fishpatrol

I have a 15-20 page paper to write on parapsychology, which, of course, I haven't even started yet. It's due on Tuesday (which happens to be the same day that my thesis is due -- I've had a deadline extension for all four of my classes on the final projects/papers, but yet I still scrambled/am scrambling to finish at last minute =__=;;). I've got ten books on the subject piled around me and this is the first time in the past four years that I've had to use actual books for a paper. I feel like a humanities student.

Also: STAR GATE is apparently the code name of a (terminated) project that the CIA developed to train psychic spies (training remote-viewing techniques, to be more precise). LOL.

1. Wonder Boys will never not be delightful to watch (though their previous performance was a bit better). The dance moves! The slinky slinky hips! Hee! How cute are Sungmin and Taemin? And that boy from 2AM (I think...? 2AM and 2PM...are they two different bands? dear_whimsy??) has awesome facial expressions.

2a. So, funny story. Last week, people on LJ were saying how they watched SGA 5x19 and how alkdjfs;k awesome it was. Thing is, the episode is due to air on January 2nd. For a moment, I had thought that maybe I skipped forward in time! Yes, that would mean that I missed out on a week-and-a-half of vacation time, but maybe it would also mean that I had somehow finished all my grad school apps! But then common sense kicked in and I realized the episode was leaked online -- and of course I rushed to download it. I've watched it several times since because it is just that awesome. The downside was that I still had to do all my applications myself (two done, three more to go! or four more. IDK.)

2b. 5x20, the show finale (D:!!!), was leaked online as well. I kind of want to watch it, but at the same time, I really really don't (and not just because of the McKeller line). I never did watch the Season 10 finale of Friends -- I've watched almost every episode of that show at least twice, but not the finale. In my mind, if I don't watch the ending, then it hasn't ended! How's that for awesome logic?

3a. Does anyone know where I could obtain the Merlin soundtrack? I found a handful of torrents, but none of them had seeders. :(

3b. I haven't been actively seeking out Merlin fic, but I came across this Merlin fratboy!AU and it's pretty fabulous (check out the sequel too!). The thing I like about fanfic, compared to original fiction, is that no matter what kind of crazy setting you throw the characters into, they are still essentially the characters you know and care about (the assumption here is that you're reading good!fic ;) none of that fanfiction.net stuff). It's like going out with good friends instead of meeting new strangers.

7. I've lost my train of thought. There are cherries downstairs and I want to eat 'em.

The power went out again last night, and since I had some battery power left on my computer, I wrote an entry in Notepad:
( Writing by candlelight )

--
So on Tuesday, after class, Friend R left the classroom as Friend B and I stayed to ask the instructor about something. A minute later, Friend R comes rushing back into the room, with the kind of excitement usually reserved for cute animals and cute boys, telling us to hurry and follow her. We jogged through the hallway after her, completely and utter perplexed. She stopped right around the corner and pointed to something, giggling hysterically. It was a water fountain, gurgling and spewing mud. Like any other person would do in this situation, the three of us whipped out our cell phones and started taking pictures. Lo and behold, the mud spewing fountain :D

--
Speaking of pictures and cell phones, I realized mine can support moving .gif images as wallpapers. I now have this picture as my background and I giggle every time I flip open my phone.

--
Say, hypothetically, you've roped some poor professor into being your undergrad thesis supervisor. Now, your thesis project doesn't start until September, but he asks you if you want to do some work as an RA (aka research assistant aka professor's lackey) during the summer. He's this nice, but completely scatterbrained and quite possibly computer-illiterate old man. He doesn't say anything about pay, but he does say, in his first email about RA-ing, "do you want to be hired for the summer?" So, hypothetically, how would you go about asking him whether you're hired as in hired or if you're simply working as a volunteer? ;;;

I have the worst luck with doors. Every year I seem to have an ~*unfortunate incident*~ with a door. In my first year of university, I was living in the dorms, and one night I went out with a friend and realized halfway through the night that my keys weren't in my purse. I looked for them everywhere, but to no avail; we called it quits and took the subway back to res in defeat. I went to the porter's office and told him what happened and he went upstairs to unlock my dorm room for me. When we got to my door, I found my keys dangling from the doorknob. The relief overcame the embarrassment. XD

In my second year...well, at least this time, it wasn't my fault. I was living with some friends in a suite-style apartment on the top floor of a house. I woke up in the middle of the night, tried to open my room door in a daze and found that the knob wouldn't turn. I shrugged and went back to bed. The next morning, I woke up nice and early to do some massive cramming before my exam later that afternoon. The doorknob still wouldn't turn. I roused my housemates from slumber by banging on the wall and calling them on their cell phones. The door wouldn't open from the outside either; turned out the bolt was actually stuck. So my housemates called more people up from downstairs, and they tried coat hangers and butter knives. They even slid a butter knife under the door and I was able to remove the knob from the inside. The bolt was still stuck. I was frantic by this time and was even considering to email the TA about how I was stuck inside my room and won't be able to make the exam. One of my friends tried digging at the wood with a knife and got shavings all over the carpet. Still stuck. So finally, she got fed up, grabbed a hammer and just slammed at the bolt. That did the job, heh. Again, much relief (I made it to the exam, didn't do too well though XD;).

Third year: now I'm living in a house with single rooms and shared facilities. I was in a hurry one day and I left my keys inside my room. Getting into the house wasn't so bad; I simply knocked on the window of one of my housemates' rooms. I called my friend over and had the utmost faith in him because he's had some practise with breaking into rooms (heh, weird people, weird hobbies ;)). He even brought equipment with him, including a Swiss army knife, pliers, and a hammer. After much shoving and twisting, and after breaking my one and only butter knife, he still couldn't get the door open. I was a bit more frantic now, so I caved and called the landlord -- turned out that he was several provinces away and wouldn't be back until later in the week. So, back to shoving and twisting it was. Finally, my friend got fed up, gave my door a hard shoulder slam, did some twist thing and got my door open. There was relief...but there were also cracks in my door. I had to get glue and paint to cover up the damage. XD;;

I'm not quite yet into my fourth year, but the door-devil paid me a visit anyway. I got locked out again. It was, like, 2am, and I just came back from my shower, pjs and no glasses and all, and found my door somehow locked. The last time one of my housemates locked herself out after a shower and called the landlord at 11pm, the landlord was pissed -- I had no desire to try his temper at 2am. I also didn't have his number since my cell phone was in my room. I admit it, I felt panicked. My housemate who lives right next door to me locks herself out of her room all the time and has now perfected her breaking-and-entering technique -- but her door is easier to break into than mine (which is not necessarily a good thing at times -- she's scared that a hobo might break in XD). She was already asleep and I felt horrible for rousing her, but I had no other choice. She was awfully nice about it and grabbed her usual lock-breaking tool from the kitchen and did the shove-and-twist thing. I tried the same with a bobby pin that was left out in the hall from the last break-in attempt (I'm so useless when it comes to breaking in ;;;). To no avail. At this point, I was ready to give up and just sleep in the hall and call the landlord in the morning. I thought my housemate went to get his number for me, when she came back with a folded piece of paper. She did a twist-thing with the paper and to our shock, it actually worked! I feel so relieved that I'm sitting in front of my computer right now instead trying to sleep in the hallway.

(my life is sad to the extent that i just wrote a ridiculously long entry on how doors and locks always get the better of me D: *SIGH!*)

I've always told myself that even though I may not be the most competent cook ever, I would never be so silly as to make an egg explode in the microwave. Everyone knows that.

But then...

It was midnight and I was packing a lunch for tomorrow. I ran out of meat, and I need my Daily Intake Of Protein, so I decided to boil an egg. I let it boil and boil. However, when I cracked open the egg, parts of it were still runny. I'd already cracked it open, so I didn't want to re-boil it. Then I figured, hey, it's mostly cooked, just a quick whirl in the microwave will firm it up a bit. It wasn't as if I were putting a raw egg into the microwave ('cause y'know, that's just asking for trouble). BUT HOW WRONG I WAS. Thirty seconds later, the top of my tupperware container blew off and there were egg bits everywhere. >__O;;

Every once in a while, I like to attempt drawing realism portraits. According to my sketchbook, "every once in a while" = once every two years (or so). ;;; The last time I actually tried to draw a real person (actors as opposed to fictional characters) was almost five years ago -- it was Elijah Wood and he was surprisingly recognizable, haha. I spent all day today* trying to sketch Leeteuk, but to no avail. I even tried the "mathematical" approach: measuring the distance between the eyes, from forehead to chin, etc and trying to translate that on to paper (in theory, that should've worked! Maybe I should use a protractor next time to ensure the angles are accurate...). It still didn't look like him. :(:( So I gave up for the day and sketched him in shoujo style to make myself feel better.

( Slanty bangs and mini-ponytail<3<3~~ )

*-Actually, part of the afternoon was spent driving. I spent half of the lesson hyperventilating and clenching the steer wheel with a death grip. XD;;

Part of the lesson went something like this:
Driving Instructor: Okay, keep to the right. Do you know where we're going?
Me (unfamiliar with the area, but naively trusting): Nope. :D
D.I.: We're going on the highway. *pulls the steering wheel towards the ramp*
Me: OMGWHAT. O___O
D.I.: More gas, more gas!
Me: OMGWHAT. The lane is merginggg! *FLAILS*

Despite the massive amounts of snow and salt on the road, and my lack of depth perception, and my death grip on the wheel...today's lesson went relatively smoothly. I think I'm getting the hang of this whole turning business (have yet to collide with oncoming traffic -- five points to me! *knocks on wood*).

The mix-ups between "your" and "you're" (generally in the "you're"=>"your" direction) drives me batty. There was this community I wanted to join to leech music -- the "request to join" post was chock-full of grammatical errors ("you're"=>"your"s were the least of it), and I didn't much feel like wading through the incoherent rules (I think this may be a sign of elitecitis).

Anyway. Back to the "you're"=>"your" issue. One would presume that elementary school teachers would have crammed the rule down your throat -- along with the whole "i before e, except after c" thing and etc (though I can never spell "perceive" right on the first try). Personally, I think the blame belongs to the creation of "ur". With "ur", one can use the same representation for multiple purposes; for instance, "ur momma" or "ur dumb". I can't decide which is worse, "ur stupid" or "your stupid" -- as far as I'm concerned, you're both stupid. When I'm the queen of the internets (which is essentially the equivalent of being the queen of the world), I'm going to banish "ur" to somewhere far, far away, to a place where everyone tYpeS lik dis. I'm also going to make Jaejoong my boytoy, but that is neither here nor there.

So randomly, there's this patient by the name of Arthur Ford at the clinic I work at, and every time I file his chart, I gigglesnort a bit on the inside. (If you don't get that reference, then you probably also won't know why sticking a particular type of fish down your ear would be beneficial to your performance on language related exams.)

I went home for the weekend and we were having an innocuous dinner-time conversation about being published in the newspaper (I have a friend who swears that she saw one of my Chinese school essays being printed in the newspaper, but I have no recollection of such an event -- my mother's friend also insists that I've had some Chinese story published in the newspaper when I was back in grade school. Again, no recollection of such a thing. I do remember the story she was referring to, though -- it was about a vegetarian tiger. It was a literary masterpiece, I assure you. But anyway, I digress.) So my mother says, "Your poem was published in the newspaper, wasn't it?"

Due to my inattention and possibly also the process of selective hearing, I heard "porn". I went a little "O___O?? Omg, what does my mother suspect/know?" before I remembered that I have never written porn in my life and that the newspaper does not print such material. Not our local newspaper, anyway.
Haha, whoops.

In other news, I ate too many grapes and now I feel a little sick. Let that be a lesson to you all.

The mosquito bite on my jaw looks disturbingly like a hickey. >__o (and itches like heck)

I watched episode 10 of Oofuri as I ate my Chinatown-bought-Vietnamese rolls. That show is killing me with its cuteness<3. Mihashi is a big ball of wimpy cuteness. If I were to choose one of them to go out with though, I'd choose Hanai (it's the glasses ;)).

During my shopping trip today, I saw a t-shirt that had "My boyfriend drives a MUSTANG" across it. The first thing that came to mind was, if I were to wear that shirt, I'd cross out the "drives a" and write "is Roy".