The Two Extremes of College

Horticulture class was interesting again. We looked at many pictures of gardens. I continued to make exasperated clawed fingers, because it was just so bad. He went over the definition of "site" six times. In a row. Like pre-school. I kid you not. At one point our sub told us that he wasn't actually a teacher and this was kind of his first instance in a classroom setting. It shows.

He also said that humans created the English language. Should... should we tell him?

I really hope I pass this class with a decent grade. I'm done.

I was able to polish off the last page of that lifespan development assignment after horticulture and before Institute. I cut it really close on timing, but I made it! I got the work submitted and I headed out the door. Nice!

We had some guest speakers from Bouchard in my chocolate class today. As in, the bosses of the company. They brought some samples for us to try, and even used us for their research (They surveyed us on what we liked and even how much we'd pay for it, because these are chocolates they haven't released to the public yet). I tried this sea salt caramel that was really good, which was surprising to me since I didn't think I liked caramel. But I really liked this one. Probably because I tasted mostly chocolate with just a bit of salt. When we were surveyed using the i>clickers, only one person in the entire class - there were about 70 people there today - said they disliked it. Ha.

They also had these chocolates that were on these little cookies. My group was assigned to the coconut, peach, and raspberry flavors. The coconut was my favorite, although I was in the minority. Most people preferred my least favorite- raspberry. The other flavors were blueberry, lemon, chocolate mousse, crème brûlée, and vanilla, and one more fruity one that I can't remember. Those will probably be hitting the shelves next year, along with another flavor they're putting out: a snickerdoodle chocolate. We didn't have samples of that to try, though.

When chocolate class ended, I went to the Marketplace and had dinner. I tried to take my time, because SI for behavior analysis was starting at 5:30 today and not 5:00. It was the super session, and we had a list of topics that were going to be on the next exam, and we were going to go over every one of them. Surprisingly, not a lot of people showed up. Perhaps people had other obligations. We took an online vote on when we wanted the super session held. Let me tell you, I did not vote for one of my busiest days of the week. I tried for Tuesday. But I wasn't going to let this opportunity go to waste.

The super sessions always go on for hours, and I stayed the entire time. I just really couldn't be bothered to get up and come home. Here I was receiving answers and testing myself with practice problems. If I went home, I'd have to pull out my notes for horticulture and chocolate, or work on my rat lab report. I hope that doesn't come back to haunt me. I'm doing well in my behavior class, and maybe I shouldn't have stayed quite as long as I did.

The evening bus wasn't waiting outside the TSC, and I was on the opposite side of the street and not in the mood to wait for it to show up and then take its really long route around, since Blue Square is either its last or second to last stop. I decided to walk back instead, even though it was a little cold. I made it back to my room around 7:45 feeling emotionally drained. I'd been working all day long, although admittedly chocolate class was easy today, and I did not want to deal with anything else related to school. 

So after doing dishes and changing into pajamas, I sat down and started pulling the knots and snags out of a thing I started writing a long time ago and then set aside. Not precisely relaxing, but I've been wrestling with that story for years and I wanted to feel like I was accomplishing something. It will be nice when winter break hits and I can do all the writing and novel planning I want. 

I wish I could commit to a story idea, but it seems like every time I think of something, someone else has already used that magic system, or is ready to insist that it's too cliche. I might be scrapping my glowing tattoos idea, but I should watch "Kubo and the Two Strings" to see how it worked for them. It looked from the trailers like its creators and I were on the same track, pulling tattoos from the body and pressing them onto things. Sigh. If only school didn't get in my way and I could be faster...

I think I'm gonna go the magical STD route now. I ran a quick Google search for "magical STD novel" and nothing really came up, so apparently no one has ever used that idea, or at the very least it isn't overused. This would allow many people in the setting of the story - Ethel's peninsula country - to use magic and have a society built around it, while still allowing Gavin - who's arriving from a third-world country where they don't have this sexually-transmitted disease so much - to not know how magic works very well. Also, Ethel's country is a tourist trap, so you get lots of people coming in, so maybe there are other types of magic out there, but you can bet this type is slowly spreading across the world.

This sounds to me like it'll solve other problems I was having too- namely, it bothered me how convenient it was for Gavin to immediately run across someone who just happened to be born with magic powers, and just happened to be practicing them despite living in a country where girls are forbidden to do so. Now moral issues have been called into play. I think when we meet Ethel, she'll be just recently coming off gaining her STD from someone in her school or neighborhood or whatever, so then she can be coming into her powers too. 

And it'll be easy to create unpleasant side-effects of magic, even some that aren't directly related to "magic" and are just a result of an STD still being an STD. That will be fun. I'll just need to be able to sell my audience on the idea that a simple little STD can allow you to do crazy reality-altering things. That's the hard part, but if I can absolutely soak my world in magic, I might be able to manage.

You Know, There Are Other Dynamics Besides Romance

I was able to talk with Demetria for the first time since she came back from break. It sounds like she had fun. She received some large packages from her family too- early Christmas presents that she wanted. Now she has this fancy piano keyboard, so she played around with that for a long time. It's pretty neat and sounds nice.

I took a bit of time this morning for myself, but I worked hard on an extra credit lifespan development assignment I had. Those things take forever, but they're very helpful in studying for the exams. Although this one took extra long, because all the page numbers were wrong, and I didn't remember reading these chapters. They weren't on our syllabus, so it was kind of a surprise to get this assignment.

I registered for housing next year, and I called Mom. She was feeling really sick, so I called her again after class to see if she was doing okay. Demetria and I watched the Season 2 finale of "Star vs. The Forces of Evil", unless it wasn't actually the season finale. It kind of felt like one though. The tables have turned dramatically!

It's nice to have the major couple in the show not involve both main characters. It's refreshing and I really like it. It's just fun that they got to have their first kiss and it wasn't a big deal because it's not meant to be the climax of the season or even the episode, and it wasn't done as a reward for disrespecting someone, disobeying orders, and murdering people or anything (Don't even talk to me about "Doctor Who". More like "Doctor What the Heck". I hate, hate, hate that show. I've never had to sit through watching something I hate more. I don't like live action much to begin with, I absolutely do not like the horror genre, I hardly like science fiction, I prefer shows where the characters speak at a pace and volume I can actually understand, and I definitely don't like obsessive romance. I was so, so absolutely disappointed in the scene where Rose gets left on the beach. I knew it was coming because people talk, so, you know, I was expecting this huge dramatic thing where the Doctor tricks her into staying behind while he selfishly runs off, and it was going to be awesome and full of character development and I was going to love him. Nope. Cliche love scene confession. I wanted to throw up. Such wasted potential. "Immortal and a twenty-something falling in love" is one of my least favorite tropes. And it keeps happening. Over. And over. And over. Try something new).

So anyway, the "Star" episode was great. "Slow motion interrupted kiss" is another of my least favorite movie moments because it's so cliche, so I just thought this was neat. Although, of course, now one of our main characters is starting to like the other, and so was really upset the entire episode about the other going on a date. That was... not awesome. I hope we're not supposed to support lashing out at a good, supportive relationship in jealousy to win over our crush. That's not a good thing to teach kids. I guess we'll have to see where the series takes us.

That was the fun part of the day, and after we watched the episode I worked on my assignment a lot longer. It was pretty late when I stopped. I drew a super quick thing that I'd been wanting to and then retired for bed. This is a busy time of year and I hope I can manage!

My Phone Is Afraid of Snow

We had the first decent snow of the season today. I'm glad I remembered to look out the window before I headed out, or I wouldn't have thought to put on boots. They're Jorja's old boots, but they fit me well.

I made it to my behavior class. After I sat down in my seat, my glasses broke. I didn't do anything to them- all I did was open the case and pick them up. But one of the lenses slipped out. I kept it and the tiny screw, which fortunately stayed in the glasses, and shut them both back in the glasses case until I can have them fixed. Of course, Mom just went home with my other pair of glasses in the car! I made it through the rest of the day, though. I sit in the front row in all my classes. I guess I didn't need my glasses after all.

Horticulture was... interesting, to say the least. Apparently, our old teacher isn't coming back. Instead, someone else - I think he's the old man from down in the greenhouse on the day we planted our cuttings - will be teaching us the remaining chapters we need to know to prepare for the final. It was a smidgen painful. He kept saying over and over, "I don't know about anything you've covered up until this point in the semester. I only know these units I'm teaching". And, "Who wants to tell me what an AN-YOU-UHL is?" 

Drat, man, I dunno! If only we'd been covering that since the third day of class! Maybe you should pronounce each of its syllables again so I can remember how to say the word for when I look it up.

It was mostly amusing, though. He made a big deal about how he'll set our papers back by the door so we can grab them as we come in (or I can get up and fetch mine since I have two classes in a row in this room) and that anyone late can pick them up without disturbing the class. Every time someone came in late, he immediately stopped what he was teaching and loudly instructed them, usually by the name of their shirt color, to go back and get a paper. And someone moved his chair, so then he made a big deal about how it needs to stay where he put it. 

Well. I guess it's just the first day. My neighbor and I got small chuckles out of it. Mostly because she saw me making exasperated hand signs, like upturning my partially-clenched hands or covering my face with my fingers or hat.

I'm somewhat bothered about it since I was kind of hoping to talk to my teacher about why I only scored a 90% on my garden project, and I also wanted to ask how I could keep deer from killing my little crabapple red back home. I'll have to e-mail him. Lavender is supposed to help, or things that smell strongly of humans. I hope those red weedy suckers got pulled out before the snows come.

Demetria still didn't seem to be home when I came back to my room for lunch. Hmm. Monday is her light day, and she just barely had that big opera production. Perhaps she didn't have classes, or at least could afford to skip them.

So, I enjoyed my time without her. I remembered to turn in my essay questions for Institute, finally. On my way across campus, I stopped by the student orientation office and asked if they knew a place on campus or in town where I could get my glasses fixed. They didn't, and looking back on it it was pretty silly to ask them instead of Googling a place myself. All I need is to have the screw tightened, but I don't think I have a screwdriver small enough to do that.

We had our final lecture for chocolate class, apparently. Only two weeks left until we take the final. Yikes! I need to study hard. I'm thinking of rewriting most of my notes. I think the action of writing again will help me remember things, and if I type them then I can easily rearrange them and add definitions for words that are difficult for me and pictures of chemical structures. She gives no extra credit and my grade isn't the best, but if I do very well on the final then that's everything.

I wasn't hungry, so although I normally go to the Marketplace before SI, I went to the library to study instead. SI went okay, although we divided into two teams for review and the other team was a lot better than us. I was basically trying to carry the other five people, with the occasional comment from one of the others. I felt pressured to answer fast since I felt the weight of the team on my shoulders, and I mixed up a lot of terms. It was kind of embarrassing. I also had a difficult time sleeping last night, which may possibly be why. Sometimes we had to get up and run to the board and I had to squeeze down the row past several of my teammates. Also, for one of the bonus questions, I didn't know Hermione's middle name, so yeah.

No sign of Demetria when I finally made it back to my room, late. My groupmates from the rat lab e-mailed me back since some of them were missing data too, so we've been communicating. That took a good number of minutes of flipping through papers and typing up long strings of numbers, and I was starting to get exhausted from my long day of school work, so I called it quits on work for the day and let myself watch a few Smurfs episodes and draw. That was fun. The other Smurfs told Greedy he was too heavy after he broke their swing and splashed all the water from their watering hole, and he went crying to Papa Smurf. They had a talk about health.

It was a lot funnier than it sounds in my typing, because you guys didn't get to see Hefty leaning casually against the window and sniffing, "You'd better put him on a diet, Papa Smurf". Savage. I also watched an episode where Gargamel's godfather had this gun, which he referred to as "The magic wand of the future" (Awesome line, by the way). He shot the little duckling that thought Smurfette was its mother, and it died with a squealing quack of agony. That was uncharacteristically violent.

I got a text from Demetria that said she'd be home around 1:30 in the morning. Hooray, she was not dead! I stayed up to see her in case she needed help settling in or carrying bags. I guess she had it covered, but she stumbled straight to her room and fell asleep quickly, I think. So I locked the apartment door like we do and headed for bed. However, as I was picking up my phone so I could read a few scriptures before I went to sleep, it completely died. The apps started being slow to load, and then the screen went blank.

What? That was weird. I tried multiple times to hold down the power button. Nothing happened. It was completely and utterly dead. With a full battery!

Growing concerned now, I thought that maybe it had become overheated. Having the heaters on had made my room awfully warm. I took off its case, which was pretty smeared with gunk since I almost never do that, and cleaned it while I let the phone sit. Still nothing. I read a few scriptures from my physical copy. Still nothing. Hmm.

I decided to let it rest for the night, since it was late and I was tired. At least I don't have class until 3:00 in the afternoon tomorrow, so I could afford to stay up a little.

It's actually the following morning as I'm typing this (I recovered my snowy picture up there!), and I Googled what to do if an iPhone shuts down without an obvious reason. One of the suggestions was to hold down both the home button and the power button to perform a reset equivalent to removing and replacing the battery. I did, and everything seems to be in working order once again. Well, that was worrysome.

Sonlight

This is my 100th post on this blog! I've been living away from home for one hundred days. Wow.

I woke up a bit late, but I still had enough time to eat breakfast and get ready before I headed off to church. I made it right on time. We combined with one of the other wards since so many people were still out of town for the holiday.

It was a pretty good sacrament meeting. One of the speakers talked about "sunlight" and "son light", or sunshine mentioned in the scriptures being a metaphor for the light of Jesus. Apparently she used to have incredibly bad eyes (I believe she said 20/2600, and legally blind is 20/2400, or something). Her eyes were too bad for Lasik, but she did have a surgery that involved putting a contact lens in her eye permanently, or something. I think. It was a very interesting talk either way.

After church, I came home for a bit, ate some cake, and headed out later to have my temple recommend interview. I told Mom not to bother bringing my old recommend up since it was expired, but I forgot that she could have brought the small plastic card holder for me. For now, I don't have one. But at least I do have an active recommend now, and I felt the Spirit strongly as I was answering questions for the bishop. That was nice. I haven't felt the Spirit very much for a very long time, which is surprising to me because I don't think I've been doing anything particularly wrong, really. I may not be the person who goes out and finds people to serve constantly, but I don't think of myself as a bad person.

That's been hard for me, constantly wondering if I've done something to offend the Lord or if I actually am feeling the Spirit for years on end. Sure, I still feel it on rare occasion, but only then- on rare occasion. Like... maybe twelve times in the last five years, if not ten. But I never felt like I could talk about it with anyone in case I accidentally denied the existence of the Holy Ghost (which, if I remember correctly, is a very big sin that may or may not be "unforgivable", so yeah, I wasn't about to play around there).

... But I've been thinking and praying about it for several years now and I believe that I've simply become very accustomed to having the Spirit. I keep it with me constantly and I live a righteous life, so it can be difficult to detect His presence at times, except in the situations where I can definitely feel His influence very strongly. Weird how things work out that way, isn't it?

Apparently though, He wanted to show up today and confirm that yes, I am worthy to hold my recommend and enter the temple. It was welcome and nice and I hope He knows that I'm up for feeling like that all the time. I guess He sits at an imaginary kitchen table in my soul, eyeing the pantry and trying to work up the courage to ask for something to eat. Perhaps He needs more feeding?

I came home after the interview, of course. Demetria wasn't back yet, so I figured I'd get some studying done. As I was preparing to do that, I decided to check on my horticulture grades. I have an 87% in the class right now. My essay about Thanksgiving Point was finally graded, and I only scored a 90% on it. Drat. That would have been nice to know when I turned it in a few months ago, especially if he gave me time to make changes before I submitted it closer to when it was actually due. I thought I did everything right with it, but I'll have to ask my teacher when I see him tomorrow.

I got some studying done. I'm reviewing some older horticulture notes, which I haven't had the chance to do since I've been studying more recent things. I'm growing more and more wary about this and the chocolate final. I should be able to manage all right, but it doesn't look like I'll be getting an A in either class. I might score an A- or even too, but on the other hand, I might not.

It's strange to me, since I never had to study much in high school and always came out with excellent grades, but now when I really am studying, I'm tripping over my own feet. Welcome to college, I guess. I just need to find good ways to retain the information that I'm learning. And I need to keep my grades up so I don't lose my scholarships. Both of those are good things.

Saturday After Black Friday

Some people rise earlier than others, but when we were all up, we played some Mario Uno. I feel like I won the first round and lost all the rest.

When we'd finished that, some time was spent packing things up. Mom and the kids have a decent drive ahead of them, but it was great to see them and nice of them to bring me lots of things, such as my Parcheesi board game. I expect to have fun with that. They left Disney Apples to Apples for me too. The next time we host a party or have game night at the ward should be a bit more exciting.

For lunch, we went to Angie's. Everyone was excited to "clean the sink", but I wasn't sure they would be able to eat that much ice cream since I knew the portion sizes here were quite big. As expected, everyone was fairly full when it was done, so we skipped cleaning the sink, stopped by Lee's to pick up another box of ice cream, and finished off the first box of Blue Mint at home. 

Mom enthusiastically cut open the ice cream box, which surprised me since I'd thought there was still a lot left. There was- more than Mom had expected. Oh boy. I felt like she was my teenager with eyes bigger than her stomach. But we ate it all and rested for a bit before those guys finished with their packing up and headed home. Quiet, again.

I spent the rest of the day intermittently studying and drawing. Oh, and I took my horticulture quiz the other day too, and forgot to mention it. 44 out of 50 isn't too bad- that means I only missed three. Those questions are brutal because they all seem so subjective. The majority of them are "Which of these is the best/worst option?" questions (For testing soil quality, light bulbs, etc.), which makes things rough.

That light bulb question killed me. I scoured my notes, the PowerPoints, and the Internet. All the bulbs seemed to be usable. And of course I got it wrong. Ah, well. Just a few more weeks and this class is over. I really hope that I can pull through.

Post-Turkey Day

Mom and the kids came up to visit me (Dad stayed behind for Black Friday, because that's what happens when you work for Overstock), and I forgot to take pictures. Well, that's only to be expected. I'll get the hang of this obsessive-documenting thing one day.

I was really excited to make a cake in Demetria's rice cooker for my family to partake of. I was just cleaning up when they arrived and asked me to meet them on the first floor with my elevator key. We hung out in the apartment and got them settled as I waited for the cake to cool and then frosted it.

We'd been wanting to see the new Disney movie "Moana", so Mom shuffled us out the door after that. The frosting set before I had the chance to put the sprinkles on, but I added some when we got back anyway.

The theaters were packed and the tickets were hard to come by. The only way we would be able to sit together was if we came back at 7:15 or so and watched the movie in 3D. It was almost 4:00, so Mom bought the tickets and then took me grocery shopping. I got everything I needed, and we had cake and ice cream when we made it back. Then we played some Apples to Apples. I won the first round, if memory serves.

When the time came, we went to see Moana. It was pretty good. My favorite line was probably, "Without my hook, I am nothing", and I enjoyed the hermit crab fellow. He was neat. And shiny. I thought he worked well in his role of revealing character backstories through songs and just adding a lot of character (and color) to his scene.

It was funny when we were sitting down, because we forgot to pick up our 3D glasses until the screen told us to put them on. Whoops. Mom is a good sport, so she snuck out to grab them for us. After the movie ended, we returned to Blue Square and got everyone settled in for bed. Preston zonked out immediately on the couch. These guys will be leaving sometime tomorrow, but it was nice to hang out with them while they had the chance.

Uh, Internet?

I accidentally became best friends with the most famous "Fairly OddParents" fanfiction writer in the fandom a few months ago, so that's been nothing but a delight. I fell in love with a story she wrote about Norm the genie getting a new master and actually liking this one, but - plot twist - his new master is eight years old, extremely shy, and doesn't feel like she deserves wishes and so doesn't make any for months on end, much to his chagrin.

It took her four years to finish and is exactly the kind of story I've always wanted to write- lots of character development, world-building, continuity, details, and best of all, romance is unimportant and everything revolves around friendship and family. What? And it's well-written? With an amazing plot, good grammar, and show plot holes that get solved? And the author is the sweetest person too? No way! I'm in the process of reading it again so I can point out all the things I like about each chapter, rather than babbling to her about everything I liked as a whole. She has an original book published too, and reading it is on my to-do list. I have been told there is a sentient teddy bear involved.

That's something I'm grateful for today- I'm grateful for dear, supportive friendships that fanfiction and the Internet can bring. Networking at its finest!

Awhile ago she and I were talking about Thanksgiving Break and I mentioned that my dad works for a shipping company (that'd be Overstock) and is always kept busy on Black Friday. Long story short, I made it a thing that Cyber Monday is the biggest holiday of the year for my beloved Pixies, and today I finally drew some doodles I've been wanting to for weeks. I even went all out with it and did it on a Join.Me so I could drag a few other friends of mine in to watch and we all laughed and talked about the psychology of the show and our own lives as I worked, and they helped me draw hands. It was lots of fun and I really enjoyed it. Mom thinks I left my apartment today. Whoops.

... In the "Fairly OddParents" universe, all the Fairies loan their magic to Santa on Christmas so he can deliver presents across the world. I think it's really interesting that Santa dresses the same way the Pixies do all the other days of the year. He wears the tinted sunglasses and everything. Pixies Inc. and Kringle Inc. even have similar names. Makes one wonder if a certain someone did an unpaid internship in the North Pole...

When Santa absorbs all the Fairy power, he takes on the typical red and white suit. I thought it would be hilarious if the suit was the result of Fairy magic brimming at such a high frequency that the power becomes a physical manifestation in the most energetic Fairy magic color- red. So anyone who took on all the Fairy powers would end up looking like Santa. Don't forget to leave coffee and dry cereal in your mailboxes this Cyber Monday! Thirty-second delivery or your package is free!

I'm a sucker for morally-gray characters who act strict but are secretly ridiculous goofballs and H.P. is the best I love him he's so great. My rich, snarky, OCD, asexually-reproducing wasp dad. I always fall in love with the most obscure characters. I can't help it. He's so unique and well-written.

So that was how I spent my morning. I also studied too, though (I have a horticulture quiz I'm planning to take tomorrow), watched some shows, and gave some thought to my personal writing projects as well. And I recorded myself singing a song, because why not? I had a relaxing time and it was very pleasant. Why can't days like this go on forever? 

For some reason I never actually got hungry today, so it was pretty late when I finally made myself eat something. There were turkey slices in my fridge, but I ate pizza anyway. It was very good, too.

I'm Very Scientific With My Fairies

I had a nice day to spend alone in the apartment doing anything I wanted. Luckily I'm the kind of person who has fantasies about days like this, so I wasn't lonely at all. I did some drawing this morning, and watched a couple of Smurfs episodes while I did because for some reason I was randomly in the mood to.

I forgot how much I love Brainy. He's pretty fascinating for several reasons, not the least of which is because despite being undeniably smart, he's simultaneously very oblivious, and I think it's especially interesting that he's not the brains in the brains vs. brawn conflict. That's Handy and Hefty, who become very close friends if I remember correctly from when I watched the show years ago. Instead, it's Brainy against the village, and yet Papa Smurf trains him as his assistant and eventual successor anyway. Just an interesting, unique character design, I think. 

This is how I relax.

But soon enough, I got to work on that relevance project for my behavior analysis class. Our only requirements for this project were "relate something about psychology we talked about this term to your own life, and be as creative as you want, exception being that if you want to turn in your project via interpretive dance, you need special permission first". I went through with that plan of mine to discuss some psychology in "Fairly OddParents", although I limited myself to choosing just a few topics and only three episodes. It came out well, although for some reason the voices in the clips I used fade in awkwardly, and I couldn't fix that.

It took me most of the day, but I did it! The quality doesn't look quite as nice as the version I gave to my teacher, but if I had to pick, that's the way I'd go.

So if it works and you're interested, here is the finished product:

... This is how I go through my entire life. Psychology everywhere.

Thanksgiving Pizza

Thanksgiving Break has begun! The snow is gone and so it's mostly just been wet, wet, wet. It's kind of pleasant even so.

I only had one class today, so I took advantage of my free morning to get some things done, like homework, showering, tidying up my room, and stuff like that. Though, Demetria left early before I had the chance to say good-bye to her. I hope she has a safe flight and enjoys her time with her family.

We were let out early from lifespan development as a Thanksgiving treat. I took several online surveys about my class experiences (My horticulture teacher even said he'd give us a few extra credit points for it) and I had an assignment for lifespan that was due tonight, but I finished it a few days ago. College homework, I've found, is not so difficult to manage as long as you work at it regularly and don't let it pile up. It would have been a nightmare scrambling to get everything finished now if I had been procrastinating. I think as of right now my work merely consists of finishing my write-up for the rat lab, completing that relevance project for behavior analysis, and of course studying for my upcoming quizzes and finals. That's not so bad.

I've been drinking a lot of milk lately - and using it in cooking - and my one gallon was running low. Shortly after lifespan development, I got online and studied the bus routes. I really wanted to get a Little Caeser's pizza, which is something I haven't had for about a month and a half when I visited my family. Some people like turkey for Thanksgiving, but I'd prefer pizza. 

I figured that the pizza would keep me fed for awhile, this way I would have plenty of food for when the stores shut down for the holiday, and one pizza wouldn't cost more than buying a turkey and having a lavish feast, so win-win. I'd been saving some coupons, but they all expired at the end of October, and none of them were actually related to things I wanted to buy anyway.

None of the bus routes seemed to go past Little Caeser's, though. I found one that was close, but it was across the street and down a ways, so if I rode the bus to it then that would be the last stop before the transit center, and I'd have to wait for it to come all the way around again. I studied the routes a little longer, wrote down a few notable buildings I would pass, and headed out.

I jumped off the bus at Lee's and bought my gallon of milk, some Pop Tarts, and some bananas. My hope was that they would all fit in my empty backpack. The milk carton did not, even without the other things in there with it. Well, now I know. It was a good attempt.

Then, I walked. I knew it would be at least twenty minutes, if not twenty-five, by the time the bus came back to Lee's. Then I would have to switch buses at the transit center and wait for another five minutes. Not happening, especially when I would only be riding for another stop or two. And sure, I had Google Docs, but I wasn't about to waste time. I was curious- how far was the pizza place? 

Turns out it was a ways, but I got good exercise to work off the calories I'd be eating. And I had light gloves in the pocket of my coat. I slipped them on and the milk was easier to carry that way. Plus, I found out my fingers still register on my phone screen while I'm wearing them. Nice.

I walked a straight course for a very long time, and the first turn I made was actually when I could see the building across the parking lot. It was a drive thru, apparently. I skirted the cars and circled around. All the windows were completely blacked out. To my surprise, as I rounded the corner I found that I recognized the area. Just across the street was Michaels. This was the area where Demetria and I went to Walmart. So there was a bus stop here. Oh.

I got my pizza. The guy behind the counter was amused when he saw me and asked if I was interested in their two-for-one milk deal, or something. It took me a second, but then I realized this was because I still had the carton with me from Lee's. The better way to go about this would probably have been to ride the bus, buy the pizza, and then buy the milk, and then go to the bus stop, but now I know.

The bus stop in front of the Walmart is ridiculously far away from both of the nearest crosswalks (and from the Walmart too). Little Caeser's was near the crosswalk, so of course that meant it also was far from the bus stop. I had a backpack, a pizza box, and a milk carton, but I made it work.

The bus always seems to take forever to reach that stop. I even had my app so I knew when it was coming, and it was late. I honestly think it might have been faster to walk back the way I came, even though it was quite a ways... but then again, I have been wrong before, and it would not have been fun to lug that gallon of milk and that box of pizza. I rode the bus for several stops until it finally reached the transit center. Then I changed over to the bus that would take me back to Blue Square. We rode for a few stops, and then a small group of people stepped on. Even though I was near the back and they sat in the front, the stench of cigarettes hit me hard and didn't leave until I finally got off the bus. Oh, why do people decide to start smoking? That can't be fun.

I had to keep careful watch out the dark windows so I could pull the yellow cord in time to stop at Blue Square. Mostly I could only see my reflection, and I had to lean past the pizza box I'd put on the seat in order to peer out the window, but luckily the Stadium across the street from Blue Square was glowing, so it wasn't hard to figure out where I needed to get off.

Made it! Cue the adult achievement badges! And I had the apartment all to myself. The trip had taken me about an hour and twenty minutes. Shockingly, the milk was still somewhat cool. The pizza was also cool, unfortunately, but luckily I have a microwave. That was all right. I'd almost brought a cup in my backpack so I could eat pizza and drink milk at the bus stop, but I ended up forgetting to by the time I was out the door. Maybe another day.

I ate pizza while I worked on my rat lab report. I have three and a half pages of it finished, and an outline for the rest of it. It takes time, but I'm getting there! Actually, I've done just about all I can do with it until I hear back from the TA about a few things, and maybe from one of my group mates so I can double-check some numbers I think were mixed up. 

I guess I'll set it aside for a day or two and work on my relevance project, since that's due on Monday and the rat lab isn't due until December 12th. At least a fair chunk of it is done, so I'll have less to balance along with my finals later on.

Monday Before Thanksgiving

Last Monday before Thanksgiving Break! I had my behavior class this morning, but the day off from horticulture, which was pretty nice. I've had my Institute essay questions finished for several days now, but of course I forgot to turn them in even though I brought them. I'll try to remember for next time. At least they're not racking up late points.

I talked to Mom during my long walk across campus, asking when she and the kids are coming up and stuff. We had a speaker in my chocolate glass. She works for The Guittard Company, and she brought small samples. The nibs and wafers weren't very good, but the chocolates were decent. Although, I can't taste the difference between the expensive and the semi-expensive varieties, and I still much prefer a cheap Hershey's bar any day.

Following my chocolate class I swung by the Aggie Marketplace to eat. I had half an hour before my SI for behavior analysis started. I was proud of myself for gathering the foods I did- for example, requesting that the person dishing out the spaghetti cook me only half as much as she might normally, since previous experience has taught me that I enjoy eating a variety of foods at buffets, and too much spaghetti does not help with that. I ate a vegetable casserole thing too, and tried the pizza for the first time. They never have cheese pizza, but I found an olive pizza that looked mostly like cheese. It was okay, but I like Little Caeser's better. I had a warm roll and things too, and the chocolate milk dispenser was working again, which was nice.

After I ate, I hurried over to SI. There were only three of us there today. I haven't been going lately because I've understood the material we've been learning and SI only occurs on my busiest two days, and I don't always want to balance another class on my plate when that happens. Today, I figured it was worth going since I'd gotten out of horticulture. Although I did understand the concepts and scored 100% on the ten-question practice quiz, it was kind of nice to go just to be able to talk about the things we'd learned that morning once again.

Demetria headed out to a Thanksgiving dinner the ward was hosting. I was full from the Marketplace and ready to rest at home, so I didn't go with her. It was really nice of her to clean the kitchen while I was out at my classes and SI, although we discovered that popcorn and cleaning supplies do not create the best smell together. She's leaving tomorrow to head home for the holidays, and I'll have the apartment to myself for a few days. That'll be good. Hopefully I can finish all the homework and studying that I need to do.

Car In Church

Today was a lot like yesterday. I worked on some homework and some personal writing projects, and of course I went to church as well. I scheduled an appointment to meet with the bishop next week for a temple recommend interview. A girl named Lexi sung in sacrament meeting today. In relief society, the teacher had me draw this scene on the board, and she told a story about driving home and having to pull over constantly to let the hot air out of the car, but she didn't really relate it to my picture so I don't know what that was all about:

Demetria had a small singing thing tonight, although I ended up not going to it. I'd already changed into my pajamas and was finally in the groove of getting homework done and not procrastinating. She assured me that it was fine and was sort of glad in the end that I hadn't come. She said it wasn't the best recital. We talked for awhile while we did laundry, too.

I've been working on the graphs and lab write-up for my rat lab class. I didn't realize until now that I was supposed to keep all of my physical data collection sheets even though I had already typed up all the data. Luckily I had them all organized in a drawer in my closet and knew exactly where they were. The lab write-up is worth 125 points, so I definitely don't want to blow it! It's certainly a long project, though, and it will be nice when it's finally done.

Also, since I told Eliza I'd mention this, her dad wrote a musical about the life of Jesus Christ called "Son of Man". I haven't sat down and listened to the songs yet, but Demetria seemed impressed, and she's the music person in this apartment. The project is a Kickstarter and time is almost up. I don't know if anyone who reads this blog would be interested in that, but I figured it wouldn't hurt to shout it out.

Schoolwork Saturday

It's nice to have Saturdays. I pulled out my 3DS for the first time since coming up here and hooked it to the Internet. I managed to do that all by myself, so I'm pretty proud of figuring out where to get the MAC ID or whatever it's called and remembering how to enter the code. I wanted to check to see if Pokemon Sun and Moon were any cheaper as "apps" than they were as cartridges. 

They were not, and a friend of mine who's really enjoying the game so far reminded me that if I got the app, it would take up lots of space on the 3DS, so I'll probably buy the cartridge. But I'm waiting until all my homework is done first- I don't want to get too enthralled with the game that I don't put full effort into my big school projects. I've been patient for eleven months. I can be patient a week longer.

I did some personal things and some homework today. I've been studying my chocolate notes for a week, but unfortunately I did not do well on my manufacturing quiz. Ouch. Basically, if I had been asked any questions other than the ones I was asked, I would have done great. The problem is, my teacher focuses on little details, and tells us "You will definitely need to know this", but doesn't put those things we "definitely need to know" on the quiz. I'll bet they'll all be on the final. I can still pull an A in this class, but I'll have to work pretty hard. More likely I'll end up with an A-. I guess that's okay.

Housing registration is just around the corner. I'm thinking I'll stay in Blue Square, but some other details need to be cleared and settled first. Fun stuff.

More Like 'The Girl Who Shrinks Too Slow'

Like I said the other day, Alison had asked me if I wanted to go to the temple with her today. I called Mom later and asked if she could bring up my temple recommend, but she said it had expired. Whoops. If I'd known, I could have gotten one from the bishop the other day. I'll have to make an appointment for Sunday.

I went to the grocery store by myself after horticulture class today. I picked up a gallon of milk and some ice cream, since we'd been out for about a week and I was starting to want some. I thought that I could beat the bus back to Blue Square. After all, last time I went shopping, it took the bus an hour to get back there from the time I'd left. But maybe that was a fluke. The bus beat me back by one minute, even though it would have had to sit at the transfer station for at least five. I was keeping track of its progress with the app. Its icon never turned down a huge part of its route. Hmm. Well, now I know that I ought to be patient. At least I got some good exercise.

Demetria had an opera performance in the choir hall tonight, and this one was free. Nice. For the first half of the show, there were eight Disney songs sung:

Demetria choreographed "Zero to Hero", and I thought it came out well. She was also Ariel in "Under the Sea". I didn't get the best pictures because I didn't want to be a distraction, but here you go:

Beginning of "Zero to Hero", as music starts

Demetria is on the right end

More dancing

Sebastian scolding Ariel

One of the girls in "I've Got a Dream" collects plush unicorns

Flynn was really good in "I've Got a Dream". He ran around trying to pull Rapunzel off stage, face-palming in the background and trying to avoid everyone's notice as they danced around and nearly hit or stepped on him, or pushed him into the imaginary rowboat of the lovesick girl, and made him sing.

At the end of the "Kiss the Girl" song, the lights went out right before the couple on the couch were about to kiss. Three-fourths of the audience groaned because they were so ready for it. It was funny.

After the Disney show, there was an opera geared towards kids, "The Girl Who Grew Too Fast". It was pretty cute. It's about an extremely-tall nine year old (eight or nine feet tall, so we had an actress on stilts) who is made fun of by her classmates, and she goes to see Dr. Shrink, who supposedly can shrink her. The school teacher called the doctor's office, but was told he had gone out to see an opera called "The Girl Who Grew Too Fast".

They turned on the lights and started searching the audience for the doctor. He'd fallen asleep because the opera music was soothing and boring. The actors plead with him to come forward and he refuses because he's trying to watch the show. They finally death glare him onto the stage, and he agrees to accept money, a watch, and a baseball bat as payment. The little girl behind me thought his shrinking machine was real, and kept asking her dad where they got a real shrinking machine. When the young double of the nurse came out, the girl said, "I will never, ever go into a shrinking machine". Her dad agreed that was a good idea.

After the doctor's scene, when the stage crew are changing the set, he tells the pianist not to go on with the show until he's ready, since his seat wasn't cheap. He goes to sit down, then comes back on to tell the pianist that he liked one of the earlier numbers, and starts to sing it. The pianist tells him to get off the stage so they can continue with the show, which he does, before wishing the audience goodnight and promptly "falling asleep" in the front row for most of the rest of the show. Fun times.

The evening bus wasn't running, as it was about 9:30 by this point, so Demetria and I walked back to our room and talked about what I'd thought of it. Demetria isn't in the opera, just in the Disney songs, so she said she'd only seen one scene. I got quite a kick out of that, because she knows there's a murderer in the play since she was the one who made the dynamite prop, but has no context for it otherwise. She said she'd try to look it up on YouTube. We'll see if it's quite everything she hoped it would be.

First Snow of the Season

It snowed for the first time this morning. The snow was very light, but it stuck around on the grass for awhile.

I forgot to mention that yesterday I talked to my horticulture teacher about the grade I'd gotten on the propagation lab. He said he couldn't remember exactly, but that I probably lost points for not cutting my cuttings at the right length. Even if they rooted successfully. That sounds like something that should have been printed on our lab sheet and/or explained by the adult down at the greenhouse as opposed to every length of half a dozen cuttings relayed verbally only one time super quickly when no one was ready for it and then never mentioned on any PowerPoint or paper again.

Or maybe that's just me.

I took an exam in lifespan development. It was a little more difficult than I was anticipating seeing as there were several questions related to topics not covered in the study guide and that I didn't study, but I think I did okay.

Otherwise, after coming home from class, I worked on homework and studied. I'm determined to do well on the manufacturing quiz for my chocolate class, but there are so many chemical structures and machinery parts to know, we'll have to see how things work out.

Registered for Spring 2017

Today was a busy day, but I got through it. I went to all my classes and I finished all my homework (including my three essay questions for Institute). We watched a video through all of class in behavior today. It was an older video (from before client confidentiality, I guess) about a twenty-something young man, six feet tall, who kept hurting himself. Behavior analysts were able to help him, though, even though it took a long time.

Alison texted me and asked if Demetria and I would like to join her at the temple on Friday. Demetria is performing, though. I was excited to go, until I remembered my temple recommend is still back home. Well. Maybe next time.

I ate at the Marketplace (but they were out of chocolate milk in both machines- what is this savagery?), and I was all ready to register for my classes tonight. Except, my registration time turned out to be for 10:00, and not 8:00. I guess the classes you are currently taking don't count as credits yet, so you can't be in an earlier slot. I'm still two days ahead of where I would be if I'd never have taken AP classes, though.

I talked about it with Mom, and in the end, I was able to register for all my classes... except fiction writing. It looks like there are still a few hoops to jump through there. Maybe I can take it next fall. But Mom and I both agree that the schedule I have is looking good. I hope I enjoy it.

Simple College Day

I did my laundry, cleaned the kitchen, did dishes, and worked on some other things today. I did a little bit of writing, but tried to focus more on homework and such. Although I did spend a bit of time skipping through some "Fairly OddParents" episodes. I noticed in one of the recent ones that Foop was left-handed. Turns out, he's been consistently left-handed all three seasons of his existence, and it just took me a long time to notice. 

I also noticed that Anti-Cosmo seems to have a habit of holding things in his left hand, to the point where he'll pick things up with his right hand and immediately switch them to his left, unless he's wielding a weapon. And if his wand becomes a weapon rather than just a thing he's holding, he flips it to his right hand. Good attention to detail on the artists' part. Huh. I just thought that was super interesting, and figured I'd share it since this blog post was looking rather short otherwise.

I also went to class, of course. Aced the quiz. Cheered up a friend. The works. I found out that I scored 91% on my propagation lab for horticulture. That's not the grade I was hoping for. I'll have to ask my teacher about it tomorrow, since he didn't leave any comments.

I made macaroni and cheese tonight and ate it while I worked on homework. Later, Demetria and I watched the two new "Star" episodes, and I did homework some more. Man, am I glad to have my horticulture and chocolate essays done. I would not want to be dealing with those right about now.

Board Games and Bananagrams

We're in units that I understand in both horticulture and chocolate now, which is nice. Before it was all chemicals and hormones. Now we're into different plant species, and how chocolate is actually manufactured in a factory. That's more like what I was expecting to learn in these classes! I can handle this. Those melting points and chemical structures still trip me up, though. 

At least we had some tasty samples. They were brown with white stripes on them, and looked like little leaves. There was some sort of nutty filling in them, but it was faint and creamy. I brought one home for Demetria, and she said it tasted like almond filling. It was good, whatever it was. I like it when there's no overpowering taste, or nutty chunks.

I got some writing done. I just wanted to jot down a few ideas I had before I tuck my work away until Christmas break. It's coming along nicely. Giving one of my main characters feathery neck frills that spring up when he's startled or embarrassed is a decision I do not regret. Hooray for fantasy worlds!

Demetria and I swung over to the church for a home evening activity tonight, as well as Demetria's meeting that she was supposed to have about planning future activities. We played this game called Spot It a few times, which is great for large crowds. Everyone has a small disc with about a dozen different pictures on it. You're supposed to find a match on someone else's disc and give yours to them before they give theirs to you. The loser is whoever ends up with all the discs.

After that, I tried to start a good Bananagrams game going. The rest of the crowd just wanted to eat chips and salsa and socialize. It didn't help that we played some of the slowest Bananagrams games in history- it's so much more fun when you're scrambling. I don't think the other players even realized the game was supposed to be fast.

I did regret playing instead of eating a bit, though... I heard "chips and salsa" and wrongly assumed there would be no cheese. By the time we'd played a few rounds and I went to get food from the now-lineless table, all the cheese dip was gone. Oh, well.

Since people keep asking me why I get annoyed when people fill my chip and dip pottery bowl with salsa and have never once put cheese in it, claiming instead that we can't just buy liquid cheese and pour that in instead, I now confirm that there is indeed liquid cheese and I expect to have some the next time we have a chip and dip party as a family. I want to enjoy my chip and dip bowl for the purpose it was made for.

I ended my day with some studying and more writing. I'm getting the hang of this living on my own business. I rather like it.

I Do Love 'The Ocean Is Ink' Jokes

I was all ready to head out the door this morning when it suddenly hit me that today was Sunday, not Monday. I was about to go to school on a day I should be at church.

We were a little late today, but at least we made it for sacrament. One of the speakers told a fictional story that I liked about a waiter who dealt with a regular customer who would always say he liked the food, but complained there wasn't enough bread. The waiter doubled the amounts of bread he was getting for a few days, until he was up to eight slices with his meal. The man still wasn't satisfied. One day the waiter, very determined to prove he could make this customer happy, took a nine-foot-long loaf of bread (a baguette, perhaps) and cut it in half. When the man had finished eating, he said, "Good as always... but I see you're back to serving just two slices of bread".

The speaker compared it to how we often react to receiving blessings from God. He gives us great things, but sometimes we are blind to what we have. We might compare some of our more obvious blessings with those our peers have, complaining that our friend has eight blessings while we only have two, even though our two are very meaningful gifts in our lives.

I got some things done that I wanted to do today. Studied notes a bit. Drew. I wrote the first pages of my "Stars and Finches" draft. It was weird. It was late a few nights ago and before I went to bed I tapped out a few sentences that I ended up really liking (My favorite is "Water was his comfort food; he drank it like a drug", but that might go in Chapter 2 or 3).

I've never had a strong beginning for this story, since I keep picking different starting points and have been told several times that I need to "rewind" and "start the story earlier". I usually keep the Google Docs file for at least one story open in another tab, so when I got tired of reading through my horitculture and chocolate notes, I glanced over and added onto my loose sentences.

I've been picking at this story on and off over the last three years, unable to commit to a magic system because various Internet searches keep leading me to people saying, "Someone else has done that" or "This is the system I used in my published novels" or "That's such a cliche thing". Still comes as a shock to me that "disabled princess in a wheelchair" is considered overused, because... I have never seen anyone else use that idea. Or a nervous wreck of a king who has meltdowns when his people twist his words. I just can't resist the idea of a wheelchair throne (which, as stated, I have never seen), or powerful authority figures in distress who accidentally hurt people because they're scared and everyone hates them.

Anyway, within fifteen minutes I had set myself up for a decent plot, slipped in a bunch of world-building details, invented a numerical system and some magical instruments, flipped the narrator's education level 180 degrees, and accidentally rebuilt my entire world so that all the colors are different from ours and the ocean is so polluted with decades of old, acidic magic that it will kill you if you're in it for more than a few minutes. Huh. That'll work.

That's the thing- I plan out my writing projects, but I always have to plan them loosely, because only when I get to a certain point do I come up with the "magic" I need to spark something off.

I'm leaning towards calling it Painting Finches In the Stars since in the current draft Ethel has a passion for painting, but I'm not really sold on it yet. Hopefully something will strike me later on when the story is more solid and not prone to being scrapped and rewritten entirely every few months. I'm also partial to The Finch In the Boardroom...

Galactose, We Meet Again

I've done the math and it looks like if I continue in my current pattern, I should be able to get all As! Chocolate and horticulture classes will be close, of course, so I'll definitely want to work extra hard on them. At the very least, I should be able to pull A-minuses. That's not too bad. I can live.

I locked myself out of my bedroom as I was leaving. At least I wasn't in some embarrassing situation, like only half dressed. I still had a free lockout coupon that I could use to avoid being charged, but since the RA on call just so happened to be the RA for our floor, she didn't mind letting us keep it. Excellent. That's twice we've gotten out of spending that thing. And I'm glad I was able to contact someone, since office hours on Saturday don't start until noon. I actually didn't call her until after I came back, and things worked out.

Like I said, I headed out to clean the church this morning. That went pretty well. We were there for about an hour. It ended up taking me a bit to find a door that was actually unlocked, so I got shuffled with a pretty easy task of dusting all the pews, seats on the stands, the sacrament tables (and we have two chapels, so I was there for awhile). 

Two other girls helped me, but I don't think they were quite as efficient... or focused. I had to remind them that were supposed to get the seats on the stands, and they tried to leave me behind several times. They were also very trigger-happy with the spray bottle, so yes, the side of me flashing back to my weeks of working at the veterinary clinic cringed. We got donuts in the end, though. And cold milk.

I didn't go anywhere else for the rest of the day, aside from back to my place. I studied the PowerPoints for my chocolate class again, and rewrote all the information that seemed useful into a single note page. We're not allowed to use notes on the quiz, but writing them down again helped, I think. Although I was not prepared for this question:

I am 99% sure our teacher told us we only needed to memorize the properties of oleic acid. So I got all the others wrong. At least I didn't look up the table during the quiz. Too bad that specifically because I studied my notes, I mistook sucrose to be a polysaccharide instead of a disaccharide. Dumb galactose, getting in my way. This was a fact that wasn't in the PowerPoint, so of course when I saw three molecules, I thought they were all important. I did not count on one being useless.

Mmhm. I got some work done, and took some time to enjoy myself too. I watched a video about Butch Hartman drawing Pokemon that were described to him by his cameraman. It was really funny because he drew some excellent drawings, and would get progressively more confused about each Pokemon as he went. I talked to Demetria about dishes and we came up with a new system as to how we do them. I did some reading, and talked to a friend. Ate some food, too. I introduced Demetria to the Buster Keaton film "Sherlock Jr." tonight. Fun times.

Scaring Technology Into Compliance

I paid my adviser a visit today to find out that the issues I've been having with teachers' hours not appearing on the registration website had just been fixed. Because of course they had. Perfectly on time, considering that registration started today for those who have plentiful credits under their belts, I think? Some classes already look full.

But I did learn that creative writing is actually offered as a minor here at Utah State! And a major too! You have to look in a very specific, hidden place to find it, since it doesn't show up on the official lists and doesn't come up with the expected keywords. I told Mom about it on my way back since I knew she'd want to hear as soon as possible.

Today I was able to accomplish quite a fair amount of things I wanted to- I cleaned my bathroom, showered, finished and submitted my chocolate essay (while eating a Hershey's bar I'd been saving for the occasion), read three chapters of my psychology textbook, watched a twelve-minute lecture video for one of my classes, completed an assignment for lifespan development, read some of my friend's work, and even wrote a bit myself. Phew! I am in a good place right now. Although I do need to hit the studying again tomorrow.

I also checked the online schedule that my adviser and I made together and was ticked to find that I couldn't actually view or interact with it since it had been made under her name. I can't even delete it. So I redid the whole thing, perhaps not exactly matching what hers had been, but I now have two slightly-different versions of next term's schedule in my back pocket, waiting to be uploaded with a few clicks in a few days' time. Hopefully I can make it into all the classes I want.

I did get another one of those "hard disc drive failure" messages on my computer this afternoon, but once again a simple reboot appears to have brought everything back to normal for now...

Shopping: An Hour-Long Excursion at Minimum

I went shopping today- my first time going without Demetria. I rode the bus down to Lee's, was in there for just a few minutes to grab Pop Tarts, a gallon of milk, and two large rolls of paper towels (I bumped the lowest roll I could reach and it and the one on top of it fell into my hands while an employee watched- it was funny), paid of course, and went out to wait on the bench for the bus to cycle around again. Even that quick trip took an hour from the time I left my room to the time I got back, but it had to be done.

Of course, me being not quite as smart as I would like to believe, did not pull the yellow cord to request for the bus to stop at Lee's on my way down. I was quite surprised when it didn't pull over. I had been made to believe that the bus stopped at certain locations automatically as part of its route, and had assumed the grocery store was one of them. That was the first time I had ever seen it go past Lee's. I guess previous times I haven't pulled the cord, maybe there have always been people waiting there to get on? I ended up getting off at the next stop, Lowe's, which wasn't far but was a bit of a walk. Next time I'll be smarter.

I went to my lifespan development class, which went fine, and finished reading my chocolate book today. Yes! Now all that's left to do is right an essay about it. I need to pick a topic.

I got to do a bit of writing tonight too. Rich guy is buying his son an entire flying merchant ship for his birthday... Made of lightweight metal, of course, since wood would rot in the water vapor of the clouds, I think.

America Gets Greater, I Guess...

Imagine being so disliked that even though your party rigged at least one stage of the election earlier in the race, you can't beat a candidate who's racist, sexist, politically inexperienced, just plain idiotic, homophobic, wants to deport so many people and ban all Muslims from the country, is considering throwing us into a nuclear war, comments on air that he likes to walk up to women and grab them by their privates... everything you would assume is terrible and hated by the American public, right? Hmm. Vocal minorities, I guess...

Hillary did win the popular vote, though, so I guess she gets to take some comfort in that. And Trump will still have to get his ideas passed by other people in power... He can't just demand a wall to be build and all of a sudden have a wall be built... We can hope...?

I see no reasoning behind his desire to withdraw from NAFTA (I think that's one thing he's said he plans to do, unless I got my acronyms mixed up). It's called the North American Free Trade Agreement for a reason. We've only ever talked about the positives of it in my history classes. I wonder if there are any downsides that we glossed over. We'll just have to wait for things to unfold.

I was in a mood, so I threw together a quick meme thing when I heard that 11,000 people went out and wrote-in a vote for a dead gorilla to be president:

Anyway... I guess I shouldn't be saying such things on the Internet about the man who'll soon be leading our country, but that's what happens when you have a blog you know very few people read, anyway. I've been surrounded by so many people ready to exercise their right to vote for the first time and regularly discussing things like this everywhere around me. Now I get to spend the next months or years listening to them cursing third-party voters for taking votes away from Hillary. But maybe it won't be quite as bad as before since in Utah, we did have a large showing of third-party and I'm not entirely sure if those votes combined with Hillary's would have given Hillary a boost.

I don't know. It's just the culmination of so many pent-up months of holding my tongue. I can still remember those early days in the race when we would discuss these things and Brexit talk objectively (or at times subjectively) before class officially started in AP Government. I wonder how my teacher and his current classes feel about the news. Maybe I'm wrong about my concerns. It would be nice to be wrong.

I'm just confused. This is the world we live in, and it hurts. I grew up in Georgia, raised not knowing that racism existed until fifth grade, when I was pulled in from hosting one of the field day events to, well... Put simply, I was scolded for not being racist. It came as a shock to the counselors that I had no idea what was going on, or why I'd been pulled in (three black kids in particular used to pick on a few of us white kids and if we spoke back they'd play the racism card and get us into trouble). 

So just... This hurts me. How can so many people be so supportive of someone who has pledged to and has already hurt so many people? I've never been one to have an overflowing amount of pride in my neighborhood, school, state, or my country- not that I think America is bad at all, and I would never stay sitting down during the anthem or anything, but I just feel uncomfortable about all my friends and peers trumpeting that America is the 'greatest country on Earth' when, like... That's still an opinion. Not a fact. Why do you mock people who live in other countries? That's mean. And in some senses racist. And weird.

Maybe it's an author thing, accepting that your point of view [character] has flaws. I pride myself on my ability to find the negative qualities in the good characters I write or read about and to find the good in the hated. That's just how I see the world- If someone says that something is good, I find the flaws. If everyone rags on a cartoon character for being a Mary Sue, I gather all the evidence that she is not and that she is a good character and I lay out the facts. I average things. It's just how I am. I like my characters with a blend of moral gray zone. Easy flip-floppers between good and bad choices that they make. Doing good things for the wrong reasons and wrong things for the right. Following the laws only to suffer for it, and breaking the laws only to glance over their shoulders and think, "Hmm, no one caught me and I reaped great rewards, and I could probably get away with doing it again..."

But I'm just sitting here thinking about this election and... It hurts. I shouldn't have to be worrying about the safety of my friends, or the safety of people I don't even know but whom I believe have basic human rights for protection. 

And it hurts to hear my acquaintances or strangers or people in authority dragging white people through the dirt almost every single day of my life for years on end, telling us that every racist, homophobic, judgmental, unpopular, undesirable, horrible thing that ever happens is our fault because we're all privileged whites who don't care about anyone. And then pretending that's not racism. Maybe it's not the same kind of racism because whites aren't targeted by police or viewed as dumb by some teachers, as my psychology book insists, but we're still attacked for the color of skin we were born with. By definition, that is racism. Isn't it? Or do whites never face racism, because we're born privileged?

So it hurts a little girl who grew up not knowing what racism was, then upon learning immediately swore it out of her life and tried to be kind to everyone. I'm older now, but I'm still that innocent little girl who tries not to judge, who tries to combat stereotypes and preconceived notions in the little ways, whose first reaction after watching and discussing "Twelve Angry Men" in class was to start to raise her hand in answer to the question, "Do you believe that people in prison are almost always put in because they deserve it?" because for a split-second there she completely forgot that there are people out there who don't care, and don't work incredibly hard to uncover the real story like the characters in that film did, and don't believe in making the world a better place. 

Inside I'm the girl who plays her small part in the world through her writing, by not writing allegories specifically about racism being bad, but showing it in more subtle ways. By making my people of color equally as flawed as my whites, and not attributing these flaws to race, but to the choices that they made because of the situations they were in. I'm here to read a lovely story about some people in some situation making some bad choices and some good choices. Country doesn't matter to me. Species doesn't matter to me. Why should color? Answer: It doesn't. It never has. It never will. Color doesn't matter. I'm here for the journey, which one would assume we all are (Although people of color are here for the representation, too, which is totally okay and good).

Or I play my part by making certain characters people of color but not revealing it until later in the story, chuckling, "Well, why did you just assume all the characters would be white?" Trying to combat the notion that "the default character is white", trying to give all my friends and the people I've never met representation of their color in the media where the characters are a certain color for "no particular reason, but because they just are, because why not?" and not because the book is set specifically in a certain geographical location... 

It hurts so much. But I've never been able to say anything like that. Because then I'm just one of those white people whining about "reverse racism". 

I don't get it. The word "reverse" shouldn't be in that title. This is basic common sense. If you're attacking someone for their race, it's racism. Simple as that. Fighting racism should NOT be "White people are bad, because look at what they did to us for so many years." It should be, "Being racist is bad". Because racism is bad. Duh. It has nothing to do with the person saying so's color, ethnicity, country of origin... 

"Racism is bad". Not "white people are bad". That should be obvious. 

It hurts me that it's not. It hurt me when I attended that writer's conference at WIFYR a few years back, and instead of selecting the class I had actually been more interested in attending, I veered over at the last second and attended the class about writing people of color. While next door they read an entire Junie B. Jones book and discussed what worked and what didn't, I suffered for like an hour and a half being told that I'm an evil racist because I'm white, that all white people are evil racists (our speaker was a Latina lady who had married a Japanese-American, because heaven forbid she marry one of these evil whites), and that the only way to not be racist is to be born any race that wasn't Caucasian. The people I was with ate it up, and the closest friend I had gained at the conference said she thought it was the best of the classes she'd attended.

It just hurts. It will always hurt.

This is a bizarre country we live in. A bizarre world, where people don't believe in not hurting each other. I look forward to the day it all ends and I can spend the rest of my existence in a peaceful heaven once again. That will be nice. I just have to make it there.

Enough political discussion there. This election has been long and painful and it's nice to have it over with, at least. I am still laughing about the Newsweek magazines proclaiming Madam President that had to be recalled, though. And Trump's son taking a picture of his ballot and disqualifying his vote.

I attended all my classes today, still a bit numb from the shock of finding out who won the presidency. I learned that I don't have horticulture class on Friday, which is nice. I also learned that I need to answer three essay questions in Institute, which is less nice, but not unexpected. I tried to keep a scripture journal so I wouldn't have to do the essay questions, but that only lasted for so long before I realized that I'd rather write three (presumably easy) essays then jot even slight notes for months on end as I went along. Nah. Give me the essays and let me finish all at once.

Upon returning home, I read several chapters of my horticulture textbook and several of my chocolate book. I really hope I do well on my chocolate final. I'm getting nervous. The quizzes are rough. We have to memorize obscure things like the melting point of oleic oil in degrees Celsius and the percent of three kinds of fatty acids from six different countries. The PowerPoint for our next quiz alone has sixty slides. Each slide contains an average of seven facts on it. That's 420 pieces of information we need to study just for a quiz, which will only have ten questions on it.

I played halfway through Day of the Tentacle so I could get my screenshot. I had to play it slower than normal to trigger the cutscene (sometimes I can make it through the entire game only triggering one). It's very beautiful, although I'm still adjusting to the new controls. And I'm scratching my head because the "Look, a guy who looks like Benjamin Franklin!" line has been replaced with "Albert Einstein", and a similar line became, "Has anyone told you you look like Don Quixote?" Weird. 

There's also a new cutscene about Benjamin Franklin flying his kite and wishing it would rain that I don't remember. And a few quotes appeared to have changed by a word or two, but that could be me misquoting them. But I got to hear voices all the way through for the first time, and that was kind of fun.

I watched "The Great Mouse Detective" and "The Fox and the Hound 2" each for the first time before bed while I drew some designs for characters of mine, because that's just what I do. I liked them both. I was pleasantly surprised by "Fox and the Hound 2". It was much, much better than the original. But, I've also always been a person who prefers to watch the character development in a single life phase than to orient myself to massive time skips. 

The original keeps focusing on a side plot about birds trying to catch a caterpillar to eat. It's supposed to be funny for the kids, I guess, but it keeps showing up, interrupts the emotion and action, accomplishes nothing, and overall detracts from the main story. The sequel flowed excellently and was very, very cute and full of strong characters. Young characters are always difficult to pull off, but they were well-done here. I liked it a lot. Makes the original more bittersweet, just watching how Tod was always the one to put more and more into this friendship even though Copper continuously hurts him, and Copper's the one to tell him in the original that they're grown up now and can't be friends anymore...

Before I settled officially into sleep, I read my scriptures. We're in the "Creating a Successful Family" section of The Eternal Family class readings. D&C 134, 5-6. "We believe that all men are bound to sustain and uphold the respective governments in which they reside, while protected in their inherent and inalienable rights by the laws of such governments", etc. etc. Hmm....