so i just discovered that everyone's favorite top model loser, elyse sewell, has a livejournal!!!
and she actually writes in it and posts pictures and is funny! (duh.) anyway, worth a look, esp if you like... uhh... looking at pictures of models. she is a mistress of self-portraiture as well... i wish i could take a self-portrait that didn't make me want to poop on it. :p
so, when this whole tom cruise/katie holmes thing started, i told tessa (and maybe a few other people) my theory: that he's totally gay, and that this whole katie thing is a pr stunt paid for by scientology to keep this gayness under wraps in exchange for him proselytizing all over the place. i knew this to be true, deep down inside. and now, the superficial is corroborating my story. ok, so it's fourth-hand gossip now, but still. i was totally right.
ha.
i've got a new drink at starbucks. a triple-tall americano. half the price of a double-tall hazelnut nonfat latte, and fewer calories to boot. plus i can add a splash of nonfat milk, some splenda, and a dash of vanilla powder to make it super-yummy without bugging my tummy (fucking lactose).
so today during lecture i sat down and noticed THAT GIRL sitting in front of me. i thought to myself, good, if she says anything stupid i can KICK HER. i didn't, i restrained myself. but at one point during the lecture she went to ask a question, and this girl sitting a few chairs over from her (no one between them, but not next to her) leaned over and asked what her question was. taking one for the team! i wanted to give her chocolate or something for that. unfortunately later on the instructor did see her raised hand and bit. dammit. oh well. hopefully we can count on the continued assistance of the altruistic question-answerer. something tells me no though.
samurai jack tonight, yo.
why does she have to be in my bio lecture? why, god, why?? you know the girl i'm talking about... she sits in the front row and has frizzy hair and asks STUPID questions. questions that derail our already ramble-prone lecturer and leave 90% of us rolling our eyes. it's not as if this class wasn't already painfully slow, why must you slow us down further?
i can't wait until i'm done with all these intro classes and i can take classes that actually fascinate me.
speaking of fascinating things, you know that construction at the intersection of 15th and pacific? yeah that's the new genome sciences building. genome sciences. how. fucking. awewsome.
i watched a nova special on the genome last night. other than the fact that the interviewer was this british guy that reminded me a little too much of carson from queer eye who asked questions from a complete lay perspective, it was really good. i learned about the proteome. that's like the genome, but instead of genes, they're coding proteins. because that's where the complexity is now... we've decoded the genome into CGATTATAGGCCCGATACCAGT but we can't read that shit. now we need to figure out what all the proteins that the genome codes for are, and what they do. proteins are fucking rad. all they are is long chains of amino acids that fold in a specific way. each protein has a unique shape. its shape is its job. if a protein is misshapen it can't do its job. so we end up with sad genetic disorders like tay-sachs.
chew on this one for awhile. in tay-sachs disease, one (ONE) letter of DNA is missing, so one amino acid in a specific protein doesn't work right. it just happens that this protein is the one that's responsible for removing fat deposits from the brain. so, until the child is about a year old, they appear to be developing normally, then that development slows down, and as the fat deposits suffocate the brain cells, their development actually reverses. these kids never make it much past age 5 or 6, and by the time they're that old, it's like they're an infant again. can't sit up, turn over, swallow, anything. it's absolutely devastating. and all because of one little C or G or A or T out of place.
.
so i'm back at work after my first bio 180 lecture. it looks like, at this point, there's a roughly 84% chance of me getting into the class. There are 5 spots open and 6 people raised their hands in lecture to the question, "who is trying to get into the class?" so that's pretty rad. the class looks like it'll pretty much be a breeze, but i'm going to actually buckle down and study hard no matter how easy it seems, so i can be that fucker that makes the curve. :D though i won't know for sure until thursday whether i'm in or not. i have to go to the first lab section thursday morning and hope.
i totally forgot to bring something to write with to lecture today, so i had to borrow a pen. on the first day. why does that always happen to me? :p oh well.
anyway this class is on evolution, mendelian genetics, and biodiversity. the biodiversity part sounds super-cool because there are field trips involved. one of which is to friday harbor, and one of which is to the olympic peninsula. fuckin' sweet. i really want to do the friday harbor one. because san juan island has to be beautiful. also, i love sea critters.
meh. so now i have to go buy the lab manual. and if i get into the class i'll have to buy the textbook too. and pay tuition. :p i'm pretty sure my parents are going to help out with that one... since i'm poor.
so now i'm stuck at work for a long time since i skipped out on 2 hours to go to class. tomorrow i'm going to get up earlier so i can get to work by about 7:30 or 8 so that i don't have to stay until 7pm to make up for my missed lecture time. whee.
OK, I know this news is like a week old, but it's been circulating the net so much that I kind of feel I need to comment on it. It's about Steve Jobs speaking at Stanford's graduation. You can find the text of his speech here. It's definitely worth a read.
So, speaking at the graduation that, for all intents and purposes, should have been my own, Steve Jobs, who never graduated from college, says that dropping out was the best thing he ever did. Really, this speech did a lot for me this past week - I have been having pangs of guilt - feeling like I'm a lazy fuck, like i'm a failure, like I should have just stuck it out. But really, when I think hard about it (or even not that hard) I remember just how painfully unhappy I was those last two quarters at Stanford, and remember that if I'd graduated last Sunday, it would have been in Product Design, which is a very fucking awesome major, but not what I'm good at at all. I probably would have been a miserable failure, I know I never would have gotten a job with Apple or Ideo, and well, I'm just not all that creative at heart, as much as I wish I were. And now that I've found what I really am passionate about, I really am a lot happier. :)
(ok, living with my super-hot amazing boyfriend doesn't hurt, either. ;)
i hate people today. all of them. i've been having violent fantasies all week. this morning on the bus i repeatedly shot a kid on the bus with my pretend-gun because he kept asking the driver dumbass questions. also because he was poorly dressed with thick glasses with clip-ons. honestly, who wears clip-ons anymore? at least they weren't flipped up. i guess i'm just prejudiced against the socially inept.
then today before lunch some bitch called demanding payment for some cd-rom her company sent me without solicitation. when they called before it was shipped i said, no, i don't want it! and then they sent it. and i was like, ok, whatever. then today, i got a $417 invoice for the damn thing. for a fucking CD-ROM! i mean, honestly, if you're going to overcharge, at least use up-to-date media. i could deal with paying $417 for a holographic information card. or maybe a 2GB memory stick. but a CD-ROM, hell no. so i sat there and tried to get it resolved, all the while wishing i had a "choke-a-bitch" button on my phone.
then on the bus on the way back from lunch some coworker of jared's started going off on pussy liberals talking about their feelings. oh. my. god. i only had 2 blocks until my office so i kept my mouth shut, all the while seething inside as these two coworkers of his proceeded to talk about why mexicans are bad for the u.s. economy and how they are just here to rape and kill people. duh, that's why our prison system is 30% immigrants! yeah, well maybe these people became violent criminals after they arrived in the us and realized how fucking stupid the people here are, and decided that maybe they deserve to be killed.
i also had a violent episode on wednesday night playing mario party. i had hoped that would get all the anger out of my system, but nope, people kept on pissing me off yesterday and today. dammit. at least he didn't turn around and call me an abusive girlfriend and a horrible person and make me feel guilty on top of my anger like a certain ex of mine did.
so yeah, it's been anger-management week for kat. i just don't get why i've been so twacked out. i blame the new birth control. i suppose it's a small price to pay to not worry about popping out a kid or two while i'm not paying attention...
had an odd dream last night - it was about my cousin's wedding. (he's getting married in july. which is so weird to me.) anyway, we were getting ready for the wedding, and evidently it turned out that his fiancee is some minor royalty, so the queen of england was going to be there, even though it was a really informal, small ceremony. so everyone was fussing about, getting ready for the queen. and the wedding. there was also something in there about trying to get my mom set up to use my old ipod (as if i had an old one going unused), but we couldn't find a dongle (not sure why it was called that) to convert firewire to usb, and the ipod kept giving us friendly error messages. it was kind of funny and sarcastic. then, as we were sitting down for the wedding (someone had offered me a juice with vodka in it - seemed a little early, but i took it since it was stressful times, the queen was coming!) and suddenly a tree in the yard was on fire. so i started screaming and pointing, and no one would look the right way. i tried to call 911, but i got a phone maze ("thank you for calling 911 emergency services. all our agents are currently on the line.") and then i woke up.
so the bus was 20 minutes late this morning, prompting myself and probably everyone else waiting for it to wonder if i'd missed it. turns out i hadn't, it was just 20 minutes late. without explaination. meh. so i was a little late getting into work this morning, and my double-tall hazelnut nonfat latte (yes i hate myself for using that many words to order a fucking coffee) completely failed to wake me up. so i spent most of today in a half-awake stupor. i did read some stuff on wikipedia about g-proteins, and rod and cone cells, and kind of how they work, which was neat. i also learned about cnidarians and that if you take two different kinds of sponges (the simple aquatic animal, not the kind you use to wash dishes) and put them in a blender and make sponge-shake, then let them sit and settle for a few weeks, the sponge cells will reassociate with their own kind and reform sponges. they sort themselves out. pretty fucking cool, huh. kind of makes me wish i had my own sponges to play with.
which brings me to the next car in my train of thought. i want to set up a marine tank. with live sand and rock and maybe a few fishies. eventually i want to have a huge coral tank with some sweet anemones and shit, but that stuff is expensive. goldfish are cute, but boring. i want itty bitty critters crawling around in my substrate.
this weekend was pretty cool. friday night andy (with whom i attended high school, back in helltexas) and some college buddies dropped by on their post-collegiate road trip. went to pies and pints for dinner, where we ran into the tessanator and had a lovely meal. went back to our apartment and drank. a lot.
saturday was my grandma's birthday, so jared and i went over to bellevue to hang with the Fam for the afternoon. saw plenty of family-types. my cousin krissy came over to our apartment and hung out for awhile, mostly to escape barney, who had infected our grandparents' television (much to the delight of almost-four Lauren, who is loud and talkative now). fuck barney. so then after she went back to bellevue, we headed out to a par-tay at some friends of tessa's on cap hill. much beer was drunk. met a new blogger chick who seemed pretty cool. saved tessa from certain doom at the hands of an asshole. danced wildly to annie, the swedish pop star. (note to self: find her music.) and other such party-tastic activities.
sunday i got a wee sunburn. hooray! i'm a little bit tan now (though still solidly in the "ridiculously white" category). also, had a rehearsal for the upcoming neodandi show. it's in july. we're going to have 3-hour rehearsals for this one. whee.
why do i always end up doing epic summary posts instead of shorter on-the-fly posts??
i had a dream last night that i still remember pretty vividly, so i figure i'll share it. it started with an earthquake. i can't remember what building i was in, probably not any real building, but i remember feeling the ground moving in one direction, like a large chunk of land mass was sliding. so i jumped up and stood in a doorframe like you're supposed to do in an earthquake. only it didn't stop, it just kept going. i could see where it was going - we kept sliding out into the sound, then busted through some bridge (if there were a bridge across the sound around here), and kept on sliding until we were pretty far from where we started. so we decided to evacuate. at first this was done by running as fast as we could in the same direction as we were moving, trying to get to where we could see the ocean. my dad was there. he said that we had to get off of the moving land before it fell off the continental shelf. that sounded scary. suddenly there was a big hill in front of us (that i remember someone called "mt. hill." ha.) that i couldn't make it up. and then we saw other people, and they were all going the other direction, back towards the land. at this point we realized that what had happened was mt. rainier had blown, and we were on one of the lahars that was moving out to sea. so we started moving in the other direction, first stopping back at our house to grab stuff. i tried to stuff frida into my backpack but decided against it. i think i ended up carrying her off. so then we got into a car somehow and were driving back towards the land, trying to outrun the still-moving land mass and get to safety. someone mentioned something about "you think we're screwed, i just heard that car dealership central is completely demolished." somehow i knew that car dealership central referred to the renton/auburn valley. we kept on going, driving as fast as we could in the clogged 2-lane street to get to safety. then i woke up.
so then i started thinking about the inaccuracies of my dream. first of all, lahars don't carry large land masses and things with them, they just blow them out of existence. second, if mt. rainier really exploded, we here in seattle would have at least some advance warning to evacuate. i'd put my kitty in her carrier, rather than shoving her in a backpack or carrying her by hand. and then we'd head north on i-5, as fast as traffic would allow. and auburn and renton would probably be nonexistent. these are things you gotta think about, living in the shadow of the most dangerous volcano in the country. not obsess about, mind you, but at least be aware of, so should that day ever come, you can deal with it without completely panicking.
new flickr pictures from the fashion show - by robert contreras... some of these turned out really cute. check them out. i'm slowly starting to feel like maybe i can photograph well after all. now i gotta learn how to do my own makeup :/ 'cause that's the key.
camping was swell. there are camping pics up there on flickr too. you can see them here. we should do that again sometime soon. :D
Thanks, Mike, for passing me the baton. I don't usually do this sort of thing, but I'm bored, waiting for everyone to get here so we can go camping, and you told me to, so I will.
Total volume of music on my computer: According to itunes, 2792 songs, 8.7 days, 12.95 GB. I know, I'm a n00b. But I lost all when I upgraded to the Mac.
The last CD I bought: The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou OST. It arrived in the mail today and it is awesome.
Song playing right now: "Starman" written by David Bowie, translated into the Portuguese and performed by Seu Jorge (who appeared as Pele in the movie). Acoustic Bowie in Portuguese. What could be better??
Five songs I listen to a lot, or that mean a lot to me:
Such Great Heights, The Postal Service. It's "our" song.
The Only Living Boy in New York, by Simon and Garfunkel. The Garden State soundtrack is amazing, and I figured if I could only pick one song off the album, it'd be this one.
Welcome Home feat. Mike Ladd, by Daedalus. Again, amazing album, favorite song. It's really smooth rap lyrics over an awesomely melodical song. Plus he uses the word "megadebauchalopolis" which I think is awesome.
It's A Fire, Portishead.
Love Ridden, Fiona Apple. This album (When the pawn hits...) carried me through some of my angstiest high school years. I still know the whole title (it's in the guiness book for being the longest album title ever) - ask me sometime.
Five people to whom I'm passing the baton: Jared, Tessa, Ruben, Andy and Lauren. Shit, I don't even know if five people read this damn thing.
That was fun. We now return to our regularly scheduled programming.
