Tentative Steps

On CNN, Kirsten Haglund, the winner of the title Miss America in 2008, says, "I remember the first day I decided to throw away my lunch, and I drank a Coke instead. I felt really good. I remember that day and the choice I made. And it was a choice made out of fear, not logic."

Maybe that is why I took out that bottle of diet coke Khajiit got for free from the vending machine. We are chronic Nestea drinkers, and when we are not drinking it we're drinking Lipton tea, or another latte from Tim Hortons. When I took a sip from the bottle, the fizzy drink caught in my throat and burned. But I kept on going. It is addicting, this heady mix of aspartame and carbonated water.

We have our reasons for choosing the drinks we do. Years ago, Trent Hamm at The Simple Dollar wrote, "My wife and I have both been addicted to soda for many years. On an average day, I would drink six cans of soda and my wife would drink four cans, meaning we would go through ten cans a day at our house." General Duck prefers his soda sparingly, but the bottle in his hand has still become a part of his persona.

For me, picking a drink has much to do with the mood I want to convey in my life. Coffee in those ambivalent preteen years when public transit gave us a freedom I haven't tasted until recently (not surprisingly, I have adopted a new caffeine habit lately as well). Bubble tea to soothe a nostalgia that seeps through the edges of my vision so that there is always something there, something in the corner of my eye.

Hot chocolate? Well, because I wanted to roll up the rim. Not that I won anything.

. . .

Islandtown's metro line is asking people to name their new train. One of the names was related to the Greek god of time, Chronos. I told Khajiit that one of my characters was called Chronos. He said, "Everyone has a character called Chronos."

I have tried to read more lately. I checked out Middlemarch from the library, and Khajiit and I read the first chapter (and a very wordy prelude). There is something special about the way a book can make you laugh, but I had never quite experienced it until now. So I think George Eliot is something special, critics of her other life be damned.

On the radio we hear Adele over and over again. They are tragic songs, completely not fit for a coffeehouse with bright red and yellow banners promoting its new jalapeño and asiago cheese bagels. On her YouTube videos people says things like, "She's pretty inside and out," or, "She's not fat, too many celebrities today are too skinny." They remind me of the "compare her to Marilyn Monroe" posters, of the idea that arguing men like women who are not bone-skinny is still objectifying women, because the standard-holders are still men.

When Adele said she wasn't "some blonde, skinny, fake boob, white teeth" girl, there is something sad in that statement. Something that sits uncomfortably in my stomach, even though I am not sure what it is.

A few nights ago, Veronica and Khajiit were working on our web design company (which reminds me, I need to get going on that), when they came across a photo of a group of students posing for what looked like a case competition. Veronica said, "Those girls look more natural, because girls take more photos of themselves."

Little things like that hurt. They hurt on a personal level, so to me they grate on my heart.

. . .

I stood in front of a class of one hundred on Friday. Made a public announcement about the film my environmental club was screening. I have not done something like this for a long while, especially not when I could see every single face and recognize people in the crowd.

The film itself was a success, if not a haunting one. We saw lovely paintings made of aluminum cans stacked on top of each other and baby albatrosses dead, bellies splayed open to reveal all the plastic inside.

Why must it be so sentimental?

I sleep at night panicked, tossing around, half-starting when I am about to fall asleep. There is something about the night, how still it is, that makes me uneasy. My body is failing me, or I am failing it, whichever one explains the aches and pains and dull anxiety.

Yesterday, in a fit of curiosity-laden panic, I looked up whether our house was likely to flood in 2100. The site says that if it does, it will be because of some harbor in the city near our house, or the beach, or the river. On SMBC, Zach Weiner describes a superior race that falls because of its impeccable ethics. I jaywalked across the street bordering my university today, against my usual rules of strictly following the roads.

. . .

In the depths of my blankets and shaking, I am lonely. I don't fully understand it, because I am not alone—I am far from alone—but I am still lonely.

. . .

When I wake up these days, it is usually to realize I have missed another class, or that it is now late afternoon and I have been sleeping all day. Khajiit, woken by my frantic prodding, would say, "We knew this was going to happen," to our promising ourselves the night before that we would wake up early. Then I would roll over and he would wrap his arm around me, and that would be my favorite part of the day.

These days it has been getting warmer in Islandtown. I pulled out my pair of red tights, paired them with the ridiculously high heels I bought from China, and got out a red shirt I had almost forgotten I owned. The lady at the food court eyed my outfit as I stood up next to her to throw away my cup.

Cosmic Gate is playing on my Pandora station. The other day Khajiit showed me how to set up a proxy so I could access Pandora from his server-in-a-closet. I took a jab at it yesterday and wondered if I had done something wrong when a firewall message popped up. Today, after a few changes to the procedure, I bypassed the firewall prompt. I don't know what triggered it though.

I was reading this very, very sad site that made me almost cry.

Somewhat unrelated, I had always thought that being an activist in one group made you much more likely to sympathize with activists in another group. My university, my city, and my province has proven me otherwise.

. . .

Maybe I have just been cooped up inside for too long.

Overloaded

I knew, going into this semester, that taking six classes was going to be a hefty amount of work. That, along with my commitments to all of my other activities, should have taken up most of my time. If I were being completely logical with my time-budgeting and I adhered to the schedule, I probably wouldn't have time to write here right now.

But I'm here right now, while my Java code runs through its cycle comparing 1,000,000-sized lists, so technically I am doing work. What I really should be doing is finish my base-conversion assignment, or get started on my integrate-acceleration-into-velocity program, or really a thousand other things than this.

At least I'm getting some work done, which is more than what Khajiit can say, because he is currently sitting in an armchair with his headphones on reading My Little Pony fanfiction. A fanfiction that uses underlines for emphasis, rather than italics.

My dad said I should be involved in only one extracurricular activity, or at most two. It makes a lot of sense, but I'm just getting to the good parts of programming for the robot (although it is basically a netbook on a fancy frame so it's not that ultra-fancy), and I got approved for my funding application for the environmental documentary that we'll now be screening in March, so I'll definitely have to work more on that, and I've signed up for at least three hours' worth of office hours commitment to the computer club, plus the new environmental committee that I am half-heading which will definitely be exciting.

How could I possibly choose?

So I am going into this semester with so much work, already, and I have been barely maintaining above that 3.7 I needed for my scholarship (thanks to linear algebra), and there will be so much more to do. But I am postponing all of that because I have just been tempted with at least $100 worth of Lego products, and so I will instead go to New York this weekend (among other things, likely possibly visiting Paperclip, although that is rather tenuous right now).

Also, I have been drinking so much Nestea and lattes. I need to find new sugary drinks to replace them before I grow tired of them and run out of suitable water-replacements.

Two Birds With One Very Linear Stick

Here is the problem: whenever I have about more work than I can handle reasonably (or when I think I do), I want to procrastinate. Aside from RSS and Gaia and about a bunch of other things blogging is the next one.

But! I can make this productive! I have a linear algebra quiz in about two and a half hours, and I can take notes here while I blog (and/or mindlessly type).

This is inspired by Yuma's rather nonfunctional blog now, and I would link, but it contains his real name and mine, which would make all of these nicknames rather silly and pointless.

Anyway.

Determinants and eigenvalues. The chapter where I actually learned new things.

• The most generic way of finding the determinant of a matrix is to take one row/column and add all the (entry * cofactor of entry) for that row/column.
• Cofactor = (-1)^(row# + column# of entry) det (matrix without entry's row and column)
• This technically works with 2 x 2 matrices, but what you're essentially doing is ad - cb anyway.
• This process is officially called the cofactor expansion. I always think of it as the "reduce the matrix the determinant way."
• SPECIAL CASES:
• if one row/column is all 0, then obviously expand along that row/column = det(matrix) = 0
• if the matrix is an upper/lower triangular matrix, multiply entries along diagonal (this one's easy to see)
• det(k*matrix) = k^n * det(matrix)
• det(transpose of matrix) = det(matrix) since rows/columns preserve
• det(matrix A * matrix B) = det(A) * det(B); and the extrapolation of det(matrix^k) = det(matrix)^k
• Row operations & determinants:
• 1. interchanging = -det(matrix)
• 2. multiplying one row by k = k det(matrix)
• 3. adding mults of one row to another = det(matrix)
• 1 because of signs of cofactors; 2 because of factoring; 3 because of same entries in two rows
• If det(A) = 0, no inverse (gasp!) and otherwise, yes inverse where det(A^-1) = 1/det(A) (sort of like the "inverse" of a number).
• Matrices can be blocked off to make calculations easier (if applicable). Only helps if you can make a square block of 0s.
• Adjoint of a matrix is the transpose of the cofactors matrix (matrix with cofactor of each entry in place of the corresponding entry).
• For matrix A: A * adj(A) = det(A) * I = adj(A) * A and adj(A) / det(A) = A^-1, where the proof of the second comes from the dividing everything by det(A).
• det(adj(A)) = detA^(n-1) where A is n x n; derived from above formula
• Cramer's Rule: so confusing to write... (to find nth x, replace nth column with constant column in coefficient matrix then find det (that) / det(A)) however it's more difficult to calculate for larger matrices and therefore only useful in theory
• Diagonalization is useful for calculating powers of square matrices (that can be diagonalized).
• If a square matrix can be diagonalized, then P^-1 * A * P = D, where P is an invertible "diagonalizing" matrix (so many terms) and D is the "diagonalized" matrix.
• P = eigenvectors of A and D = eigenvalues of A, in respective order (eigenvalue 1 matches with eigenvector 1 in column location).
• Eigenvalues: AX = xX where x is a constant (the eigenvalue) that is usually lambda but I can't type it easily.
• Generally, eigenvalues are found by solving the characteristic polynomial, which is det(xI - A) = 0.
• The eigenvectors are found by solving for X when the eigenvalues are plugged in for (xI - A) * X = 0.
• side note: tr(A) is the trace of A and is the sum of all diagonal entries
• For P to exist, # of eigenvectors = # of columns in A (or the total multiplicity of the eigenvalues, or the # of rows in P)
• Similar matrices are similar (no pun intended) to A and D pairs, but the other matrix need not be D.
• if A ~ B (~ = is similar to):  A^-1, A^T, A^k ~ B^-1, B^T, B^k for k >= 0 respectively
• if A ~ B: det(A), c(x) of A, and eigenvalues of A = those of B; by this the matrix A has similar properties to the eigenvalues of A, e.g. if x^2 (the eigenvalue of A) = 5x, then A^2 = 5A.
• if A ~ B and B ~ C then A ~ C

 The rest is just stuff from before.

My other work consists of writing the two paragraphs I have blocked out for my paper today (I have the topic sentences and the research, so that should be easy), as well as another location-specific paragraph that I need to do a bit more research on that hopefully won't take too long, and hopefully I can tackle another part of my paper (bring it to three full pages) as well.

Then I have reviewing for my Java midterm, so I need to start on my assignment as well, since it's been said that having that done before the midterm is good review.

My mom suggested I listen to French radio, so I could do that in my spare time. I also need to start researching for Robot On Moon (hey, ROM is also Royal Ontario Museum!), and sign up for a project for FSAE, and talk with the person in charge of notes, and review at least calc and hopefully physics too, and finish my letter and send out the food, and write my story, and fit in all my Halloween parties, and figure out my linear algebra assignment eventually, and stop typing "assignmnet" every time I mean "assignment" because terminal doesn't recognize it and spits at me every time I do so.

But. First. Fooooood.

The Past Few Weeks

I have been going to my classes every other class. Sometimes it is intentional, like today, when I skipped my linear algebra class to attend a soldering tutorial that was probably more informative and productive than any single lecture I have gone to for linalg. (I stripped wires and made pretty twists with them and soldered them together with decent speed! That has to be one of the more productive hours I have ever spent in a long time).

Other times it is accidental, like today (again), when I woke up in the morning and it was 9:45 and my java class started at 9:35, and I was groggy and on the top bunk without any proper outdoors clothes on or any breakfast in my stomach, and the earliest I can have all of that done would be by 10, and then 5-10 minutes of walking to class would leave me with 15 minutes of lecture time left. So I promptly fell back asleep.

I asked Jessica later on about what the prof talked about in class today, and she said, "Calling a private property in another class with a public method." Which is, well, what we learned on Monday. I even have rather nice notes for that day.

I think it was on Monday, too, that I left my java class and, after buying yogurt and granola for breakfast, hurried to my linalg class and read the part in the textbook where I thought we had gone over the class before. And I went into class an hour later and proceeded to hear about the same things I had just read.

As Yuma puts it, "Why are your classes so useless?"

I like to believe that it is only so because I am in this limbo mode right now where I can't actually take the exciting classes. But I do have some neat classes next semester, like intro to computer engineering and engineering economy, as well as differential equations which I've heard is actually tough (or maybe they are making it up just like they are making up how difficult linear algebra was going to be). Also I will have no more English classes next semester and, as long as my 93% fixed schedule (based on rough approximations) is not changed by the higher beings who design the electrical engineering curriculum here, I will never have an official English class again.

Or maybe they do this English thing at grad school too. Who knows. I think they should do it every year but I suppose the workload (essay-writing) does add up.

. . .

I found a couple of tunnels under my school. This would sound so much cooler if I also put in, "I sneaked past -insert integer here- security guards and ducked under the camera and picked the lock on the grate and lowered myself into the tunnels," but alas, that was not the case. These tunnels are university-sanctioned, opened for the special purpose of allowing us to get to our classes without freezing ourselves to death when it is -40 degrees Celsius outside and the snow is piled higher than your head.

On the bright side, some of these are steam tunnels, which means they'll be extra-cozy in winter. On the not so bright side, they have operating hours, unlike the buildings themselves, so any late-night cramming session during finals time will necessarily involve walking through the snow.

I am not sure if our school has drains, which I have heard is also a good place to explore in the winter, but those are definitely not sanctioned and will require a lot of time and effort and luck to discover.

Roofs, however, are open (free?) to people who find the doors open at the right time. It is apparently not a rare occurrence. I have yet to be on a roof but that should be fun too.

. . .

Boys are weird creatures. I am sure this has been stated before (I vaguely remember this particular statement or a variation of it on my blog, and possibly on Kathrya's blog too although I can't remember if either is true), and I am aware it is a gross generalization, so I will restate this. Some of the boys I have encountered lately are weird.

The other day I went to the basement of the math and science building, and these two guys were selling white coffee to fundraise for some student group (I think it was Malaysian or some other Southeast Asian group, the guys told me but I don't quite remember). I asked them what white coffee was, and one of the guys explained (different coffee brewing process + condensed milk), and then took off the "$1" sign and said that they were running low anyway, so he gave me a free sample. Then they packed up so quickly and left the table before I even left.

Today, as I was walking down the escalator, one of the guys in my class walked past me, obviously in a hurry. He then held the door open for me, even though I was not even close to the door, so I half-ran to get the door so he wouldn't wait too long.

Maybe the midterms are addling with their brains.

I would love to extend this to girls too so this doesn't resemble a gender stereotype, but unfortunately I am not meeting enough previously-not-well-known-and-probably-will-never-know-well girls to have any concrete examples.

. . .

Thanksgiving weekend was good. It involved lots of fish (alive, raw, microwaved, hot-potted, stuffed-toy-ified), a trip to the depths of Chinatown, friend-visiting, mall-bridge-hopping, movies (some good, some dreadfully slow), and a variety of other things that may or may not be appropriate to put on here. A blackboard was acquired, kitties were petted, and a bunch of pretty much useless RAMs and hard drives were lugged back up the hill.

I might write about it, but definitely not from my perspective and not with any clear-defined names.

And we can also definitely glaze over the late-night drunk on deliriousness hours of insanity.

It was apparently also Denise's birthday on Thanksgiving weekend. It was a rather sad event for her, at least on the day of her birthday, because none of us were there (Sam went to her cottage, other people were otherwise occupied with their families) and she was sick. To make matters worse she spent the weekend at the studio working on one of her many, many projects.

Sam organized a belated celebration for her by taking her to a dumpling place (and inviting all of us). They were really good dumplings (I haven't really had a vegetarian dumpling in a long while, and the ones there were delicious), and Denise and Sam ate two platefuls. I would have ordered a plate myself, but earlier that day I had gone to the-dorm-with-a-good-caf and had gotten myself onion rings and cheesecake and chicken and noodles and broccoli and iced tea, and normally I could have dealt with the main meal but the combo of onion rings and cheesecake was rather filling already, so I was stuffed by the end of the meal.

So not many dumplings for me. So sad.

. . .

I am really tired now. I slept at 4 in the morning, because I wanted Yuma to read me a chapter from a story and he didn't want to, so I stayed up doing silly things. This is probably directly related to my inability to attend my java class this morning, which apparently was pretty silly too, so it all balances out.

I bought four books from the book fair yesterday, all on math and science, and I can't wait to read them. I also signed up for about a million email lists from various clubs around my school, and plotted them all on my calendar in hopes that by virtue of them being there, I will do them.

So far I have not gone to the computer-recycling club, nor the outdoors excursions club, but I have asked Jessica about the two competitions I was interested in (both require teams).

Maybe if I sleep more...

Busy, Busy Days

I went to the tech fair this week, and talked to several companies about internships and such. I had printed out 15 CVs, because Yuma had told me to print 40, and I think I still have 6 or 7 left. Thank goodness I didn't print 40. I would probably need a few more for the volunteering/exchange expo this weekend, if that, but otherwise I wouldn't need them until winter, and by then I hope to add a few more things on there.

I still need to research these internships I've learned about though. Maybe tonight, or tomorrow, if I get the chance.

Tomorrow I am going to buy tickets to Beavertown, unless my dad plans a spontaneous visit, which I hope he won't, and if he does I can always say that I will be out that weekend with friends. Which is technically true, if you discard the notion that Beavertown is so far away. Then I'll take the metro to the expo, because it is apparently along the route, and then I'll come back to Fish Wings to go on a camping trip sponsored by my department that will last half the weekend. Apparently this is the first time our department has done anything like this, and we're going to a place that even the coordinators have never heard of before they organized the trip.

In Yuma's words (sort of), if anyone died they would never host something like this again.

Yesterday I went to the SWE-like-group's committee meeting, and we agreed on a potluck dinner/drinks/karaoke night some time next month. And today I got a nomination form for class rep (I need 25 people to back me up), and signed up to take notes for other people in my class. I also emailed a group about being a math tutor, and another group about participating in their robot team.

Jessica, who has also signed up for all of these things (well, in the sense of plenty, not the sense of exactly the same), was wondering if she wanted to take on any more or if it would be too much for her to handle.

It does seem like there aren't enough hours in the day, although my classes are still going by as slow as ever. I can't believe a month has passed and I really can't believe how little I learned in linear algebra.

But there is linear algebra homework due on Sunday, and a debate I need to research for on Monday, so I will need to get most of it done before I go on the camping trip tomorrow. Less blogging, more working.

Electronics

As Nathan puts it, "Electronics always fail. Don't just take it from me. The guys who go on to become CEOs at Ford and [some other big car company whose name I have already forgotten] all say that they know shit-all about electronics and electronics always fail."

Very encouraging.

He then proceeded to show us a network problem he was having with the black box on the car. We spent a good hour there watching him put things together, and it was pretty fascinating (I never knew about breadboards before but they are the neatest things ever). Then we watched as he ran the program and explained that, once again, it was not working and he was not getting the data he needed.

Not to mention that the team is going on a pre-race event at Lakeside in a week, and he needs to get it working by then so the other teams working on the car can have the data they need.

I have a sort-of-like-SWE group mixer tomorrow evening, and there is the tech fair all day tomorrow, so I might go there on Wednesday night, if I'm not going to other companies' info sessions. I do want to check out the other parts of the car, and maybe do some data analysis, since that is always fun.

The rest of the meeting went by pretty uneventfully. I was hoping to see Peter so I could ask him where we were supposed to be on Wednesday for our English class, since we're starting on our research topics already, but he wasn't there (probably because there wasn't anything very important going on for those who are already on the team). I did see someone else from my English class though (what is with my English class and cars? I now know four people aside from me who is/will be on the team, out of a total of 25).

In other news:

• Today marks the first day I ate breakfast, lunch, and dinner at a school cafeteria. I had an egg and blt English muffin sandwich and milk for breakfast, smoked salmon and shrimp sushi and peach yogurt for lunch, and pizza and lemonade for dinner (all the fancy stuff ran out by the time I got there). I am still $22 behind my spending schedule for the day. Tomorrow I will be $37 behind. I really, really need to increase my food intake and quality somehow without overeating. Or maybe, as Yuma says, I should exercise more. Maybe I could go up and down the hill every day like I used to?
• I found this really neat math genealogy website, and when I traced my math history professor, it went all the way back to Heisenberg and Gauss and Möbius and Copernicus and lots of other cool mathematicians. Also a really interesting thing was that when I started going really really far back (like 1400s) I would find that a lot people studied under the same people and then taught the same people and other mixed-up things like that. It's less common now because of all the people who are able to study math at a high level, but I suppose back then when learning was still a privileged thing to do, it was more common.
• I have, through some crazy notion, signed up to be part of a debate team in one of my 200-people-large classes. Only 20 people are debating in total. That is crazy, considering I usually never volunteer for anything even when 10 people are called for in a 25 people class. And it's on a topic I never did any research on. But I have lots and lots of time, I suppose. Which reminds me:
• I want to somehow pick up physics again, because I really don't know all that much about it and I believe it is rather necessary to know physics as an engineer. I have been telling myself that I need to get onto that but it's not happening yet, so I think I need to actually assign a fixed schedule, sort of like a class time, so I can get it done. Maybe two hours a day on Tuesdays and Thursdays, then an extra hour for reviewing calc. I could get that fitted into my calendar easily.

Also. People. Talking. About. Midterms.

Already.

I feel kind of silly because the past few posts have all contained some mentioning of grades, and while I do care I don't want to care too much to the extent that I won't get to do all the cool things I want to do on campus (EWB, FSAE, SWE-like group, youth outreach groups). Maybe all of this can be solved by writing shorter blog posts. These things take quite a bit of time.

Never Make Promises You Can't Keep

Or, in my case, never make promises, period. Apparently I'm really good at attracting last-minute change in plans, because this has happened to me quite often in the past week. There was Tuesday, when I promised to get math packets for Summer and Cheryl, and then conveniently Ms. Sherbert ran out of packets. Then today, when I told Zephy that: a) I can go to fashion/jewelry/whatever-it-is-now club on Wednesday, and b) I'll be able to give her a ride home tomorrow.

Guess what?

My dad has a dentist's appointment tomorrow, all the way in New York (the state), and it's in the afternoon and my mom is going as well, so they're coming back later at night. If the weather's nice tomorrow, though, I won't mind walking. It's just—

My mom also told me today that we're going all the way up to Vermont on Wednesday to get our visas straightened out (since my dad is planning to move to Florida and everything). That is going to be fun. I'll be missing extended multi, which is rather sad, but I'll also be missing crucial review-day-before-first-test physics, which is not good at all since I'm aiming for that pencil. And I'll be missing a bio lab, which is also not good, because I am rather bad at reading bio labs. The actual labs themselves make sense. The boggy text, not so much.

But enough about my future. Today, in econ, we talked about the classic guns and butter, otherwise known as the production possibilities frontier. It was pretty easy to understand (especially the part about cows making guns), and I loved the graphs. Graphs are so nice when I don't have to draw them by hand. After econ was French, and since that was uneventful (my French teacher is almost always late to class, probably because she has to go from the first floor to the third floor, so I spend the extra time trying to look into Mrs. Cumulonimbus's class), then I went to English. Cammie wasn't here today, and we had an in-class essay.

I was freaking out (a little) about the in-class essay, because I usually don't finish those on time (or I write not so much compared to other people), but this time I actually finished ahead of time with a neat conclusion and everything. So I am surprised and not quite sure where this newfound skill in essay-writing came from, but I will assume it's because we're writing more in class now (we get free-write minutes before every class, which is really cool).

Then, on the bus, I discussed the chem test with Yuma (something about X and F, and I remember that remotely but definitely not enough to know the answer without doing the question out). I still miss chem. A lot. I wish there was a period 7 chem class, so I can drop by and say hi and everything. Oh well. Can't have everything in life.

I know what valence means, thank you for asking

Okay, so I know that a significant portion of my class are sophomores who have never taken chem before, or have only started taking chem. I think it's a huge loss for them, but, alas, our school's system is such that we learn biology first, then chemistry, then physics, which makes little sense because you use physics to explain chemistry, and you use chemistry to explain biology.

Anyway. I acknowledge that. I know most people don't have "metal oxide + water = base" in their heads, and the majority of my class probably does not know that all nitrates are soluble, but hydroxides are only soluble with alkali metals and the heavier alkaloid metals. I don't expect them to know that. I didn't even know that until last year.

Still. To be talking about "Na + Cl = NaCl!" is, well, really mind-blowing. In the bad way. Every single science textbook that I have ever, ever read (except for the physics one) mentions sodium and chloride, and, guess what? Sodium chloride. Every single one. I really don't think it's that hard to realize that, whoa, a metal and a gas comes together to form the stuff you over-sprinkle on your food.

I guess I am overreacting a little, because I spent 45 minutes doing absolutely nothing (well, okay, not nothing, I did draw a few pictures) while everyone else talked about basic chemistry. We are having a test on this thing in a week. Carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen (not in that order, of course). Trace elements. And a good dose of electron shells and elements and compounds and I'll bet organic chemistry.

FON, FON, FON. (It's a chem joke Mr. Turkey shared with us one day.)

In physics, Mrs. Cumulonimbus (back from sending her daughter off to college) said we would be learning basic calculus next week, which means derivatives, integrals, and u-sub. The last one got quite a few groans (well, there were groans for all of them from the people who were just starting to take calc). I always forget if u-sub is the LIPET one, or if it's the other one. They both involve u's.

But the physics calculus, so far, is easy. I've already finished the utexas due next Friday, and it's basic stuff. Nothing harder than integration of polynomials. I'm a little sad that we're not going to see shells, but I can live with that. Maybe.

After that, in English, Cammie and I discussed our Creeper Lists, among other things, like how I am horrible at music (I'm tone-deaf and therefore I can never tell if I'm playing something right or not when I'm playing harmony—which is almost always with the bass—unless someone kindly tells me). I would mention more, but this would involve adding people to labels and I would rather not do that.

So. Instead. I shall end this here and get back to my French and econ homework, and perhaps figure out how to approach the subject of my many, many clubs. I can't believe it's Friday already. (I also can't believe I missed yesterday's Project Runway review. I must be really out of it.)