Macaroni Graphs

I had statistics today. Since there's no lab this week, and Jeff and I are in the same lab, we made plans to meet tomorrow at our lab time and compare answers for our take-home exam. After that, I had two and a half hours before my abnormal psych test. Those two and a half hours really dragged on, but I went over all the PowerPoint slides again and studied my terms on Quizlet some more. It's pretty handy living in this day and age. My mom wouldn't have had access to that kind of thing when she went here.

The test was surprisingly easy, I thought. I guess I just prepared well enough. It's also nice that he told us in advance a few questions that would be on the test (like the difference between a psychologist and a psychiatrist). Sometimes there were three vocabulary words (like agonist, antagonist, and inverse agonist), and he'd say only one would be on the test, but he wouldn't tell us which one. Two questions were about a video we'd watched in class and were pretty easy.

I went through my test circling all the answers as I thought of them, and finished the thirty questions in about ten minutes, before anyone had come down to place their test on the table (left side of the table for leave early, right side for staying after to here the answers here and now once everybody was done). I then went through a second time as I copied my answers over to the scantron. 

Now people started coming down. After that was done, I checked my scantron to ensure I hadn't missed any bubbles or left questions blank. Everything seemed to be in order. More and more people were coming. After one more skim over my answers, I got up as well. My original plan had been to wait until everyone else was finished so we could go over the test answers right then, but if I'd chosen to do that, I would have had to sit in my chair twiddling my thumbs for an hour. No reading books, drawing, working on other work... Just like middle school exams again, only longer.

So instead of doing that, I went to the library and used a computer that had the SPSS graphing program I needed in order to complete the online half of one of my assignments. I was there for an hour, leaving only a few minutes before my abnormal psych class would be going over their answers. I considered swinging by, but I had the feeling I shouldn't walk back into the testing room after I had left. Looking back on it, maybe I should have hovered outside the door where I wouldn't have been seen. Oh well. I know for next time now.

I saved my work as a PDF and printed it out when I got home, so I didn't have to pay for all the papers or anything, and just to ensure that I could. We were supposed to make up our own variables (one nominal, one ordinal, one interval, one ratio) and invent fake information for twenty-five different people:

As you can see, you have to program nominal variables, like the drink column, with numbers in the table, but make it so they appear as labels when you create the graphs (My drinks were "no drink", "water", "milk", and "grape juice". My subject was "how much people enjoy macaroni", then I had birth year, then how many times macaroni is eaten per month.

Since I had macaroni on the brain, I did dishes while I cooked macaroni for dinner and then swept the kitchen floor. Then, macaroni in hand, I began work on my online statistics assignments. I wanted to get them at least mostly done because they're due at 11:00 Thursday night, and Wednesday is so busy for me. Mom called to ask me how my test went, since she knew I'd been worried for it. I might have missed one, and maybe two, but I went over my answers carefully and I think I made the correct choices. We'll have to see when I get my scores back soon.

Preferable To Rump Roast

My phone went through a new update last night, and now when I flick the tab at the bottom of the screen, it comes up with a menu for music volume, not for turning airplane mode on and off and adjusting the screen brightness, both of which I am known to do often, though the latter I often do ten or fifteen times throughout the day. It seems ridiculous since the old version had a music volume adjuster too. If Apple is going to release constant updates, could they at least leave some old features in the settings menu somewhere so we could customize our phones with the features we actually want? Sigh.

At least our presentation in English went well! We were the first group up and I don't think I messed up too badly on my role as "flipper of the slides". After that, I had several hours to myself to get a lot of work done. In my psychology as a career class, we had a speaker give us some pointers on writing resumes and cover letters, which is one of our upcoming assignments for the class. Fun stuff. Although I was irritated when I realized I'd left my hat and scarf in the guest room back home...

I stayed on campus after that class was over, because interior design was only an hour or so later. I crossed from the Emma Eccles Jones building to the TSC and camped out in the rear food court area with a bag of Little Bites chocolate chip muffins and my laptop. While there, I polished off my homework assignment for psychology and made it farther on my statistics assignment too, which is due on February 2nd. Almost done!

Interior design came after that. Our subject for the day was "emphasis and subordinates". One of our slides had these images on it:

My teacher praised the room on the right and was disgusted by the room on the left, because it's too cluttered (which it is, but it's still somewhere I'd like to live. Maybe because it's so big?) The picture doesn't quite do justice to how hideous I found the room on the right. Maybe it was that yellow square (mirror?) on the door, because it was a very ugly color. Here it doesn't look so bad, actually.

I also thought it was funny that my teacher showed us another room and talked about how cramped it seemed. It's really quite funny because he's over six feet tall and I'm about five feet. To me, it seemed like that room had plenty of space, because I could have stood on the counter and barely reached the ceiling with my arms raised. I'll need to keep these things in mind if I have to design a room later in the semester.

That was my last class of the day. As I headed back to Blue Square, I stopped by that igloo on the quad for pictures inside. I barely had to duck to get through that door, so you can kind of get a sense of how big it was.

For dinner, I made macaroni and read in my abnormal psych book for quite awhile. Then I went over more vocabulary (which I've been doing over the last several days- I enjoy playing the matching game on the Quizlet app). Our first abnormal psych test is tomorrow. Nerve-wracking!

Earlier today, Alison had texted me asking if Demetria and I wanted to have lunch with her sometime. I replied that we had actually been wanting to invite her over for board games and cookies, but were waiting to confirm dates with the girl we're visit teaching this weekend. I'd bought cookie dough that Demetria can't eat and figured Alison would enjoy splitting the cookies with me. We're leaning towards her coming over on the 10th, and we'll see if that still holds up later.

I told Alison that even if Demetria is busy with all her singing preparations and game night wouldn't be for awhile, I'd be willing to have lunch with her this week. She said she'd been wanting to go to the Skyroom for awhile, which is the fancy place above the TSC that I haven't been to yet.

My picky tongue was regretting walking into this trap, but it IS Alison and she's cool, and they do take meal card swipes there, so at least I can justify this visit as the food being already paid for. I checked the menu and we made plans to meet for lunch at 12:30 this Thursday. Hmm. Time to embrace my inner Anti-Fairy, apparently (everyone knows chicken cordon bleu is the food that no Anti-Fairy can resist). For research! Aha... It's good to stretch outside my comfort zone anyway. We'll see what happens. I might like it. Plus, I've been wanting to ride that elevator and see the place too.

I also learned an interesting fact today. My siblings and I used to watch LeapFrog videos all the time growing up. I don't remember why I was thinking of "Letter Factory". I had no reason to be. But I've seen it so many times that even years later, I still have almost the entire thing memorized. For some reason as I was sitting down at my computer to start blogging tonight, the scene where Professor Quigley gives Tad his business card popped into my head. Tad says, "Nice to meet you", and I remember the exact inflections of every word.

So as I was reaching for the keyboard, I froze. That voice... No, it couldn't be.

Yes it is. I looked it up. Debi Derryberry (Why can't my last name be Derryberry?) who voiced Tad also voiced Jimmy Neutron, and I will never unhear this. Nailed it. Even all these years later, I'm good with quotes. The more you know!

Cheyenne Wins!

This morning I attended stake conference with my family, and we had a new stake president called. I ended up staying for most of the day. I did statistics homework and we had fajitas for dinner (delivered around the table courtesy of the train, of course). We also played another Colt Express game, this time with the Horses and Stagecoach expansion added in. Instead of Django, I played as Cheyenne. The entire game I kept regretting my moves and thought I was doing terribly, but I ended up winning! It was pretty nice to break Doc's daughter out of the jail car on the very first turn and draw seven cards for the rest of the game. 

At one point Cheyenne punched Ghost (played by Preston), so he dropped the valuable $1,000 suitcase. Unfortunately, for several turns I didn't have the card in my hand that would let me pick it up off the ground. I was hoping the others would forget it was there, since everyone was focusing on doing their own thing. Finally, Stockton played a "loot" card, and I was able to use "bright idea" to copy his last action and take the case. Oh, and Preston also took the poodle hostage early in the game, and took damage all the way to the end.

Stockton finished the last few levels of "Dumb RPG" tonight and wanted to show them to me. It took me a few tries on some of the bosses, but I made it!

That was the last of it for me. I'd gotten all packed up, so Dad and I hit the road for Logan. Demetria wasn't here when I got back, actually (she has a performance coming up and has to stay late all week to practice), so I took the time to get some homework done. I finished a long assignment for my psychology as a career class, and had time to revise my group's MKUltra presentation for tomorrow. There's a lot of homework to be done in college, especially since you can't finish it during class time like you often could in high school, but so long as you stay on top of things, it's not so bad!

Brother's Seventeen

Today was Stockton's birthday! I got him another nice ping-pong paddle to match the one I got him for Christmas, and a king-size Hershey's bar. He seemed satisfied.

This morning Mom took me to my laser hair removal treatment, and after that we went to Kneaders because Stockton decided that he wanted their bread for his birthday breakfast. Weird, but okay.

Apparently he's been working on this computer game called "Dumb RPG" that he was really excited to show me. When Great-Grandma Parry and Grandpa Jack were still alive, we used to visit them every time we went up to Idaho. I don't remember a little toy called Bruno the Kid very well, but apparently Stockton does, because he usually brings him up when we talk about Grandma and Grandpa. He created a sprite for Bruno and made him the main character of this game. I was impressed, since this is the first time I've seen one of us create an RPG using Multimedia Fusion that actually worked. Huh.

We played another game of Colt Express with one of the expansion packs Stockton got for his birthday. Jorja played as Sam Ford the marshal, who plays the game differently than all the bandits do. She surprised everyone by winning. Nice.

Tonight, we paid a visit to the Hodsons. They were having a Chinese New Year party for the Year of the Rooster. As is tradition, people entered a contest to draw the symbol for the year's animal. I wasn't feeling it this year and elected not to, though I regretted that decision when I saw Nathan had gone all out for the prizes this year. Jorja took first and won herself twenty dollars:

I wouldn't have beaten that anyway

 Preston, Stockton, and Jorja

Stockton also had a cake, of course. He enjoys Cold Stone ice cream cakes "as chocolate-y as they can make it".

17 in 2017!

After a car wash, we returned home and ended our day watching "Bruno the Kid", because that's what Stockton wanted for his birthday. That was entertaining, to say the least. I think he had an enjoyable day all in all.

Paper Badger

I went to English class this morning. My teacher was still out sick, but this time we had a sub to sit with us while we worked on our group projects. Our presentations are coming along.

I did a bit of cleaning and homework until Mom came to pick me up. The nice thing about living only two hours away from home is that when my parents come to visit me, they buy me groceries, and I can get said groceries back to my place in a car. That means I can buy lots of groceries at a time. One of our cool finds was a bag of Mini Chewy SweeTarts that were just the purples and the reds. Nice.

I was also pretty excited because I found the Lee's Marketplace mascot. Every time I come I look for him, but I never knew if I was looking for a picture or a stuffed animal or what. He was in plain sight today, though! I was pretty excited and the lady at the front desk let me pick out a Dum-Dum sucker.

In the back by the meat and cheese

After shopping, Mom and I carted our goods back to Blue Square, then went to the Aggie Marketplace on campus for lunch. When I'm there I usually try to get meat and vegetables, but this time I just went with spaghetti, rolls, and ice cream. I also tried a slice of pizza, since it was the first time I'd seen cheese pizza here and it was the last slice. The lady gave me more ice cream than I was expecting, but I won't complain. And I got the last of the chocolate milk before the machine emptied, and then the first of the next batch when it was refilled.

Once lunch was over, we bought a birthday gift for Stockton at the campus store. I knew exactly what I wanted and I think he'll like it. After I was packed, which didn't take too long since I'm just leaving for the weekend, then Mom drove me home. The cool thing about Fridays is, I only have one class and it's first thing in the morning. It makes trips like this much easier.

My family introduced me to two new games tonight they'd bought while I was away. One was called Colt Express, which is a three-dimensional game involving bandits, trains, and action cards. It's a bit long, but it requires a lot of strategy and memory to succeed. I played as Django.

The second was Code Name, where where team member has to give clues and the rest study the words before them trying to figure out which ones are Red Team agents, Blue Team agents, bystanders, and in one case an assassin. Both were pretty cool and we should get some good fun out of them over the years!

I Am [Gary] Number Four

I ended up being too late to catch the red bus, and chose to take the purple one up to the TSC rather than stand around for ten minutes and cut it close with my classes. Then I walked to the fine arts building. We got our take-home tests, so I'll have to focus on it over the weekend.

After class, I headed out to wait for the red bus. We all know where this is going by now. I texted it, and it was supposed to be here in five minutes. Ten minutes later, it still said five minutes. I dryly noted this out loud, and one of the other girls with me was looking at a map that tracked all the buses around the campus. Apparently, it had pulled over or something, and it was soon taken off the route. Rather than wait another twelve minutes for the next one, I decided to just walk.

Of course, fool that I was, I chose not to take the blue bus while it was there, because I don't like crossing the street and walking to my building; I prefer being dropped at the door. After walking across campus to the fine arts building and walking back again, I was stubbornly determined to enjoy a ride back to Blue Square.

By the time the purple bus arrived, the red bus had already come and gone. So, I guess I could have waited for it and ridden it around and still made it to the TSC in time to catch the purple bus. And then of course, the purple bus was having problems. Something to do with its emergency door, I think, so it was blaring an alarm and the workers/drivers/repair people/whoever spent a good five to ten minutes messing with it. Eventually, they gave up and I had the pleasure of listening to the alarm. Karma. At least I didn't need to walk.

I was able to make my second review comment for the interior design assignment today, as well as do my English reading assignments and half of my abnormal psych one. I also made it halfway through my math assignment before I headed out for my second class of the day (abnormal psych), which was pretty nice because then I only had a few questions left to answer when I got back. I still have to take a quiz tomorrow, but it shouldn't be very hard.

I did a lot of homework today, and some studying via Quizlet (especially on the bus). Still anxious about that coming exam, but our teacher has dropped hints about a lot of items we'll be seeing on the test, and I have them starred, so hopefully I do okay. I do prefer the matching game on the app to doing it on a computer- it's just so much faster to tap than it is to drag. I have about a hundred and fifty terms to juggle, but this seems to be a good way to get them down.

Apart from the homework, tonight I had a turkey and cheese sandwich for dinner and did dishes and laundry. I also had an amusing conversation with that friend of mine who often draws. Butch Hartman's go-to name for side characters seems to be "Gary". Some time ago, during one of her streams, she drew the two more prominent Garys with their clothes swapped (as well as Gary the snail from "Spongebob" on the side). "Dadlantis" brought us a fourth Gary (Well, third, unless you want to get technical like me and count Gary Hardcastle, but he doesn't entirely count for reasons I won't go into here because none of you would care).

This new Gary is a mermaid (merboy?) who is very awkward, and a prince. So I told my friend that she needed to draw him next to those other Garys from that long-ago stream. She kept me updated throughout the day as she drew mermaids. Prince Gary is very chubby, and he looked adorable. He has an orange tail in canon, so after some discussion, we agreed he needed to be based on a sunburst anthias, which is a gorgeous saltwater fish fitting for an Atlantian prince. It's also hilarious because he's so awkward, but now he's very pretty. And he has glasses, but my friend decided that made no sense, and gave him scuba goggles instead.

Then she started getting really into it. To make the scuba goggles work, she declared he collects lots of junk from the ocean (which wouldn't even be a stretch, given the plot of "Dadlantis"). Her biggest concern was that this would make him too much like Ariel, but I told her I'd give it some thought and pull something together for her. And we briefly brought up Atlantian social structures and politics, and tail colors, and a tentative theory of mine I never went through with that the mermaids and the genies could be distant cousins. It gave me something to do during study breaks.

Then I snuck in a joke about how I'd claimed Happy Peppy Gary for my own, and the third friend in our trio is a big Imaginary Gary fan. Therefore, I declared, he was her Gary now. Oh, she tried to fight it at first ("Wait. But. You wanted me to draw him. I was just helping") but I insisted that "You don't choose your Gary. Your Gary chooses you". That left her to make amused comments about, "I can't believe I just accidentally saddled myself with the mer-Gary", which I responded to with, "Sorry, I have a strict no-return policy on gifts". Her filename for her chubby prince is "I'm growing attached", and there were additional jokes about "'Chip Off the Old Chip' AU where instead of a song called "Find Your Voice", Chip Skylark sings one called "Find Your Gary".

So it's a thing now, and eventually I'm going to need to draw the sunburst anthias prince myself. Once school and studies aren't so pressing, of course, because I do in fact have my priorities straight. Then I insisted we give him the full first name of Gerald, because I had already given Happy Peppy Gary the first name Garrett, and if there's anything worse than multiple characters with the same first name, it's multiple characters with the same first full name too. She agreed. After that I ran a Google search and it turns out Gerald means "ruler with a spear", so now he has a spear too.

Prince Gary only has two very short appearances in this weird little episode, but we spruced him up and made him our precious. This isn't an uncommon thing with us. Don't ask what I did with Steve, the bizarre half-leprechaun who has been nicknamed The Destroyer of Canon and Headcanon Alike. I kid you not, this obscure little brat defies all the rules. Actually, I drew him the other day in response to a joke about, "Is there any world-building inconsistency you DON'T have an answer for?"

He's wearing a lampshade

So that was how I spent my evening. How was yours?

If You Give a College Student a Snow Day...

My English class was cancelled due to my teacher's sickness once again, which is slightly a shame since I was already there and had my laptop set up and everything. This time I wasn't to blame for not checking my e-mail, though- she didn't have the chance to send one this morning, and it was another teacher or adviser who poked her head in to send us home when our teacher hadn't shown up after a few minutes.

That is one nice thing about college- if your teacher gets sick, you don't have to take a class with a sub. You're free. And if there were a class I could afford to not attend three days so far (two sick days and one snowed-out one), this one's probably it. Although admittedly we have been focusing on mean, median, mode, and range work in statistics.

There were some impressive snow creations out on the quad that were made during the snow day on Monday, or the Tuesday following so I took pictures:

It's hard to tell, but that snowman was huge

Seriously, it was very tall

Here is a snow fort

And my favorite, the giant igloo!

There were also huge bowling pins with red stripes around their necks, which I didn't get a picture of.

I headed over to the Emma Eccles Jones building to kill time while waiting to visit the computer lab at 11:30 for stats. While there, I went over my abnormal psych flashcards, registered for the Sona website (where the research studies are posted, and where I can earn points to get extra credit for abnormal psych, although I have yet to find a study I'm eligible to participate in because I don't have obsessive behaviors or other qualifications), and I took a look at a writing contest USU is hosting. I saw the sign in the TSC. It's been there for awhile and I've been meaning to take a closer look at it, but I never had the time to stop and never remembered to go back to it later.

The entries are due by 4:00 pm on February 6th, short stories have to be under 17 pages long, and the winning entries will be published in a special addition of Sink Hollow, which seems to be a magazine. It doesn't look as though we were given a topic (Yes! For once I've found a contest not about diversity! That topic gets old after the first few times). I'm on the fence about whether I want to participate, because with two tests (abnormal psych and statistics) coming up on Tuesday, I'd rather focus my attention there.

But maybe I can give the contest some thought and pull something together when the tests are over. Shame I didn't stumble across it earlier, but they have the contest at the same time every year and the requirements are probably similar each time.

I did write several paragraphs for a few different story beginnings, but the problem is that each one seems too promising to submit to a contest and turn my back on forever. I don't like the idea of surrendering my work permanently. If I had a guarantee that I'm allowed to turn these pieces into full-blown stories someday or otherwise reclaim them for my own use, I'd be more willing to offer them up. It's the not knowing if by entering the contest I'm swearing away these promising beginnings that I have a problem with.

When 11:30 finally rolled around, I headed into the lab. We were walked through how to do a short assignment using the SPSS program, which is a lot like Excel except it has some cool extra features. Then I stuck around the Emma Eccles Jones building until my next class there, the one about psychology as a career. We had a guest speaker talk to us about the CASA program, where volunteers act as a stable, trusted adult in the lives of children whose lives have been upturned in times of court cases or additional abuse-related situations, which was pretty interesting.

 On my way across campus, I stopped to have lunch/dinner. I sat at a table with a guy named Umar (spelling may vary), and he was pretty enjoyable to talk to. He told me he'd been born in France after his parents had moved there from Africa. The TV was playing behind me, so sometimes he would watch it, and get excited when weird fish, crabs, or plants that hid themselves under the dirt would lurch up and snap their jaws around fish that were swimming nearby. One time one of these sea creatures swallowed an octopus, and he was bouncing a little in his seat, asking me what the word was in English for "long fish with all the legs".

He also asked me at one point if I was Hispanic, and was surprised to hear that I had grown up in Georgia. He asked several questions about what life was like for me growing up, commenting that "he'd heard the Southern states could be very prejudiced". Whether he meant for me or for him, he didn't say. Perhaps he was taken aback that a little Caucasian girl asked to sit by him? That's a sad way to view life. Well, I think he enjoyed having me to talk to.

Then I went to interior design. Our topic for the day was harmony. At the end of class, our teacher talked to us about those projects that are due on Friday, and showed us some pictures he'd taken of projects he had done. Aside from being a teacher, he's some sort of interior design consulter ("consulter" was the word he used), and shared pictures of several dining room chairs he had bought at thrift stores in poor condition and reupholstered over the weekend.

Lastly he showed us the finished dining room scene and said that the materials and things had cost him maybe $60, but "he had charged $2,000 for it". Wow. Pretty impressive. Heh heh. If Dad were more into upholstering furniture like that, it sounds like something he might enjoy. I wonder if that $2,000 including the bookshelf/side-table he'd made out of a weird, old-fashioned, ugly cabinet. He'd painted it white and navy blue and it looked pretty cool next to some of those refurbished chairs.

Hopefully he won't be too harsh of a grader, since all I have to show for this first project is a trashcan made out of a cardboard box. I talked to him after class for a minute and told him my project wasn't very fancy, and asked what he would be looking for with the project in terms of skill level. It sounds like my trashcan fits all the necessary criteria. Here's to hoping, I guess.

After that class, I made my way to the Institute building. I found a couch downstairs and alternated between running through my vocabulary terms and doing a bit of writing. Class was fine (although once again, my teacher made many of the same comments that he did in the previous lesson). I do enjoy listening to him though, because he tells us some interesting things that the average reader wouldn't pick up on, like wordplays in the Hebrew language (Jesus was born in a manger - ebus - which sounds like the word yebus, which means Jerusalem, stuff like that).

I came home and checked to see if the new "Fairly OddParents" episode ("Crockin' the House") was airing, even though I didn't have much hope. I wasn't able to catch it, and this time I didn't have a friend to toss me a link to an online version. Well, I'm sure I'll find it eventually. I DID get to enjoy "Dadlantis" and "Chloe Rules" though, so fair trade-off.

The second episode opened with this big dramatic build-up about how well Chloe did on her book report (including following "the most important rule: taping a five-dollar bill to the bibliography"), and when Crocker was ready to announce the new hall monitor, he said he would reward Chloe... by naming his nephew Kevin as hall monitor instead. Chloe's reward, he announced, was that she would learn the valuable lesson that life wasn't fair.

Poor Kevin. Crocker keeps forcing him into awkward positions like that and trying to groom him to be his "heir" to the "family business" of fairy-hunting, telling him that he doesn't need friends, that he needs to act more like a Crocker, and Kevin is so confused. For several episodes he's been wavering back and forth on whether he wants any part of that life, or a life of being Timmy and Chloe's friend. I think we all know which side he'll pick in the end, but it's fun to watch him fight to find a middle ground, since he loves his uncle dearly but has never had any friends before.

As for me, I love watching Kevin, because he's so very... Kevin. Even when the camera isn't "focused" on him, he has little personality quirks. For instance, when he gets nervous he covers his eyes with his hands, even when he's in the corner and the other characters in the scene are doing the same or similar actions together (all pointing and screaming, for example). It makes me happy when the animators remember that every character reacts to situations differently. Timmy and Chloe may panic and scramble to find a solution to a problem. Though there's been no direct attention called to him, Kevin just shrinks back and tries to hide. It's very interesting to me.

There was another scene in that episode I liked where Crocker and a bunch of students - including Timmy - were tearing down the hall at top speed in order to escape Chloe on a power trip. Chloe demanded that they all show her their hall passes, which is when they realized they didn't have any. Crocker, still running, then screamed, "I'm a teacher, you lunatics! You're all excused!" ... It's funnier if you see it, I guess. Sometimes this show just kills me. I don't know why it was so funny, but it was.

Well, Wednesday is certainly my busy day, and I was on campus for about ten hours without returning to my apartment. Right now I can only imagine what it will be like to add English class into the mix too. I hope it doesn't become too overwhelming. Luckily my classes aren't too difficult for me just yet.

Red Bus, Black Sheep

I gave myself enough time to get to class today, except I made a "mistake" at the crosswalk. The light for the cars turned red, but the crosswalk light didn't come on, so I didn't cross. Of course, the red bus rolled in while I was stuck on the opposite side of the road, and left just before I reached it. After statistics class, it was supposedly five minutes away, so I waited for it instead of walking to the TSC. Midway through its route, it turned around without explanation and went the other way, so we had to wait for the next one to arrive. Oh, red bus, how I love thee so.

Actually, it was funny because I'd left my phone back at Blue Square (Another girl was tracking the bus for us as we all waited). I had my Chromebook balanced on my right arm and Google Docs open, and I got a surprising amount of writing done just tapping away with my left hand. Ten minutes, at least. Left it out while I rode the bus too, which was another ten minutes to the TSC, and then another ten since the teal bus makes such a huge loop. Got to make time where you can! ... I was actually planning to do the Quizlet matching game on my phone with some vocab words, but since I had neither it nor the computer mouse on hand, I went with that option instead. Starting tomorrow I'll be studying in these little pockets of free time.

Abnormal psych went well today too. I am enjoying the class, and hopefully I do well on the tests. I studied my abnormal psych vocabulary words for awhile this afternoon, as well as read a chapter from my math book and completed an online assignment (Took me awhile, but I got 100%!) Additionally, someone else uploaded their interior design project, so I had the chance to post a reply on his piece. One down, one to go! I wonder how he figured out how to get those still images uploaded. Hmm.

I also got in contact with the second girl Demetria and I are supposed to visit teach, but she just moved out of the ward this semester. Whoops. We're clearly on top of things over here, aren't we?

Oh yeah, and I colored a drawing of mine tonight while I listened to my vocabulary word flashcards some more, because that sounded more productive than coloring it while listening to music or audiobooks I've heard dozens of times:

Oh look, it's the quillguin

Nothing to see here, just a joke about how my life is getting to the ridiculous point where the only romance I can stand in writing is the romance I write myself. Mostly because I prefer awkwardness to situations that are "near-perfect". Botched dates that were well-intentioned, irritated little kids who don't want a new mom in their lives, nervous forty-four-year-olds who have never been good at this emotional dribble-drabble trying to express their feelings for the first time, tensions that rise because each of the pair has quirks and wants that the other is trying really hard to turn a blind eye to or find a compromise for somewhere between... Come on, other authors out there, step it up a notch! Or rather, cut back. Take it slow. Seriously. I've read too many characters moving together too ridiculously fast.

And I especially like characters who respect one another and truly want the other to be happy, even if that means they let their crush drift on to another (*cough* especially if they haven't made a move on him even if they feel entitled to him because main character points *cough*) since they see how happy he is with someone else, and they care about his feelings.

No, Sam's emotionally abusive and manipulative treatment of Danny and Valerie in the "Flirting With Disaster" episode of "Danny Phantom" (as one completely random example) didn't absolutely infuriate and pretty deeply ruin her character for me, why would you say that?

And a Trashcan Video

I'm glad Demetria and I went shopping on Saturday. Mom called today to inform me that Utah State had put out a "Code Blue" and school would be starting at 10:30 today due to the snow and the roads that needed to be plowed. Apparently Dad is listed as the contact number in cases like this, although I still get e-mails. The e-mail from my English teacher said we would simply have class on Wednesday.

Personally I thought the roads looked clear, but maybe they're too icy.

Last night, Mom and I had been talking about a writing conference in May that Sam had suggested I sign up for. I'd picked out all the workshops I wanted to attend, and Mom did the registering process for me. She needed to do something with a PayPal because the site didn't want to accept her credit card. I think she finally made it work with her debit card. After that, I started killing time until my first class of the day at 1:30.

Around 1:10, I rode the elevator down to the first floor and started out to the bus stop, but hesitated. I texted the bus to see when the next one would be coming. The message I got back said, "No buses on route". Oh. I checked the Stadium stop too, just in case. Same message. 

Now I was worried I'd have to walk up the hill, which would take me fifteen to twenty minutes, not counting the extra few minutes it would take for me to get to my class. Fortunately, I was smart enough to check my e-mail on my phone first. Yep. Classes had been, apparently, cancelled for the whole day.

The weird thing was, I checked my e-mail several times throughout the morning. Except, I have two e-mails and I guess I checked one and not the other. Clearly I need to be more on top of things.

At least I was on top of things for interior design! I uploaded my project today, even though it's not due until Friday. I'm pretty happy with it and I should get a good score.

But for whatever bizarre reason, Canvas was set up so you couldn't upload still pictures for this assignment. You can only link pictures from elsewhere on the Internet, and I wasn't sure I wanted my teacher to view my blog and/or think that I'd stolen my picture from some blogger out there. I reread the syllabus and was about to ask him for advice on how to submit multiple pictures showing progress over time, before I decided to save myself the trouble and just put together a 30-second video slideshow instead, because Canvas said it would accept that type of file. Here is the result:

I think this qualifies for a recycled project about harmony and contrast!

One of the other requirements for this assignment is that I submit a critique on two other projects. Of course, mine is the only project that's been submitted so far. I guess I'll have to check back later.

As for how the rest of my day yet, I did a lot of writing - pushing through that writer's block, yay! - and went over my abnormal psych vocabulary words a bunch of times. Barely a week until that first exam. Boy oh boy.

A Bus and a Trashcan

I forgot to mention yesterday that while we were at the transit center, Demetria and I picked up  those LED keychain lights I wanted to get back in December. They're shaped like buses and pretty cute.

Anyway, today we went to church, as usual. When we got home, I did dishes and painted the trashcan. Luckily, we didn't use a lot of green on the pumpkins during October, so there was more than enough for me.

A house with a window and vines growing in front of it?

I think I'll call it all done, but I don't want to turn it in just yet. I have interior design tomorrow, and I'd like to ask my teacher what the best way to do so is (I want to post a timeline of photos, so I could put them all in an Paint document, but I want to make sure he can open it. I could put them in Word, although I'm 99% sure he said he doesn't accept Word or PDFs. I think he wants Google Docs, but I need to reread his syllabus).

Hopefully I get the chance to talk to him if I can't find the answers in the syllabus- after all, I did sign an agreement saying I'd make no attempt to see him outside of class, and if I remember correctly, last time he came in so close to the start of class that no one really had time to ask him anything.

Tonight, there was a stake auxiliary training meeting, so Demetria and I went out to that. Since those meetings are supposed to be for anyone who has a calling, I was surprised at how few people were there, especially when it was the entire stake.

I was also less than thrilled with the information I got from my meeting when we split into groups according to similar callings. It would seem all the other wards are way ahead of us when it comes to visiting teaching. Demetria and I made plans with one of our people today, but I'm a visiting teaching supervisor (I think?), and I was told that the coordinator was supposed to contact me. 

I actually ran into her at the meeting. Her name is Megan and she plays the piano most days. She told me that the old presidency assigned all the visiting teaching pairs, even though it was technically supposed to be her job, but they never got in contact with her. Our directions have been very unclear (I think I was even told "not to do anything" until the coordinator contacted me, and she said that no one has talked to her either). Megan told me she's going to talk with the presidency and try to clear things up, and I gave her my number so we could keep in touch.

Also, no one in our ward's presidency actually showed up tonight, so now I have a paper I'm supposed to deliver to the first counselor. It doesn't look super important, though- it's the lessons that are supposed to be taught from the Hinckley book on certain days, and I think they're all in order. If I don't lose it, I'll bring it next week, I guess. We've done fine through January so far, so she might already have a list anyway. We had donuts and chocolate milk after the meeting, though. I appreciated that.

I read a chapter in my math textbook tonight, and copied down some more vocabulary words. And yep, I'm still trying to convince my skeptical friends that Youngblood is an awesome character worthy of at least some of their love (they prefer the melting clone who was betrayed by her father figure and I kind of don't blame them). Here are sketches I made of some backstory headcanons:

Youngblood is very brave and kind of a brat, so I can totally see him 

not telling Sitarist he lost his hand because "it would slow them down"

The Ghost Zone's greatest hunter is disappoint.

Skulker and Ember are dating by at least Season 3, so I thought it would

be funny if he had all the shirts she gives out at concerts lying around

Captain's quarters? The image of small Youngblood in a giant 

bed with like seven pillows was too amusing to go undrawn

Sitarist is less than thrilled that Skulker and Technus are tricking

out his easily-distracted and trigger-happy little charge.

I feel like Youngblood was definitely alive during the 60s since "youngblood" was apparently a slang term for a kid or young teenager around that time. I've also heard that his "Wanna watch me launch myself into the hearts of millions?" comment is a reference to the launch of the Apollo spacecraft, although I haven't been able to confirm if that's true. Either way, it's perfect and I accept it. Though now that I'm thinking about it, I believe Ember is supposed to be from the 80s, so she wouldn't be in the Ghost Zone around this time. Ah, well. They're just doodles.

And just to remind everyone that sometimes I draw "Fairly OddParents" characters too, here's Sheldon Dinkleberg and Thaddeus Turner Timmy's dad when they were Squirrely Scouts as kids:

"S! Q! 'uirrely-Y!"

"I think I'll need an alibi."

... "Dinklescouts" is such an underrated episode.

Cardboard Trashcan

Demetria and I went to the grocery store today. We had a successful trip, except the self check-out kept giving me grief. Apparently I'd bought too many things, so the machine wasn't happy they didn't all fit on the scale at the same time.

While we were out, we saw this dinosaur balloon. Demetria wanted to take a picture of me with it since it was taller than I was.

I made macaroni and cheese for dinner, and talked to both Mom and Dad today in the hopes of stirring the creative juices as to what I could craft for my interior design project. I finally settled on "building a trash can out of unused cardboard boxes". That's recycling! It also doesn't match with the rest of the furniture, which creates contrast (Though, I'm trying to decide if I want to buy some paint and add color, to make the contrast more obvious). It might be more contrasting if I leave it as is.

Starting with a box and two chunks of styrofoam.

The styrofoam does nothing except make the can taller.

I wasn't sure masking tape was going to work, so I cut through

the styrofoam and wove them together with a plastic shopping bag

 Holes in the box

Plastic bag woven up through the two layers of styrofoam,

through the cardboard box, and down again

Styrofoam

Cutting out the top of the box

Viewing the bottom of the box from above

  

 Used a paperclip to keep the flaps shut

A garbage bag has been added and we're done!

Lid is made from a second box, held up on the sides

and in the back with straws and more paperclips

My OTP

Once I was done with all the cutting, I threw the scraps away inside the new can. Oh, the irony.

Urban Legend Research

My day was a simple one. I woke up and went to the library for English class. We were split into groups to gather research for a project we'll be doing for the next week on urban legends. My group was a assigned to discuss MKUltra which, against all odds, is both an urban legend and a true story. Go figure. Better than Bigfoot, Slenderman, or Bloody Mary, though.

After returning home, I took a bit of a break before doing laundry, and finally getting down to business with homework. I gathered all the Pins I needed on Pinterest for my interior design board about contrast, finished writing my article summaries for English and, after some time spent studying vocabulary words, took a statistics quiz. 

11 out of 12 on a quiz isn't bad, except for the fact that the question I got wrong was one I specifically picked a different answer for because this was my retake, and in my previous attempt at the quiz, there was a very similar question where the answer I'd picked was wrong. But it was right in this question in the second attempt, if that makes any sense. I think I'll bring that up with my teacher, because I have no idea what part of it is wrong and how I can tell the difference between them for future reference.

My homework is all done for the weekend! Well, except for two things. Three, if you count studying. I want to read Chapter 4 of my statistics book, and I have six days to do that "refurbish or recycle" project for interior design. The directions are kind of unclear, but I think if I recycle something into a decoration for my room and make it look pretty and/or make it more functional, I should be good. 

So I still need to decide how I want to do that. I wanted to call Dad and talk to him, but I forgot and I think he's up at the cabin and probably out of range now. I suppose I can use my Pinterest board to search for ideas. I just have to make sure not to copy anything I see too closely, because that counts as plagiarism and if any of my teachers are familiar with Pinterest, this one's probably the guy who'd call me on it. I might glance through some things for ideas, such as "I'll make a lamp!" or "I'll make a pencil holder!", but I definitely won't mimic exactly.

I got some writing done tonight. Six pages worth of a new short story project, which isn't bad. I've been suffering writer's block with some other works of mine, but this one flows very naturally. I'm writing a character with a very heavy speech pattern- not an accent, just a sort of rapid, rambling, childish way of talking that consists of a lot of rhetorical questions directed loosely at the reader. It was a good day to relax, though I'll have to get back to studying tomorrow. I want to keep myself always at the ready!

A Brilliant H.R. Plan

Dumbest thing I did today: I left early so I could catch the red bus, but when I got outside, I forgot I wanted to ride the red bus and instead of walking up to that bus stop, waited for the purple bus instead. I realized my mistake as the purple bus pulled up, and didn't want to leave after I'd been waiting there. I rode to the top of the hill in the hopes of catching the red bus at the TSC, but it left just as we reached it.

So, that was lame. I texted the automatic tracker to see when the next one would come. One in eight minutes, one in fourteen minutes. But it's the red bus. So add at least five to each.

Since I hate standing around and waiting, I walked instead, which took me ten minutes. Honestly, riding up to the TSC and then walking is faster than waiting for and riding the red bus. Plus, it gets me exercise. I guess I'll switch it up whether I ride or walk, depending on the snow and cold.

I was half an hour early to stats class, so I sat by Jeff again. He told me about his career plans. He wants to go into human resources and was telling me it seems to be an easy job (hiring, firing, doing career fairs, some meetings, payroll stuff, etc.), and that he'd only need two years of grad school (as opposed to the four or five or six he'd need for other psychology stuff), and that he could potentially start out with $70,000 a year, or something. I didn't fact-check this, but it seemed pretty interesting. I'm proud of him for finding something it seems he'll enjoy. And if you get paid well, bonus!

I actually did ride the red bus all the way back to the TSC today, which is two stops past the one I usually jump off at and walk. The shuttle has to go far down a back hill and curve around again, whereas if I simply walk, I can cut across the quad, pass the TSC, and then reach the bus stop (on the correct side of the street, even). I'm pretty sure it takes longer to ride. As you can see, I'm not a big fan of the red line. It's at least a twenty-minute ride all the way around and is just too slow.

I went home for lunch and to relax before my abnormal psych class at 3:00. It went well, although I waited at the TSC shuttle stop for several minutes afterwards with a steadily-increasing amount of people before some old lady arrived and announced that "the buses had crashed".

I was debating whether to walk home - it was snowing - or hang around the TSC for awhile and grab an early dinner, even though it wasn't even 4:15 yet and I was still mostly full from lunch, when I ran across a girl with whom I went to high school who now lives in Blue Square right next to me and Demetria. We decided to walk and talk on our way back together. On our way, we saw one of the city buses (not the school campus shuttles) on the road, guarded by a few police cars. I think it just slipped on the ice or something, and it didn't look like any cars had been hit. That's slightly less dramatic than "Did you hear the buses hit each other?!?!"

After a bit of a break, I did my reading assignments for English and abnormal psych, typed up some notes, and took an English quiz on citing sources before scooping myself some ice cream and typing up this blog post. I'm planning to do some writing tonight (I think I came up with a great idea for my "Stars and Finches" so Ethel can have her own plot besides "escort Gavin across the country")!

I listened to a short TED talk about world-building the other day and jotted down some notes. I was pretty shocked when I realized that this is one of my only pieces of writing I've never written a history timeline for. It must have slipped my mind since I was more concerned about maps and culture. I definitely need to fix that, and I'm always getting closer to finalizing the magic system. Everything is coming together.

And, because I was in the mood, here is yet another Youngblood and Sitarist sketch I did in my little notebook:

My all-time favorite character relationship is apparently "devoted child and distant parental figure". It's why I love Cackletta and Fawful from "Mario and Luigi: Superstar Saga", and why I love H.P. and Sanderson from "Fairly OddParents", and Jumba and the experiments from "Lilo and Stitch" too. This is my first time replacing "parental figure" with "older brother figure", and I'm enjoying it quite a lot. It's obvious in the show that these two get along swimmingly, except for the fact that one is a brat who keeps fretting over his own grammar and the other is a snooty stuck-up who probably sticks around to feed off that energy field Youngblood puts out that renders him invisible to adults, I guess.

Every one of those characters I listed (Well, maybe not Jumba) seem to be so overlooked in their games or shows and fandoms, which is a shame because they all have so much potential. A pity so many people see a show or book and just cry, "You get a romantic relationship! You get a romantic relationship!" There's so much more to these characters than pairing them off, and I wish people wrote platonic relationships more often. It's nice to shake things up.

Money For a Broken Chair

This morning I had English again for the first time in a bit. We're meeting in the library on Friday, and hopefully I remember that when the time comes.

I went home between that class and Psychology as a Career.  It's difficult to take notes for that class, because so far everything is either a get-to-know-you or common sense information (I don't think I'll be tested on why my classmates decided to come to college or how it's different from what they expected).

I stayed on campus after that, ducking into the eating area at the end of the TSC's lower floor, and scribbled out some story notes on a napkin. I need to do a project for interior design due next week, I believe. The theme is "harmony and contrast" and I need to "refurbish or recycle" something (and there was one more word that I forgot and that's not listed on Canvas). Hmm. 

My first thought was that I could do a neat display by taking sheets of old first drafts and other early writings, doing that trick Demetria did with the papers we took to the Halloween party to make them look yellow and old, and crumpling them up at the bottom of the display. I could make some sort of stack. At the top of the mound could be a character or something rising from the discarded drafts. Recycling, see? But that's more of an art project, and probably not what our teacher had in mind. It would be a good idea to make a timelapse video to show him and the classmates who are supposed to comment things they liked or disliked all the steps, though. 

Apparently our teacher had in mind ideas more like "refurbish a chair". He said that since he didn't make us buy the two recommended texts for this class, we could put that money into our projects throughout the year. So if I want to buy a broken chair, I can.

I had a little time before my Institute class, since it was Wednesday. I went back to Blue Square to drop off my stuff and get something light to eat (I wasn't hungry enough to eat anything on campus with one of my meal swipes). We had an interesting class, although I think our teacher forgot about some of the things he told us last week, and told them again. We talked about Mary being pregnant and visiting Elisabeth, and Elisabeth knowing she was pregnant without Mary having to tell her, which probably came as a huge relief to Mary. We discussed Joseph too.

And we talked about how some religious scholars out there try to deny the fact that Mary was a virgin by saying the scripture was mistranslated. "In Greek the word means 'virgin'", they say, "but they translated it from Hebrew, where it just means young girl, and the Greeks mistranslated it because of reasons". Which my teacher said sounds like a convincing argument, unless you know the Greek culture of young girls being temple prostitutes. In the Hebrew culture, it was a given that a girl of marrying age would be a virgin. But in Greece, where apparently girls had to serve their time as a temple prostitute before they were married, you needed to specify that Mary was a virgin, and they did. The scholars would know this detail, but don't bring it up, I guess.

Finally, my teacher used to work with the back-door neighbor of Boyd K. Packer. He asked him what that was like one time, and the neighbor said, "Well, he just seems regular to me". When prompted to share a story, he said that (at that time), the last time he'd seen Boyd K. Packer, they were talking over the fence and there was a squeal. One of the piglets in Packer's yard had tripped into the mud and gotten the mud all over its face. Packer walked over, scooped up the piglet, and gently used his thumb to smear the mud out of its eyes. The neighbor said that it made him realize how gentle he was, and that Jesus probably treated animals a similar way while on the earth. I just thought it was a neat story.

My teacher asked if we could pray in a foreign language for the opening prayer, and asked if a redhead could pray for the closing prayer. And I can't remember what source he cited, but it was from the presidency in one of the older Ensigns or something that "a two-minute prayer is sufficient to open any meeting, and thirty seconds is sufficient to close it".

He's pretty cool, my teacher. Except, I chose the wrong day to stay after class to ask a quick question, because he ended up talking to one of the students about life in India for fifteen minutes while his roommate and I waited there. That was Not Cool (TM). I rocked back and forth, bounced on my heels, and drummed my fingers on my notebook while trying to look like I wasn't. Clearly, I was too subtle. After fifteen minutes, I finally interrupted them and asked the teacher if he could remind me next week that I wanted to ask him a question, because I needed to go. The roommate shot me a grateful glance and said that I could probably ask him now, because "I think we're about to head out too".

All I wanted to ask my teacher was why he kept saying "This is [like] the Hill Cumorah pageant" every time one of the songs in the scriptures came up (I can't remember if last Wednesday I mentioned this, but in Greek - I think Greek - there are a lot of poetic songs in these scenes with Gabriel, Mary, Elisabeth, and Zacharias). He was doing this last week too. I didn't understand why he didn't say "Christmas pageant" since this was the Christmas story that a lot of us have probably put on, or if it was a metaphor for people singing and putting on a pageant show and he didn't want to use Christmas pageant as his example, why he didn't say "Nauvoo pageant", which more people would have been familiar with.

He said it was because the Hill Cumorah pageant, a pageant once put on at the Hill Cumorah, used to be the more popular one, and admitted more people probably would have known about the Nauvoo one. I just thought it was a very weird thing for him to be saying, because he said "This is the Hill Cumorah pageant again" at least seven times between today and last week, and I wanted it cleared up. A dumb thing to wait fifteen minutes after for, sure, but I wasn't expecting him to go on talking to that guy for that long. Well, I got to hear interesting things about dowries and schooling and culture.

Regardless, it was a frustrating end to my day, since I'd been first in line to ask him a question after class, but he'd jumped up to grab free parking passes for the kids who drove, and the line got all muddled by the time he came back. I have a right to grump about it for a blog post.

I went out to wait for the evening bus, and finally made it back to Blue Square a little over half an hour after my Institute class had ended. The flaw in having Institute once a week on Wednesdays is the fact that all the new "Fairly OddParents" are airing then. It was supposed to air at nine, but the time zones weren't clear, so I didn't know if that meant 7:00 here, or 8:00. I flipped on the TV just as one of the old (like Season 3) episodes was coming on as a rerun, and since I'd watched it during the marathon, I took it to mean that 7:00 was not the correct time. Kind of a relief.

My artsy friend was doing a stream again (she does a lot of those in the evenings, you see). I wasn't in the mood to join her (especially since I knew I'd want to see the new episode), so I distracted myself for a bit until it was 8:00. Then I turned on the TV again. It seemed like the new episode wasn't airing, so I reluctantly withdrew to see what my friend was doing. The other day she was drawing a Danny Phantom picture for someone who didn't get a gift during a Christmas art exchange some people were doing. It was coming along well. Only, apparently she didn't save or the file got corrupted or something happened, because she had to start over today. She wrote this info next to the stream link, so I thought I should check up on her.

It turned out to be good I did. Apparently, there was a lot of confusion about the episode, because they played the wrong theme song or something so one of my friends turned it off only to realize later they played the new episode... Something along those lines. Anyone, one of our pals had recorded it, so after taking half an hour to get it set up, she uploaded it.

I told our drawing friend, "I'm totally ditching you to watch the episode. I'm not even going to make up an excuse for it". She said she wasn't even mad. She ended up pausing her stream but leaving the chat open, so we all watched it together and talked about things as they went on (Anti-Cosmo and Anti-Wanda apparently MOVED from their castle while Foop was away at school, without telling him, so he's been living by himself in the giant castle for who knows how long and this is why his parents haven't appeared since Season 7. Holy heart-shattering plot twist, I was not ready). So it turned out to be really fun! 

Sammy Sweetsparkle kills me. Vicky is all "Tell me I'm pretty!" and then you have this small elf (cough he's slightly different from all the other elves so it's my headcanon that he's one of the huldufólk because of what he does with food and the way his magic gets strengthened by music cough) boy written to be an exasperatingly good person who turns sour things sweet and adds sprinkles to everything and has this sweet little voice and personality, running for his life on a treadmill and sobbing, "I would, but my mommy told me never to lie!"

It was an okay episode, and there were things we didn't like about it, but we all agreed that Foop and Chloe hugging was great. Completely coincidentally I've always ended up drawing Foop and Chloe on the same layer, so I was amused by this friendship, and my friends were all over it too.

Though if I were smarter, I would have checked the TV again at 9:00 to see if the episode was airing, for future reference. But, it's okay. The last time I was in the stream, another pal sent me the link to where I could watch all the episodes that were supposed to air in America, but that never did for reasons that were unclear. I felt no shame in watching an episode that was supposed to air last April and is not scheduled to air during this "mini-marathon" now. I have friends in high places, apparently.

So I'll be okay in the future if I can't catch new episodes on Wednesday. The other reason why I didn't feel bad about watching the nine or ten episodes that have aired in other countries online is because apparently, they won't be airing here in America in chronological order. That was not okay with me. Sure, it's MOSTLY a cartoon where it doesn't matter what order you watch them in, but at the same time, it does matter, because Timmy and Chloe's friendship was so absolutely rocky at the start, and Timmy is slowly warming up to her. I wanted to see this happen in order so I could notice the turning points and future continuity.

That's what I did on Tuesday, watch episodes, so I'm caught up with my friends and they don't have to keep spoilers from me anymore. "Dimmsdale Daze" was very, very good. And it's hilarious because it's becoming more and more obvious as time goes on that Chloe isn't a Mary Sue (she lies to get out of trouble, turns in an alien who's been hiding on earth for six seasons and trusted her with his secret to get a good grade on her extra credit project, and has absolutely no problems stealing a doll she wanted from Timmy's dad, even when she knew it was ultra-rare and he'd been looking for it for years, etc.), so everyone out there who was insisting that she was is in for a storm. I've been defending her since the beginning, so it's pretty awesome to me. 

It's also really cool that after just watching her for a few episodes last year, back when there were only like seven of them out, that I made predictions about her personality - she denies everything that goes wrong or that she doesn't agree with, her parents pressure her to be a perfectionist, her parents are often absent and left her to raise herself on a Care Bear-like cartoon meant for three-year-olds that she's loved for the last fifty-five years - and then all of these things are being confirmed as canon in the episodes as they come out (she DOES deny everything, and her parents are "extreme veterinarians" who are often gone. It broke my heart that time Timmy pointed out that they were wearing their pants backwards, and Chloe scoffed that "her parents don't have time to pay attention to the little, unimportant things in life" when they do things like leave for the Amazon one night while she's asleep without wishing her good-bye). 

It's wonderful. The writing has been tipping downhill now that Butch and some of my other favorite writers don't write the episodes, but I'm glad my friends and I can all find things we agree we like, and we can talk about continuity jokes like Punchie the Kangaroo too. It's a good show for me.