I Asked Out a Boy (and I Liked It)

I had creative nonfiction this morning, and managed to swing by the writing lab in between it and Institute in order to print out the essays I need to peer-review by Thursday. I ended up on Quinton's bus after Institute was over. At some point or other, he ended up asking how my group chocolate project was coming along. I paused, then said, "Well, we present this Thursday, and then we'll finally be done. Actually, I was thinking I might go down to Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory by the Cold Stone and celebrate after it's all over, and I was wondering if you might be interested in joining me."

He paused for a second too and said, "This Thursday, right?" He told me when he got off work (7:30), and that he would love to join me. We exchanged contact information and learned each other's last names for the first time. When he heard mine, he said, "Oh, that's my mom's maiden name. Maybe we're related." There were a few seconds of silence. I said, "Well, I hope not, because that's going to make Thursday awkward." Laughs were had.

Since Quinton was driving and couldn't put in my information, I sent him a text so he would know it was me, and clarified that I was flexible as to where we went out, because I wasn't sure what his food tastes were. Later, he texted back, suggesting either the underground pizza restaurant that I enjoy, or Angie's Diner. I noticed that he suggested both a more casual location and a more formal one, and left the final decision up to me. I can work with that. So, I guess we're going to Angie's now. He upgraded my chocolate shop / potential ice cream trip to a full-on dinner. Smooth.

I stepped off the bus at Blue Square and paid a visit to the Aggie Chocolate Factory. To my disappointment, it was shut down at this time, so I couldn't see the sacks of beans on display very well (I'd been hoping to learn which countries the beans were coming from for the product line my group is creating). Oh well.

While I was staring through the window, a boy sitting on one of the restaurant benches ended up taking to me. His name was Braden. He was nice, and talked to me for about half an hour about chocolate and school and things. I was able to interview him for research purposes, and he offered some interesting insights my group hadn't considered. Apparently, he's heard rumors that the large wall in the middle of the downstairs area might be knocked down soon, which would open the entire room up and create a more social environment. When my group met with the owners of the Chocolate Factory, creating a social "coffee shop" environment was high on their list. Braden also mentioned that he often comes here to study because it's quiet, but that once the Factory opens, he might not hang around anymore if it's too loud. Good things to know.

Back in my room, I completed four assignments and quizzes for my Sensation and Perception class. I'm now officially finished with that class, except for a presentation I'm giving on November 14th, and the participation points I'll earn for attending everyone else's presentations. Not bad!

My chocolate group were meeting up again tonight with the hopes of finishing as much of our project as absolutely possible. Quinton was driving the evening bus, so we were able to talk and finalize plans a bit more. My chocolate group worked for 5-6 hours tonight, designing our graphics and organizing the results of our survey. It was 10:00 by the time I headed home on the evening bus (not driven by Quinton this time). It will be very nice to have this project over and done with, but it has to be done. At least it's an enjoyable topic!

Chocolate 'Til 11

Last Friday in Literary Analysis, everyone signed up to meet with a "writing fellow" (one of two girls about our age who would peer-review our papers with us). These writing fellows would critique our essay drafts and nudge us in the right direction if we needed help. This morning, I met with mine. Not... my best work there, to put it lightly. It's coherent, but as we went through it together, I was internally screaming the entire time. There's a lot to fix there. The essay is heavier on the summary side than the analysis side, but it's workable. At least it got done before the deadline.

We had a guest lecturer speak to us in the actual Literary Analysis class today. It was the professor who teaches Native American Studies- a class that I considered taking, but dropped from my schedule after Day 1. That was interesting.

Sensation and Perception came after that. We're beginning presentations now. I don't give my presentation on split-brain syndrome until November 14th. That'll be interesting. I'll definitely want to keep that on my radar, because I wouldn't want to show up to class that day unprepared.

After Sensation and Perception, I ate at the Marketplace, then headed back to Blue Square (via Quinton's bus) and from there headed out to Logan High School. Since my plan to purchase tickets for the school play online had failed, and calling the office had failed, I decided to see what would happen if I showed up in person. As it turns out, tickets won't be going on sale for another week or two. But, I needed to head out to the grocery store anyway, so the trip wasn't a total waste.

I met with my chocolate marketing group tonight so we could work on our project. I ended up staying until 11:00, but we did get our survey sent out and work on some good ideas. There's a lot to do with this case competition. Crazy how we're given only one week to do our research, design a product, and put everything together.

I'm feeling good about my group. One of them was in the group that won the case competition last year (which was for a real estate agency, I believe). Rumor has it that one of the groups we're competing with already fell apart, because several of its members dropped the class. Another group can't get in contact with its group leader, in a bizarre twist of fate. So far my group has gotten along together well, and it seems like we have a good balance of skill sets. It will be interesting to see how things turn out.

Steak Conference

Dad whipped up a breakfast of crepes today, and then we attended Stake Conference. This was, of course, followed by a steak dinner (with some spaghetti on the side). After dinner, I worked on designing my schedule for next semester with Mom. We've set it up so that theoretically, if I wanted to, I could graduate next May with a major in Psychology. However, I do plan to continue my education for another year so I can obtain my English major as well. That will be nice to have.

This evening, I drove back up to school with Stockton. It's nice that we can do things like this together. Switching drivers one way or the other sure makes the trip easier than driving both ways, especially when it's late at night and navigating is hard.

Western Octave

Mom was sick today. I did lots of writing. That's basically how it went. I got some use out of my thermos for the first time this weekend, enjoying how icy cold the water was. It definitely does stay cold for 24 hours if you chill it properly, so I'm happy with my birthday purchase.

I took an online quiz for our unit on sound in Sensation and Perception today, although I did get a little stumped on the question, "In Western music, which of the following is NOT a note in the octave?" My answer choices were A, F, E, and G, which I could have sworn were all in the octave. I stared at the question for a long time, wondering if I should ask my family members for advice, but worried they would tease me for not knowing the answer to a question that was surely obvious. I just kept staring at it and thinking, Maybe I'm just an idiot. What am I missing? Anyway, it turns out that G is not in the octave, despite being the 7th letter of the alphabet. Who knew?

Music is not my thing.

Dad cored a lot of apples today, and watched a few movies while he did. He decided to finish off the night watching The Incredibles II, which he never saw in theaters with the rest of us. It's a nice movie and I enjoyed getting to watch it with Dad. It's nice to have these lazy Saturdays every now and again.

She's Siiixteen

I didn't have any classes today, which was nice. It gave me the opportunity to work on my assignments. Specifically, I had a very difficult assignment for Literary Analysis due tonight. The writing prompt was released at midnight, and we only have 24 hours to read and respond to the assignment. I read through it several times this morning, but only grew more confused. Finally, I gave up struggling with it and did some laundry. I washed my sheets so I would have a nice, fresh bed to come home to after my trip home this weekend. That's nice to do every once in awhile.

Stockton and I drove down for Jorja's surprise birthday party today. Traffic was horrid in a "we went 1 mile in 5 minutes and were forced to stop in the middle of an intersection on a green light" kind of way, but we made it eventually- and before Jorja arrived, too. Mom had rented a pavilion and hired a D.J., and Dad whipped up cotton candy for everyone. There were colorful cards for everyone to write notes and leave them in a basket. I was in the middle of writing mine when Jorja arrived at the party with her last few friends. Everyone cheered and shouted "Happy birthday." I hurried up to give her a hug. By the time I reached her, she was in tears. I think she enjoyed the surprise.

I spent most of the party playing with Preston, spinning him around and things. We slipped out to the playground at one point. I wanted to try the monkey bars, but when I saw them, I said, "Oh, I don't know if I can do this." Preston scoffed and said, "They're just monkey bars," until he climbed up beside me, reached out his hands, and said, "Oh." The monkey bars weren't your average, straightforward monkey bars. They branched off in two directions to form a circle in the middle. Doable, but unexpected. At Preston's request, I gave him a boost and he crawled across the top. He said his hands were shivering by the end, but he enjoyed it.

Mom allowed me to duck out of the party early, which was nice of her. I spent the rest of the night struggling through my literary analysis assignment. It was a lot of work to do in a very short time, but I'm glad to have it done.

Super Chickens

Creative Nonfiction was cancelled today. I worked on my seven-page essay that was due tonight, which I of course hadn't started despite the fact that I knew putting it off to the last day was a terrible idea. Actually, our prompt was "Seven pages of completed essays" with the decision of whether they were the same large essay or several small essays left up to us. Having bounced several ideas around earlier this week, I'd finally decided to simply write about my experience writing, from starting when I was seven years old to working my way up until now, and the decisions I have to make in my future.

Institute was my only class today. I didn't bail out. As an added bonus, I bumped into Quinton at the bus stop when I left. A few weeks ago, I'd been sitting on the bench at the TSC bus stop when Quinton walked past and said hello. After a brief pause, he doubled back and sat by me, and we talked for a few minutes. Then, spotting the Red bus pulling up across the street (its one virtue being that it's the fastest way to my apartment from the TSC), I bid him good-bye and hurried to catch it. Only after I sat down again did I glance out the window, see Quinton leave the bench to stand by himself, and realize I'd just ditched him while he was flirting with me. Oops. That probably gave off a signal that I didn't intend.

So today, I was determined to take my time and talk with him. I passed on taking the Orange bus, which takes the long route to my apartment. Quinton noticed this, smiled, and said he was about to start driving the Purple bus. So, I was able to hop on with him and talk some more, which was kind of nice.

I didn't have my Huntsman Marketing Association class today. We've divided into groups to work on the marketing for the Aggie Chocolate Factory. My group met up yesterday to touch base and determine what questions about the product we needed to get clarification on. Today, we didn't have a regular class, because all HMA students came down to Blue Square to interview the owners of the soon-to-be-opened Aggie Chocolate Factory one group at a time. Dr. Martini was excited to see me, saying that she recognized me from sitting at the front of her class all the time. Impressive, considering that was two years ago. Each group had about 12 minutes to interview her and Steve Shelton. Then, I invited my group to meet upstairs in my apartment. They stayed for almost two hours, and we bounced marketing ideas off each other and prepared some survey questions for our project. It's a big project, but we're off to a promising start.

After everyone left, I worked on my essays some more. I was keeping a close eye on the clock, because a guest speaker was coming to the university today to talk about "The science of animal personalities," and I'd been excited about this for awhile, since that's my field of interest. Quinton was just starting his shift on the Evening bus when I got on, so I told him about the guest speaker. His name is John Shivik, and he's the author of a book called Mousy Cats and Sheepish Coyotes: The Science of Animal Personalities. When I took the bus home, Quinton was still driving. The Evening bus has the longest route, so I had a good twenty minutes to chat with him about my interests and possible career options, and things like that.

Also, I took a picture of the sunset as I was walking to the library where the lecture was held, because it was quite lovely:

I really enjoyed the lecture. Shivik discussed a research assignment he was once a part of where the researchers' goal was to keep coyotes away from hot dogs. They set up a machine that blared noise and flashed lights when the coyote approached, and graphed the reactions for the individual animals across the next 30 days. Some coyotes didn't care about the potential threat, while others were skittish for a few days, and some didn't approach at all. He also explained how variation in animal personalities is beneficial in nature. Bluebirds are territorial, but if the males are too aggressive, then they spend all their time fighting with other bluebirds, which forces their mate to leave the nest and feed herself. This in turn reduces the survival rate of the eggs. Passive bluebirds had greater reproductive success, but weren't able to maintain their territories. Having variation in personalities between individuals has allowed the species as a whole to survive. Up north where temperatures are colder, female spiders share webs and raise all their children together. Having one huge web spread over a large area allows them to catch more insects, and increases their offspring's chance of survival.

Finally, he told us about "The Super-Chicken Experiment." Some researchers once thought it would be a brilliant idea to take all the chickens that laid the most eggs and put them in the same flock, so they would churn out tons of eggs and become a flock of "super-chickens." The control group ended up laying more eggs, because the "super-chickens" were also super aggressive and just killed each other off. I was proud of myself for predicting the outcome to this story before the guy revealed it, since the only other person to raise her hand when he asked us why we thought the control group did better was his own daughter, who presumably knew the answer from him telling her beforehand.

Shivik was engaging and friendly, and definitely had a sense of humor. His wife sat near me with their two daughters, and I heard her whispering to a friend before the lecture started that every time he does a lecture, his girls give him several random words that he's supposed to incorporate somehow while still sounding natural. Some words in the past have been "unibrow" and "bubbles." Judging from the muffled giggles of his family members during his speech, the words on the agenda today were "Tra la la," "Permanent marker," and "Glitter." I have to say, he did an impressive job weaving them in.

Because animal behavior is my field of interest, I took notes throughout the lecture and stayed for several minutes after to network with the speaker and gain advice on my potential career path. I received some good advice about not being afraid to read lots of research papers, and encouragement to reach out to the authors of those papers and ask them if they had any research positions available that I could fill. Definitely something I'll have to keep in mind over the next few years as I graduate from college and begin to search for a job.

Fluid

This last week was... a strange week for me emotionally, and it's partially the reason why I ended up falling behind on my blog. I've always considered my personality to be a little fluid between the two halves I see in myself: My "pleasure" self (whom I refer to in my head as "Kima") and my "rational" self (whom I refer to in my head as "Riddle"). 90% of the time my personality is strictly what Riddle embodies, but every once in awhile, Kima springs up to cause a little chaos.

It's definitely not to a bipolar or a dissociative identity disorder extreme, and I would never try to avoid responsibility by pushing it off on my other "side," because it's always ME, but there's been a distinct divide in my head between the two for years. Riddle and Kima have different interpretations of things, and a few personality traits simply don't overlap between them. They also have distinctly different writing styles, so I can look at a piece of writing I've done and instantly recognize whether I was "Riddle-dominant" or "Kima-dominant" when I wrote it.

Put simply, Kima is my "write drunk" brain, and Riddle is my "edit sober" one. Their inability to agree on consistent character portrayals makes revision a nightmare, so about two years ago, I cut off Kima's access to my main writing by setting aside a Google Docs file that is specifically for her to play in. When I'm "Kima-dominant," I write sex scenes all the time. When I'm "Riddle-dominant," I have full memory of writing those scenes, and I know the exact word choice found in certain sentences, but I can't stand to open the file and read anything because it grosses me out. It's a weird experience, and with no scientific evidence to back me up, I usually just blame it on my fertility cycle. I guess there's a small part of me that's boy-crazy after all.

Kima is usually only dominant for an evening or two every few weeks, and it's not normally a problem. She'll fixate on something, stay up for hours working on it, and either not eat dinner or indulge on dessert, but it's not a big deal. 

But this last week... Kima was the dominant half of my brain for multiple days straight, which has never happened before. It was incredibly weird. I had the distinct sense of the "Riddle" half of my personality being "offline." During my Sensation and Perception class today, I actually opened eight different documents and wrote eight different "letters" to myself, trying to describe the experience. For example:

Kima brain was dominant for multiple days straight this week for the first time ever and I’m kind of freaking out because I legitimately feel my self control slipping away and I can feel myself not caring about consequences and that’s gonna be a problem if it goes on but I… don’t… care.

and

Literally writing this in class instead of paying attention, which is NOT USUAL and Riddle would NEVER ALLOW THIS. We’re watching a video. Why am I not watching it. It’s a super interesting video. 

I don’t know how I feel about this. Curious more than anything. Still legit not concerned about social consequences. That’s… foreign… to me… 

Distinct sense of Riddle being absent. Like. He’s literally off right now. Has been for days. This never happens. Where is he.

and

I’m gonna have to cut myself cold turkey and reassess my priorities holy wow this is weird and I should probably be freaking out more than I am.

and of course 

I legit don't know where Riddle is. What is he doing. Where is he. RIDDLE WE'RE GONNA CRASH KIMA NEVER THIIIIINKS. Guys I'm thinking rationally I swear I 100% know what I'm doing. You don't need sleep. Ahaha I'm okay making jokes about this. I totally know what I'm saying and we can talk about this openly when Riddle comes back ok.

They're weird to look at now that I'm "Riddle-dominant" again, because like I said, the writing style difference is distinct. It's just... usually channeled through an actual narrative, not at my future self.

Kima is the "pleasure" brain. She's energetic, ambitious, a babbler, and I don't always make the best decisions when she's "dominant." Don't want to fold laundry? Leaving it on the end of the bed for two days is probably fine. I skipped breakfast, skipped dinner, and stayed up until 3:00 in the morning for several days in a row. I pushed off an essay until the last few hours before it was due, but thankfully it was intended to be a messy first draft and I still have a week before the final needs to be turned in. I was fully aware of the poor decisions I was making, but nothing felt important to me unless it was immediately going to make me happy. Like eating candy, looking at pictures of pretty animals, and just drawing things that I wouldn't have prioritized when in my "Riddle" mindset.

It was... an interesting week all in all. Riddle "clicked back into place" this afternoon for the first time in days. Thankfully. We did our usual laid-back rational thing. Dishes were washed. Laundry was put away. Food was eaten. I read through all the "write drunk" writing I did this week with my "edit sober" brain, shaking my head in frustration. On Tuesday mornings, I share bits of my writing with my online friends, and we spend our free time in the next several days bonding with one another and offering critique on each other's works. Before he went offline, "Riddle" had gotten 6,000 words into the new chapter I was working on. Kima decided it wasn't good enough for her, tossed it aside, and pounded out 15,000 words this weekend using HER interpretations of characters instead of the established "Riddle canon" versions, and submitted it to the group yesterday, so that's our new canon and I have to work with that now. It's not a big deal story-wise, but I was uncomfortably aware today of how I need to put this energy to better use. If Kima would stop writing things that Riddle has to rework or entirely undo, maybe I could actually get somewhere in my writing career.

My "personality fluidity" has never been a problem before, and hopefully it doesn't develop into anything serious. Maybe this is just a girl thing- some girls get moody and snappy at a certain time of the month, and I get energetic and hyper-fixated. It's never been a big deal to me, so I hope I'm just being overly paranoid because of my psychology classes. I've been writing a bipolar narrator in one of my stories for the last year, and I recently picked up the project again after being on break from it during the summer, so maybe my recent research is just messing with my head.

It's probably best to make a written record of this odd week anyway...

Avoid Contact With Skin

We discussed humor in creative nonfiction today, mostly by doing "boring" things like trying to analyze our individual senses of humor and write out our thoughts in the most scientific, jargon-heavy way possible. After Institute today, I ate lunch at the Marketplace, and headed home at just the right time, because I ended up on Quinton's bus for the first time in two weeks, so that was cool.

I did lots of homework this afternoon, especially essays. I washed my towels today, and happened to glance at the tag on one as I put it in the machine. It read, "Avoid contact with skin." What? I read it three times over, but sure enough, that's what it said. I was very uncomfortable for the next thirty minutes, but when I took the towels out of the washing machine, I checked the tag again. At the very bottom, where the tag bent against the towel, it said, "Avoid contact with skin treatment products." Oh. That makes more sense.

Lots of Time With Laptop

I got my test back in Literary Analysis today, so I was finally able to see what I missed. All the questions I'd gone back and changed were wrong, so I was annoyed at myself for not sticking with my gut instincts. I was pleased, however, to see that I'd gotten everything in the allegedly hardest section of the test - the scansion part where you indicate the stressed and unstressed syllables - completely right. I spent a long time on that section, so I'm glad it paid off.

Had a busy evening today. My workload is picking up again. I'm glad I've already done almost all my Sensation and Perception assignments in advance. Doing assignments is rarely fun, but Rule Number 1 of college life is to keep on top of your work. Things take longer than you expect, more stuff will always pile on, something unexpected will come up, etc. It's just a relief to look at my list of assignments due for the day and see I'd finished all of them a week ago. There's just something very nice about having buffers.

Cheddar Cheese Soup

I tried to make cheddar cheese soup today. This was one of the first soups I'd picked up at the store, when I was just grabbing interesting flavors I thought I might like rather than checking for protein. I'm definitely going to want more pans up here, because all the soups I've made so far have left scorched glop in the bottom of the one pot I do have, so I can't make other soups or spaghetti without either running the dishwasher or doing some serious scraping and scrubbing. Dickyi hand washes her dishes, so the dishwasher doesn't fill up fast.

Anyhow, I opened the soup can and poured the gloppy stuff inside into my pot. I'll be honest, it looked pretty disgusting. Like literal nacho cheese- same color, same texture. Adding milk didn't help, because there were just little chunks of gross-looking cheese floating around. When I finally boiled the soup, let it cool, and went to eat it, it still looked like nacho cheese mixed with milk. That's pretty much what it tasted like, too. Since it was gross and not healthy anyway, I finally dumped it all down the sink and made something else to eat. That's definitely one I won't pick up again.