Mission Accomplished

I just mailed a birthday card to my aunt (her birthday is on Saturday). Why am I telling you this? (Besides the obvious, its my blog and I get to do what I want)

1. This is an amazing event because as many of you have probably noticed, I don't send birthday cards. I try, I have everyone's birthday in my calendar set with a reminder for two weeks ahead of time so that I can get a card and mail it but it never happens.

2. I bought this card five years ago.

See I lived with my aunt and uncle for a short time and during that time (because of the type of people they are and because of the type of person I am) we accumulated a number of inside jokes - all of which are at the expense of one or more of the three of us. Then living in Santa Barbara five years ago I was at Gelson's and I found the PERFECT birthday card for my aunt so I bought it even though it was months until her birthday. I put it in a place where I would TOTALLY know where it was when I needed it and then I forgot where that place was. I found it a few months after her birthday and was all, "no problem, now I'll totally know where it is for her birthday this year." Nope, gone again. I think you can probably figure out the pattern of the last few years. BUT, today I sent it, I'm very excited.

I would also like to point out that despite misplacing it multiple times, I never lost it and I think we need to remember that I have moved four times (including inter-state!!) in those five years, and also that I have only unpacked one box in my bedroom since my most recent move and it happened to be the box with the card in it. I actually purposefully didn't want to unpack any other boxes when I found it because it has since been the only thing sitting on my bookcase for a month and I didn't want to unpack more and risk forgetting it again.

Yeah it is So You Think You Can Dance Again

If I was still dancing with any level of competency I think I would only want to do Mandy Moore* routines.

From this week:


From a couple seasons ago (and I think I've shared this before but I can't get enough):


Maybe 80's tunes just make me want to dance.

*This is not Mandy Moore the singer / wannabe but isn't really dancer, totally different Mandy Moore.

In case you are wondering where I've been the last couple of weeks well quite frankly I've been wallowing and eating mashed potatoes for more meals than I choose to admit to* BUT I've also been studying. You see tomorrow I have a Genetics test and I have to know a lot for it. Not just basically know it and be able to answer questions where if you have the basic gist of the answer you get credit, NO. I have to KNOW everything, word for word.

Everything on these flash cards (pencil for scale) has to be in my brain.


Along with eight pages of diagrams that look like this:


I also have to be able to answer any question that has been assigned for homework (a LOT) and do some other things that don't really fit on flash cards like centromere and three point mapping.

I wanna go home now.


*Don't misunderstand me, these things are also going on, I just have to study in between bites.

I have found the new worst word in the English language: Heartbroken. It is a ridiculous, trite, and cliche word used to describe something that is anything but. It makes me feel like some silly girl out of a Jane Austen novel who just got home from the ball "heartbroken" because the gentleman wouldn't dance with me. I'm banishing it. Come up with something better.

beepbeep beepbeep beepbeep beepbeep

So I start packing up my kitchen and I throw all the magnets on my fridge (which is kind of a lot) into a ziplock bag and pack them in my mixing bowls near the bottom of one of my largest packing boxes. This box ends up being filled with odds and ends. The kind of packing you do after midnight the day before movers arrive at your house, the kind that involves just taking large armfulls of random things and putting them in boxes? That is what this box consisted of.

One of the magnets I have is a kitchen timer. This kitchen timer beeps when it goes off and it keeps beeping until you press the button to make it shut up. On more than one occasion I have wondered how long this timer will beep if I don't press the button. Usually I can't make it more than about a minute before I absolutely have to make it stop so I really had no idea. Notice I said "HAD no idea." Now I know that it will beep for 30 minutes if you don't press the button. I learned this between 2:30am and 3am on Friday night while it beeped at me as I finished packing. I wasn't all that annoyed with it during the time because I had music going that pretty much drowned it out but around 3am when I decided to be finished and go to bed, THEN it was annoying me. See, I knew that despite the fact that it was in the bottom of a box full of other things downstairs and that I would be trying to sleep upstairs that I would be able to hear it and with my brain still wired from the half a coke I had at 4pm I knew I wouldn't be able to sleep.

I sat on the couch for probably 2-4 minutes just staring at the box and willing it to stop but it wouldn't. I finally decided that I was going to have to unpack the box and find the stupid thing. Once the decision was made I jumped up, grabbed the scissors, turned around, and stopped dead in my tracks. The beeping had stopped. I honestly didn't know what to do. If I moved would it start again? What if I put down the scissors? Had it just reset? Was the beeping going to start again? The silence was too much for my wired, yet exhausted, brain to handle at 3am. I carefully put down the scissors and went to bed.

It started beeping again the next day at the new house when Michael was over and we were sort of unpacking things. Again it stopped as soon as I decided that I was going to find it and shut it off. Apparently it isn't 30 minutes, it is just however long I am willing to put up with it.

How was your week last week?

Mine went something like this:

Sunday: I could see doom on the horizon. I knew this week was going to be the confluence of everything and that I wasn't going to like it. I knew I had two midterms on Friday, a "quiz from hell" (direct quote from teacher) on Wednesday, a paper due on Thursday, homework assignments due Wednesday, Thursday, & Friday, and a little something called needing to be out of my apartment by Saturday and not getting the keys to the new place until Friday afternoon. Umm lets see, oh yes, and you know that feeling you have when you just know you are going to wake up sick the next day? I'd had that for over a week.

Monday: Physics teacher announces that we will be retaking the first test because everyone did so poorly. And this will be happening on Friday. Awesome, thanks.

Tuesday: The guy from work who promised to bring the boxes he used to move, didn't bring in the boxes he used to move. Now, I have no boxes. Awesome, thanks.

Wednesday: Wake up sick. Awesome, thanks.

Thursday: Fairly normal despite being exhausted, high on dayquil and not really prepared for all the tests I have on Friday.

Friday: Apparently actually studying doesn't really influence my understanding of Physics, good to know. English midterm goes fine. Statistics midterm, well lets just say that this was the one test of the week I was really confident about and then I realized I forgot my calculator.

Then there was moving. So it turns out the guy DID bring boxes, he just put them in the storage unit so they wouldn't clutter the office. The locked storage unit that I don't have a key to, in a storage facility a mile away, behind a gate that I don't have the code to open. Yeah, strange that I didn't think to look there. Also, the LOADS of boxes he was bringing turned out to be 3 normal sized moving boxes and 6 liquor case boxes. So there I am, 5:00pm on Friday with basically no boxes and movers coming at 9:00 the next morning. I think I'll put the move in another post later, there were some interesting moments, or at least moments that made me want to kill people but that others might find amusing.

PS - Uhaul is by far the cheapest place to buy boxes if you have to go that route.

Currently Keeping me Going