To Dew, Or Not To Dew

So Im thinking my caffeine resolve needs to end. I was sitting in my o chem. Lecture last night, and I was dying. It’s a night class, sort of, from 4 to 530 pm. It’s only held twice a week, but it’s an hour and a half long because of it, so we fly through the material, and at night my brain shuts off. I also had my Genetics section and lecture that day, and my o chem. Section right before the lecture, not to mention work in between, so my head was pounding. Then I thought, "hey you, how did I make it through night classes before?" Vanilla Coke; that’s how. My first night class was an English one. I loved that class, but I would always need a pick up before class or during, and since they lack pepsi machines at the U, I would get Vanilla Coke or that Coke One stuff—both of which are really good by the way. The same went for my History of Ceramics class. I think both were at 6. Physiology was a 2 hour class that went from 7-9, so I needed more potent stuff, but I think Coke will be fine for my needs here. It’s become one of my study aides, along with peanut m&m’s for test studying.

What’s weird is that when I give up caffeine I forget what Mountain Dew tastes like, which is what I’m always hooked on, and yet I crave a Coke whenever I see one, and even though I never drink it that much, I can totally taste it just thinking about it. It makes me wonder if they ever took out the cocaine in the first place. So yeah, that’s what I was craving like the Dickens the whole class.

Visiting the Point of Exhaustion.

Saturday we celebrated my birthday. "We" being me, Frogkisser, Pinkie, Duckling, Socially Retarded-Boy, WJJ and Joshuar. The whole thing started at the game store at 6:30 pm. Rather, at 6:40 when I got to the game store. Mainly because I wanted to make eclairs for my work potluck the next day, and even though I could make them in my sleep, it took a while to locate all of the materials with which to make them--and I couldn't just leave them baking in the oven. Then I had to pick up WJ, which I found out just as I was driving past his house. He was carrying around this 2 liter of Sprite with him everywhere. I asked him if he was thirsty, and he told me that if he could no longer have soda on airplanes he was going to make the best of it by having it everywhere else that he still could. Clasically WJ; "those poor slow children...at least they can still play." So then it was just me and WJJ in my tin can of a car without AC driving down the freeway with the windows down--which created a wind tunnel affect. A very interesting experience I must say. Amidst our many conversations he informed me that he wanted a wench on the back of his car (it's a type of hitch apparently).

At the game store we ended up playing two games, neither of which I remember the names. What were the names FK? One was a card game, and I enjoyed myself thoroughly. I guess it's the only game they had that more than 6 could play at, and we were 7. It's always amusing to see WJ lose at games due to his strategery. There were a lot of numbers, no turns (we all played simultaneously), and points were penalties, which capped off at 75, thereby causing the game to end. I got second, Pinkie took it all if I remember correctly, and I think Joshuar was the Ultimate Loser. Or The second Ultimate Loser next to WJ. And Dave gave me the best back massage. The second game had a dragon card, paths cards that were defined as the game went on, and dragon pieces that moved along them as you tried to not send yourself off the board. First thing I sent Pinkie off the board, without any idea of what I was doing. I ultimately won, as all but two of us crashed into one another, and I held out against Joshuar and let him kill himself. Good times. Actually, the only board game I haven't won there was Niagara.

Then we went to the Spaghetti Factory at Trolley Square. It's been a while since I've been to the Spag Fac, so I was excited. I got the Chicken Parmagiana with spaghetti, creamy pesto on my salad, and a raspberry Italian cream soda. Predictable, but that's why I go there. As always, I got full on the salad and the bread, so I only ate one bite of my food--which I only did so as to not look like I didn't eat anything. Then because it was my birthday they brought me out something that looked like fried icecream, with something crispy on the outside, but it tasted like Heath or something. With that I had my spumoni, so I ate entirely too much icecream.

By the time I got home it was pretty late, and then I still had to finish making eclairs at my parents' house, as I had neither the ingredients or the means to make them at my house. I really only had to fill them, which can be messy and time consuming, and I ended up making two more batches for good measure. As a result I have quite a few left over eclairs, but thankfully I didn't have any left over filling. I swear, you make one batch of the filling and you have to make 4 batches of the eclairs to use it all. Let me know if there are any takers. I think I'll be in the So Jo end of the valley on Tuesday, which is tomorrow.

Finally I was back in Salt Lake, and it was already past 1 in the morning. I got to work at about 2, and was pretty tired by the end of the day, but I stayed at work till 3. Part of that was that I stayed till noon to hit the potluck, then ended up staying just so I could put a dent in the list of pipettes I need to calibrate this quarter (all the computers are in use on the week days, so times are limited for me to do that). Then I went home and basically passed out, but woke up at 7 pm or so to do some much needed laundry and studying. All in all, this is the first time I've been well rested in a couple of weeks. And to top it off, today is my Friday, so I'm very excited. I would be more so if I didn't have classes to go to in 15 minutes. I have 2 lectures today and 2 sections.

I get this weird warmth tingle in my leg when I don't sleep.

So far this has been the most exhausting week ever. School officially started, and after two lectures Genetics has me officially stressed out. I need to get in some serious study time this next week, because we have these lecturely quizzes we only get thirty seconds to take. By the way, I didn't do so well on the first one. This course might make my head explode.

Then yesterday I went to the zoo with my 3 year old nieces and nephew. It was a lot of fun, but entirely exhausting. That's where my work had it's summer picnic this year--at the zoo. I wasn't happy because I could only get a ticket for one other person, and after 5 everyone not from ACME Labs got kicked out. Three of my sisters were also there, though obviously only one had an after hours pass and special meal ticket from ACME Labs, as I did. But the whole experience was pretty amusing, because first thing we walk past the monkeys and one of my neices gets really excited, and pointing to it yells, "Look! Elephants!" to which my other neice joins in. My sister then corrected them and they started yelling "Monkeys!" instead. Then we got to the elephants and suddenly it was, "Look! Tigers!" I laughed pretty hard. But after 3 hours with 3 three year olds, and little sleep the night before...well, me and my little sis stayed only long enough, after it closed to the public, to eat the food.

The next stage in the adventure of yesterday started when I dropped her off at my parents' house, and I discovered my alternator belt had snapped off of my engine. It took me 3 different stores to find one that fit my car. I was rather annoyed. My dad then put it on and I was on my way, but the whole process took a while, and by that time I barely reached home before I passed out on my bed. Except then my roommate woke me up and I talked to her for a while, then went back to bed.

Today I'll be going to the game store with a group of friends, and I think the Spag Fac. It is my birthday week after all...sort of. I also need to make eclairs tonight for my potluck tomorrow. I can't wait till it's next week, which will be busy, but not as much. Work today hasn't been too bad, being the weekend and all. I've been completely done for a couple of hours now, so I've had a lot of time to study Genetics at work, although not nearly as much as I'd like. I'll have a lot more to do tomorrow--I know, not good on the sabbath--but if I don't do it then I'll just worry about it not being done and I hate being stressed out on a Sunday. I need a nap.

"I believe the children are our future...unless we stop them now."

Yesterday was the first day of school. I'm torn between emotions right now. On the one hand I'm surprised to find that I did miss school. I know that between Genetics and O Chem I'm likely to have a lot less hair by the end of the semester, but I'm excited to learn from both. And for some reason I've always liked homework, so as long as I find the time to do it, I'll be good. On the other hand, Salt Lake can be a lonely place. I know hardly anyone down here, and those I do are rarely around. Both of my roommates have boyfriends, so I really can't count much on them. I can always come home every other Tuesday I guess, and I do know a few other people, but it's still going to take getting used to. On my on weeks so far I come home and hide in my room, because I seldom make plans on days I work, and I feel weird just chilling around anyone at my house. Oh, the loser that I have lately become. I need to find more hobbies.

However, on a brighter note...It turns out that one of my roommates is in my Genetics class, and the other is in my Chemistry class/lab. Of my two classes, I'm already starting out with someone in there that I know...Sort of. And it'll be nice to have someone to study with conveniently placed in the very same vicinity as myself.

I guess Mondays will be taken up by league starting in a few weeks, and I definitely need to start going to the gym daily, so that should help. School of course will take up the greater portion of my life, and work. I'm also taking an institute course with a good work friend of mine, and it sounds really cool, so I'm excited. The Gospel and Early Christianity. I'm actually going to it for the first time in about 20 minutes.

The Today Post

So it's only 4:30 in the morning, and today already sucks. For starters, I'm back at work and some sort of problem occurred with my instrument, which is now causing it to beep at least every 10 seconds. It's loud, nerve-racking, almost panic-inducing, and I just want to kick it every time it happens. I guess it's not recognizing the allergen caps it's dropping, so at this point I don't know if my run is even salvageable, but I have to wait it out just in case. Thank goodness it's only Tuesday and our sample load is small. However, I have no idea how they're going to fix this, so it might effect the rest of the week as well, and if this continues to happen when we're busy I will kick the thing. All of this is super, considering school starts tomorrow.

I also found out that of all the people who applied to become my new supervisor, the one person in the world I didn't want to get it, got it. He used to work in my old section, and he wasn't mean or anything, but he was anal about people not getting overtime, ate all the deserts at company parties before anyone else got a chance to get any, and most annoyingly would stick his nose into places where it didn't belong. Basically he would check other peoples' time hours on the time clock (which he had no authority to do, and which happens to be quite a breech in privacy at that), and then would get after them for it, even though we were short staffed at the time which begs to ask, "what else could we do?" But yeah, my school schedule is always messed up, so he's going to freak out on me, I'm pretty sure. I hope I finish that stupid pinata in time for my birthday.

On top of all of this, I'm tired and I just want to go home and take a nap. It makes it worse that I can't even go on a break in case my stupid machine breaks, so instead I have to stay here and listen to it beep.

The Yesterday Post

I've noticed lately that I'm very good at starting out posts with, "so yesterday..." This is regardless of if something happened today. I always seem to get behind. It's why I could never stand to keep a journal. I hate writing if something hasn't happened, and when it does I'm too busy to write. So instead I try to think back on events, and my memory is not so much good, so you can imagine how well that turns out.

Anyway. Yesterday I took my nieces to the fair. I also went to the library, but that wasn't very exciting. And I went to the gym, but again, old news--though I am rather proud of myself for making myself run past the point I usually want to stop at, which is not that far from the point when I start running...But back to the fair. My nieces are barely 3, and they're tiny, which might have something to do with them being twins, but I think there's a very good chance that after this experience they now harbor fears of sheep. We were walking past the animals and all of the sudden this huge sheep just sticks its head out and bleats at the top of its lungs. My little niece jumped soooo high, and then hid behind her mom. Her sister then looked back to see where the loud noise came from, and the sheep just ahead of her did the same thing. They were both rather startled and were not all that excited to stay in the large animal area. The rabbits and fowls were much more pleasant. Whenever I see chickens with huge head feathers I think of my little sis, and especially the chicken in our West Valley neighborhood with the feathers that looked like dreadlocks, and said sister making us stop the car to look at the thing whenever it randomly appeared. It always makes me wonder, looking at the artwork and stuff, at how exactly they grade that stuff. Do they do it by age? A lot of it, especially ceramic works, makes me think, "They won a ribbon for that?" My dad thinks they give ribbons to all who enter, mainly because for Young Womens a few years ago my sister had to paint a ceramic squirrel with a pot on its head, and she got a ribbon for it. She didn't so much spend any time on the thing, so it was bright pink, but had black dripping down from the pot, and basically he reasoned that if she got a ribbon for that, they all must have. Or possibly that they thought she was handicapped. Anyway, at the vegetable portion my older sister and I noticed the tiniest tomato I've ever seen on the "large wares" table. It looked lonely, surrounded by all the huge stuff. So essentially that was the fair. Snow cones there were a rip off, so we ended up going and getting slurpees instead.

That same day I finally put in the order for the Big Ol' D shirts. What a relief.

...drink. Drink until only the dregs remain.

Yesterday I went to the tea cottage again. I'm becoming quite the regular, but I think this was the last time in a while. I just keep finding people I know who want to go. This time I went with Duckling and my sis. We then proceeded to watch 5 hours of the best version of Pride and Prejudice; the Collin Firth version. Man I love the BBC sometimes. The whole experience was rather interesting. First thing Duckling and my sister were in the costume corner, and before I knew it we were all wearing hats and scarves, to my sister's extreme insistence. Then I had a bit of trouble with the lemon squeezer, and managed to launch it into exploding peppermint tea all over myself. It was hot, then awkward. I felt pretty stupid, but only briefly; Others were amused after all, and who am I to damper amusement?

So the lady there asked me what my opinions were on everything there, having been there often enough to observe many differences. I told her I liked it when they had cucumbers in the water the first time we went, and that I love the apple/cream cheese sandwiches, which aren't always there. I also bought an ounce of herbal peppermint tea as a fix until I go there next, and the cutest little diffuser. It's a miniature silver tea pot, with holes in the sides of course--to keep the tea leaves inside, while letting the flavor seep out with the water--and a little tray to sit it on after pulled out by the chain on top. I'm drinking it now. I think the only way to keep the leaves completely out is by using a tea bag, but they all stay at the bottom anyway. I can't help but think Harry Potter. They're not exactly dregs, but I'm looking at the pattern in the bottom of my empty cup, and I'm seeing a prancing tiger. Or maybe a satellite dish. Huh.