Pedestrian Safety

So after several months on living in Eugene and walking everywhere, I've developed a false sense of security crossing streets. Every once in a while, I get a little reminder that those on wheels (cars, bikes, or skateboards) often fail to notice pedestrians. On several occasions I've been pulled out of the path of large vehicles that would have otherwise flattened me. This morning I made the "mistake" of walking across and area marked "Do not enter" just as a recycling truck decided to enter. He had to quickly stop in the middle of the intersection so I quickened my pace to get out of the way. Already feeling a little awkward and upset with the driver, things took an even more awkward turn when the truck pulled up several yards in front of me and stopped as two men got out to pick up some recycling bins. I could feel their eyes following me as I casually walked past. *cough*

Winter Term!!!

So my first night back in Eugene for almost a month went fairly well. As soon as I arrived I dumped off all of my belongings and met up with my friends in the LLC dining area. After dinner we went back to the dorms where Cassie and I shared all of our favorite youtube videos (For those of you back at home I've got some new ones for ya). I then gave everyone their Christmas gifts. Now for those of you who know me, you probably are aware that I am pretty much the worst at finding gifts for anyone, but with Staci all things are possible and I somehow managed to find 7 gifts that I'm pretty sure won't be instantly returned (at least everyone appeared to be genuinely pleased).

I'm really hoping all of my classes go well tomorrow. The only new things for Mondays are that I changed from regular to honors chem (and lab) and I'm starting biology. I'll still have my Korean and the science colloquium. I think that this term in the colloquium we are visiting various labs each week, but I'm not positive. Well, I should probably put away all of the crap piled on my bed. G'night.

Excitement!!!

This afternoon when I went onto imdb to look up a movie I'd been trying to remember the name of, I wasn't expecting anything too exciting. The imdb homepage came up and I casually scanned the headlines. To my astonishment and unnecessary excitement, there was a link to the trailer for Prince Caspian, the next installment in the Chronicles of Narnia series. I nearly wet myself in anticipation as I waited for the trailer to load. It looks like it will be truly amazing and I can't wait until May 16.

Oooooo Crap

So this morning I woke up at 9:00 giving myself sufficient preparation time for my 12:15 chem final. I fed my fish (He's been working quite a bit on his bubble nest)...



... watered the tree...



... and did a couple of the practice exams available on my professors web page. I left a little early so that I would have time to get situated and arrived at about 11:05. I was moderately surprised to discover that the exam didn't actually start at 11:15, but rather at 10:15. When I asked one of the TAs for a test he gave me a very surprised look and said "You haven't started yet!?!?!?" I wasn't at all panicked as you might expect. This class had been entirely a review of what I had learned in high school so quizzes and test always took less than half the time that was given and I had way more than half of the allotted 2 hours remaining.

I was directed to the professor who also seemed surprised and more than a little worried by my calmness as I requested a test. But he soon handed me a copy of the test and a scantron. About five minutes later he came up to me and said I could just write my answers in the test booklet and a TA could transfer it to a bubble sheet for me. I thanked him and continued working. About 40 min later I was finished so I got my scantron back, filled in my answers and left. I'm pretty sure the professor thinks I cheated because when I told him I was done he gave me an incredulous look and quickly flipped through the pages of my booklet, but he didn't say anything so I'm not too worried. He's posting the answers online at 3:00 so I'll know how many stupid mistakes I made due to working at the speed of light.

Potions Class?

Yesterday I had my first practical exam. Now to me, the term practical exam sounds like something out of Harry Potter, so I like to think of my chem lab practical as my OWL potions practical (Yes I know I'm a geek. No making fun). At 8 in the morning I got to go down into the basement of Klamath Hall (the dungeons) where I met my TA (not quite Snape) and was given 20 chemicals (potions) 1 at a time to identify. We were given 4 minutes for each chemical and our only reference was a flow chart that we had made earlier in the term for this specific purpose. Before the process began, 50 panicked students could be found outside the lab pouring over their notes/flowcharts and saying things like "What's the difference between zinc oxide and calcium carbonate?" and "If I get a white solid I think I'll kill myself." (About 15 of the possible 40 substances were white solids with no distinguishable physical differences).

I think I did pretty well. 4 minutes seemed to be too much time for most of the substances. When I got sulfur, tin, manganese oxide, ammonia, etc, I was instantly able to identify them either by appearance or smell so I spent the remaining 3:45 either lighting the substance on fire with my Bunsen burner or watching the guy next to me freak out every time he poured something in his waste beaker and it fizzed and almost bubbled over. My TA emailed us later informing us that her students' average was 62% so hopefully I was above that.

Most of my classes are done (until the final) so all I had left was Korean after which I took a very long nap. Upon waking I realized what a mess the apartment was (mostly due to my laziness) so I very thoroughly scrubbed every inch of the kitchen, living room and my bedroom. I am so glad I did because it looks amazing now. I had apparently lost track of the time because I realized it was almost 11:00 and I still had to write my introduction for my Korean oral final. Yikes! It took way longer than it should have because I was constantly distracted by my fish (who is apparently feeling amorous according to the massive bubble nest he is making), youtube, a cool new blog that I found, pretty much anything that exists other than what I was supposed to be doing (typical me). But because of my 3 or 4 hour nap, going to bed at 3:00 am was actually the equivalent of going to bed at 11 or 12, and I didn't even have to be up until 10:30. Perfection!

I have a new friend

So today Erin, Mitchell, Ally and I went to Walmart to get Erin a fish. As we looked I decided that I needed to get one for my apartment, so I got little 마술 (pronounced ma sool) here.




I've never actually had my own fish before, but I was told Betta aren't very high maintenance so hopefully I won't kill him too fast.

Trapped

So Friday night I planned on going to Sprague's orchestra concert at 7:00. I had also promised my friend Renee that I would bring her back to Salem, so I told her I would pick her up between 5 and 6 (which should give me plenty of time to drop her off and maybe stop by home before heading to the concert). Well at about 4 Erich decided he was going to go to the store and Goodwill, which was fine because he promised to be back before 5:30. 6 o'clock rolled around when Erich finally showed up. In a bit of a panic I grabbed the keys and asked Erich where he parked the car. He replied "In the garage" so I took the elevator down to the parking garage and searched, but no luck. I then started back for the elevator rifling through my pockets for the key for the door to the elevator/stairs. Whoops! Left those on my desk.

So now it was 6:10 and I was trapped in the parking garage which apparently can only be exited by someone with either a key or a car (the gate out has a pressure sensor). Time to call Erich. He released me from my concrete prison and informed me that he had parked in the other parking garage next door. I rushed to Renee's picked her up and sped (not literally of course) toward Salem. It was 6:30.

I dropped Renee off at about 7:45 and went straight to the concert. Luckily I caught the Camerata's last piece, which sounded great. It was so exciting getting to see everyone. I got lots of hugs, which is definitely the thing I miss the most. We all went to Dairy Queen afterward and then I had a small Mario Party party at my house. All-in-all it was a perfect Friday night.