Belated.

My poor, neglected blog. And I don't have a really good excuse for it either. Unless of course you count the "me not having the internet" thing. I haven't yet figured out how to steal it from the neighbors. Usually I have some access on my on weeks of work, and I have access at school when I'm there, but when I'm there I'm in class, and once I'm home I don't want to walk back there just for the internet, even if it is only a couple of blocks. Anyway, enough excuses.

Thursday my car died again. I figured it might be because it was out of gas, but gas didn't seem to change much. Fortunately school is close enough to walk to, so the only real inconvenience was that I couldn't go to the gym, which I didn't particularly want to do anyways. And I only had two classes; one a lecture for my lab, which I won't even have next week, and the other Institute. So Sheidi gave me a ride home from Institute, and then the deep cleaning of my house began. My roommates and I deep cleaned our house by the way. It's an old house, and it really needed it; plus our landlord was cutting our rent by 200 bucks this month to do it, so we're practically paying nothing. I think the best method of going about it would have involved gasoline and matches though. It needs to be repainted at the very least.

Wednesday I made it through my 3rd Organic Chemistry lab. Man do I hate that lab. My TA for it is so lax it makes me nervous. I seriously get anxiety every time I go, and then my roommate, who is my lab partner, gets anxiety from me. I leave thinking, "shouldn't volumes matter in chemistry?" My TA doesn't seem to think so. Personally I think he's building a false sense of security, telling us not to worry so much about strictly following procedures, and he's really just weeding out A's from the B's. You really can't get lower than that in a lab, but even if everyone deserved an A they can only give out a set number of them, so everyone else is stuck with B's. I really hate labs. I never know what I'm doing, and they won't let you fully know until after you've done the experiment, written up a conclusion for that experiment, and have then taken a quiz on the experiment. Then they clue you in to why it worked and what the point was. So I've pretty much challenged my TA on everything he's ever said. I want to understand what I'm doing. He seems to want us to stand on our own feet, which is good, but I for one need some kind of guidance before I can become comfortable enough to do that. Roommate #1, who is my lab partner, keeps hissing, "he's going to fail you if you keep being so confrontational," but I don't think that's true. He knows I'm smart, and the thing about nice people like her is that they think everyone is insulted by other people being rude to them. Not true. Some people can take it. I personally try not to be purposefully rude unless I know someone can handle it, and Brian deserves it more than most.

I guess I should relate my first lab experience now. Not too surprisingly to those I know, I'm pretty anal in a lot of ways (a random waiter gave me the nickname "anal annie"), and a total perfectionist on top of that. So I have 2 lab parnters: #1 and Mr. Cynical. Which meant that there wasn't much for me to do, because the two of them covered most of it; and so I mainly loomed about and questioned everything they did. I did catch a few errors. Apparently my roommate and I are like "the odd couple," according to Mr. Cynical that is. And I give her anxiety, as was aforementioned. Anyway, I mainly took this lab at this time just because I knew I had to have a lab partner for it, and with my roommate taking it and her threatening me that I had to take it as well so I could be her lab partner...well, I kind of figured I'd have a lab partner. We randomly picked up Mr. Cynical our first lab because he had no one, and we didn't mind having another person. Personally I think he was hitting on #1 a little, and for some reason my drawer is the other isle, while his is next to hers, so that's the real reason we ended up with him. He asked if she had a lab partner, and she did, but she said he could join us. So if you couldn't guess by his name, he's a total punk, but that's not to say I dislike him. It's just always interesting when I meet someone as cynical as myself. He was trying to be frustrating, but I don't mind people like that, because I'm kind of one my self sometimes. I can be a smart alec. Anyway, Mr. Cynical doesn't want to get married, and he thinks you can turn love off, so you can stop feelings towards someone if you don't want to feel them. Funny how adamently #1 fought him on that, considering she didn't believe in love either until she met her fiance, and now suddenly everything's coming up roses. I think I can specifically remember a group of friends having a conversation very similar to the one I witnessed in my lab, but over fondue, and her arguments were very similar to his, only not against marriage, just the idea of love.

Right, so I think there's too much socializing in there and not enough science. Actually I rescind that statement; there's plenty of science, but not enough understanding. And that is my lab so far. The lab that I don't actually need to be taking. Oh, that kills me still. Just one more stress to throw on top of the pile, in the middle of the week when I have other things to divide my attentions between. My next post will be less depressing.