. I told her I would help. Which I did and she was grateful to understand.

But that's another thing. This is college algebra. I learned how to factor in 8th grade. What is the matter with my class?

The math teacher, though, she doesn't go through examples very well. She'll explain something, and we'll do a fairly easy example, so I'm pretty sure I've got it down. Then the next example is something way hard, so now I'm beyond confused. There's no transition. Bleh. I feel like I'll be reading much of the math book this year.

My English class is fine, though. Teacher's nice, a little crazy, and he sometimes seems to have trouble finding his words, which is not usually comforting with an English teacher, but he's nice enough and the class is pretty easy. We read short stories from this one book I have and then we seminar about it for 10 or 15 minutes. Nothing too deep, which is alright. And we write essays. No problem, so far.

And, against the odds, this kid Michael is in the exact same classes I am. We have the exact same schedule Mondays and Wednesdays. It's kinda cool, he's pretty nice.


On Tuesdays and Thursdays, I have gen chem and intro to psychology. Man. These days are infinitely better than my other days. Gen chem is really interesting. SO much better than high school. I did not learn one thing in my high school chem class. I didn't actually fail that class, in fact I was only a few points away from an A, but I felt like I was failing, so it wasn't fun. The teacher could've said "ok, figure out how to do this on your own while I try my hardest to distract you and keep you from doing your work." He was interesting and a good guy, but not a good teacher.

So in my first day of gen chem, I learned more than I did all year in high school. It was really neat. I understand these things, so it's not totally overwhelming. It's really interesting, and I'm feeling much more confident with my major choice (chemistry with an emphasis in criminalistics). My teacher is really good. I sat in his lecture the first week, taking notes, and then I read chapter one. It was neat, because he had covered all the material in chapter 1 in class. There was just one thing that the book cleared up a little for me. This is my favorite class so far.

Psychology is pretty cool, too. On the first Tuesday, my friend Luke was telling me about his psychology teacher and how she's some crazy little Asian lady and he doesn't really like her teaching style. So when I get to class I'm just worried that I've got this crazy Asian lady teacher. Some guy walks in, and at this point, I'm just relieved it's not the same person haha. He starts writing on the board "PSY 3240" and I get a little confused, but it's a psychology class and it makes me really skeptical of what people do, so I think it's some kinda experiment to see how long we take to say something. He keeps writing "Adolescent Psychology" and everyone in class is whispering to each other, more than a little concerned-like. I turned around and some girl asks me if I was here for intro to psych, and I told her that I was pretty sure he was doing it on purpose.

He's kinda scanning us looking at our reactions, and some kid shouts out, "Isn't this intro to psychology?" And he looks at us. "Is everyone here for Intro?... Is anyone here for Adolescent?" No one says anything. "Well, we'll go with majority rules. I'll go see where I am, and if I'm here, I'm gonna come back to yell at you." It was pretty sweet. I'm glad students aren't the only ones who get lost. Anyway, so I'm back to worrying that I've got the crazy Asian teacher. But about 5 or 10 min after class was supposed to start, our real teacher walks in. (btw, a few kids were freaking out, wondering where the teacher was, and I thought this was another experiment to see how long it would be before we left.)

He was nice. Didn't really care much about getting the psychology book. There's a paper due in his class, originally it was about some article called "15 Reasons Not to Say 'Good Job'" and it was supposed to be 5 pages. He changed it to being about anything psychology related (ie a paper on Finding Nemo, exploring Nemo's daddy-issues and his gimp fin) and it should only be "a couple of pages." It's due the last day of class and you can turn it in whenever. He's pretty funny, too. I generally like that class.

So, that's how school is going. I love campus, I like hanging out in the Tivoli and watching TV between my classes. I get all caught up on American Chopper, and if I want to stay after class to watch more Discovery Channel, I can watch Dirty Jobs, and then Cash Cab. Awesome. Actually, I was almost late to freshmen comp because I was so into Dirty Jobs haha. Woo.