un bien grand mystère

My brother is a legal adult today. How weird is that? But not quite as weird as it will be when he goes off to college next year, even if he's probably going to end up around home.

I had Thanksgiving dinner and a movie with LaLa and Linda, and went out for sushi with LaLa on Wednesday, but that has been the entirety of me talking to other people since Tuesday evening. I did enjoy spending time with LaLa and Linda, because I don't see them very often and they are fun people, and I probably would have ended up depressed had I spent actual Thanksgiving dinner by myself, because I have been brainwashed by American society.

But all that aside, it has been an absolute relief to have the apartment to myself for a period of days. I've been cooking a lot more and spending the rest of the time lying around on the couch, which I never do normally. And playing music without headphones, of course, which is always fun.

Yesterday I wrote two pages (single-spaced, so a little more impressive) of my 1501 paper, after which I felt I had done enough work. So I made lasagna for dinner (turned out pretty well!) and then baked some cookies (the easy way, since I wasn't up to mixing ingredients and Sarah has corrupted me) and watched Star Trek again. When did I turn into a crazy person?!

I meant to get more work done today, but I only managed to submit a couple more job applications (for next summer) and finish reading A Personal Matter. I only made it something like eight hours in actual pants before I gave up and went back to pajamas. Sadly, I'll have to make up for all this slacking tomorrow at the library.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

I have not been very good about making Thanksgiving posts in the five years I've had this journal, but a lot of things this fall have made me feel particularly grateful for my life.

I'm thankful that my family supports me, emotionally and financially, and that I am fortunate enough not to need a job during the school year. I'm thankful for parents who will spend a week helping me out while I panic about job applications and my future.

I'm thankful for old friends I can still talk to without needing an excuse. I'm thankful for new friends who get me out of my apartment and show me silly things online and make me feel like less of a social failure.

I'm thankful for the internet, which is frequently a source of great amusement and also restores my faith in humanity (almost as often as it destroys it!).

I am thankful for fandom and the astonishing quantity and quality of its creative output. I am thankful for fandoms that don't take themselves too seriously and are hilarious and fun even for lurkers (Star Trek, I'm looking at you).

I am thankful for everyone reading this, whether you take the time to drop a comment or not.

Borders failed us yesterday, and Anna and I weren't about to spend the day before break doing actual work, so we went to see New Moon instead! I have to say, it was completely hilarious. Jacob's spontaneous stripping! Cockblocking! We were dazzled for sure. (I laughed for like 5 minutes at "Face Punch.")

Classes sucked today, because no one who actually showed up wanted to work at all, but my profs were obnoxiously determined to have lecture as usual. We should really just get the whole week off, seriously.

But then I got home and found that Hadley had done most of the dishes (because Charlotte is a tool and flew off to New Orleans without taking any responsibility for the absolute mess she made last weekend). So I felt motivated enough to do the rest of the pots and pans, as well as all my laundry, and basically cleaned the entire apartment. It was glorious.

And then I got to lie around on the couch, since I've got the whole place to myself, and catch up on the last week of television.

PS: Whoa, is this true? My worldview is shattered! I used to play that game all the time.

Last week was tough. Even though it was just a cold (starting to subside now, thank goodness), being sick took up a lot of the energy that I desperately needed to do work. Somehow, I managed to survive a paper proposal, an exam, a kanji quiz, and a programming project that I started just 3 days before the deadline.

So to make up for it, I proceeded to have a pretty fantastic weekend, all things considered. After classes on Friday, Anna and I got holiday drinks at Starbucks and then went downtown for Light Up Night festivities. We wandered across what felt like all of downtown and saw the holiday sights: the crèche, Macy's window displays, ice sculptures, the global Santa display, and ten million people clogging up malls. Eventually we got to the river and found a really good spot to watch the fireworks: we were so close that it felt like everything was shaking during parts of the grand finale! It was a great show; they used the bridge to spectacular effect:



Somehow we managed to get the second bus back to Oakland, which was an interesting exercise in personal space. We stopped at McDonald's for food and had to make an effort not to fall asleep while we were eating (story of our lives, help!).

On Saturday, I made it through work despite several coughing fits and went to taiko for the first time in about a month. We learned a really awesome piece that involves crazy spinning and posing and running around. I was pretty bad at it, but it was a lot of fun. Then Anna and I spent the rest of the afternoon and evening working on Aspects homework (and some Matlab tinkering in my case).

Sunday, I slept in till 11 for the first time in forever - it was absolutely wonderful, although I think it also gave me a headache for the rest of the day. I got Star Trek in the mail on Friday, so I watched it with Anna, who hadn't seen it before. Ahahaha, I love this movie so much. Then we did more work and ate leftover pizza and Quaker Steak and ended up completely exhausted like the old ladies we are. Life, it takes so much energy!

I'm feeling a little crazy again today, because now that I've got a little bit of a lull in schoolwork, I'm flailing through job applications for next summer and getting some GUI updates done too. At least I have all of Thanksgiving break to start final papers, because I'm going to need it.

Well, the sick finally caught up with me. I spent the whole weekend with a sinus headache from hell, and I called off from work this morning because I felt a little feverish. For the most part I'm just sniffly and congested, so if I'm lucky this is just a cold and it'll blow over quickly. Meanwhile, I have way too much to do and not nearly enough energy. Why has this semester been so much work?

Despite wanting to lie in bed all the time, I spent most of yesterday afternoon in Hillman with Anna, doing research for our final Aspects papers. Mine's about the evolution of the feminine speech style, or something like that. We were burned out afterward, so we ate at Chipotle and then went on a spontaneous grocery shopping trip to Giant Eagle. When we got back, we finished up an episode of Iris with Rachel and then watched Three Rivers (med drama set in Pittsburgh) on TV. I stayed way too late considering I'm sick, but we poked around on the internet and discovered beautiful things like terrible CSI Miami one-liners and the Chinese version of Mirotic (worth it for the rap alone). And hey, life is short.

Think the drowsy meds are kicking in now ... zzzzzzzzzzz.

I AM NOW A DECLARED DOUBLE MAJOR IN COMPUTER SCIENCE AND JAPANESE!

And it only took me eight months. Congrats, A&S advising, you really know how to file your paperwork. My BCC Japanese grades are still on my transcript when they shouldn't be, but I'm debating with myself how much I really care. It's not like my GPA needs help at the moment anyway.

In other exciting news, I feel bad about Charlotte being so sick, but the truth is that the dirty dishes are being generated at a much slower rate because she can't get out of bed to cook. So I can work away at the sinkful of dishes in a leisurely manner and actually make progress!

I finally watched last week's FlashForward and I totally broke down and cried. Which is so unlike me I can't even put it into words. I must be in a weirder mental state than I thought.

(I'm really glad Hadley wasn't around. She's home being sick, like Charlotte - I am so doomed.)

New icons! Only six months late. Also the first time I've had icons that aren't anime- or game-related, how weird. And my bias is showing, oops. Wouldn't be quite so bad if I could have more than 6 icons.

I remembered along the way that I despise icon-making because I am a perfectionist through and through, and nothing I make satisfies me. Ah well.

Because I am at work and don't feel at all like being productive. I actually registered two weeks ago (AP credits for the win!).


Japanese 1021 Third Year 2
---Lecture TuTh 1pm - 1:50pm
---Recitation MWF 1pm - 1:50pm

Japanese 1058 Westerns and Samurai Films (+ W credit)
---Lecture M 2pm - 4:55pm

Anthropology 1784 Japanese Society
---Lecture W 6pm - 8:30pm

CS 1550 Intro to Operating Systems
---Lecture TuTh 4pm - 5:15pm
---Recitation F 2pm - 2:50pm

CS 1671 Human Language Technologies
---Lecture TuTh 2:30pm - 3:45pm


I'm taking a night class again, but since it's with Anna and an interesting topic (unlike Algorithm Implementation) and only once a week, it shouldn't be too bad. I'm really excited for CS 1671, since I'm interested in AI and natural languages, etc etc, and they only offer this class every two years so it's amazing that I'm taking it. Not so excited for CS 1550, because I'm not really into OS stuff and the professor terrifies me. But it's my last required CS class, so I might as well get it over with now.

Fuck everything, I want to go home and lie in bed for a week.

/me being irrational and depressed.

Things are better today. I'm still feeling perpetually annoyed at everything, but hopefully this is just a monthly symptom and will go away soon. Charlotte did the dishes the other night, which helped my mood a lot, not gonna lie, so I felt up to venturing into the living room and taking out the trash and recycling and tidying up a bit. It'll never be up to my standards, but it's livable.

I think this is the calm before the storm: there are less than six weeks of class left in the semester, and the deadlines are starting to roll in. I don't have much work this week, so I took the opportunity to finally catch up on three weeks of TV (Fullmetal Alchemist, Merlin, Glee, The Office, and FlashForward - which I've totally got my parents into watching, btw), but I'm starting to feel the pressure. I'll enjoy myself while I can - spent a good couple of hours today reading an absolutely brilliant fanfic, but I feel slightly melancholy now that I've finished it - and then it's back to the grindstone this weekend.

From the department of rhetorical questions, why is my weather toolbar currently warning me of snow tomorrow? NOT OKAY, PITTSBURGH. And so winter begins...

I just filled out and submitted the paperwork to declare my majors for the third time in seven months. This is in addition to Mills-sensei posting the schedule an hour before class started, and the apartment continuing to be an absolute shitshow. Clearly, the universe is conspiring to make me homicidal today.

Yesterday was a surprisingly good day, considering I was running on less than five hours of sleep (thanks to everyone in the building banging around on a post-Rocky Horror high till 2 am) and it was the supposed culmination of all my deadlines (turned out that one project got postponed till Sunday, but I'm finished with it now anyway!).

Anna and I went to Squirrel Hill to browse around B&N and also have delicious pumpkin spice frappucinos. We also made an unplanned stop at Giant Eagle, so I took the opportunity to buy pumpkin pie ingredients - hopefully that will happen tonight! This involved silly things like calling parents from a grocery store to ask about pie crust ingredients and the price of pomegranates. We ended up back at Lothrop to watch The Two Towers (extended edition), which super natsukashii and also awesome.

Today I didn't go to taiko because I'm seriously burned out. So I got to come home and ... not really eat lunch, since there's no food and no dishes. I had a pear and some Pringles and did the dishes for an hour instead. And the whole counter is still covered. Apartment living: not always what it's cracked up to be!

I had at least two dreams last night about airports and flying. Strange, because I rarely remember my dreams - a couple of times a month at most. Is it mid-semester homesickness? If anything I feel a little nostalgic but not really homesick. So maybe my brain's just been affected from the amount of work I've been doing lately.

My two weeks of hell are almost over. Freedom is tantalizingly close! But I still have a 1501 project and a week's worth of 1502 homework to do for Friday. Tomorrow night is going to be fun. To make up for it, I plan to do absolutely nothing this weekend. I might skip taiko, do some cleaning (the apaato is badly in need of it), maybe even catch up on some TV! How exciting!

I finally finished sorting through all my music. I now have 11 GB (about 1900 songs) of music, less than half of what I had before. It's a little silly how accomplished this makes me feel, but hey, it took more than two months to complete.

The three-day weekend was possibly the least relaxing time ever. Between the Japanese film series, working on Saturday and Monday, taiko practice, watching the entire Super Junior concert DVD, Disney movie night, and a trip to the Waterfront (now I have pie plates!), I spent barely any time in the apartment. I did do some intense cleaning on Sunday morning, before escaping to Rachel's to avoid imminent partying (actually, I came home at midnight to find everyone already asleep, which is hilarious). Other shenanigans involved nearly dying of secondhand perfume (or naked people, take your pick) in Abercrombie and Fitch, and curtains and The Big Bang Theory and the Sorry Sorry dance in Lothrop.

Last night we saw the final movie of the Japanese film series, Kamikaze Girls. It was cute and hilarious, but the speaker introducing the film was super awkward and made uncomfortable jokes about lolita complexes and the status of women in Japan and also Star Trek. Which, okay, there are probably some interesting parallels to be made between the conventions of the old Star Trek fandom and the anime/game conventions in the US today. But I mostly just felt embarrassed. So I came home and crawled into bed and watched Star Trek again on my laptop before falling asleep, because that's how I work.

I'm at work now, being monumentally unproductive, but I have (re)discovered the magic of zooming out in Firefox. Now I can write LJ entries with minimal paranoia!

Someone has decided that since it's now below 60 outside, it's time to turn on the heat! Consequently it's so warm in the apartment that I couldn't fall asleep for hours last night, and I've got the fan on right now. Takes a lot of the pleasantness out of fall weather...

My recitation today was canceled due to the midterm yesterday, but instead of being sensible and taking a nap, I got a grande latte from Starbucks and watched last night's FlashForward. And now I'm off to a study abroad meeting, followed by dinner and the next movie in the Japanese film series. And hey, I've got a three-day weekend to catch up on the sleep that work deprives me of.

Things that are awesome:

I got through both my midterms relatively unscathed! I think I did decently, at least. And I did much, much better than I thought I would on several writing assignments in other classes as well (see: the Lit paper that I thought was complete bullshit but my prof gave me full points on it).

An upcoming three-day weekend, and having my 1501 project mostly done so hopefully I won't need to spend too much more time on it.

Finally finishing downloading 1.3 gigs of pure awesome (okay okay, it was a DVD rip of Star Trek, I admit it), to be properly appreciated at a later date (maybe this weekend).

Family dessert nights, featuring chocolate chip banana bread and cake! Next up: I need to use up the Hershey's kisses, probably by making those cookies again. On the downside: SO MANY DISHES TO DO.

I have midterms this week in both my CS classes! And a programming project to do, and several writing assignments to start thinking about. But did I do any work this weekend? Nooooo. Why do I hate myself?

Friday:
- これから名古屋へ！ aka went to Starbucks with Reba, Anna, Rachel, Jason, and Liv. Tried the pumpkin spice latte: good but possibly not worth the price. I like my vanilla lattes.
- hung out at Lothrop for a while, watched things, then Panera for dinner
- saw The Cat Returns at Frick, part of Japanese film festival (the dub track was funnier than the subbed version I watched a few months ago, interesting)
- ended up at the Oakland Tea House after that because the night was still young
- played an hour of Halo 3: ODST in Nordy's because hey, not even midnight yet! Also it was free. It was weird being the only person who'd actually played Halo before (normally I'm the worst player in a group); also won Slayer for the first time ever.
- Anna wanted a muffin, so we went to the コンビニ (7-Eleven) and walked out with chips and salsa and donuts instead
- sat in my apartment till 3 am watching Reba play Phoenix Wright while Anna fell asleep on the floor

Saturday:
- went to work after just 5 hours of sleep, kill me. :( I worked like 5 times harder than my coworker, too.
- taiko outside! I can actually feel myself getting better at this, though I'm still not good.
- failed to find any free food, so we went to Veracruz for a much-belated lunch instead
- sat around in bed on the laptop in lieu of actually taking a nap
- watched Shaun of the Dead with Mike, since we hadn't done anything in aaages
- collapsed

Sunday:
- slept in! Glorious.
- Hadley made cinnamon rolls for breakfast. They were amazing.
- considered doing work but thought better of it
- eventually Rachel came over and we went to Starbucks, then came back and watched The Chronicles of Riddick (Karl Urban with a mohawk was hilarious), and then played some Pokemon Heart Gold. We finally have Pokeballs!
- bought plane tickets for December.
- thought again about studying. Didn't. Watched more TV online instead.

This weekend I have watched:
- 3 episodes of Glee (I am of the opinion that all the female characters save Emma are bitches. And at least some of them are supposed to be likable! Which is both sad and frustrating, and almost made me stop watching, but so far the musical numbers are saving it - the football team performing "Single Ladies" made my life, and I don't even like that song! Also, "Don't Stop Believing" is wonderful.)
- 1 episode of The Office (fun but not much to say there)
- 1.5 episodes of FlashForward (ooh, now this seems much more like my type of show! Also I recognized Penny from Lost by the shape of her mouth. I'm getting better at this!)

And I told Sheila I'd try The Big Bang Theory. Screw this, when did I start watching TV? I don't have time for this!

Between taiko and JSS and work and classes and my sad attempts to have a social life, I think I'm going slightly insane. It's a bit silly, because other people juggle more than this with no problem, but I always feel like I'm ignoring something.

Things from the past two weeks:
- bowling with JSS
- learning an actual song in taiko (even if we suck at it)
- free food from pre-G-20 seminars and work meetings and nice TAs (including good macaroons! Mmmm.)
- movie on the Cathedral lawn! (It was The Proposal, which was much better than I expected. Possibly it helped that I am apparently a huge sucker for "we have to pretend we're in a relationship!" tropes.)
- potluck dinner thing - I made cookies! - at Kevin's, where I met some pretty cool people (although the party didn't end on such a good note, but oh well, that's life)
- working up to the last minute on some nasty proofs last week
- G-20, oh dear (see below)
- playing Pokemon Heart Gold in Japanese with Rachel. It took us about an hour to get our starter Pokemon (a Chikorita we named CHIGAU!) but it was educational (bouken = adventure!).
- incoming fall weather! Ah, bliss.
- the programming project of death that nearly gave me a panic attack actually turned out all right, because the prof pushed back the due date and then I had a breakthrough Saturday night
- after which I gave myself a break and watched 4 episodes of Haruhi; 2 episodes each of FMA, The Office, and Merlin; and 1 episode of Glee
- have almost succeeded in declaring my majors! ...only seven months late.

And because it didn't really fit into the bulletpoint format, G-20:

I had 3 canceled classes out of 5 on Thursday and Friday. For the most part I avoided the protests and the observers and the police squads, but Anna and I did end up sprinting for our lives (I'm not even exaggerating, because we had no idea what was going on) from what later turned out to be a smoke bomb - possibly one of the first. Definitely strained some muscles there, and taiko stance for 2 hours on Saturday didn't help.

So Thursday night ended up with a lot of broken windows in Oakland and a few arrests. Many stories about tear gas and pepper spray and rubber bullets going around.

On Friday, as the summit itself was technically over, we stupidly thought the protesters and associated craziness would be over. But for whatever reason, both civilians and police were out in force that night. We'd spontaneously decided to go to a Pirates game (we missed the Prime Minister of Japan throwing the first pitch, which was depressing, but the Pirates won, and considering they're something like the worst team in history, that's pretty cool) (also the second baseball game I've been to in my life), and upon getting out of the stadium, we got messages from Pitt's emergency system warning us about "deteriorating conditions" in Oakland - scary stuff, when you don't actually know what's going on. Turns out that Pitt was being cautious, but I almost didn't make it back into my apartment because the SWAT teams were attempting to shut down Forbes Ave preemptively.

So that was an adventure, and I'd much rather not go through any of it again. And now I'm going to bed before I pass out.

My logic textbook: "For simplicity we have assumed 'the unicorn' refers to a specific unicorn named Charlie."

Also, Nara-sensei keeps cracking Star Trek jokes ("Maybe your boss is a Vulcan! Like Spock" - while talking about logical implication) which are doubly funny because from the way he tells them I'm not actually sure if he knows anything about Star Trek.

Hadley had a class this morning, and she says the streets are absolutely dead quiet. I can hear a helicopter doing rounds overhead - probably circling the Cathedral? Anyway, I've got to venture out for Aspects in about an hour, so I'll see for myself.