Pictorial

Let's get the positivity flowing after that last negative entry. This will be purely pictorial.Jibbles is sitting in my hoodie, and is clearly thrilled about it.I left the majority of this collage until last night. By one in the morning, my back was killing me, and I went to bed. So I finished it up this morning, minutes before I had to go to class. I felt like I was back in third grade with Elmer's Glue and scissors.

So Frustrated!!!!

AAAHHH!!!!! Okay, so I've been working on this research methods and statistics project, getting this big long application ready to be sent to the ethics committee for approval. I sent a copy to my professor, she looked it over, sent it back with corrections (since we're just learning about how to do applications with the ethics committee) and said to send back the revisions to her no later than Monday morning, and she'd have them corrected and back to us no later than Monday at 4:30. I sent my group's revised copy to her Sunday night, waited all day yesterday, and didn't hear boo from her. We needed the three copies for the ethics committee printed off and signed by her by class today. So here I am, fifteen minutes until class starts, printing off these three copies of the ethics application. I've checked my school email a million times, and she still hasn't written back. Icheck one last time before I print them off. And I print them off. (Each application is 24 pages. I don't have a printer, so I have to use the school printers, where I have a limited amount that I can print.) So rest assured, I've just used up my entire printing allowance for the year. And just before I'm about to go down to class, riiiiight before class is starting, I get an email from her. What does it say? "If you haven't gotten revisions back from me, don't print off your three copies, blah blah blah blah blah." AH!!! Did she not think that with class breathing down my neck and no word back from her that I'd not print the copies off?? Now these are WORTHLESS, and I've used up ALL of my printing credits for this year. Couldn't she have just sent that email out maybe an hour earlier? Ten minutes earlier would have done the trick. But no. Class begins in fifteen minutes, and that's when she sends us this email. Agh. Gah. I'm so mad.

Evil!!!!

Awesome Dream

I just laid down and had an awesome dream. I was in Japan, watching ping pong, and there was some important guy sitting also watching who really really liked General Tsao's Chicken, and I pointed out some way that he could get more General Tsao's, and he was so happy that he had a bunch of Japanese women dress me up in some special black and red kimono. We were all going out to dinner or something, but Anne was there (and in my dream I'd been quite sick, too), and she kept telling Mrs. Sugi that I'd been very sick, and if I started to seem tired at all, they must stop tiring me out. I felt very loved by Anne for wanting to take care of me, and it was great being dressed up in a kimono and made something big of.

What a great dream.

Edited

I wrote a gripey entry on toilets, and how when some people who don't like to sit down squat, ...anyways. I removed it. No one wants to hear about gross toilets with a wonderful gross picture of an outhouse toilet. Thus, it's gone. Edited. Poof!

I will still tempt you with mention of my future hobbit home, to be discussed later. I know, you're so excited. :)

Today, I Ate a Mango

Today, I ate a mango. Mangos are not nearly as interesting as pomelos, it is true. But it was my first my mango, if you know what I mean.

Some thoughts on mangos:
-I have no idea how to cut these things
-They're really really messy and slimy
-High in calories compared to other fruits
-They're delicious
-And taste a little like carrots

Slimy. My fingers actually pruned.--->

My temperature got up to 103, but the amazing (and I mean amazing) muscle soreness left around 5am, allowing me to sleep. When I woke up yesterday, I thought I was basically better, but things just went continually downhill. Bonus: The extraordinary sore muscles didn't come back, and for that I was extremely grateful. Now, I'm just mildly yucky.

Jibbles loves his un-brand Diet Green Apple pop.

Update

At 102 degrees and freezing, blogging is a little beyond me. Crawling under as many covers as possible seems to be the best option. I can't even find my nail polish to paint my nails!! I've watched far too many home decorating shows.

It's time to burrow.

Sick Day

Well, here's my first sick day of this academic year. I've been sick this year, but still gone to class. Many thanks to my roomie Kale for this cold.

As a sick day, you all know what this means. I will sit around blogging an absurd amount, painting my nails, drinking water, and looking at real estate online. My temperature's 99.5. This might sound very low to you, but when I'm healthy my average temperature is around 97.5. So that's really like 100.5. Which still isn't very bad. But hey, it's not every day that I get a temperature of 98.6 or higher.

Today, I Ate a Pomelo

Today, I ate a pomelo. A pomelo is like the predecessor to the grapefruit. A grapefruit is a cross between a pomelo and an orange. As you can see, it's more yellow than pink, but I get the impression that this varies. I liked it! Its big bonus is that it has everything pleasant about grapefruit, without the aMAzingly bitter taste. I ate it without any dusting of sugar, and it was nice. Its rind was a little thick, but I found that actually made it easier for me to wiggle out the segments. So, two thumbs up for the pomelo!

Second on my list of accomplishments: Last night, I finished my first real knitting project. It's about the most basic hat you can do. It was in knit 2 purl 2 ribbing, knit flat just decreasing up the top, and sewn together along the back seam with mattress stitch. Unfortunately, and unsurprisingly, I screwed up a lot. Some of my knits and purls got misaligned, and there's a little hole. Soo...it looks as pathetic as the attempt was, but I'm still proud.





Jibbles was sitting in the laundry basket as I was unloading the dryer. As I folded the clothes and put them back in one by one, Jibbles stayed. He was thoroughly ensconced by the time I was done.Here is my dyed hair. I think it's a actually a little darker than this, but you get the idea. I feel very brunette. This summer, I think I'm going to go some reasonable shade of blonde.

Ooh, cheerleader from Heroes is doing a Neutrogena commercial!! Like...Jennifer Love Hewitt, Mischa Barton, and Kristin Kreuk. That doesn't seem like a very good sign to me, except that I really like this Hayden Panettiere. Her first name is Hayden? That's a kind of cool name for a girl....

My absolute favorite facewash: Neutrogena's Oil-Free Acne Wash Cream Cleanser. Let me tell you, I've used a lot of cleansers, and as far as helping acne goes on an oily face, this one takes the cake. If my skin were less troublesome, I'd probably use something milder. But for all you zit-suffering oily skin people out there, this is my pick.

The Future Crazy Cat Lady

Now that we've all appreciated the cuteness of Jibbles, we can move on to much more important things. Like hte fact that the movie The Fountain has come to Antigonish. I've gotten the impression that it's extremely mediocre, but hey, it's not Black Christmas or one of the many other horrific movies that come here, so I'm going to see it! And I'm very excited! as indicated by exclamation points. I'm still waiting for Bond to come. It's probably an expensive film or something, so they have to wait to be able to afford it. Is that how it works? I have no idea.

Right now, I'm between classes with a coffee, muffin, and streudel. Not exactly diet food, I know, but I need something to hold me over until eight o'clock tonight when I go to Tim Horton's to meet that guy who ran into Grandma and Grandpa Callahan in Brazil. I'd really like to see Grandma Callahan sometime. I like her gruff exterior with the hard-to-see love. Grandma and Grandpa Callahan are having their...60th? wedding anniversary, this summer, btw. There's going to be one celebration type thing in Columbus, and another in Gitchee Gumee. We should all go! They called me months ago, so that probably would have been like a year before their actual anniversary, and told me, to make certain that I could be there. ...I wonder if we still have to help serve food at the meal hall. How cool would it be to have another Gitchee Gumee Bible Camp t-shirt?? Answer: Very cool.

Next class we're watching a movie. If it has anything fun in it, I'll talk about it. In social psychology, we're talking about factors that bring people together in a relationship, and factors that cause them to split. It's nothing unusual or that you didn't know instinctively (sort of), but it's just depressing sitting there, seeing what is basically a formula for breaking up and learning about it. Did you know that even if a long distance relationship makes it through, and gets back together again, even though they're back together, their chances of breaking up are still higher than average? How sad. I love my Irish Cream coffee. No liquer in it, it's just...creamy.

You know what I think Dad would enjoy? Blogging. I think it'd really suit him. A simple format, and he could say all the things he wants to say and we could all comment. And he could post pictures of the things he did around the house, and we'd all say, "ooooh," or, "Oh dear, that's hideous, undo it. CtrlZ! CtrlZ!"

I must say, Jaime, that I am also a pretty big advocate of owning a cat. It's true that it's nice having a roomie taking care of Jibbles, but at the same time, I'm totally attached to him, and it's going to be sad when university ends, and we go our separate ways, and I have to say goodbye to him. If you adopt a cat with the SPCA here, they vaccinate all the cats, and pay for half of the cost to have them spayed or neutered. Oooh, I want to be a foster home for it!! That way you get an endless stream of kittens, and people adopt them. Based on looking at this webpage, it looks like every animal is almost always adopted. Wow, how...not what I was expecting. I guess the only ones that get put down are either feral or too sick to live well.

So anyways, eventually I want to get a cat, but only after I've settled down somewhere for at least a couple of years. So, basically, graduate school. I'm going to become one of those crazy cat ladies, aren't I? I can see it coming. You know what I want? A cat that looks like Patches. Classic and badass. It's a shame we don't have more pictures of her. There must be a hidden stash somewhere.

Ben K: I suggest that that anonymous comment was also left by Lisa the Waitress. 'Cause I think it makes sense in the topic that it'd be her. Especially since it was left only like one minute or two after her original comment.

I think that studying the logical errors that children make in developmental psychology is actually leading me to be more illogical. Like look at that above paragraph. I sound like a little kid reasoning. "I think there's more liquid in this glass, 'cause it's taller." WRONG! Aaah, conservation of liquids joke.

Well, that coffee was delicious. Off to class!

Jibbles!!

Jibbles is Katie's (roomie) cat. He hangs out with us almost constantly upstairs, and we take naps together. He's very mischievous. The other day, he ate Tim's plant right off the windowsill. Hr crouches behind corners and pounces as soon as you walk by. Oftentimes, when I open my door in the morning, he's sitting right outside, staring up at me. Here are some pictures of Jibbles, as promised. Jibbles loves his Alpine box.

More Quick Thoughts

At the moment, I'm sitting in a warm computer lab drinking a Bolthouse juice (green goodness) for breakfast/lunch, I have an apple in my bag for later, and I'm feeling veeeerry content.

Oftentimes, when there's not a google searchbar on the computer I'm using, it doesn't occur to me that there could not be one, so I click on the Address tab, and type in there like I'm searching. And then feel very silly.

If I were Niki Sanders, I would *definitely* feel like I got short-changed on my power. Who wants a manipulative, evil, alter-ego who wants to kill your husband and who knows what else?

I've really been slacking off work-wise. I haven't been reading my textbooks at all since I've gotten back from winter break. This is really going to come back to haunt me when, at the end of this year, I have four textbooks to read in a week before finals.

This is really funny:
On October 2, 2006, Emerson Electric Company, an appliance market competitor of NBC's owner General Electric, filed suit in federal court against NBC. The suit was in regards to a scene that appeared in "Genesis," the pilot episode, which depicts Claire Bennet reaching into an active garbage disposal unit—labeled "In-Sink-Erator"—to retrieve a ring, and severely injuring her hand in the process. Emerson claims the scene "casts the disposer in an unsavory light, irreparably tarnishing the product" by suggesting serious injuries will result "in the event consumers were to accidentally insert their hand into one."

...because if you were to insert your hand into one it ..wouldn't...hurt? I've seen how my spoons have come out of there, and it's not pretty. Ben K's garbage disposal almost took care of a...what was it? An avocado pit? Something.

Did you know Canadians call garbage disposals garburators? Sooo funny.

I'm starting my first real knitting project. Wish me luck!! I'll take pictures when I'm done. :)

I've been getting a *lot* of hits from Decatur, Georgia on my blog. Anybody know someone likely from Georgia? Running on Safari browser...interesting. On a Mac. Have I scared off whoever this is? Sorry. :) I just wonder what brings people back once they've come here.

I'm going to have an entry with a lot of Jibbles pictures, so if you don't like cats, too bad.

Lots to Talk About

I'm going to guess that this title didn't hold as much promise for Jaime as "Computer Labs and Casual Sex" did. However, I have lots of very interesting (to me) things to write about.

The first:
On Friday night, there was an insane rainstorm (after days and days of snow). It actually felt like a hurricane with the winds. The house was creaking and groaning under the strain, and perfectly closed doors were forced open by this maelstrom. Upon looking up the exact definition of maelstrom, I realize that this isn't a whirlpool, but it does suggest the chaos and strength of it well, so I'm keeping it. So nit-picky vocabbers back off. Anyways. After a couple of hours of this crazy wind, the lights started dimming in and out. And in and out. Until, at ten, all the electricity went off. I expected it to come back on pretty soon again, while I waited in complete pitch black. But no. They didn't. Apparently Jessie had a flashlight, so we all (except Curtis, who was elsewhere) ended up in the kitchen. In the whole house, we only had Jessie's flashlight, I had one candle, and Katie had one candle. So what did we do? We all sat down to play cards. First, we played two games of SkipBo, which took a surprisingly long time, and then we played crazy eights. Due to using two decks of cards, the twos and queens of spades came out like nuts. Instead of playing down to one, we were all exhausted, so we stopped as soon as someone reached five. By that time, I think it was twelve thirty or something, and we called it a night. The power came back on at 3am. It was odd, though, how this crazy socializing happened as soon as all tv, internet, and xbox live were unavailable. I can see how communities could become soo tightly knit in these circumstances. I can also see why going to bed at nine or earlier was even more reasonable. With the flash on, it looks like a perfectly normal game of cards. When you take the flash off, you get to see how it actually looked.

The second:
Saturday night, I actually had a little bit of a social life. Tim and I went over to this girl Alison's place, and we played Settlers with her and her boyfriend, Craig. Craig, Alison, and Tim are all from Rothesay, NB, and went to high school together. First of all, it was nice hanging out with another couple. I'm not used to that, but I felt a lot more comfortable, and I wasn't worrying about making someone uncomfortable or feel left out. Second of all, I felt like I was forcing them to play Settlers, which I didn't want to do, but they seemed pretty up for it. Sure enough, though, they loved it. As soon as we were done with the first game, Craig wanted to play a second. We ended up staying til 12:30. Craig and Alison are the type of people who I'd like to be friends with. Not wired with hyperness, you can sit and talk with them, and you're not expected to get drunk off your face or anything. It's nice.

The third:
Today is Katie's birthday! She turned 20. I have noooo idea why, but her family has a tradition of putting butter on someone's nose on their birthday. Last year, Katie's Mom called me and told me how incredibly serious it was that I accomplished this. I had to go out and buy butter, since I'd had no need for it before. :-P But I did it. And this year, I remembered. She toootally thought I wouldn't. So, there was nose buttering madness, and Tim, Kale, Jessie, Virica, and I all took Katie out to Boston Pizza for a birthday dinner. My dyed hair's in there, if you can see. I'm a brunette! My next post will probably be on knitting, so brace yourself. Knitting and lots of pictures of Jibbles for Jaime. Jibbles is a very cute cat. Much cuter than the ceiling cat seen previously on here.

So, happy birthday, Katie!!!

Computer Labs and Casual Sex

So, I'm sitting ina computer lab in the living sciences building. I don't think anyone knows that this computer lab EXISTS. And even if they did, they wouldn't come. The computers are so old, that there's a collective roar in the room, and the monitors' screens are iiiiitty bitty, but the monitors themselves are HUGE. I like the old school keyboards though. They're fun to type on, and make really loud clicking sounds. That doesn't matter, though, 'cause I'm the only on in here. No one to bother. It's not like this is some tiny hole in the wall computer lab, either. There are 25 computers in here rotting, until campus technology service decides they want to have fun beating them up in a field with a baseball bat a la Office Space.

Yesterday was an unusual day for me blogging-wise. I had a lot to talk about, plus lots of breaks between classes. True, I could have been reading my textbooks...but what fun would that have been?

Besides, without all this free time, I wouldn't get to tell you guys all about the casual sex study by Clark and Hatfield in 1989. We're starting the Attraction and Liking chapter in social psychology, and one of the early topics brought up were gender differences between males and females in society, and an evolutionary versus social roles theory for these differences. Amidst this debate, there's a study to see gender differences in receptivity to offers of casual sex. I just find this funny. This study took place on different American college campuses. The questioners were either attractive males or females, depending on the sex of the randomly approached participant.

In the first condition, the attractive confederate approached a member of the opposite gender randomly, and asked this question, "I've noticed you around campus, and I think you're very attractive. Would you go out on a date with me tonight?"

Women: 55% agreed

Men: 50% agreed

In the second condition, same situation, but the question asked was, "I've noticed you around campus, and I think you're very attractive. Would you go back to my apartment with me tonight?"

Women: 6% agreed

Men: 69% agreed

In the third condition, same situation, but the question asked was, "I've noticed you around campus, and I think you're very attractive. Would you have sex with me tonight?"

Women: 0% agreed

Men: 75% agreed

Very interesting, and very funny.

Interesting Personal Discovery

A few days ago, I started getting nauseous in the morning. The first time, I thought I was going to puke, but it passed suddenly. The second time, I was walking in Nicholson Hall to my first class, and suddenly had to run to the bathroom, where I apologized as I puked into a huge trash can, since all the stalls were full.

I know what you're all thinking, and the answer is no, so stop freaking out. The real cause is much more interesting. Multivitamins!! I told you I was trying to be healthy, right? In this process, I picked up a multivitamin. The day that I puked, I suspected that that might be the cause, even though it didn't make much sense. So I stopped taking it, and for the last two days I've been perfectly fine. No problems whatsoever. I researched it online, and it looks like a lot of people have problems with multivitamins and nausea. I only have a thing of yogurt for breakfast, and I guess a full stomach helps with that. So I took one tonight, after having four tacos (whoops), and so far no nausea.

I'm just so surprised. Multivitamins!

Piaget's Memory!

I don't know how many of you know this, but Piaget was crazy smart. He was a genius. At like fifteen or something, a museum offered him the job of head curator based on papers he published. When he wrote back and told them that he was very sorry, but he couldn't accept their offer because he was fifteen and doing something...fifteenish, the museum was really embarrassed.

Anyways! Piaget was a genius. His first thoughts on memory were that he thought that the smarter you were, the earlier your memories were. So it was just an intelligence thing. Evidence of this was that his first memory was when he was still in diapers, being pushed about in a pram by his nanny in Switzerland.

"I can still see, most clearly, the following scene. I was sitting in my pram, which my nurse was pushing in the Champs Elysees, when a man tried to kidnap me. I was held in by the strap fastened round me while my nurse bravely tried to stand between me and the thief. She received various scratches and I can still see vaguely those on her face. Then a crowd gathered, a policeman with a cloak and a white baton came up, and the man took to his heels. I can still see the whole scene, and can even place it near the tube station. [p. 188]"

He believed this memory until he was fifteen. The nanny, apparently, had been converted by the Salvation Army, and was writing to everyone to repent of her sins and apologize. She wrote Piaget's parents, and returned the gold watch that they'd given her in return for her brave defense of their son, because it turned out she'd made the whole thing up and inflicted the scratches on her face herself.

And that led to all this interesting research by Piaget on memories!! Tomorrow, I'll tell you a funny study about on men's and women's views on casual sex. At least, I think it's really funny. We're doing Attraction and Liking in Social Psychology right now.

In Response to Ben's Post (About Mine)

No, I have no brilliant or even non-brilliant insight about 3rd vs. 1st person in memories, though what you were implying definitely seemed logical.

I will now recap some of my first memories. And Ben, I wasn't that little when summer wars happen. I have a fairly chronological sense of many summer war memories (when you and Joey let Anne and me catch you, but we didn't have a prison 'cause we'd never actually managed it, and you told us to just put you in the Jones' garage, and you prooomised you'd stay, but we came back and you left?) among many others.

1. I have some extremely fabricated early memories. Let's start with the first. Me almost driving the van into the lake. I see myself crawling into the drivers seat, and Mom and Dad running out of the house with a look of terror on their face, and then crashing into the tree after I leaned the gear thing all the way into drive out of reverse. Must be totally false.

2. Also fabricated: My 1st birthday party, at the shack, sitting in that seat that clipped onto the oak table, with a blizzard outside, while Mom got me a bottle.

3. I think this is real. Mom let me pack my little pink plastic Barbie suitcase to move from the shack into the farmhouse. She was just letting me have fun, since she was actually taking care of everything, but it was great, and what I remember is walking down that sloping front lawn, holding that plastic Barbie suitcase, and feeling oh so important and grown-up. Age: I don't know, but I was walking.

4. Possible real memory: Talking to Uncle Dale while he was in the garage at his former house on Courtright. Was I even alive when they were living there? Considering I didn't know 'til I was 15 or so that Dale was on his 2nd wife, this is probably fake.

5. As Ben mentioned, the strength of the 1st person-ness of this memory makes me think it's real. In 1 and 2 it was pure third person. I was sitting in that old blue van in my car seat. It was parked outside a barn (or polebarn?) that had tall grass growing along the side. Everyone piled out to get stuff. I was the only one in a car seat, and I remember watching everyone get out, while I sat buckled in, wondering where everyone was.

I think #3 and #5 are my most legit. First memories are so weird the way they're so fuzzy, but you remember certain details so clearly.

I can only guess about my ages in these. Two or three? Who knows.

Impromptu Infomercial & a question

These times between classes, sitting on the computer, mucnhing on an apple and drinking ice cold water, not going outside where it is cold, are so perfect. Getting to browse everyone's blogs and enter foods into fitday.com while looking at fun graphs that pertain to me. By the way, if anyone ever wants to lose weight or find out how they're doing nutrition-wise, or just has free time and wants to have fun, I toootally recommend fitday.com. Every day you can enter what you eat, and it will tell give you a little pie graph with breakdowns of your food by carbohydrates, protein, fat, and alcohol. Then you can see how many grams of each of these things your getting, how many calories are coming from each thing, what percentage of your daily intake each is, and what your totally calorie count for the day is. And that's just the homepage. The rest of it is even more nutrition-tracking fun. If you want to lose weight, there's the weight page, where you can enter what weight you want to weigh by what day, and it tells you how many pounds you have to lose per week and how many days you have left, and shows how healthy your current weight is. On other pages you can check and see if you're getting all the vitamins etc. that you're supposed to need, enter the fitness activities that you do for hte day and see how many extra calories you've burned from that, ....basically, the fun graphs are just ENDLESS. And did I mention that it's free?

So, that was a fun infomercial.

Oftentimes, I'm trying to finish my apple before a class begins, so I'm standign out in the hallway, and more often than not, I find myself standing down into something gross. Yesterday it was one of those ash trays that stick out from the wall and have two decades of grime inside. The day before that, it was the trash can. Why do I do that? I would prefer not to be staring down at amazingly gross things while I eat...but I do. Maybe my subconscious is trying to self-handicap my eating process and thus make me skinnier. Tricky, subconscious. Veeeeerry tricky.

Do you guys ever get tired of taking notes? Every day in class, for four or so hours, I sit writing solid, and sometimes it feels like my brain is just turned off. Sometimes, I switch to print just to change the flow and give my hand a break. Anyone remember Brock's enormous writing bump on his middle finger? I'm starting to get that. Not really, mine's tiny. But still, it's there!

About a week or so ago, the door to Tim's room locked us out (stupid lock). All of our books were in there, as well as our shoes and coats, and class was coming up in half an hour. We couldn't get ahold of the landlord, so we went outside barefoot, stood on a chair, and tried to open teh windows. No doing. We tried to pick the lock. No doing. I gently tried breaking the door in. Shockingly, that option didn't work. We tip-toed back outside, and tried to force the window open. The storm window outside glass broke. Whoops. So we got the inside window open, and I shimmied inside. We got our books and shoes, and made it to class, yay! Now, however, the storm window is broken. The windows are ancient, but I don't know what to do about it. Should I try to replace the storm section of the window myself? Can you even buy storm windows like that, without the rest of the window coming with it? These things were tight. Now that the storm window's not there, cold air is just sweeping into Tim's room. We keep the door closed so that it won't suck the heat out of hte rest of the house. Should I just ignore it and give the landlord the damage deposit and let him deal with it? Should I get dad to come up, and say, "Daddy, what do I do? Help me." Either way, I'm not doing anything until some of this snow melts. So, I'd love all you homeowners' advice.

I signed the lease for a house for next year. Yay! It's a five bedroom place, really close to campus. There's a nice-sized kitchen, two full baths, and 60-gallon hot water heater. The rent's only 425 a month, and it includes everything, water, electricity, heat, high-speed internet, cable, phone, and there are internet, cable, and phone jacks in every single room. Suhweet. Plus, thermostats for every room and little ventilatey thingies. And the best part of all: It's only an eight month lease!! The landlord is this guy who cooks at the Moonlight Diner, one of two Chinese restaurants in town (not good, don't go there). His name is Simon, and he speaks with such a heavy Chinese accent that it took me a while to begin to decipher it. At first, I was sort of nervous and thought maybe this was his way of saying all these things about the lease and policies, and getting us to nod our heads like we knew what he was talking about, while he pulled the wool over our eyes and we agreed to outrageous things that would kill us later. After a couple of visits with him, though, I realized that he's a really, really nice guy. He tried really hard to make sure that we understood everything about the lease, and everything about the apartment. I'll be living with Katie, her boyfriend Chris, who is transferring from LeHigh University in Pennsylvania, Tim, and this guy we found to be the fifth. So, yay, happy news!

Cold!

Today, during the day, the temperature felt like -20 F. Just putting that out there. -20.2 degrees fahrenheit.

Memories (careful, psychology)

This post is for Ben K. Actually, and all the other siblings. Actually, it's for everyone, 'cause we've all experienced this, and no doubt pondered it. Ben K's just the one who always makes fun of me for things that pertain to memory.

In Developmental Psych today, we were learning about the phenomenon of infant amnesia. Okay, everybody, picture your earliest memory. Who knows if it's actually real or not. <--not an actual question. How old do you think you were? According to developmentalists, our first genuine memories typically occur between the ages of 3 and 4. Some people only have their first memories a little after the age of 7. Crazy, eh? And it's really rare to find someone who has a genuine memory at 1 or 2.

So today's class was about theories explaining *why* this occurs. There were all of these stupid theories that really didn't make any sense, then there was Freud, saying we were too sexual and repressed them to spare ourselves self-loathing, and then there was Piaget. Ahhh, Piaget. I love him and I hate him. We all at least recognize his name, right, and anyone with kids has probably read a parenting book or something which probably mentioned him at some point....anyway. He has these stages of development. There's the sensorimotor, then preoperational. In sensorimotor, there is no symbolic thought. You can't think about something when it's not there. So while you know your Mom, you think of Mom as the way you interact with her, and the way she smells, and the way she handles you. You don't think of this abstract idea of Mom in your head. So that's the way all thinking is at this time. And in the preoperational period, there is symoblic representation, so things like language and thinking about people who aren't there are possible, but thinking is also pretty illogical. Preoperational children use things like transductive reasoning instead of deductive or inductive. Most everyone's first memories are in these preoperational stage, but probably rather fragmented, and you can't be certain what came before what, so there's no strong sense of chronology, unlike memories after ten or so, when you can remember something, and know where it really fits in. Aaaanyways. Piaget thinks that the reason we can't remember things from our sensorimotor period is because we're trying to remember them using our symbolic thought that we use as adults, but memories from then weren't stored like that, they were stored with actions and sensations, and thus aren't directly accessible to us. And later on, in preoperational, our memories are spotty and fragmented because we both don't have a complete mastery symbolic representations such as language, but we also don't have reasoning that would have helped us, at that time, assemble them in some sort of chronological order. And *that* is why the closest you might be able to come to a emmory from your sensorimotor period is if a friend wears the same perfume as your Mom, and they keep reminding you of your Mom, and you don't know why. Stuff like that.

But! We're not into what really pertains to Ben K, yet. That was background. So, what about autobiographical memories? There are episodic memories (a specific event at a specific time) and generic event memories (like being given a bath, or a basic script for what happens at a birthday party or the zoo). Generally, we forget episodic events, unless something particularly exceptional or weird happens during it. So eating my apple at lunch today, I won't remember that specific memory. ButI take an apple with me every day, and years from now, I might look back and remember the generic event of me taking an apple and eating it during breaks between classes. For a little kid, if an episodic event happens like 5 times in three months, it will become a generic event. But most kids don't have these autobiographical memories, because they only have generic event memories, so how do they get autobiographical memories? It depends on their parents! Some parents are "elaborate parents" who when asking their kid about something, helps them out, and gives them all these details, and all these clues to remember what happened last month at grandpa's house. "Pragmatic parents," if their kid doesn't remember what happened, will probably just say, "Yes, you do, you remember. Come on, who did you see at Grandpa's last month?" They don't actually help the kid try to remember. But, through the elaborate parents providing such a detailed picture so often of what happened, the kid relives the exact same event again and again, turning an episodic memory into something autobiographical, which wouldn't normally occur for a child that age. However, maybe you've spotted a consequence of this. Things that are salient to little kids tend to be quite different than what's salient to an adult. What an adult thinks is totally cool and unusual is probably very different than what is to a kid. A kid might just be staring at the texture of the fur of a bunny they're holding, with the idea "soft" in their head, while their parent is like, "Cool, a rabbit." Later on, the kid will probably think of hte event more as something soft rather than remembering that they were holding a rabbit. But when the parent keeps recounting holding the rabbit, and what the rabbit was like, and what rabbits do, the parents' ideas of what is salient and what happened will gradually take replace what was salient to the kid, and eventually he'll think of the rabbit, rather than just the idea of soft or fluffy or whatever. So, I think it's really interesting to see how kids' memories can be changed like that.

Aaaand this idea of salience is what I'm getting to with Ben K. As an 8 or 9 year old (or any age, really), something in a particular situation could strike the kid as very salient. If that happens, what is salient will probably be linked to future memories in the kid's head. So, if something happens one or two Christmases that strike the kid a lot, every Christmas afterwards will probably be associated with that somewhat. So, if I have a particuarly striking memory of some events, don't blame me for not being able to dissociate it from past similar events, since I might want what was very salient to me at one time, but probably doesn't have any real founding in tradition, or being repeated more than two or three times. As an older sibling with many previous Christmas "scripts" in one's head, what stood out so much to me probably whizzed through your head, without making much of an impression. And maybe *that*'s! why I really want some things to be just so. Either that, or I just love to imagine certain things being important to me. :) You know, either or.

That was an awful lot of explanation about memory to make a very weak point at the end, so sorry. But I did think that was an awesome lecture. If you're really lucky, maybe I'll tell you the story about how Piaget realized that memories are our own creation. It's pretty fun. :)

Roomies!

Well, here you are. The list you've always been waiting for. The five people I live with.

Curtis--Curtis is a fourth year and is former president of my dorm, MacIsaac. I've never seen anyone able to drink so much beer, and yet act so uninebriated. He's in business, and seems to have mad people skills. He's sort of an invisible roommate. Spends a lot of time in his room, at class, and at work. I don't really know what he actually does for his job...but he's good with computers and laughs a lot. We didn't know Curtis before he lived with us, but he's turned out to be a cool guy. Oh, and O Brother Where Art Thou can occasionally be heard blasting from his room, which can only be a good thing. Curtis is from Moncton, New Brunswick, about three or so hours east of Antigonish.



Jessie--I met Jessie like the first day of school last year. She and Katie hit it off. She lived one floor below me, but had a dirty roomie and I don't think she liked the Mac style. Katie sort of links us together, I think, but we've had fun times at movies and hanging out. She's really close to her family, which I like. Also, she speaks Mi'kmaq, which is awesome. I wish I could speak Mi'kmaq. Jessie's from Cape Breton, but I'm not exactly certain what town.



Kale-- Kale's the other guy none of us knew going in this year. The property manager found a person to fill the sixth room without talking to us, and so we were pretty nervous, but he's totally laid back and makes beautiful smells in the kitchen when he cooks. Oh, and when he arrived, he brought tons of oatmeal raisin and chocolate chip cookies, which can only create a good impression. Major bonus points for me, I know. He smokes a lot of weed, but is really courteous about everything that he does. He, Tim, and I are on the first floor, and as a result we all hang out together a lot. Well, he, Tim, and the XBox 360 hang out a lot. :-p Kale works in the kitchen at Boston Pizza. He works full time and still manages to go to classes. Kale's from the Halifax area.



Katie--Katie was my assigned roommate in the MacIsaac residence double rooms. Talk about the residence office not screwing up. We both like Radiohead and are unashamed Harry Potter fans. It would bot be a lie to say that our room last year kicked ass. I get the impression that Katie's normally much more outgoing socially than I've seen her at university, but we both had a pretty quiet lifestyle in MacIsaac with a few exceptions. The door to our room wouldn't stand open, so as a result we didn't meet people on our floor very easily the way other people did. She's super clean, which is nice, and I'd try and be as clean as possible. Having Katie as a roomie definitely made it easier. She has a long distance boyfriend, Chris, in Pennsylvania. Oh, and her birthday is January 21st. Cool, eh? Oh, and she's from Massachusetts, but is like 3/4 or a half Canadian. Oh, Katie is the owner of the oft-mentioned cat, Jibbles.

Tim-- Tim's from Rothesay, New Brunswick, and his house is conveniently five minutes off the highway I have to take to get home, and only an hour and a half from Calais. You've all met Tim, though, so there's not much to say. He's doing biology, plays a lot of Halo, has three older brothers, plays piano and saxophone, and also plays a lot of Starcraft. Has a much better work ethic than I do.





Well, my laptop's battery is almost out. It's snowing like nuts outside. And those are all my roommates! I apologize for the mugshot-type photos I took.

Short Thoughts

So, I've been counting calories (no surprise there) and eating healthfully (what?!). Yeah. I spent like an hour at the grocery store a little more than a week ago picking out nice food. Instead of having a lot of crappy, low-calorie food, I have a little bit of really nice high-calorie food. I also splurged and got multi-vitamins. They're HUGE. And green. Like, lime green. Instead of cardboard-like icky bread, I have molasses brown bread from the bakery that come in nice, big slices. Yay! And...dinners of just a salad. Radical.

I have a target weight with a target date to achieve it. If I do achieve it, I'll put a picture up here just to celebrate it. For motivation, I have a picture of a Victoria's Secret model as my desktop. That may seem shallow, but motivation is very important to me. I always start out overzealous and then burn out.

Oh, I dyed my hair this weekend. When I'm motivated enough to get up from my seat, I'll take a picture to show you guys. It's a somewhat outrageously dark shade of brown.

Every morning when I'm sitting at my desk checking email, Jibbles (cat) sits on my lap, sticks his little paws into my desk drawers, and fishes around for things. He drags out my little sewing kits and then goes back and fishes around some more. It's very cute. Another cute feature of cats that I never observed before is the way they wash their faces with the paws. It must suck being covered in hair like that.

So, Gears of War. I'm impressed. I don't have HD or anything, but the graphics and fluid motion of the characters and ways to fight are just really impressive. Why is everyone so large, though? Each character has legs the size of tree trunks. Oh, and I love the crouch run. Zoom!

Really Quickly

I've got class really soon, but just thought I'd throw something up here, since it's been awhile.

I had an at-home, impromptu tetra-fecta this weekend. It was sad, really. Something's Gotta Give was on tv, I was waiting for it to come on, a movie (I can't even remember what) was on beforehand, I watched that, but then 10 Things I Hate About You was on as filler, so I watched that, then Something's Gotta Give, which I enjoyed more this time around then I did the first time I saw it, and then The Truman Show. I didn't even want to watch The Truman Show, but I let it get like half an hour in, and by then I just wanted to see the end of the movie, 'cause I'd already invested. How sad.

My latest plan volunteer-wise is maybe the Philippines or somewhere Central America. Fly down to Santa Fe for Anne's graduation, drive to LA with Brad, fly from there to volunteer location (wherever that may end up being) a few days later after proper socialization and showing of town has occured, then fly back from volunteer location to who knows where--maybe Ohio to visit. How much fun would that be.

I wrote a piece of tooootal BS for my art scholarship submission essay of "what art means to me." How is a person supposed to answer that question?? It's like saying, "Please, we would like to evaluate how good you are at BSing." Apparently the essay doesn't matter at all, though, and it's all based on your entry pieces, so I suppose it's okay that my "essay" really blows. And isn't in essay form. And uses sentence fragments--artistically. :-P

Well, time for developmental. I'm skipping French lab today, 'cause I really can't stand the thought of it right now. This'll be the first class I skipped this year. With the exception of Thanksgiving.

I have so much to blog about, so you won't have to wait too long for an update. Developmental Psychology time!!

In Jaime's words: Gripery

As you all know, I'm a very intolerant, unreasonable, mean person. I have intolerant thoughts all day. And today, as I was sitting in a lobby waiting for Tim to get out of his botany lab, I wrote some intolerant thoughts down, just so I would remember them and be able to write them down here. Now, there you see effort in order to perpetuate my intolerance. I am lazy in all the wrong ways.

Actually, these aren't all annoyances. Some of these are just observations.

Sam's mentioned in his blog (CommonPlaces, to your right) that people who write blogs might be, "a little bit keen on themselves." And just in case there was any question about this, I thought I'd clarify: I am in fact a very self-centered person, and this blog feeds my egotistical, selfish thoughts. Actually, that is something I worry about. I notice that the word "I" or any "me"-related word seems to pop up in every sentence I use. So I try and eliminate this egocentric world I'm in...and I can't. In the end, I've resigned myself. I think that almost everyone is this way. It's been shown that people remember anything better if they relate it back to themselves. It's called the self-reference effect. So I wonder, does anyone else have this nagging sense of self-centeredness? It makes me feel very...uncaring or something. There I go again: me me me. :-P

You know, even when the weather here is cold, it's really not that cold, but it FEELS that cold. So you may see on the weather report, 8 celsius or something, but do not be deceived. That is not as warm as it may sound. The actual university is on a bit of a hill here, and the wind tends to whip like nuts, especially the way it funnels between buildings, building up force. There's actually one point on the top of about...61 steps, where the wind is (to me) notoriously bad. I have to hold on to the railing to keep it from tossing me down the steps. It's especially bad when it's just snowed, and everyone goes up and down them, packing it into smooth ice that's very rounded: ideal slippage. Anyways. It was a seemingly cold day today, and I was bundled up. However, I walked outside at one point today--and it was perfect. It felt balmy. And I realized that it was because the wind wasn't tearing around, ripping the warmth from me. I'm certain that Ben and Julie have a very excellent sense of the ripping cold wind, from being at St. Andrews. Whew! Now that was an icy wind. Granted, Anne and I didn't have jackets...(smart packing).

You know what really bugs me? When people who are perfectly healthy and strong use the handicap button on the powered doors. Why do they do that?? Why don't they just push it open? It's not like there's something in their hands. Just give a little push. I especially hate it when I'm sitting in the lobby of the building that the lazy door pushers are leaving, and the doors stay open, both of them, forever after they leave. It's not so bad when someone enters/leaves without pressing the button, 'cause generally the outside door is closed before they fully open the inside door, or vice versa. But when they push that handicap button, and both doors open at once, and they stand there like that for so long, the wind zips into the building, and sucks out all of that nice, heated air, and it takes at least five minutes for me to heat up properly again. At which point some lazy person comes along and pushes the handicap door button. I think it's funny that I'm complaining about other people being lazy. Ha.

You know what else really bugs me? Handicap doors. I know that some people actually need them, but for a selfish person like me, that doesn't stop it from bothering me. I never use the handicap door buttons (see above paragraph), but if I want to go through one of those doors, they resist being pushed open. I actually have to push much harder with a handicap door than a regular door. The regular doors swing so nicely and easily. And before you go excusing the healthy handicap door button pushers: There are several non-handicap doors for every handicap door we have. And before you tell me: Well why don't you just do through the non-handicap door? Let me say, I try. But it's hard to identify which doors are the handicap ones, and which aren't. Sometimes I try and go through the non-handicap ones, but it's tricked me, and it's the power door! Aaaaaagh. Ohhh, the trials I suffer.

You know what's crazy? The weather in Antigonish. It seems like every area seems to say that the weather is unpredictable for that region. In Maine, I never really noticed that the weather changed that much, despite the fact that there were many touristy t-shirts making jokes about it. In Antigonish, though, that actually seems to be quite true. I've been standing beneath a rain cloud with sun everywhere else around me. Today, it was cloudy and snowing on one side of a building, sunny and snowing on another, and cloudy and raining on the other. That was weird. Perhaps this is a common quote for any area that thinks it's known for it's unpredictable weather, but my French professor said it while we were talking about the spring-like weather yesterday (today, btw, there are two in. of snow on the ground). She said there was a saying that went, "If you're in Nova Scotia and don't like the weather, just wait a minute." I thought that was funny. :-[

Today, French class was odd and fun. It felt like a high school French class. We worked for ten minutes in pairs on two exercises, and then went up to the board to write our answers. I reaaally like that. It's very low stress. I get a chance to think calmly in my head. Normally, the professors just walk around and randomly pick students to perform exercises in front of the class. That is just TOO stressful to me. I get scared, and my thoughts run in all different directions. Before you know it, I'm conjugating etre wrong. That still happened a little bit today, but that half an hour or so of low stress work felt fabulous.

Well, that's about all the griping for today. And I know, I need to work on being more tolerant. :-P

Well, that's a surprise

So, it turns out that my art professor has submitted me to compete for an art scholarship...random. However, they're judging based on work done outside of class, of which I have...very little. So I only have until Monday to do a number of sketches and an essay saying, "What art means to me." The scholarship's not for very much, but still, it'd be nice. So, that was my nice surprise.

Best frozen dinner I've ever had: a butter chicken type thing with rice. I know, frozen dinner, yada yada yada, but it wasn't bad! And it was unbrand. You know what would be awesome to have? A Trader Joe's nearby. I don't go to the grocery store often enough to keep lots of fresh stuff around, so it would be awesome to have their variety of frozen foods around. I've only seen them in the store, but they look so good, and aren't the typical grocery style.

OSU

I'm just not even going to talk about it.

Ramble a little...or ramble a lot

I met my new French professor today. For the first time, I'm being taught in class by a Francophone (my lab prof is also a native French speaker) and it's very intimidating. Her name, amusingly, is Dr. Mendez. Thankfully, she speaks very clearly and slowly in French. My lab professor, Mr.? Dr.? Maillet speaks reaaaally quietly and mumbles. I spend the entire time struggling to discern what he's saying. Have I bragged about my French lab, yet? In addition to overall small class sizes, I have a French lab once a week. There are five people in it, total. We sit around for the first half of classes, in a discussion led by Dr/Mr Maillet. Basically, I spend the entire time blushing with my inadequate French.

My developmental psychology professor, Dr. Bigelow, is a low talker. I sit in the second row, about five feet away from her, and if anyone so much as shuffles a paper, what she's saying is lost. Today, someone half-shouted from the back, "Could you please speak a little louder?" She laughed, and made a small effort to speak more loudly, but in no less than thirty seconds, was back to her extremely quiet volume.

Professors at my university are awesome. I don't know if everyone has this experience or not, but every one of my classes is taught by a professor. A TA teaching a class doesn't exist here. The professors learn students' names, and almost every professor is heard to say something like this, "Stop by my office whenever you want. I'm almost always there. My door's always open. If you're having problems, I'll help you out. If my office hours don't work for you, call me, and we'll arrange a time to meet. I care about you doing well, I think you do too, and I'll help you." I love that.

Random weather: It seems like everyone's been having an unseasonably warm winter. We were too, and today I walked to school wearing my winter coat, feeling silly for even wearing it. It was a beautiful, sunny day! When I got out of French (one hour later) it was snowing. A lot. Those big, clump flakes that wouldn't have even stuck, except that they were so BIG. By the time I got out of developmental psychology, there were three inches of snow on the ground. One hour later, walking home from French lab, it was raining. It poured rain for the next three hours. Many thanks to Ben and Julie for getting me those Grr Boots. They came through when I was wading through the lake that the grocery store parking was converted into.

Home Sweet Home

I'm back in Antigonish! The 'Nish. Some might say this is a bad thing, but I like Antigonish. It's small, the pace is slow, and there's a Subway. As I'm sure everyone knows, Dad got me a digital camera to replace my old one that I lost. Yay Dad! Now, however, I'm able to show you all my beautiful home. Get ready for picture bonanzas. As soon as I run into Jessie, I'll take her picture, and then there will be a roommate post, so everyone can get to know the awesome people I live with. With whom I live. Whatever.

Here is 12 Xavier Drive, the house I've been living in with five other people for the last...(pauses to count on fingers..Sep..Oct..Nov..Dec..) four months. You can't see it in this picture, but there are three nice little trees in my front yard, and we have a small backyard that we never use. But we should. But we don't.


Here we have the living room. You can all admire the very well coordinated furniture we have, and amazing decorations. Other than that futon, they're all really comfy, and most importantly: free. The futon was left in the house from last year's students. Periodically, as I or someone else is sitting on it, it suddenly falls apart. Like it seriously just goes...fwoosh! The bolts wiggle out and the frame goes kerplunk. I'm loving the onomatopoeias today, eh? Yeah, I had to look that spelling up. We trash-picked that armchair, and Kale (roomie) brought everything else.





The kitchen doesn't look like much, but it does its job. It can get kind of cramped when people's dinnertimes overlap, but what kitchen doesn't. Every day I'm grateful for those two full-sized fridges.






Here's my room. I swear, it seemed really clean. I can excuse myself because I took this just after I'd arrived, and the room was in the mayhem of unpacking. Excuses, excuses, excuses. A view of both sides of the room.




So, there you go. I have pictures of Tim's room and my bathroom. If anyone cares about seeing them, let me know.

The gang's all here

We've made it!! Each of my six siblings (+ Jaime, every bit a sister) now has a blog. Btw, Anne, am I remembering correctly that you were talking about changing the name of your blog?? Please don't! I love the name The Divine Comedy. It's so...so...I don't know. But I really really like it. <--Profound.

So, I saw Rainbow Six: Vegas today. Good game. I like the way when you hide behind a wall, you don't just crouch, you sit with your back to it while the bullets whizz by to your sides and over your head. I also like the way you can aim while you're crouching, then flip around in a second and shoot the other guy bang on. I hear that if I like this, apparently Gears of War kicks ass even more.

World's latest review: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. There's not much to say. I'm both extremely depressed, but also happy. Danny DeVito looks *much* better when not spherical. I spent the entire movie going, "Is that really Danny DeVito? Nahh, ...but it has to be!" Turns out Jack Nicholson and Danny DeVito's are friends from when they were little kids. Their parents ran a business together. Fun. Anyways, this movie broke my heart, and now I understand why Jack Nicholson has respect as an actor. Wow.

Go Troy Smith!!

Congratulations to Buckeye Troy Smith, for winning the Heisman Trophy!! I had no idea that the whole thing had come and gone already. This happened December ninth??? Where was I? Must have had my head in the sand somewhere...oh yeah, exams. :-P Anyways, Go Troy! Plus, that name just kicks ass. I wish I could pull off the name Troy. "Hi, I'm Troy." "You're kidding me."

Man, look at that NECK.

Coincidence of hte day

I know this will seem very boring to everyone, but I'm really excited right now. I continued browsing through real estate today, this time in the Saint John area (where Tim lives). I came across this house and fell completely in love. Check it out, and be certain to click for more pictures on the right hand side. This is only $300,000 USD!! So I showed Dad, I showed Wayne, and then I showed Tim. At which point he said, "Oh, I know the people who live there. The Mildenburgers." At which point I said, "You mean Mrs. Mildenburger, who helped out with Andrew and Amanda's wedding???" (She's German and very very awesome and nice.) And he said, "Yes!" He wanted to confirm that it was their house, though, so he looked at the person to contact, and said, "Whoa, the woman selling this property lives just down the street from me." So, I think it's fate that we buy this house. Let's all chip in!

So, that's my crazy coincidence. :-P

Cabinets!...sort of.

Here are the 4'x8'4" "cabinets" Dad and I made last night. This is one almost but not quite complete island. To the left, outside the photo, are others just stacked on top of one another.

I won't be able to tile tonight, 'cause we need to order them. So, that means I'll be coming back here for spring break, and doing lots of tiling! Yay! So tonight, we'll work on the rest of hte cabinets instead.

Just to clarify, I will in fact be tiling the kitchen countertops. It seemed like a decent, cheap way of improving the overall feel and look of them, and to help make them seem more legitimate.

The Christmas decorations are almost all down, and I am a demon of cleanliness!

Anne, you left your brown Mossimo shirt behind, and Brad, you left your navy blue Gap button down behind. As you can see, I may or may not be wearing both of those in that photo.

Productivity? What?

Yeah, this is a shocker. Today I was a slave driver, and Dad and I got a lot done on the kitchen "cabinets." To make them seem more legit, I suggested tiling the counters of them. Dad got pretty excited about the idea, though, so now I've been studying tiling from his book, making a list of what we have and what we need. Hopefully, before I leave for New Brunswick, there will be at least one tiled countertop! Not gonna lie, I'm really excited. I hope we can find everything we need tomorrow. However, before I get started on the tiling, I'm supposed to have all the sheets, blankets, and decorations put away in an organized manner. :( So, maybe I'll wake up at a decent hour tomorrow and try to get that taken care of.

Additional shocking announcement: The house is really warm right now, and my cheeks are all flushed from the heat. Amazing. For those of you who are not aware, my Dad's house is in its very early stages of construction. Some walls aren't insulated, so the cold Maine air just falls down into the house, making a common house temperature 52.

By the way, congratulations to you brave warriors of Christmas vacation here. As Brad said, the water did eventually start running clear again. I spent today bleaching the stains off of the bathtub, toilet, and sink. Ladybugs are still crawling everywhere, but hey, I think they're pretty cute. Ohhh, fun new discovery: the fruit flies were coming from the CORN STOVE. Dad hypothesizes that the warmth allowed them to hatch while they were sitting inside. It broke today, Dad scooped out almost all the corn to get to the parts he needed to fix, and while he was showing me how it worked, I noticed that hte corn looked like it was...moving. Yes, moving. Upon closer inspection, I realized that it was actually just hundreds of little bugs crawling around among the corn. Whew, for a second there I thought the corn was moving. Wait...BUGS!!!! I pointed it out to Dad, and we were both amazed, though I was mostly just grossed out and alarmed. Once I saw that our bug killer stuff was nonflammable, I proceeded to spray the living daylights out of them. Undoubtedly, I am now inhaling horrible chemicals, but hey, it's worth it.

I took the geography test that everyone was bugging me about. Didn't do too well, scored a 119/150. :-[ So, now you know. I suck at knowing the states. They all sort of blur together once they're past the Mississippi. I read Anne's book BabyCatcher, by Peggy Vincent. It presents a really good view of modern midwifery, I think. So, everybody read it. There was an interesting line in the back that reminded me of Ann Niblock. Under the section Appendix I: Pearls of Wisdom, she says, "The mother of the laboring woman suffers most." I remember sitting with her in the waiting room for hours and hours, while she tried to not look worried, and while I tried to give her things to occupy her mind with, and how when Ben K text messaged from the delivery room that everything was okay, and the baby had arrived, and it was a girl, she just cried, and hugged me, and cried some more. What a great time, but I certainly felt terrible for how worried Ann was.

I have been sucked into looking at real estate in Maine, and I'm having a ball. Right now I've got my on this little baby. Really nice interior, and $140,000. Too bad I have no idea where Winterport is.

Well, now that I've binged on real estate, and it's midnight, I'm going to bed. Wish me luck with my tiling adventure!!