I'm sighing... watch me sigh.

I really should not be procrastinating as much as I am. Psych is dumb. Yesterday wasn't as busy as I thought it was going to be because one of my appointments was canceled. Yippee, but really not... I needed that appointment. It's scheduled for later in the week though. Today wasn't very busy. My psych paper is due on Thursday. Ugh. I hate papers.

Really, I don't have many opinions, but I feel strongly about the ones I have. My German class (Contemporary Germany and the European Union) is talking about the EU right now and when I went to office hours yesterday I told my professor about how much I hate the Euro. I mean, seriously, the Euro is dumb. I hate it. It takes away the individuality, culture, and heritage of the specific countries. Ok, so it doesn't do it all at once, but the Euro is just a step in that direction. I mean, what will come after the Euro? A universal language in Europe? And then what? One ruling government for Europe? I actually mentioned the language thing and was surprised to hear that it was what we would be talking about soon and what the next paper was on.

I have a new mouse and I love it. It's wireless and cute.

Hmm... yeah. Das Ende. Thanks to Vanessa, my paper is done. Das Ende. Das Ende. I don't know what classes to take. Hmm... yeah.

Sheep Meat

Today = busy day. This week = ARG.

I had my usual Monday classes: German, calc, and linguistics lecture. Calc was different because we had a different professor, Andy Booker. He shares an office with Chris Hughes, my usual calc prof. I was going to call Chris my "normal calc prof" but he's really not normal. Andy is American (or at least he sounds American). He might be the first American prof I've ever had for math at UM. We might've had an American lady in 186 though... I'm not sure.

Linguistics was fun. It seemed like the prof was especially humorous today. ...It wouldn't be funny to you though so I'm not going to repeat the quotes.

Then later I went to Kalli's office hours because I had an appointment at 2:30 to talk to him about German. I ended up waiting at least 15 minutes because other people got to go before me. It was fine though because I felt bad about taking up his and his real students' time anyway, although it did make me later for my other meeting.

Busy day... tomorrow is going to be even busier. I'm so far behind in everything. I have a paper for psych due Thursday and I don't even have an idea what to write yet. I have calc homework due Friday and I need to start that before tomorrow. I have German... always German. Then there's linguistics. Plus, I don't know what I'm going to take next semester and I register on the 5th. On top of everything, I have 50 bazillion appointments/meetings this week to go to and I'm stressed about different things. ARG! Therefore, I must not waste anymore time tonight on this blog.

Like Diet Coke on Acid

Thursday was Thanksgiving, Friday was Christmas, and Saturday was the inevitable.

Thanksgiving dinner was typical. Everyone ever from my family was there. Shall I name them? Sure, why not. Grandpa, Grandma, Kevin, Sarah, Darren, Kathee, Will, Heidi, John, Lois, Derrick, Nicole, Adrienne, Michael, Rose, Clay, Jonathan, Deborah, Rob, Jerry, Diane, Steph, Dan, Anna, Tom, Shiela, Carly, Jason, Christy, Cadence, Jeff, Jen, Ashlyn, Olen, Elaine, Olene, Laura, Jon, Kim, Mikel, Jacqulyn, Agnes, Glenn, Leona, and me. I think that covers everyone. There were a few missing though (Crystal, Seth, Eunice, and Nelson).

The weekend with my cousins was fun. I got to see Gladiator for the first time. Exciting, yes of course. I enjoyed it, although I would've enjoyed it more if I had not been so tired. Will, Heidi, and Anna were so adorable! And everyone seems to think I should study abroad. Hmm... we'll see. Also I'm sick of people asking me what I'm going to do with a German major. I don't know, I don't care, so LEAVE ME ALONE!

Yeah, I don't really have much more to say.

Today we came home. There are frustrations that go along with that, but I am not going to get into that now.

I need to unpack, pack, and all of that wonderful stuff now.

Relentlessly Happy... Again!

Wow, today was a good day. And the best parts of it happened before 1:10 pm. First, it was snowing. It was fun walking to class in the snow. Yes, it was cold, but it was snow and you have to love snow. Then German was fun. Erika and I were forced to sit in the front, but that was ok. We got our papers back and I got an A/A+ on mine. :D I was quite pleased, especially since I spent maybe 2 hours on it, which isn't much time at all. I basically sat down and wrote it off the top of my head. I love German.

Then I went to calc. On the way there I almost durfed it at least once. It was funny though and I laughed at myself. You have to be able to laugh at yourself. Calc was odd. Maybe half the class was there. We sat down and as the prof was getting out his calc book someone said to the professor, "Let's not have class today," and someone else said, "Tell us about your research, what you do on Thursdays." (Thursdays are his research days when he refuses to talk to any of us). So he thought for maybe a second, said "ok", and put his calc stuff back in his bag. Basically the whole class period was "a 50 minute diversion", which was fun. We learned about the Rieman-Zeta function and about university in England and about the professor's life history (where he was born, what his favorite kind of cake is, where his parents live, what he's doing next year, when his birthday is, where he went to college, what his interests are, etc). Someone asked what he does for fun on the weekends, and he replied "I spend most of my time in the department." Then someone suggested that he go out partying with them because he "could get all the girls with his accent". It was definitely an interesting class.

On my way to linguistics lecture I almost fell many times. I found it humorous. We watched a movie about language and I enjoyed it, though I was kind of blocking it out by the end. Hot prof was there and that made me happy. Afterwards I talked to my GSI for a bit. Fun times.

Finally it was Thanksgiving break and my classes were over! Steph (my roommate) and I piled into her car and drove away from my beloved Ann Arbor. It took us forever to get out of Ann Arbor; traffic was so bad. We met my parents in Birch Run and then my parents and I went to Saginaw where I met up with Vanessa. She was on her way to Detroit. Vanessa is fun...

When I finally got to Au Gres around 8pm, I stopped and talked to Lyne and her children and saw her kitties. They're cute. Then I went home and saw my kitties. They're very cute. I missed my kitties. Ross came over later and he finally got to listen to my campus band concert. I think I was justified in making him wait considering what the first song was. It was nice to see Ross again. Now I need to pack for tomorrow.

Have a wonderful Thanksgiving!

Ich liebe...?

Lyne asked, "what did the doctor have to say?" and the answer to that is "absolutely nothing". All the tests came back normal except the blood test which hasn't come back yet. I was supposed to get a call about that today but that didn't happen. Frankly, I think the nurse practitioner overreacted. But I guess it's better to overreact than underreact.

I think I might play some Medal of Honor tonight.

So I spent this evening emailing various lecturers, GSIs, and teachers. That was the theme of this evening. I emailed Garyn (my psych GSI), Cati (my linguistics GSI), and Doc (my high school calc teacher) once, and I emailed Kalli (the German advisor) three times. So yeah, that's what I did this evening. Exciting, I know.

Ich liebe Deutsch. I hate spanish. Französisch ist ok. I want to learn Latin and Greek.

Thanksgiving is in two days! Only three classes tomorrow and one of them is a movie... but it's the one that I would rather not have be a movie.

Because you're a moron.

German test today. I think it went ok... but maybe not. We'll see.

So I went to UHS today because I still have a cough and breathing difficulties and the lady practically flipped out on me. Ok, so it wasn't an actual flipping out but she made me get all these tests done (three separate ones). Then she got some other doctor to come ask me questions and he reminded me of the mouth of Sauron from Lord of the Rings. But my blood pressure was a good 118/66, so that's good. I was there for over 2 hours.

I'm watching Stargate now. I've already seen this one. I've seen most of them.

I don't know what to take next semester. Any suggestions? It's tough to decide. Ryan was little help.

Hot prof was back again. That was nice. Some people said something about how we have class on Wednesday before Thanksgiving and he said, "You have to remember, I'm not American so Thanksgiving means nothing to me."

Thanksgiving is in a couple days! I'm excited because I'll get to see my cousins and aunts and uncles and grandparents. :D It's exciting! I'm excited!

Yeah that's all.

atmen

Snow. It snowed a lot Thursday. It snowed Wednesday too. Ah, snow. Snow is nice but cold.

So I don't want to do my homework. Naturally. When do I ever want to do my homework? Well, sometimes I actually do, but not now.

My odd British calc prof said something fun Friday. "I can't give blood because I've lived in the UK for more than six months... surprisingly. So therefore I'm infected by mad cow disease, which explains a lot." :) Speaking of calc, I got 43/100 on the second midterm. It was 23 more points than I expected to get. It's ok though, because it ends up being a B. Also, my calc prof is a fan of Harry Potter.

Now for today. Today was eventful. The first thing I did was go to the front steps of the Union and argue with all the scalpers about how much one of my OSU tickets was worth. So that was my illegal activity of the day. I had previously arranged for the sale of the other ticket and so I went to take care of that next. The fun thing was that where I had to go to sell the ticket was the same place as the Cru tailgate party. If I would not've had to go there, I probably wouldn't have, so it was kind of a good thing that I had to sell those tickets. Anyway, I enjoyed my time there... I ate a couple buckeyes and talked to Jeremy about German.

Then tonight we watched Signs. I really enjoy that movie and I think it rivals The Sixth Sense for M. Night's best movie. Maybe later I'll go into why I think that.

Ellie has three profs for her religion lecture and the one is so boring that the other prof, Ralph Williams, fell asleep during his lecture. I found that quite humorous. But she also said that when he finished his lecture he said to the class, "ok, you can wake up now" and that kind of makes me feel bad for the guy.

I have more thoughts but they will have to wait until some other day.

Music To Invade Poland To

"German language suits heavy metal music. French might be the language of love, but German is the language of anger." -Rammstein

I've found an appreciation for Rammstein. The song Sonne is especially good. I must thank Kevin from calc for introducing me to that song.

My calc exam was today. I did horribly. No joke. It's frustrating how I can study and study but it makes no difference. Then I was late to linguistics but it was ok because the lady was having technical difficulties.

The rest of my day was pretty good though. I got to talk to my other linguistics professor (not the lady, the guy) about German for 75 minutes. That was quite interesting. Then I got the recording of my Campus Band concert. It's beautiful. :)

I'm still so sick. I thought I was getting better but I'm definitely not. My head is cloudy and my nose is stuffy and I cough and cough and cough.

Anything genuine?

This morning I got a mocha latte before I went to class and as I was walking to class with my coffee, memories from last semester filled my mind. Last semester I would frequently get a coffee before I went to physics and so it felt like I was going to physics this morning.

The campus band concert went well. It was about 45 minutes long and the conductor didn't say a word during it. He was grinning during a lot of the pieces though and at one point at the end he mouthed something like "perfect". My parents said that he hardly moved when he was on the podium conducting.

I'm still sick, but I may or may not be getting better. The cough isn't as bad I think. I don't know though. It's not good.

During dress rehearsal for the concert we sang all the way through one of our songs. It wasn't like sight-reading singing, it was like sing the actual pitches. I loved it.

There's not much else to say. I have a calc exam on Wednesday and so I'll have to study for that. Yeah, that's about everything there is... ever.

It's better than watching a duck with a speech impediment.

This morning I woke up to the sound of drums... drums, drums in the deep.

My linguistics GSI and my German instructor are filling out my academic and foreign language evaluation forms for study abroad. I asked my GSI yesterday and I asked my German instructor Wednesday. So whether or not I decide to go, the process has started.

Yesterday's interesting fact was that my calc prof is only in his mid- to late-twenties. Isn't that weird? I definitely would've guessed early thirties, but I guess he really doesn't look old. The only reason I would've guessed thirties is because he's a prof. So that means that another certain professor might not be so old...

The course guide for winter 2006 was put up yesterday. I've found some classes that I could take, but not too many that I really want to take. I don't know what to do! I can't find any good schedules. Grr.

Coughing is not fun. It really isn't. I wish this was sore throat sickness instead of coughing sickness... maybe. I don't know. I just wish I wasn't sick.

The game was nice. Michigan won, 41 to 14. I stayed for the whole thing even though it was boring. Before the game, two F-14s (maybe F-15s) flew right over the stadium and that was fun. I love military aircraft.

Why are you so weird?

Apparently people here think I'm weird. Ellie said the title of this post to me after I said, "I, blue books, take thee, stamps, to be my lawfully-wedded office supplies."

So my honors multivariable calc professor had to teach me algebra yesterday during office hours. Yes, it's true. It was matrices, which Doc skipped over in algebra II. I said to the professor, "I've never learned matrices in my life... ever. Could you explain them to me?" and he did. He made-up a kind of mini lecture for matrices. At the end, he said, "How did you ever learn calculus without knowing algebra?" And then I wrote Doc a joking angry email.

Linguistics is hot. I was looking on the Freiburg website to see if they had linguistics classes and they definitely do. It's exciting. Plus, I get to talk to my linguistics prof about German! YAY! Also, because I'm in the honors section we have to do a presentation at the end of the semester. At first, I was totally not pleased about this, but then I read the sheet describing it and the main requirement was that it had to be about a language other than English. I was excited. I mean, how perfect is that for me?

Campus Band was ok last night. We have a concert on Sunday.

Concerning Freiburg, I talked to someone who went last year and got to ask a bunch of questions. Now that I'm more informed, maybe I'll be able to make my decision.

I'm getting a cough. I'm getting sick. Yuck. Sickness. It's throat sickness, which it my favorite kind.

Fall is nice. The tree by the union is now like my pictures that I took last year. I like leaves.

There's a group on Facebook, made by Kevin, called "The CP Hugs fan club". It's dedicated to our British calc prof. I'm an officer and my title is "possibly the only sophomore in the class". I'm proud of my title. :)

Happy birthday, Leslie!

Full Circle

So... another day.

I massacred my left contact a few nights ago. I didn't mean to, but it was brutally murdered. When I put it in its case, it was dark and so I couldn't see. It turned out that I had ground it to shreds when I twisted the cap back onto the container. Poor thing.

This afternoon after psych, I went to my German professor's office to talk about some things, and right when I walked in she said, "Can I ask you a question? What's the difference between a geek and a nerd?" I was amused by that. It's just such a random question. Also when she asked that, it hit me once again that she (and many others here) aren't native English speakers and so some words and phrases have no direct translation and so can be hard to grasp. I don't know, it was just weird to see that from the perspective of knowing instead of being the one confused. For example, there is this German word "doch" which doesn't really have a set 1 to 1 translation and so I find it hard to use and hard to know when to use it.

The multiple choice scores of the second psych exam were released today. I did better than last time... 6 points better. I don't know about the short answer though. I don't think that went well. But we'll see, won't we?

It seems like the more I play Medal of Honor, the worse I get. Today, playing the first level, I blew myself up once, let a Nazi get ahold of the machine gun and shoot me half to death, and then the Nazi threw my grenade back at me and blew me up. How pathetic is that? If you answered "very pathetic" you would be correct.

Dinner was very goos tonight because it was leftovers from Sunday. Mmm.

I watched a movie in German tonight and it was weird... and dumb. There were no subtitles and so I had little idea what was going on. Scheisse.

Please, shut up! You're wounding MY soul.

That's a quote from About A Boy. Ellie and I watched it Saturday evening. I like that movie. It's full of hilarious quotes.
...
I got an A on my German test! YAY! And then I spent hours on calc this afternoon. Calc... I just don't know. I got an extra 20 minutes though, so that was good. But then I waited around my professor's office for 30 minutes and then only got to ask 2 questions and they weren't even good questions. Arg!

Yesterday I went to church and didn't get home until 5pm. After church, I went to the house of the Brown family and had dinner. It was really good and I had a really nice time with them. We walked their dog. It was a large dog.
...
I despise "IM speak". You know, the abbreviations and careless spelling and grammar. (That was a structurally ambiguous sentence, by the way). The only thing I'll allow is no capitalization. But Ben capitalizes things when he chats on IM, so yay for Ben!
...
Ross, here is your name, so you better go back and read the things you skipped over!
...
I must've drank a gallon of liquid yesterday... It was annoying to say the least. Then tonight I was forced to eat many things that were sweet. Blech. I feel a little sick now.
...
Verziehung, aber Sie haben Ihre Grenate vergessen.

Achtung!

I was playing Medal of Honor again today. Viel Spass. There was this one time when I threw a grenade into a room of hostile Nazis and suddenly one of the Nazis fell to the ground before the grenade had even exploded. At first I thought that was weird, but then I realized that he had dove onto the grenade; he was sacrificing himself to save his comrades. Hmm. I laughed. I finished another mission today too. It was another sneaky mission where I had to use my silencer and everything. I kept getting lost though. It is so hard to find one’s way around those dark video game buildings. I finished my Medal of Honor playing for the night by blowing myself up with a grenade.

All afternoon I sat here on my computer, but I was actually doing homework for much of it. I had to read an article online for linguistics. Of course, I kept getting distracted and doing other things. But no one was ever online. It was sad but good. Good because I was less distracted.

German is awesome. Here’s a quote from Mark Twain about the “wonderful” German language.
"An average sentence, in a German newspaper, is a sublime and impressive curiosity; it occupies a quarter of a column; it contains all the ten parts of speech -- not in regular order, but mixed; it is built mainly of compound words constructed by the writer on the spot, and not to be found in any dictionary -- six or seven words compacted into one, without joint or seam -- that is, without hyphens; it treats of fourteen or fifteen different subjects, each inclosed in a parenthesis of its own, with here and there extra parentheses which reinclose three or four of the minor parentheses, making pens within pens: finally, all the parentheses and reparentheses are massed together between a couple of king-parentheses, one of which is placed in the first line of the majestic sentence and the other in the middle of the last line of it -- after which comes the VERB, and you find out for the first time what the man has been talking about."

So... I dusted this evening. Weird, I know.

So much to do!

Remember those sour watermelon chewy things from the pump (I don't remember what it's really called)? Those were the best. I loved those. I think they were one penny a piece. They haven't had them in a really long time though, and that is sad. You know what else is sad? A lot of stuff.

Strawberry coke might taste good. Where did that come from? I was eating strawberry mentos and then I took a drink of coke, hence strawberry coke.

Random thoughts:
- Ludacris was here last night. I didn't go... I'm broke. I don't think I'd want to go even if I had money.
- I almost fell out of my bed a few nights ago. Good thing I'm not on the top bunk.
- Two nights ago I had a ton of dreams. I don't remember them but I was reminded of one today.
- Even though there are 643 songs on my iTunes, I never want to listen to any of them. Hmm... I don't know what to do about that problem. I added 23 new songs today.
- I have dreamed in German before. It was definitely cool.
- I definitely had the same thing two days in a row. Yesterday I had a chicken patty sandwich in Stockwell for lunch and today I had a chicken patty sandwich in South Quad for lunch.

I looked out the window this afternoon and saw something that I hadn't noticed before. At first I couldn't tell what it was. It was small (far away) and moving and its color was flickering. But then I realized what it was: an American flag waving in the wind. Well, I guess I don't know if it's an American flag, it's really far away. It's farther away than the football stadium, way down in south Ann Arbor.

It's funny how people don't know that "Only Hope" was originally done by Switchfoot. It's funny how people don't know that Switchfoot bas been around for years and years. It's funny...

Fridays, how lovely. The sad thing is that I'm doing homework on a Friday night. Bah, I don't care. Bah bah... bah bah... bah bah black sheep have you any wool? I'm a stupid sheep. But anyway, that wasn't where I had planned for this paragraph to go. I also played Medal of Honor tonight. I completed a mission (but only with one star... sad). It was a sneaky mission. I had to kill Nazis and steal their papers. Haha. I only killed two, but I was 100% accurate. They need more lighting in those things. Sometimes I get lost only because I can't tell where I'm going because the screen is almost black.

There was this little Asian music prodigy boy on Jay Leno tonight and he was so cute! It's amazing how he can play. He played the cello but he can also play the piano.

This journey never ends?

Writing is a definite destresser for me. Some people work-out, some run, some listen to music, some zone out in front of a TV, some scream, some clean (it's true, Ellie just said it), but I write. I'm sure others write to destress also, and I think I've written about this before.

We've (we being me and the flute player next to me in Campus Band) come to the conclusion that the conductor should dress up in a green suit and be a leprachon, because he already looks like one.

I wanted to download Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 from iTunes, but you can only download the whole CD for $50. Psh, yeah right. Fifty dollars... that's like over an hour of calc. Anyway...

I took a test on the internet and I scored higher than 69% of other people of my same age and gender in the psychopath category. Muwhahaha. My label was "the nutcase". ;)

My psych exam was today. ...We'll see. I'm not going to make any predictions. But I'm mad because I know I got one wrong. Grr! If I don't do better than last time, my GSI and I are going to have a nice long chat.

Walking through the Diag, sun filtered through the clouds, leaves falling like golden snow...

The sunset was pretty tonight.

I'm watching A Walk To Remember with Ellie, Tina, and Steph right now. I've seen it a ton (I own it), so I'm not missing much by typing up a blog post during it.

You don't have "shiffle"?

It's my first November post!

When you meet with my psych GSI, let me tell you, you really meet with him. I have never had such long meetings with any other GSIs or professors or anyone (excluding calc office hours where all I do is sit there and hope to be thrown a bone). Usually when I go to talk to one of my instructors, it takes 20 minutes or less and it rarely goes to 30 minutes, but I was in the psych GSI's office for at least 45 minutes this afternoon and it was the same the last time I was there too. But it's definitely not a bad thing that it goes so long. He's very helpful. We went over the practice exam and then he went through the chapters and pointed out specific important things, and he also made me explain things and answer questions so it wasn't like I was just sitting there while he told me what I needed to know... he was helping me learn what I needed to know.

What else? German... I like German. :) I like German a lot. I answered a question today that the others were confused about. But it annoyed me because for one word I used the English word when I wasn't sure if the German word I was thinking of was right and it ended up that the German word that I was thinking was correct. I always do stuff like that.

I hate math problems where you have to prove a theorem or prove that something is true. I suck at those. All I can prove when I try to do those is that I'm an idiot.

So what did I do tonight? I typed up 10 pages of psych notes and I'm still not done. We also had a nice Bible study tonight... it was quite enjoyable.

My head hurts, but there is much to do before I sleep.