Why You Should Own A Pet Gerbil, Now

DISCLAIMER: The following is not meant to be taken seriously. The author and her friends do not wish harm upon any animal. Mosquitoes and flies aside.

Anyway.

Zephy and I were on the bus today, and we passed by the dog park. I pointed out that a lot of people were walking dogs, and then I asked Zephy, "If you had a dog would you walk it in the park?"

"Depends on what kind of dog," she said.

"I don't know—a long-haired dog, say."

"Are they hypoallergenic?"

At which point I remembered that I had forgotten that Zephy was allergic to cat and dog fur. So I said, "Probably not a long-haired dog then. What about chihuahuas?"

"My cousin has a chihuahua," she said. "It's named after my other cousin, so it's really confusing when we call its name. But I don't want a chihuahua."

"Hmm. What about—what else are you allergic to?"

"Cats, dogs, and dust. That's what the allergy report said."

"So you're not allergic to gerbils?"

"No, I'm not."

"So you could get a pet gerbil and walk it in the park! In one of those wheel things, except instead of staying still it would roll forward."

"You mean like a sphere?"

"Yeah! Except a wheel would be better, if it was wide enough so it wouldn't tip over. Because you could tie a leash to the side and—uh—walk it. But you probably couldn't really walk it since well—okay, maybe you could. You could pull on the string and then the wheel would roll and uh, the gerbil would just kind of tumble inside."

I guess this is why people "walk" their gerbils in stationary wheels.

. . .

Zephy told me that three people made AIME this year, including me, Tybalt, and some other person whose name she did not hear. But the cutoff score is 93, so maybe that last person was Sonny? It would be a bit annoying if he was the one, since he half-guessed his way there, but it's not like there's a prize for qualifying for AIME, so if he likes doing more math problems then good for him.

But I guess this means I should do more math problems. Instead of reading RSS every night. Although I am very up-to-date on various things such as the pseudo-flooding in Western Ohio, the near-Oscar-sweep for The King's Speech, and the various new functions of Google Docs.

You can't win it all, I guess. Not even golden statuettes that cost $150 each to produce.

. . .

I just realized today that Mr. Wollen's website says "First page you see" when you click his name from the school site.

He also has "First day of Spring!!!" on his March calendar.

I can't wait for spring to start, and for this snow to end. But I suppose I should get used to it, because I have now received both letters of acceptance and scholarship from McGill, and that is most likely where I will be going. So snow, hurrah! Good thing I'll soon be legal to drink, right? Don't they say cider's the best way to warm up on a cold winter night?

Or maybe that was hot chocolate. I like those better anyway.

I also need to choose whether I want to major in biomath or EEE. Yes, those are actual majors. I'm thinking that I'd rather major in biomath, since if McGill hadn't offered it I would most likely have gone for a biology or math major with the other as a minor. But EEE! If I minored in English (no way, but if I were to) it'd abbreviate to EEEE! And if I picked up economics as another minor, EEEEE!

Okay. That is not a good reason.

The real reason is that engineering is a rather fast-changing field, and it's something that generally does not require being in one place for a long time, and that's tempting. Dealing with high-tech is tempting too. As well as this whole "applied" business, because after all applied math goes hand in hand with engineering.

So I will ruminate for a couple of months and decide later.

Why Not to Start Your Research Paper on the Day Before it's Due.

1. You find yourself needing to write five pages of solid work, of which you barely have one page.

2. You find your fellow classmates needing to write five pages of solid work, of which none of them barely have ten pages combined. In a class of twenty.

3. You find yourself waking up really, really early to finish off said five pages.

4. You find your fellow classmates not waking up really, really early and not finishing off said five pages.

5. You find yourself weeks behind on another blog entry.

6. You find your fellow classmates... wait, you don't know if your fellow classmates have blogs.

Well, now that I know why I should totally not procrastinate on my research paper, and why I should totally plan it out ahead and totally write it long before it's due, will I actually do it?

Well...

No.

I'll probably, at most, just think about it for a very, very long time. And I doubt I'll even think about it for such a long time. Other, more exciting things, are always around.

Like the AMC results.

I talked to Argon, who religiously checks the AMC website and can apparently glean off information that I myself cannot find (a.k.a. the cutoff scores), and he told me that the 12A cutoffs were 88.5. So, if the 12B cutoffs are the same, I have room to make two "oops-I-bubbled-it-wrong-again" mistakes, and exactly two.

The downside to that?

Dino would also make it, what with his guessing not-so-strategy.

I know it sounds mean, but I really do not think Dino deserves to make it to AIME's. But I searched around Google and I've heard that quite a number of people got over 100, so I am not sure about these cutoffs. Also, apparently, many people who take 12B have also taken 12A and take the second one because they didn't do so well on the first one, and are thus more prepared for the second one.

Who knows?

All I can say is, I am 95% confident that Argon was one of the pitifully few who actually did practice problems on the AMC site.

I know for me, personally, I forgot the AMC even existed until the day before, when Nyx conveniently reminded me. But that's just me.

Of course, I'm also really, really excited for Moody's.

Rumor on the street claims this year's topic is going to be about healthcare, namely what is the best way to tackle the healthcare problem while minimizing government (or better known as tax) money, maximizing savings for the average person, and possibly avoiding political attacks.

You know, such things as, "It's socialism, and if this is passed in Congress then I'm going to move to Canada!"

Well, no, you're not. Because, if anything, Canada is much more socialist than the US, even with the addition of a universal healthcare system. Moving to Canada will help your case in no way whatsoever. You might as well say you're moving to China.

Which actually might help, as China's barely starting (if any) a socialist system, and as for now, there isn't even a property tax.

But I digress again.

Regardless of whether the rumor's true, I'll be looking into the healthcare system for the next few days. And if it is true, and some other topic such as when is the best time to end the war in Iraq/Afghanistan or how to end our reliance on foreign oil is not chosen or even how to make sure colleges don't spam your inbox with the same emails, then I'm sure we will be prepared plenty.

Of course, I would also be pleasantly surprised if they asked us to design a work calender to maximize worker productivity, with an emphasis on more breaks. I'm not picky at all.

I will be bringing my calc textbook, my precalc textbook, my algebra textbook, my photocopied version of the geometry textbook, my stat textbook, my dad's weird math textbooks in Chinese, my AP review books, and other assortments of random things. You know, calculators, pencils, graph paper, shiny erasers, and so forth.

I think the fact that I've been writing research papers and US reflections for the past few weeks has greatly hindered my natural tendency to write in lists instead of separate, cohesive thoughts, and thus I am expressing myself excessively in this post.

Oh well. Moody's is coming up, and that means fourteen hours of, as Jimmy nicely put it, "insanity." I do believe this reminds me to also bring nice, soft, cushiony pillows, as our school's chairs are most uncomfortable (although the tables are, according to Tea, better than some other schools' tables). I would not be able to stand another fourteen hours of sitting on the ground with only my coat as a soft thing to buffer the pain. I wouldn't even have Joss as a pillow anymore.

So yeah. Pillows, food, writing utensils, and more food.

What more math could there be?

Oh, being on A team for the math meet, finally, after a two month hiatus. Not that I minded B team too much, but I would have liked a chance to see if I could rank comparably with the other people in our grade, and missing a chunk of points because your score wasn't counted does skew the results somewhat.

However, I find it amazing Tybalt did not do better than me. He had been, after all, beating me in my rounds ever since... he started doing them as well. Maybe he had been distracted. That could explain the slightly lower AMC score as well.

Does that mean, since Bryant also scored worse than last year, that he is also distracted? By what? Or whom?

Oh, such mysteries in this world.