roboppy.net

I'm printing out bits of the Movable Type instruction manual and the template tags alone takes up 26 pages. Doh. The least I can do is print on both sides of the paper. I'm not going to memorize all these tags anyway...

Okay, WHY am I doing this? I'm going to Movable Type-uh-muhfy the new Media Cloisters website (not sure when it'll come into fruition) because apparently no one else in the school can do it. Or wants to. Actually, more of the latter...well, of course no one wants to, it's a pain in the butt! But I would have killed myself if I stuck with the default templates (I'm going to work on the Poofy Project, I swear). Actually, I know I'm not the only person that can work with MT tags because the WVKR site uses MT. So even though Ken (head media cloisters guy) says I'm not giving myself enough credit, he's just giving me more than I deserve. I swear, SWEAR, that I do not know much about MT. Honestly. So now I'll just be a big disappointment. This blog shows the extent of my ability to use MT tags, and if I tried harder I could have done much better.

Well, I just finished printing half of the tags. Now it's time to print on the other sides. WEE.

I think I am a psychological anomaly. While my psychology class is interesting (I should get more into that later), by reading the textbook I'll probably find out how many problems I have. I've gotten to the section about "operant conditioning phenomena" (when you don't know what the title of a section means, that's probably not a good sign, eh?), specifically a bit about "learned helplessness." I am constantly in a state of learned helplessness even if nothing bad happens. Can someone explain this to me? I have this generic idea that everything I do (I wrote "does" first and it took me a while to realize how wrong that sounded...my brain is officially mush) is crap and it will never really be that good. So I'm just kind of unhappy with everything. It's not good to think everything you do is the epitome of God's creations, but the extreme opposite isn't good either. ...But I do think it's better to be highly negative than in your own little world where everything you make is the best.

It still bothers me though. Oh well, maybe I'll find some other problem in my psych book that I have. OH yes, my last psych class...it was rather amusing. My teacher was talking about rats who would experience some dimension of pleasure that no one else really knows by pushing a bar that would zap some part of their brains and they would just keep pushing the bar until they were too tired to carry on. Even if they had to endure pain to push the bar, they'd do it, which sounds kind of sad. But maybe not. It was just funny how he explained it and said they don't do those kinds of experiences on humans, but he wouldn't mind being a guinea pig (well, a rat in this case, but you know what I mean).

Speaking of guinea pigs, I'm going to be one tomorrow. All psych students are required to take part in some kind of experiement, so I picked one that sounded really interesting and is probably one of the longest and more physically involved ones. I especially liked this excerpt from the e-mail confirmation I received: It is much easier to get good electrical signals from the brain if there isn't much oil on the scalp. That interferes with the recording electrodes. If you can, please wash your hair, any time before you come to Blodgett. I was surprised that not that many people signed up (it seems like only three people are doing it?) but I'd be very interested to see my brain waves. It would put an end to the debate of whether or not I have a brain, for one thing. Mwahaha.

Music class is becoming pretty confusing. We're learning about beat units and stuff...actually, that's not the hard part, but making sure you write the notes correctly so...actually, nevermind. I don't even know what I'm talking about. Which is why I should do my homework. I started doing it last night, but it was confusing the hell out of me. I do enjoy music class though because it doesn't actually feel 75 minutes long and I think it's interesting. I just don't think I could ever write or play music for a living.

Today Ken asked me if I was planning to stay in school over the summer to work in the cloisters. I guess if I stay in Vassar, I should do that, and now I feel bad about wanting to leave. I overheard another girl talking about how she wanted to go to NYU, but Vassar (which was her last college choice) gave her more financial aid and the people she spoke to were nicer. I don't know if I'd be better off at NYU, but I might be better off in NYC. Unless I stay in my more spacious dorm room all day instead of actually do stuff. I don't know. At the very least, I know I have real friends in NYC. And it's not that I don't have ANY friends here, but I don't fit in with anyone. I'm not necessarily a round peg surrounded by square holes (or is it the other way around...ah, whatever), but...but but but. I still don't feel very comfortable here and considering it's my second semester, that can't be a good thing. I'm looking at the next two weekends as pure sleep and staying inside my room a lot (and seeing Rufus if I can get tickets, and if I can't, I'll probably find out I have more psychological problems).

By the way, Borders is having a student sale this weekend, so check that out. Not that I can (there is a store in Poughkeepsie, but duh, I have no car). I went there last week and bought some things though. [sigh] I'd buy the new Air CD, at the very least. There are 17 Borders in NJ and I've been to four of them (and I've seen a fifth one). I'm surrounded by them. WHY.

I found out that Overstock.com is a really cheap place for books. The shipping is really cheap too, so I wouldn't even factor that in. There are loads of books I could get, but I better wait on that. At least until I get my first paycheck, which won't be until next week I think.

Crap, is this all I have to say? Not much is going on, obviously. Or I'm too lazy. Actually, I should start doing homework because I haven't done any all day. Oh, random thing, I stepped into a ridiculously gigantic puddle today. You couldn't tell it was a puddle until you stepped in it...hence making it an evil ghost puddle. After my boots got soaked (thankfully they're waterproof!) and I got into Japanese class, Megan came in and told me she stepped into the puddle too. IT'S EVIL, I tell you. There are loads of puddles everywhere because the temperature actually went above the freezing mark. It was in the high 30s earlier today, which I interpreted as being warm. Yes, the 30s are warm, sweltering perhaps.

Ho hum. Hey, I didn't really talk about food yet. LET'S CHANGE THAT! Yesterday I bought 22 pieces of fruit from the ACDC. I'm sure the cashier thinks I'm nuts, but she doesn't ask me about it. Mwahaha. Tomorrow I'll have to buy more to last me throughout the weekend since I'm not going home. ...home. That's a nice place I'd rather be.

I thought needing to give myself a crash-course in Movable Type was pretty bad. But not much can compare to wearing a cap with electrodes and getting goo syringed onto your scalp and sitting in a dark room for an hour...

Okay, it really wasn't that bad. What the heck am I talking about anyway? I volunteered to be a guinea pig for the psychology department on Thursday for an experiment that would test my brain waves as I solve spacial and verbal problems. A cap resembling a swimming cap except with a chunk of wires coming out of it and little metal circles dotting the surface had to be applied to my head, which took about half an hour. It took longer later to actually get it working because my head was being very uncoopereative. Before I got to the point of being hooked up to a computer though, the student who was testing me (a very nice junior majoring in psychobiology) had to apply the cap to my head. Besides the cap, I also needed some electrodes to be attached around my eye area and one behind each ear. Apparently blinking really interferes with brain activity so they had to take that into account while I was actually being tested. And to make all the connections between the electrodes and my brain work, she had to syringe this brown goo into all the little circles. [shmook] That was definitely interesting. I don't know what was in it, but it was slightly brownish, kind of like...well, I don't know what to compare it to, actually. The goo had a real name, but I prefer to call it head goo, or electrode goo, or brain goo, and so on.

After I got the cap on my head and the other electrodes around my eyes, I went into the testing room, which was a small room with two computer monitors. There we found out that the connections weren't very optimal. A faculty member came in to help make the connections better, which we could observe on one of the screens as a map of all the connections on my head. Each connection was represented by a square with a certain number and letter combination and all the ones on my head were at their lowest level, represented by bright pink. After a pretty long time to moving the electrodes around, applying more goo, and digging the elctrodes as far as they could go into my head without making their way into my brain cavity, we got the connections up to the green point, which was good enough (blue was the strongest). They said that sometimes people's connections work right off the bat, but not always. Maybe my head's too fat or something? Hm...

The student showed me my brain waves on the monitor. I have brain waves, yes! It was a rare sight. Every time I blinked, the waves would suddenly spike, which was kind of cool. If you keep blinking then I guess your thought processes would be somewhat impaired? Hm.

Then the testing began. I don't have qualms with being in a small dark room with a computer, but after about 15-20 minutes I started feel very woozy. Somewhat queasy. Extreme lethargy came over me...damn you, body, what's going on? Some form of claustrophobia? It didn't make much sense and I felt bad for my tester because I don't think she's ever had to deal with someone nearly falling asleep and feeling like puking before. Anyhoo, the tests were pretty simple, not that I got them all 100% right, but I showed some level of intelligence (on par with paramecium). My tests required me to either press the left when I saw a match on the screen and the right if I didn't. The screen was totally black and there were 12 positions for a letter to flash for a split second. There were three tests for each the spatial and verbal testing, for which I had to one practice round and two full rounds.

In the spatial test, first I had to determine whether a letter was showing up in the upper left corner closer to the center of the screen. If it did, I'd press match, and if not, then I'd press mismatch. That was the easy one, though. The second test was the hardest one in which I had to press match if the letter was in the same place as the one twice before it. In the last test I had to determine if the letter was in the same place as the one right before it. The students said I did well in the spacial tests, which wasn't usual for females and meant I could do well in chemistry. I thought that was funny...I don't associate myself with doing well in ANY science. I have bad memories from 10th grade chemistry class, but now I'd be interested in taking a course, maybe over the summer.

By this time in the experiment though, I was feeling pretty sick. I messed up a lot more in the verbal testing, probably because I'm worse at it and I was yawning every two seconds and feeling pukish. :| The verbal tests were like the spatial ones except I had to match letters instead of locations. I would think people would do better on the spacial test since there aren't as many placements to remember as letters and I'd think it's harder to confuse locations than letters (I was supposed to stare at the center of the screen and sometimes I think I confused Ts with Fs), but maybe that's just me. I took a little break during this test since I felt pretty bad, but I managed to finish everything.

After my cap was taken off, I found that my hair was quite matted down with goo and I had some marks on my face from where those electrodes were. Eek! Thank god my jacket had a huge hood that I could wear back to my dorm. And upon arriving to my dorm, I promptly went to the shower to wash my hair (but I haven't taken a shower since then..um, no one cares).

So, that was Thursday. I didn't do much yesterday and I doubt I'll be doing anything today. In fact, I might stay inside my room all day. That's what I do when I stay in school: nothing. Last night I was thinking how much I don't fit into a college and how I'd rather be home. I just found out that someone in my Japanese class decided to take off for the semester. Man, I wish I could do that. It's not that I hate it here, but honestly, I'm not going to make super-good friends here. I haven't already and it's kind of late for me to feel like trying. I don't know what normal people do...

I realized that I've been maintaining blogs since I was in 9th grade. It's been nearly five years. (And I've been maintaining websites since 7th grade...I kept an online journal in 8th grade, but that wasn't a blog.) I read this interesting article about blogging (taken from odradek and it made me realize that...this is how I am. Kind of screwed. I mean, I don't totally fit into the blogging sphere because I don't write EVERYTHING that's on my mind, like really personal things, among other things, but I guess since I'm really shy I'm just more inclined to blogging? I don't know. Meh..MEH! Nevermind.

I got my Rufus Wainwright ticket for next Saturday's concert yesterday. WOO! Happy. The people selling the tickets didn't set up their table on time and there were loads of us just standing around. Rufus for $8 is very good though. I'd think the next best thing is seeing Rufus for free. The opener is Rainer Maria, of whom I've heard some music before, but not much. I hope I can get a good seat, but I'm not sure how early I'll have to start waiting. And I don't know if I can take photos, but since I didn't read anything saying I couldn't, I hope I can. :)

Oh well, I may as well prepare myself for a day of doing nothing but eating and doing homework and website crap...

While I would usually put stupid ranty type things in my livejournal, I'd like to start writing more often in this blog too. Whether that's a good thing or not, I don't know, but maybe I should write more frequently in shorter entries.

Anyway. I suck. That's my rant. Everything's my fault. Yup, I'm back in that state of mind. No matter where I am, whether it's Vassar or some other place, life will suck because I'll make it suck. That's just the kind of person I am!

Well then what's the point of doing anything at all? Why don't I just throw myself in front of an oncoming truck? All my mum keeps reminding me is that college-educated people are just different from non-college educated people and ...well, of COURSE they are, but I guess in most cases it's a bad thing. "Do you want to get an entry-level job and rent a little apartment for the rest of your life?" Well, isn't that what's going to happen anyway? And if life sucks so much, why don't I do the truck-thing ...um, again? If it's possible to do twice?

I probably sound really stupid right now, and I guess I should because I feel stupid. I didn't do any homework today, and now that's its past midnight I guess it means I didn't do any homework yesterday. God knows I could have. I should read my bio textbook, even though I think bio is hopeless. As for Japanese, I don't know what's going on. There are counters for everything apparently, in strange categories, so the counter for a bottle and a tree are the same because they're long, cylindrical things, although if you saw a tree-sized bottle, that might be weird. I can't remember all this stuff, but if I stay in this school I think I'd major in Japanese.

My mum said I should look at schools that offer a major in web design so ...I am. Dakota State University, anyone? Maybe I should, it's only 1% Asian. Average ACT is 22....damn.

If a school's website doesn't work very well or look good, it doesn't really make me want to go there to major in it. Vassar's web site is pretty nice, but then again a website for a univeristy would be much larger. So anyway. Blah. Nevermind.

Oh yeah, I'm having a bunch of problems with food, kind of. Or not. I don't know. I have eating problems I guess. I must treat food differently from most people because nothing I eat is really a stand-alone meal (unless I go to a raw food restaurant) thus I snack a lot. Actually, with the schedule I had today, I couldn't snack that much:

9:30 AM - 10:00 AM: Check bio lab with partner
10:00 AM - 10:20 AM : Go to health food store
11:00 AM - 11:50 AM: Japanese
12:00 PM - 12:30 PM: Meet bio partner and try to do homework and not get anywhere
1:30 PM - 2:45 PM: Music theory class
3:00 PM - 5:00 PM: "work" in media cloisters (can't say I did much)
6:00 PM - 8:00 PM: see Derrick Jensen lecture (it was pretty good)

And in the past FOUR HOURS I've barely done anything besides get mad at the Internet for sucking, buying stuff at Eat Raw, and talk on the phone with my mum for a long time, which was just confusing and made me feel guilty about buying anything (I spent about $60), even though my mum was saying how I SHOULDN'T feel restricted about anything. I don't, but I feel guilty anyway. I feel guilty about everything.

But life could be worse. I guess that's a consolation. Or something.

...yeah, being a snail would be worse. For my bio lab we tested if snails would eat cyanogenic leaves. Answer? No. So they have some kind of sense of what has cyanide in it. Goodie.

Being a snail would suck. It's only slightly worse than being me, I guess.

Two entries in one day. Two...

You know what, I should be able to swear in this thing because I'm not speaking. These are my thoughts, not what I'm saying. I don't know why I have a hard time swearing in real life (I admit, I say "poop" and "crap" a lot, which is crude but not censorable, right?).

Man, you can already tell this isn't going to be good. What's wrong with me? I'm not really depressed or angry, although I might seem that way. How would I describe myself...hm...apathetic. But not really, or else I wouldn't have any emotion at all, right? Kinda?

I ate shitloads of food today. YES. I'm not sure how many kg that equals to, but I feel okay, besides knowing how much I ate. I bought an 8 oz bag of cashews yesterday and I finished it today, so I probably ate around 4 oz. Supposedly, cashews aren't even healthy for you (but I figured I'd try em anyway), and you only need 2 oz of nuts a day. I think that's for a normal person, and considering I'm kind of small, I probably don't need that much. I also had about two ounces of almonds. ...god, all I smell are bananas right now. If I'm crazy, I'll eat one.

I don't know what's up with my body. It's not hungry. There's no way. Something's wrong with my brain. I woke up this morning at around 8 and the first thing I ate was (were) CASHEWS. I didn't get any stomachaches though, thank god. How the hell do people eat bacon and fried potatoes in the morning? Ack. Anyway. During the whole time I was just thinking, "WHAT AM I DOING? [munch cashew]" but I did it anyway.

I don't expend that much energy in a day. I don't have good metabolism. I'm just going crazy. And it's bothering me. Any dream I had to lose five pounds by the end of next month seems quite implausible unless I get some kind of parasite. So screw that. But WHAT'S GOING ON? ERRRGH!

Cashews are made of crack. That's it.

Fuck it, I just ate a banana. In about five seconds. Or a minute. (sigh)

If you can believe it, food isn't even the biggest thing on my mind. ....okay, I might have to think about that a little more, but overall I really think I just suck. Maybe I just feel like crap after I work in the Media Cloisters because I hate, hate, HATE (okay, that's not the right word, but I'll use it for now) that people think I know more than I actually do. I'll admit that I tend to downplay my "skills" (I use that term loosely), but my knowledge is definitely not on par with the other people, and I feel like a completely dumbass every time I'm there. I don't CARE if there's no such thing as a "stupid question" because yes, there is. Definitely.

Okay, now I'm eating dried figs. I'm surprised I'm not dead yet. Or diabetic. Or whatever happens when you...eat...um...nevermind.

On a completely random note, I'm completely sick of all the opposition to letting gays get married. What can the opposition say about themselves? I don't get it at all. Homosexuals aren't as human as everyone else? I don't even know any gay people in real life (although statistically, I think I'm "should", and statistically I wouldn't have so many Asian friends) but...okay, that was a complete digression. Just a random thing I was thinking about after reading about it in Time. I don't know who they polled, but more people said they were unlikely to vote for a presidential candidate if they supported gay marriage, or something like that. Swell.

I should register to vote, eh? Eh.

Oh yeah, back to feeling shitty. I don't offer anything in this life. Yeah, it's my fault, so what am I going to do about it? No idea. I gotta redesign this page so I don't make people puke, for one thing. Other thing...um. I really have to study more, although I don't know if it'll help my stupidity very much. Could I go to art school? Would I like that? Why can't I just be really good at something that do that? Or why can't....blah blah blah something or other BLAH! I'm going to feel awful when I tell my Japanese teacher that I can't be sure about majoring in Japanese because I might transfer. She's really cool and nice.

If I owe you an e-mail, I'm sorry, I'll get to it! Really! :|

I can't stop eating these damn figs.

I have to do my laundry.

This entry sucked, I'm sorry. I'm not usually like this. Maybe cashews make your brain suck.

---

I just remembered something that I've been thinking about for...quite a while. If I hear someone outside that sounds close to my door, my heart jumps for a split second, like some kind of panic attack. This has happened enough times for me to think it's pretty abnormal. Even if it didn't happen a few times, it'd still be weird. I just remembered it now because it happened. I DON'T KNOW WHY. ARGH.

---

I just realized a few minutes ago that I hadn't checked on my Neopet in five days. That has never happened before. My mind is obviously mushed.

And I changed my mind about being apathetic. I am sad.

Man, I'm really tired right now. It's only a bit after 1 AM, so I don't know why I'd be so tired...but eh.

My emotions go from one extreme to the other too frequently and it annoys the hell out of me. Stop...doing...it...stoppit stop!

Oh well. What did I do yesterday? I don't quite remember. I woke up feeling a bit pooty, but I felt better after I got my first paycheck. I make $8.10 per hour. Whaaa-? I have no idea why. Initially I felt really happy and lucky, but now I just feel unqualified and somewhat wrong for being paid so much when I really shouldn't be. People asked me what I do in the cloisters and I can't think of much to say. "I sit there for hours doing random stuff and work on some projects, or at least attempt to because I don't know what I'm doing." Screw me.

That reminds me, I should work on this blog. It looks like complete crap now. Before it used the MT default template, but at least it didn't look like crap. I'm trying to make it look like the website design that Ian made, but...moo. That's all. My answer for everything is "moo".

I'm listening to "Pass In Time" by Beth Orton right now. I love this song, but it makes me feel incredibly sad. It's a strange kind of sadness though, which I can't explain, so you'll just have to trust me on this one. Deeply rooted psychological problems. HA HA. Wow, I'm not even making sense now (although that assumes I made sense before).

So the paycheck happiness was fleeting, especially since I already owe my mum $70-something. I might be able to afford a book with what's left, unless I go off and spend that too. What I really want are books, books, BOOKS! Design books, mainly. There's too much stuff that I want from You Work For Them. They could make my life a little easier by letting me save the items I want to buy and having a "search" function or something, but they've got good stuff. I've decided that Genevieve Gauckler is awesome.

A few days ago I was thinking how maybe (a very small maybe) I should consider going to art school to major in graphic design. Good/bad idea? Really random? Hell yeah. I can spend hours trying to design stuff though, so maybe I should try that. Or maybe I'll end up hating it. I'm under the impression that I'd die in art school because it's buttloads of work, at least from hearing what my friends have to do. Would any place even accept me? My not-very-feasible plan would be to quit from Vassar at the end of the year and take art classes for a few months while applying to some art schools and hoping some place accepts me. But right now I think it's not very realistic and I should just hope that I can get into NYU. I submitted that application last weekend but haven't gotten any notice that they received it. Oh...great.

[random note: something smells like Chinese food...noodles, to be precise. What the heck is going on with my brain? I think my nose is playing tricks on me.]

So if I don't get into NYU. Then. Then. I don't know. Can I stay here any longer? I KNOW I'm really lucky to be here since it's a good school and the people don't suck (I'm sure if I were plonked back into a high school environment I'd beg to come here) but something's missing. Like my affection towards it. Actually, after looking at loads of different websites of colleges and such, I realized that this is a really pretty campus and really beats ugly sharp, rectangular buildings. But I could live with that.

I'm not sure why I feel so unfit to be here. When I see other people being together and acting like the best friends in the world, I wonder why I can't have anything like that. That probably sounds selfish or...I don't know, but I wonder things like that a lot. It doesn't have to be directly, but it's a feeling that makes me feel sad and alone, even being surrounded by hundreds of people. I get that feeling a lot here. Although I have some friends who I'm probably lucky to have, I don't have a strong comraderie with anyone. I mean, I wouldn't regret leaving. If the friends here are worth keeping, we'll keep in touch, and if not...well. Mm. Maybe the reason I don't have many friends is because I'm so blase about friendships. ...am I? ...

Okay, it's already 2 AM because I've been working on the blog for a while. Not getting very far. I'm doing more CSS stuff than what I should be doing, which is the MT tags. I'm confused though because I'm not really sure what I'm doing. I never know what I'm doing.

There's a reason this entry is called "Rufusness" (or else that would be quite random). Last night was the Rufus Wainwright concert that caused me to actually stay on campus rather than run to home sweet home. It was very enjoyable despite my stupid, inexplicable emotions (which I will actually attempt to explain later). Rufus played for about two hours and I think I recorded most of the songs. I realized that my photos would suck, so I may as well record some audio, which also sucks but probably not as much. At the top of my head though, here's what I remember he played:

Harvester of Hearts
Dinner at Eight
14th Street
Cigarettes and Chocolate Milk
Oh What a World
Vibrate
Natasha
Foolish Love
Matinee Idol
Liberty Cabbage
Go or Go Ahead
11:11
Greek Song
Want
Hallelujah
I Don't Know What It Is
Movies of Myself
Pretty Things
Beautiful Child
Millbrook
Gay Messiah
Art Teacher

...wait, that's a lot of songs. I may have added something. Well I remember that he definitely played Vibrate because two girls in the audience held up a big heart-shaped Valentine that said something along the lines of "My phone's on vibrate for you," which took a while for Rufus to see. In the meantime as they were standing on the bench, some of the other musicians saw it and thought it was funny, and the audience was laughing a bit. Rufus jokingly called out, "Security!" after seeing it. Art Teacher is a new song and very ...well, Rufus-y in content, about an art teacher he had a crush on. :) He introduced Liberty Cabbage as a song about his love/hate relationship with America (since he went to boarding school in the US, which you might know about if you've listened to "Millkbrook", after spending his childhood in Canada) and more specifically that we need to get rid of Bush. As always, he sang and played perfectly and beautifully, although he did make some random sounds and faces just...cos. Because he can!

Man, I'm really getting tired now. It's about 2:35...I've been refering to the recordings I made during this time. Mm, relive the magic! But anyway, back to me having psychological problems that aren't serious but suck anyway. I started waiting outside the chapel to get in at 6:25, at which point a small line had started to form. The doors didn't open until around 7:30 and during that time my toes nearly froze off. Or something. And I was standing alone. I realized that it was the first time I had ever gone to a concert alone, although there were a lot of people around that I knew. I'd rather be in a place with just one person I really liked than alone surrounded by people that I might know. Somewhat. So that sucked because I don't think anyone else in that line was alone. I could be wrong, but it seemed like everyone had some buddy or some other group of people to talk to. I was studying Japanese because I majorly need to study for my test on Monday. The problem with be being alone to think to myself is that...I think to myself. About things that I don't need to think about and don't matter and...just those annoying things. Like how I don't mind being alone, but being alone around other people sucks ass. Whatever that means. "Sucks ass"...yeah, I didn't make that one up.

I wasn't in the greatest mood by the time we all got to go in. I just couldn't stop thinking about those stupid things that don't matter. I just got the feeling even more that I need to get away from Vassar, or something. It's not pushing me away, I'm just not fit for it.

That's a small wrap-up of whatever may have been going on in my head. I'm in a better mood now. Crap, I'm tired. Oh yeah, I bought some stuff: a Rufus tour poster and a Rainer Maria CD. They were a nice opener. Not really related to Rufus's music, but quite fun, and the CD was only $10 so I figured, why not. A bunch of students got up during their set and danced in front of the stage.

Okay, time to sleep. Yes. ...holy crap, did I not talk about food? Well. I ate too much today and felt kind of bad about it, but I'm definitely having some problem because I just can't stop eating. It's like the thing that I KNOW will make me happy, at least for a while, and then later it comes back to haunt me (like pants getting ever so much tighter and digestion degrading). Cashews don't have crack in them, they're MADE of crack. And nothing else. Dammit. And this morning I had an extra banana because I was in the student center doing some bio homework with my lab parter, Jason, and studying psych since we're in the same class, and he found a banana that someone had left behind int he ACDC (the student center is on the second floor above the ACDC). Of course, it was very nice, and I probably would have eaten a banana later anyway. Free bananas....mm.

Someone's listening to Natasha right now. It's really faint, but I guess it's not that far away.

if it's not already apparent, I'm trying to make major changes to this site. Like unsuckifying it, for one. I'm not sure why I didn't update my blog all week, but seeing as today is Sunday and...well, that sucks, I'll write something once I figure out what the hell is going wrong with this site. [First off, it might look really bad in Internet Explorer, so you know what? Do yourself a favor and get Firefox. :)] Now that I've gotten to test this in IE, it actually looks a bit better, but has some bugs. in Firefox the first entry's date keeps getting linked and the first entry's title doesn't have a buttet point, but it works in IE. DAMMIT! I was so close!

I still prefer Firefox, of course.

Alright, I'm exaggerating a bit. I've never been obese, only overweight (although as to what a normal weight should be is debatable). For some reason lately I've been unable to control how much dried fruit and nuts I eat and it's really bothering me. However, all I do is sit here and stuff myself sill while thinking, "Gee, I shouldn't be doing this." So in the end, I know it's all my fault, but why? My body has no need for copious amounts of nuts and dried fruits, but I can't turn that sense off. All I can do is use up my supply of nuts and dried fruit (which will only take another day or two) and see what happens. I won't say how much I weigh now or how much I used to weigh before doing the whole vegan/raw food (and now non-vegan raw food) thing, but I've gained nearly half of what I lost two summers ago. Fun? No.

As for non-vegan foods, I had Japanese food with Sarah, a friend from high school, last Thursday. That was the first time I ate at a restaurant since winter break. Sure, it hasn't been that long, not even two months, but it's nice to get out and eat somewhere other than my dorm room. The dinner was kind of random, but not really...I don't mean it in a bad way. I saw Sarah at the Rufus concert last week and she suggested we get together. She's really cool and unique, and I think I'm lucky to know her. We were casual acquaintances in high school and can recall those fond memories from AB calculus... .... ...yup.

Other things I did last week were freak out about bio, freak out about psych, and freak out about Japanese. Thank god I don't freak out about music theory. [Sidenote: damn, these pants are getting tight. Screw me.] I had to write a bit of my manuscript-thingy for bio, thus telling me that BIO IS NOT A ROBYN THING (although to be honest, most things aren't). I can think of loads of things that would make bio worse, but it's bad enough now. The only good thing that happened was that last Tuesday we all got laptops to use to work on spreadsheets and I used it to check my webmail, only to come across a message saying that my package from eatraw.com had arrived in the shipping building. First, I thought, "Crap, it's closed already," but then I realized "No wait, I have five minutes! Five minutes to run like hell!" The thing about the shipping building (which is where all the non-USPS packages go) is that it's one of the farthest places on campus from anywhere else, which I'm sure would suck if you shipped a sofa to yourself. However, the bio building isn't too far away, and I got to the counter just as it was about to be closed. Woo! I carried around my package of dried fruits and nuts like a first-born child.

And all that sweet sweet delicious food has contributed to the sharp increase of my girth in the past week. Damn! Yeah, I obsess over weight, probably more than other people. I know I shouldn't. But I'm not sure what kind of eating disorder I have. It's not something easily identifiable like anorexia (oh man, there's one thing that'll never happen), it's just...well, I enjoy eating. People tell me they enjoy eating, which is why they can't be raw foodists. No, no, I really enjoy eating. Maybe I'm so removed from the cooked food lifestyle that I can't understand other people's views anymore. There's going to be an "eating disorders workshop" on campus tomorrow, and it sounds kind of interesting, but I don't want to hear about people who DON'T eat. You don't get to hear obese people talk about being overweight much, do you? If you ask me, the number of people with the "disorder" of overeating is much higher than those who eat too little. If whatever I'm saying now sounds really stupid, then forgive me, because I've never known anyone who was anorexic. I'm not trying to be unsympathetic or anything. Oh, something funny (or not) is that in this e-mail about the eating disorder workshop, it says that refreshments will be served. I can understand that since refreshments are served at EVERY function possible (even the ones promoting hunger strikes, I'm sure) but it just seems a little ironic. :)

Friday felt like the longest day ever. I woke up at 8 AM for bio, like every Friday, and after my Japanese class was over, I met up with my mum to go shopping. We went to Borders, but I didn't find anything I wanted. Then we went to some grocery stores, where I did find things that I wanted. :) I got a few containers of those young greens salads (mm) and some nuts (bad idea). I also got some organic oranges, which I must say do taste different from regular ones, at least the ones I can get in school. I'm not sure how they taste better, but they do. We also went to a Christian bookshop since from afar I thought it was a regular one. Damn. I'm not against religion, I mean...well, whatever floats your boat, as long as it doesn't make you sink other people's boats (I have no idea what I just say; some neurons aren't functioning) but there was this one book that sounded so ridiculous to me. It was written by some pastor (or someone like that) who had gotten cancer. The exerpt on the back of the book said something along the lines of "At first I thought, how could I have cancer? I've been so good to God! I'm here to tell you that you can get cancer too." Well, that's not what it said, obviously, but it was just as ridiculous sounding. This guy just sounded a tad ignorant. You can' abuse your body just because you have faith in a God.

Something I noticed is that despite my loading up of my body with hard to digest foods like dried fruit and nuts, I haven't been lethargic or sleepy. I was disappointed that I couldn't sleep for more than 8 hours at a time this weekend. I went to bed at 4 AM and woke up between 11 and 12. I've also been waking up a few minutes before my alarm goes off in the morning each weekday, which I find really freaky since the times I have to wake up aren't the same every day. My digestion has always sucked, so I'm thinking that my body isn't using up loads of energy digesting because it just doesn't know what to do. It says, "Screw you, we're not dealing with these raisins. We'll just pack em away in this little part of your intestines and make you look like you're in your second trimester." Oh, okay, thanks! Well, at least I can wake up before the sun starts to go down.

I didn't finish talking about Friday yet. Um. Um. Erm. Oh yes, my mum and I went to places, one which was a spanish grocery store. I've never seen one before, so it was interesting. They had a whole aisle of dried chiles. Also, they had small packs of nuts, which was a big difference from the build half pound or one pound bags I saw at Stop and Shop. Oh, another thing, the Stop and Shop had shopping carts that you had to pay to use, which I've never seen before. It makes the Stop and Shop I worked at look so...ghetto, for lack of a better word (and the one I worked at was called a Super Stop and Shop? I don't know what the "super" means, although I've been trying to figure it out). Friday night I saw Whale Rider with Megan on campus (the film league puts on good movies). I saw it before with my mum, but it's a really good movie so I wanted to see it again. After that we saw the HEL (Happily Ever Laughter) comedy show, which the two guys across the hall were in. It was pretty funny, with surreal humor. Now I think the guys across the hall are really, really weird. They're really nice guys who you'd never know are so odd. And then you see the "Mr. Pokey" movie...nah, I won't get into that, but it was reallly funny. Many talents, ah...yes.

On Saturday I thought about doing something, but instead I stayed in my room all day. I also worked on this website...you like? I got this far, but as for doing all the other pages on my site, I don't know what I'm going to do. Paaaain. I want to become a CSS MASTAAAH (as opposed to the lowly, CSS MASTER) but I can't remember all the damn tags. It's so nice to not have to deal with crazy HTML anymore. I can't believe the crap-ass websites I used to make where I'd format every single paragraph of text with font and font size and all that crap. And tables are a bitch, so I'll try to stop using them, if possible. I really want to redo the evenmagnet tour page. I'm working on the pictures page right now and it's going...alright. Considering how slow I am, at least.

So just as a warning, a lot of the stuff on this page isn't going to work. I'd be surprised if anything does, actually. COMMENT! DO SOMETHING! :)

"Exploding Nematodes" would be a pretty bad name for a band. Unless it's a band of bio geeks, in which case it's just awful.

Today in bio I saw three nematodes explode through my microscope. Nematode heaven received many new occupants today. In my bio class we just started a new module in which we're observing C. elegans doing...erm, stuff. Not sure yet. We watched videos of the worms slithering about and having sex, which didn't look very enjoyable (just a little info: there are only males and hermaphrodites). The worms themselves are absolutely tiny, which freaked me out a bit as if I had 100 of the little buggers on my hand, I probably wouldn't notice (well...it wouldn't be like having a leech sucking your thumb, which isn't much of a comparison, but there you go). The most annoying part of the lab was picking up the worms from off of the agar with a thin metal pick. At least, it looked thin at first. Then it grew into a gigantic silver shiny dagger of doom as I tried to coax the worms to jump onto it so I could dump them on another petri dish of agar or onto a slide, to which I go no response because they're worms and couldn't give a poop about me. They were too busy brainlessly slithering around or having sex with each other (or themselves).

Whenever I prodded one of the normal worms, it wriggled away in a frenzy. I'm not sure how I eventually got two of em, but a lot of the class was having trouble, I later found out. The mutant worms were easier to deal with because they were pretty much rendered unable to move. Boy, that helps! I poked and prodded away without any problems. "MEET MY SHINY DOOM DAGGER!" Actually, it was sad looking at the mutants because they could only slightly move their heads. Otherwise, they just lied on the agar, and most of them were squished against each other. Why? I don't know. Maybe they were having orgies.

The explosions happened when I looked at a bunch of the mutants under the microscope. All was fine and dandy, until all of a sudden...whoa, the ovaries just plooped out! And kept on plooping. It was a little depressing, but also cool, especially under the 10x magnification. Due to the dark lighting of the slide, the worm kind of looked like a celestial being in the middle of the galaxy (the multitude of dust specks served as stars) and the explosion was like the outgassing of matter. "Matter" probably being eggs. I witnessed three of my worms explode (because they dried up) and it was painful to think of that as their last moments of life. Just imagine being all find and dandy with your ovaries and such (or whatever reproductive organ you have) and suddenly having your abdomen or posterior end explode as all your organs and internal fluids gushed out and pooled around your dead, writhing body.

It's sucks to be a nematode. That's what I learned in bio today.

Oh man, how could it be 8 PM already? My internet connection isn't even working right now, so who knows when I'll upload this entry. Today was alright, can't say I have much to complain about. I'm even semi-appreciating the onset of my period today because I've been gaining mega-tons lately and I know I'll lose weight today or tomorrow. I tend to retain weight all the time, but even more so the days before my period. OH JOY.

The grapefruits from the ACDC are really yummy. Mm. Water. Sugar water. That's basically what it is. The interesting thing about bio (among many interesting things, I guess) is that I'm learning about all the important...things. Like how calcium causes neutrotransmitters to travel to the next neuron. Potassium and sodium are really important too though. So now I'm wonder, what the hell am I eating? Sugar and water? I mean, it's more than that, but those are the main points. I also take multivitamins, so hopefully that'll help my interneuron functioning. I need lots of it.

I got a B on my psych test, thank god. I could have done a lot worse. Now I know that my teacher practically puts all the questions on his website, so I won't have to freak out next time, unless he decides to do something radically different. And that would just be mean.

Internet's still not working. Damn! I can't even do my Japanese homework because it's a listening assignment and I have to download the files from the school site.

It snowed today. WHAT. WHY. ARGH. I want the snow to stop and now I want to go to a school somewhere in the west. Despite that, I've done more for my NYU application...well, of course I did, but now I'm wonder if I really want to get in. I do, but I also don't so then maybe I'll be forced to do something else.

Man, I have to pee again. ARRGH! STUPID BLADDER!

Last thought: If you've never listened to Grandaddy, maybe you should. I'm listening to "Underneath the Weeping Willow" right now.

Okay, another random thing: There's a little bit about Vassar's porn magazine, Squirm, in the latest issue of Time (like a sentence, but there's a little picture as well). I've never actually read it, although I've heard that the stories in it are really poorly written. Isn't it kind of sad that such an English-centered school can't churn out decent porn literature? Huh huh? I guess those people don't use the Writing Center.

Last last last thing: I want to go to the Air concert, but I decided not to because it's on a Saturday night. But now I'm thinking about it again. It probably costs a lot though, so that alone would deter me. $20 to get to NYC and back, for one thing. Doh.

I was working on my bio manuscript (which is due next Tuesday; could I be any more screwed?) and I suddenly got sidetracked. Well, maybe not suddenly. Well. Erm. It's hard for me to concentrate on things, which makes me wonder how I've survived throughout all these years of schooling.

I was reading this review of the movie Eurotrip and ended up checking out Eurotrip.com for an extended amount of time. I mean, I'm still there. Dammit. This metafilter post sparked my interest in travel and made me think about how the only time I went to Europe (I say that as if everyone has gone many times, sorry) was when I was seven. Needless to say, I was bored out of my freakin' mind by everything that wasn't owned by the Disney Corporation, but even EuroDisney was just "okay" because it wasn't finished yet.

My first passport is overflowing with stamps from Asia (my second passport is blank, as far as I can remember). Maybe I'm lucky since I happen to be one of those people whose international excursions took place in Asia 99.99% of the time. However, I don't remember a great deal. My mum had to remind me that I went to Manilla...how do you forget something like that? I mean, that's a major city. But it's not really the same as Europe. When I went to Europe with my family, we went to a few counties (erm, maybe?), but in Asia...actually, we kind of did the same thing. Actually, Asia's COMPLETELY different, you can't even compare it to Europe, really.

Sorry, I'm just babbling. I SHOULD BE DOING BIO! But anyhoo, I want to go to London or Bergen (Norway). Just because. I wonder how much money I'd need to save up to do that. The only thing is that there isn't anyone I would care to drag along with me, and since I'm 18 I could technically go by myself, right? But then what the heck would I do when I get to any of these places? Could I really explore these places on my own? I've never even flown a plane on my own and haven't had to since I'm so close to home. I'm just having stupid daydreams here (actually, it's really late, but you know what I mean). I don't have enough friends in any European counties anyway...well blah me.

My roommate has been sleeping for the past few hours. She went to bed early because the Internet wasn't working at the time, she couldn't borrow a movie she had to watch for some class, and she had nothing else to do. Nothing? As much as I'd love to go to bed before 10 PM, there's too many things I could imagine doing, or actually have to do. I'm really worried about this bio manuscript, for one thing.

Oh, it's so stupid for me to be thinking of such random things. I probably wouldn't be able to even save up a few hundred dollars anyway.

Rarhg..RAGRHA god I'm tired. Somewhat. I just feel tired because I've been in a very dark room for the past few hours.

I decided that my entries were just too damn long to be displayed in full length on this page. I was worried that people missed my "exploding nematodes" entry due to the other entry I posted in the same day (not that you would have missed out on much...maybe it's for the better). The blips are my way of posting interesting links, not that you actually have to visit them. But didn't anyone watch the weird Korean poop animation? Anyone? ...Bueller? I probably need a wider readership before I can demand more comments. ;)

A lot of you already know about my raw food diet, but I was writing an e-mail to another raw foodist who goes to Oberlin and it might fill in some people here with info about my diet:

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I've been raw for about 13 months now, and I know I'm much better off health-wise, but I wouldn't say raw food is this miracle that makes you feel like a million bucks. Unless you were really bad off before. :| It's great that there are so many people who can say "I'm full of energy and mentally better than ever!" but for me, it's not like that, and I'm pretty envious of the other people. Or I don't notice. Mentally, I guess I was never that bad off, but I'm like...one of those stupid smart people, if that makes sense? Emotionally, I'm still kind of messed up, but not so much that I'd be put in a psychiactric ward, and energy...well, I don't take naps anymore, so that's a big plus. I wake up easily in the morning too. My mucus used to be BEYOND awful, but now I have no problems with it. I was hoping to get more into exercise, but I guess some things never change (I've always hated exercise, and having to take gym classes all my life probably hasn't helped that situation).

I guess one of the biggest pluses with raw food is that my period is very easy to handle. When I see what my peers have to go through (taking drugs and feeling like crap, I guess?) then I feel lucky. But I don't know why I end up gaining weight so easily and...blech, it sucks!

Your blog is interesting! I used to have a raw food blog, but it totally died. Here's my regular blog, in which I talk about food a lot

But other non-food things too. I can tell you what I ate today though:

2 oz almonds
2 oranges
1 grapefruit
3 sheets of nori and 2 oz of baby greens (the bag had 4 oz, so I think i ate half) and some olive oil
3 oz of cashews (which I know aren't really raw...but damn, those are good! I shouldn't buy them)
6 dates
too many figs, unfortunately. A few oz? I'm addicted to those as well.

The way I stop eating is thatI have to decide that it's too late to eat anymore. It's not so much that I'm not hungry, but 8 PM is the latest I'll eat. I try to finish earlier, but sometimes I just go on and on (like today).

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Totally random thing: I got my Poofy shirts today! Check this one out. I'll take a picture of the other 23 shirts too. They're in two trash bags by my closet right now, hehe.

Happy February 29th! How did you spend your leap-year-day? I spent all day inside my room. And the bathroom. Oh, the joy! There wasn't anywhere that I had to go, and I woke up at around 1:30 PM so I decided just to stay in my pajamas all day. Sundays are for being lazy.

I'm so removed from the rest of humanity that I semi-forgot about the Oscars. First off, it's never this early in the year, right? And I stopped watching TV a while ago. But I am excited this year because of the LOTR frenzy. I'm reading Fannio's Oscar Blog right now to catch up on things. :) I'm also watching the Return of the One Party webcast, not that I can really understand anything. But people sound excited!

Oh, apparently they had a big screen up in the students center showing the awards...doh! Mmwell. Thank god for the Internet!

This weekend was rather uneventful. Yesterday I spent six hours in the student center with Jason, my lab partner, to work on our manuscript. What could be more exciting than how freezing temperatures and herbivory affect cyanogenesis in C. elegans? WHAT? I don't know.

Holy crap, I must've missed something; everyone in the webcast is cheering a lot now. A lot-lot. But I can't really understand anything...OH okay that's because ROTK just got Best Picture! WOOHOO! Thank you, Fannio!

[the screaming continues]

I should listen to the ROTK soundtrack and get in the mood, eh? CONGRATULATIONS TO PETER JACKSON AND EVERYONE INVOLVED IN LOTR! You guys are awesome. And you all made me so happy. SO HAPPY! :) :) :) :) :)

So yes, six hours of attempting to write a biology manuscript was JUST how I wanted to spend my Saturday. And that's what most college students do, eh? When I finally left, I thought, "I don't remember what fun is!" I spent the rest of the day in my room doing...god knows what. I don't even remember, to tell you the truth. Isn't that sad? I guess I was eating stuff...

My mum dropped some food and things off for me on Friday. She said that I'd probably have some food left over to bring home at the end of the week. Erm! Wishful thinking on her part. ;) She brought me two 9 oz containers of almonds, another container of cashews, a 10 oz container of dried figs, two ten-sheet packs of nori, and a 4 oz bag of leafy veggies. Since Friday I've finished the veggies, the cashews, one container of almonds, and one pack of nori. And that's in addition to the loads of oranges and grapefruit that I already eat. Isn't that just a little frightening? I think so. God knows how much weight I'm putting on. I feel like I'm going to give birth to a bowling ball.

[I totally can't understand what's going on in this webcast, so I think I'll stop listening to it. Doooh.]

My mum also brought up my Poofy shirts! WOO! Here's a picture of me in my nice orange Poof-tastic shirt. Nice, eh? There may have been a few problems with the order though. I e-mailed the printing company about it and hopefully I can get them replaced, or maybe a little refund. I can't believe I didn't notice earlier how weird the mouth looked, but I can't do anything about it now so there's no point in dwelling on it, eh? Eh. I'm the type of person who dwells on things, but then I only ordered 24 shirts, so no big deal. If I ever make another one, anyone who ordered this one can get a discount, haha!

Crap, there's something wrong with my CD and the songs sound funny. Wah! No! :(

What the heck is up with this Oscar Gift Bag? "Included gifts are; a Z Electric Scooter, a gift certificate for a private island getaway on Fisher Island"...oookay. Man.

Great, now all I can think about is LOTR. I should watch ROTK again. YES! I mean, I only saw it three times, I think. Not a whole lot.

Man, I can't even remember what I'm supposed to be doing right now. My roommate is already sleeping, so I should probably go to sleep soon too. Only five more days of school until I get to go home! And I'll be in California in a week! EXCITING! But I don't know anyone who lives around Disneyland, so that kind of stinks. :| I could have met Rebecca if our spring break plans coincided. I hope that being in Disneyland will make me so happy that I will forget about eating and lose some weight. BWAHAHA!