All the posts I've been starting but not posting

From this weekend:

I have about five different things of chap stick, and they all decided to run out at once. That's bad luck.

"Don't disrespect the pizza parlor!" I've been watching The Sopranos pretty much nonstop. Right now I'm in Season 3.

From March 18th:

I just had an embarrassing moment of comedic helplessness. Today and yesterday it's been really windy. The kind of windy where you can lean back into it and it supports you, or if it's blowing from behind it scoots you quickly along. Anyways. I was trying to leave Nicholson through these glass doors. The wind was blowing against the door, so I had to put some effort in pushing it to get it a bit open, but as I was going through a huge gust came through, and pinned me in the door frame. Until it subsided, I couldn't push the door off of me enough to finish going through. All these really only lasted like 20 seconds, but it was pretty great.

I watched The Graduate last night.

There's a guy in the Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix credits called Slightly Creepy Boy. Fantastic.

One of the reasons I enjoy having my hair short is that it makes my shadow twenty times more interesting.

Okay, really, there were a lot that I wrote but didn't post, but I guess I've been deleting them...

So, I'm switching over to a regular psych major from the honours. And I'm pretty happy about it. But because I already have so many psych credits though, if I do a regular major I have to take everything but psych in order to fill all these electives I all of a sudden I have now. So next year is looking really fun. I'll have a minor in studio art. :-P

I'm so over titles

This was a nice little moment of comedy in the middle of me writing the paper due today...

Stairs

This blog is starting to be updated as often as Ben's. Either Ben, actually. :)
I have a very annoying habit of counting stairs. If I stay in one place long enough, I start memorizing how many steps are where. Yesterday, as I was walking down from the Annex (where the psych department is), before I'd reached the bottom of the first flight I thought, "no doubt this'll be boring old 11." And it was; both the flights were 11 steps. I didn't have those memorized, so it made me surprised that I'd expect them to be eleven steps, and when I looked back on stair counting, I realized that in academic environments (or is it just public places?) there tend to be eleven steps in one flight, or two sets of eleven. But not all places are eleven steps. My favorite number of steps is fourteen. The Bexley house had fourteen steps, and the new house in Calais that Dad's building has fourteen also. I was very happy when I realized he'd picked 14. Now every time I climb them I get a little bit happy or satisfied instead of a little bit annoyed.

Anyways, that's my semi-realization, which may be completely wrong. That public places tend to have stairs that come in 11 steps, and houses tend to have 14. Feel free to count the steps around you and say, "Excuse me, Mandy, but my house has thirteen steps, and my workplace comes in sets of twelve."

I hate small numbers of steps. The little threes and fives and twos. Obnoxious.

You know what I love? Places that all have the same number of steps except for one spot that's off. Bexley (Cassingham, middle school, and high school) was great for this. The entire place came in 11 steps. Eleven was everywhere. Except for that small, narrow stairway back where the old orchestra room was, where the only off number was in the whole building, and that had one bit that was 10. I always wondered if anyone else knew that.

Thank goodness for computers. I would never remember Daylight Saving Time if it weren't for my computer automatically adjusting for it.

M.C. Escher, by the way, is actually really cool. I only ever saw his trippy stuff, or little tesselation thingies, and while that was nice, I thought that in the end it was pretty boring and not anything I'd want around for the pleasure of looking at it. But I saw a book on Escher the other day, and was really surprised. He did tons of cool linoleum cuts in different styles. Don't you like Escher so much more now?

A week of movie watching gluttony

Atonement
Cloverfield
A Goofy Movie
Eastern Promises
Howl's Moving Castle
I Heart Huckabees
Lethal Weapon
Live Free or Die Hard
Love Actually
Terminator 2
Terminator 3
The Godfather
The Usual Suspects
There Will Be Blood
V for Vendetta
Beauty and the Beast
Cinderella
Casino Royale
Predator

Pavel...or Alessandro Nivola?

I'm so sad. I was looking up Alessandro Nivola, to say that he looks like an adult version of Pavel/Sam, when I saw that a movie Chess was being made. I got alllll excited, thinking that this was going to be like Hairspray and Mamma Mia! and they were just continuing down the line doing Chess. But no. It's about a record producer or something.

Anyways, I think Pavel toootally looks like Alessandro Nivola.

I've installed every codec known to man, and I can watch movies that I download onto my computer, but for some reason I can't play actual legitimate DVDs that I put in my computer. I used to be able to.... And when it started not playing DVDs, it used to tell me that the correct codecs weren't there, but now it tells me that it can't be played and I should try lowering my resolution and color quality. So I've gone down and lowered both to their absolute worst possible, until my computer looks like it's from 1995, but it still gives me that same "maybe you should try lowering your resolution and color settings" message. Grr. And it's not just on one DVD that it's doing this; I've tried several.

Yesterday I was a movie glutton. First I watched Beauty and the Beast, then Cinderella, then Love Actually, and then (because I had to find out what it was like, don't laugh too hard) A Goofy Movie. And A Goofy Movie was actually a lot better than I expected it to be. If I'd watched that when it came out (I would have been 9), I bet I would have thought it was really cool...maybe. I actually remember seeing that line in the preview with the guy with the Cheez Wiz (sp?) saying, "Hey man, it's the Leaning Tower of Cheeza," and thought, I will never see that movie. And yet, 13 years later, I did.

Today might be another day of movie gluttony. Somehow my meal plan has run out for the year, and so since I'm living on PB&J and Mr. Noodles (aka Ramen), I don't need to leave my room. So I just sit, watch movies, eat, and knit. My fingers are actually really sore from all the knitting I did while watching movies yesterday.

Oh, I saw Predator! I'd only seen Predator II before. And I have to say, I think that might be the most stereotypical action movie out there. If I had to show someone the action genre in one movie, it might be that one. Except there aren't any car chase scenes or anything.

So, Friday I played in a Dylan tribute festival thing, accompanying a singer along with a clarinet and a violin. Between rehearsing that evening and fifteen minutes before we were supposed to play, all four of my pegs spun out, leaving me with strings as loose as cooked noodles. A nice guitar repairman guy helped me get them to stick (it normally takes me a day or two of sitting around cursing filing chalk dust onto the pegs to do it myself). But when I afterwards went to lower my A string a bit with the fine tuner (and I swear I was making it flat, not sharp) the bottom of the string flew completely out. I thought it had broken, and I definitely thought that since it was now really close to when we were going to play that I wasn't going to be able to get it in tune. But I did, and everything went pretty smoothly. Of course, we were the most un-Dylan-like group there, and stuck out like sore thumbs. But it went pretty well, especially considering the chaos with my strings right beforehand.

Well, today's the last day of reading week. Classes tomorrow. :(