God, I love that show. Happy birthday, Q! And B_b's wife, too!
Nice. You gave it to her! Have you been rocking out?
I played for about 10 minutes this morning. It is seriously therapeutic stuff. Enjoy
I'm back home. I spent a few days with my friends up in Humboldt hoping to get out of my uncle's hair and just decompress until the hospital finally got their shit together and scheduled my mom's surgery. They didn't get their shit together. I spent as long as I could possibly hold out on getting a flight home and took the cheap one I could last night (pretty lucky, less than $200 just two days before flying out). Of course, less than six hours after I booked it, the hospital scheduled her for this Friday. Which was like a double slap in the face, because even if I didn't buy the ticket, I simply could not afford to stay until then. Then, in even more fun, my mom's work essentially ended her job for being gone too long, but guaranteed the job will be there when she's able to come back (in December, according to doctor's orders), but now her fucking insurance isn't working either, so she can't get any of her medicine, especially the vitally important pain pills, or her diabetes medicine without paying full cost. Which she can't. Because the disability office is fucking around too and still hasn't cut her check. How the fuck we can live in this country without absolute, vitriolic disgust and unanimous upheaval of a system that: -Cuts off a job -Cuts off the benefits -Has disability services be crippled by bureacracy -Fucking make people fucking pay for fucking medicine and charges 200 fucking dollars for a vial of fucking insulin Is so far beyond me it makes me lose hope in my countrymen that believe these are debatable topics. On a side note though, everything you all donated made a goddamn world of difference and makes me feel a gratitude I'll never be able to repay any of you. I was able to get gas in her car, get food for the house, get some of her medications, get my flight home, and even was able to pay for an absolutely necessary vet visit for her cats. I'm still going to come up short on my bills, but I can hopefully find a way to make that work, while all the absolute most pressing things were taken care of by you amazing people. Seriously. Thank you. Every single one of you.
I'm from Europe and have enjoyed medical free care all my life. I know we are paying it, nothing is free, but it's a good thing to know no matter what that you will be taken care of. Things are changing though. Good luck!
It's been a long week. It's going to be a long week. I'll have had a long week. I'm having a long week. Tuesday evening: 1.5 hour choir rehearsal Wednesday evening: an hour of meetings, 1.5 hour piano trio rehearsal, 1.5 hour debate practice Thursday evening: 1.5 hour choir rehearsal Friday evening: 1.5 hour debate practice Sunday: Debate Tournament, AND THE FIRST ROUND OF COLLEGE APPS ARE DUE. I need a drink...* On the bright side I'm going to the symphony on Monday night with a pretty girl named birchbarkcanoe, and I've confirmed my trip to New York for Thanksgiving (nowaypablo) *another goddamn cup of coffee
LOL FUCK COLLEGE But seriously you best be shooting me the ol' PMski if you get some free time in NYC!Sunday: Debate Tournament, AND THE FIRST ROUND OF COLLEGE APPS ARE DUE.
The best decision I made for my sanity was to not do early anything for college apps. Regular decision is fine by me, especially if it lets me actually put quality time in. Plus, no way am I ready to commit to a college with early decision. Do you have a choir concert coming up, of is that just regular practice?
"You're gonna eat lightnin', and Crap Thundah! You're gonna become a very daaangerous pehrson"
It's been a month and a half since I moved to Lyon. So far, it's great : I started running again (I did 10 kms in one hour last time), will try to run 20 kms every week by December. I'm eating relatively healthy food considering the situation. The school is nice, there are a lot of great people and the courses are ok. Still trying to figure out what to do later. About this : I have the opportunity to do a semester aboard, I'm interested by the United States and I might have the chance to get into these universities for one semester : TEXAS A&M UNIVERSITY ; UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA ; CASE WESTERN RESERVE UNIVERSITY ; ROLLINS COLLEGE. I didn't start to check these out yet, some of you know if it's any good ? I went to a week-end in the Alps with friends, it was amazing views and colors all around us. To give you an idea : http://imgur.com/XGTWz21 (it's me! ; it was taken with a Galaxy S6).
Texas A&M is ehhhh. Pretty good academics, but the culture of College Station, a remote-ish ultra-conservative town, was a bit stifling for me. If we're being honest, it was almost unbearable. If you still want a big state school, I would go with U of F.
A&M is a good school in a hellishly ugly and boring place. I'm not a big fan of Orlando either but you'd be driving distance from many cool places ... may not help if you're an exchange student. There is nothing particularly interesting about Cleveland, except that their newspaper is the Plain Dealer, which afforded Kid Cudi the chance to make all sorts of puns. Gainesville is a really interesting area ecologically, is supposed to be an awesome college town, etc. Make friends with car people if you do spend any time in Florida.
Wow, it is already Wednesday! That's just crazy. Well, this week has already been very productive. I am looking forward to sharing with you all what I've been working on. We are getting close... That said, if you have any friends/family that happen to be venture capitalist specializing in the biotech/medical space.... Also, I'm very excited to be working on a new project for Hubski. More to come on that, but I think you all will agree with me that it's a fun idea. I made chili Monday night and damn, it is awesome. Right now, it's raining hard but somehow it's still bright outside. The leaves are Changing colors and everything seems clean and crisp. I have secured a number of high level appointments for my new job. Yesterday in a sales call I quoted Tagore. -it was beautiful. I felt like a Jedi master waiving my hand in front of the client, "you will buy from me..." Fun stuff.
ALMOST DONE WITH MY FIRST ROTATION AT WORK. And it doesn't feel like I've accomplished that much, which is a weird feeling and I'm going on my 4th work schedule in as many months. Trying to convince people to let me work on the fancy new automation/intelligent platform that we're implementing so I can learn some IT skills. Working my way through Automate the Boring Stuff for the whole python thing. Starting to get into the more interesting things like web scrapping. Started running again. Mostly 1.5 - 2 miles with hill intervals. Feeling somewhat healthy. It's been kind of lightly raining for a couple of days now, and there have been a bunch of minor earthquakes around here lately...not feeling too good about that part.
My best friend impulse-bought tickets to Kendrick Lamar's Kunta's Groove Sessions. They're VIP--a ton of merch, signed vinyl (TPAB of course), and early entry for that sweet sweet front row. Mostly a total waste of money compared to GA, but screw it! can't wait!
The remnants of Patricia are beginning to pass over my head as we speak - It just started to rain about 5 minutes ago. It's gonna get ugly, but nowhere near as ugly as it was down south so I'd call us lucky. I have to wander in to work to talk to a co-worker. She had a job opportunity for me who was supposed to call me, but hasn't yet, so I'm going to check on it, see what's up. This is my last week at my restaurant job, so I'm hoping for a smooth transition into another job ASAP. Still looking at going to Toronto. Probably next week? leave here thursday afternoon, come home saturday night/sunday morning? Need to meet with the lady i want to have as a thesis supervisor. That's also my birthday weekend, which is cool and fun for me. I found a groupon deal for laser hair removal from a place with a good rep that wasn't too expensive, and my folks paid for half as my b-day present. It will be nice to not have to worry about a beard all the time.
So I finally got through the Classical Music List. There is some stuff that I haven't added, but have scrawled down on napkin somewhere. It was definitely an interesting experience to say the least. I'll probably make a post about it in a couple of days to go through what I learned, what I experienced, and what I hope to keep doing.
I've never heard of that show, but after looking it up on Wikipedia it sounds kind of interesting. I'll add it to my list. I know they have classic M.A.S.H. as well as the original Star Trek. I'd love to see them get more shows from the '50s to the '70s. I'd watch the hell out of them all.
I really look forward to checking this out. I love all sorts of blasts from the past, though I do have an extra soft spot for sci-fi and westerns. A lot of them really hold up well to time, despite the limits of the era they were made in. Movies like Forbidden Planet, the original Little Shop of Horrors, The Blob, etc. are all great fun and I think more people should give them a shot. The same is true for comics too. I bought Child of Tomorrow for one of my friends last Christmas and he's still talking about how much fun that book was.
The NSF Graduate Research Fellowship application deadline is tomorrow, so the story of my life this past week is the endless cycle of revising, sending to my advisor, revising, sending to my advisor, etc etc. We decided to radically change the research proposal at the last minute so I've been sort of scrambling. But it's turning out really great, and I'm feeling really good about it! I got an Honorable Mention last year, and in my opinion my materials are much better this year so I'm hopeful. Wish me luck!!!
FUCKIN'hell, I just came back from what is likely the most difficult final I've ever taken. Linear damn algebra. Not as straightforward as I was hoping (pun inteded). If they're judging loosely I might have passed, and my peers have less sensible answers, but still. Now I have three more finals to look forward to! Yay.
Finally getting a chance to sit for a minute and breathe. I am enrolling two new research patients today and it's a busy day with just one patient, let alone two kids. Everything that normally needs a double check needs a triple check, everything that needs a signature needs two, etc etc etc. Luckily they are in MRI for the next two hours so I have time to catch my breath, eat, put data into the computer and post to pubski. I was talking to _refugee_ about this earlier in brief, but I don't know if I want to do anything friday night. In the last few years I've become vastly disinterested in pretty much every holiday, and Halloween was always my favorite. Now it's 2 days 'till, I have no costume and the only plans I really have set would be joining a bar crawl that's populated mostly by people I don't know, going to bars that I'm pretty uninterested in. The $1 jello shot has lost much of it's appeal. I'm torn because I don't want to be a hermit, but I also don't want to go out and be social just because I feel like I should.
oh but you know i do approve of becoming a hermit just not on actual halloween, dawg Like OK so I've been exercising and hermiting a lot. But this week I am just like, yo, #treatyoself a little bit, because Halloween and my favorite holiday and I had this great party and so on. I have felt guilty at times, actually. But I already have a run planned for Nov 1st with my weekly running friends that is going to be really awful because we're all going to be hungover but I am so totally making it happen. I'm gonna love every terrible second of it. You're allowed to take a break from being a monk for special occasions, dude. I'm really hoping I can even manage to get laid.
I work, then I read on the bus, then I cook, then I exercise, then I spend a few hours of leisure time, then I sleep, then I work. On weekends I wander, maybe eat out once, visit whatever outdoor thing is happening. I realized at some point that it's perfect. Hermitude evidently suits me. My friends are scattered across the country and I went to considerable trouble picking them. I'm not sure I want to bother with that process every time I move.
I'll be spending my Halloween marathoning Halloween and passing out those shitty individually wrapped orange and black candies to the neighborhood kids. Because fuck those spoiled brats. (Mostly I think it's funny to pass out candy normally reserved for the octogenarian set.)
Divinity Original Sin Enhanced Edition came out yesterday, so I'm stoked. I'm still building out my education/moodle site, and no matter how I make the lessons there's always something wrong with them. One in particular has gone through five iterations, but at least each one was better than it's predecessor, so that's nice. I'm a little worried because I have a reputation as a fast worker, but I'm not a fast worker, I just started this job during a build phase. Now I'm in a trial and error phase and everything is moving a lot slower while I try to figure out what works. Oh well, at least I have Divinity.