Kat’s Pause 

Today I spent $85 on math tutoring — $25 for one hour in the morning and $20 per three hours with a different person in the afternoon. I am now one-third of the way through the review questions for next week’s test, and feeling slightly more competent albeit more than a little poorer. Sixteen more weeks to go.

I just finished up a biology lab on energy balance, in which I discovered I expend 1.7 time as many calories as I take in.

Maybe I’ll wheedle Ben, who is currently asleep beside me, into going out for breakfast. All-day breakfast, because it’s 11am. Teee.

Math tutors charge too much.

That is all.

(stolen from Ren)

You are a seeker of knowledge, and you have learned many things in your life.
You are also a keeper of knowledge - meaning you don’t spill secrets or spread gossip.
People sometimes think you’re snobby or aloof, but you’re just too deep in thought to pay attention to them.

You are usually the best at everything … you strive for perfection.
You are confident, authoritative, and aggressive.
You have the classic “Type A” personality.

You are a seeker. You often find yourself restless - and you have a lot of questions about life.
You tend to travel often, to fairly random locations. You’re most comfortable when you’re far away from home.
You are quite passionate and easily tempted. Your impulses sometimes get you into trouble.

Last night, a bunch of us from my university’s swing club hopped over to Toronto to crash their swing club. For once, I remembered to bring my camera, so I’ll post stuffs when I fetch it from Ben’s house. It was a lot of fun. Hooray for new friends! We were going to get drinks afterward, but by that time it was really late and we all just wanted to go back to our smelly city. Another time.

Everyone’s trying to talk me into going to the weekend-long exchange with U of T, despite my plans to go to McMaster’s charity ball that Friday night. I’d be more inclined to try to make it to the latter if they both didn’t cost money. Everything is money right now: my mark in calculus is going to be directly proportional to how much I pay to get privately taught everything from this class and everything I’ve forgotten from high school.

Forgot to mention: calc tutorial today has convinced me that it’s tutor or bust. Personality-wise, the tutorial leader is very much an awkward nerd, complete with ponytail and slight lisp, but that can be easily overlooked if he knows what he’s doing. Alas, I am less than inspired by, after he arrives at the ugly-looking ln(e^-6k) = ln(9/20): “Is that right? I hope that’s right. Yeah, that should be right. Okay, now we find k…”

8:30am biology lab. I’m twenty minutes early and I have a headache. It’s the first lab of the term, but I meant to bring my lab coat just in case. I forgot to.

The walls are too white here; I welcome the rainbow colours of the janitor’s cart as it passes. Look out the window: so many students up so early. Wonder how much they slept.

There are other students, and they’re also hanging around room 207, looking nervous. More trickle in. I don’t see any lab coats, but then, we never put our lab coats on beforehand. Except that one time when I walked to class wearing mine. I secretly love my lab coat, with its rolled-up sleeves twice as long as my arms, the wrists yellowed from years of chemicals on the lab bench.

Biology labs always make me want to write. I’ve tried a few stories, but nothing worth continuing. I managed a poem, short and timid, more of a self-pitying lament than anything to do with the study of life.

My eyes keep straying to the janitor’s cart, parked across from me now. Red mop, green cloths, blue broom, and a huge yellow rubber sack. A very pleasant peacock-blue bucket sits beside it, the kind of blue that can do no harm, despite the yellow CAUTION triangle on its side. The colour relaxes me anyway.

People are moving. I almost didn’t notice, I was so focused on the blue bucket. The doors must be open. It’s time to start the lab.

Zero linked me to this — I want to be that guy.

I enter my room to find that the bottom feeder I just bought (an algae-eater appropriately dubbed Suck) has swum to the top of the tank just to wedge itself in between the wall and the filter like Georgey Boy. And let’s be clear, they do this at the top of the filter, so that their dumb little heads poke up, not up from the bottom where the water actually enters the device.

Come on, Suck. Is it really that important that you fit in? Be an individual. Just Say No to filters.

Stats is much better than I’d feared. Maybe the prof just had a hangover on the first day, I dunno, but he’s a lot more of a normal human being today, albeit one with a very greasy ponytail. He’s drawing funny pictures on the overhead to illustrate mean and median in a distribution curve. I can certainly deal with that.

Bio is confusing me: too much biochemistry and too many formulas. I swore I’d read my textbooks on the weekend, but I didn’t. I haven’t actually bought my bio text yet — I’m holding out for someone to return theirs so I can save $40 getting it used. Can’t hold out much longer, though.

After stats (which I’m in right now) I’ll be getting in line for OSAP, after which I have Evil Math Class (calc) and then philosophy. I missed a lot of class last week, which I didn’t mention out of deep shame, so this week I’ll be playing catch-up. Not the greatest start to a hard semester.

One of my fish has developed an annoying habit of jumping up out of the water and landing in between the filter and the tank wall. Each time, I think he’s dead, but he always recovers from the trauma. One of these days he’s going to do it when I’m not around to rescue him. I’ve renamed him George Bush — always going places he shouldn’t.

Saw Juno tonight with brilliant and another friend. It was precious; I cried a little bit. Definitely earns my recommendation.

At Ben’s insistence, I took a belay lesson again. I’m glad I did, because I had trouble all today tying a proper figure-8 knot. Just wish they offered some kind of belay refresher course rather than having to start from scratch with the newbies. Though I helped them out a bit when I could… tried to limit my dispensing of advice to knot correction and encouragement so that I’m not responsible for anyone’s fatal injuries.

My hands have gotten wimpy and delicate again, and they very quickly got rubbed raw. It also didn’t help that I’ve been keeping my nails quite long for a photograph I want. Long nails and climbing do not mix. But I came out of the gym happy. Once I cut my nails and build up some calluses, I refuse to let anything stop me — school, dancing, insomnia, they can all suck it. Mostly because there’s no way I’m taking that lesson a third time.

My calculus class is a nightmare come true. In fact it is exactly as I’d imagined it: straining to decipher the equations a small white man scribbles without explanation on a blackboard rows and rows away from me. Except the professor has a French accent that makes his mutterings even harder to understand. I hadn’t imagined that part.

Bio prof is good, stats prof is the most depressing human being I’ve ever seen (think if Comic Book Guy suddenly realized how pathetic he was), and I’m on the fence about philosophy prof. He may possibly be a religious zealot, in which case I dread the upcoming lectures on abortion.

Dave reminded me that this video is superior to the kitten I linked.

I quit Mariposa. Yay! I gave two weeks’ notice, but considering I wasn’t given any hours for the next two weeks, yesterday should be my last day.

I might get a job at Mac, depending how much my two math courses abuse me.

Three little tetras, because all the tetras looked so bright and pretty in the pet store. Their colours are much less vivid away from the store’s aquarium lights, but they still look cool, especially the x-ray tetra whose organs I can see through its transparent body. I’ve named that one Google.

The slightly larger red-finned one (serpae tetra) will possibly be Wikipedia, but I’m going to put off naming them until I finish buying fish; I need an algae-eater to keep the tank clean, and I think I’d like a colourful female betta as well. I’ll have to wait a few days before the aquarium is ready to handle more fish.

The tetras seem happy enough — they were very shy at first and stayed huddled together at the bottom of the tank, but they’re separating and exploring now, especially the silver-tipped one who will probably be named Netvibes.

“The first half of our lives is ruined by our parents, and the second half by our children.”

-Clarence Darrow

The Boy is playing The Sands of Time. I love when my loves combine.

No fishies yet, but the aquarium is all set up and ready for them, complete with overpriced underwater plants and colour-coordinated gravel.

I had an entirely unproductive day with more failed plans, but I had fun with The Boy anyway. Dear friends: Stop being lame and learn to answer your freaking phones.

1. Swear exclusively in non-English languages.
2. Hold my laptop in less lazy positions to reduce typos.
3. Care less.

UPDATE: I have now broken resolution #1 too many times to count, but I have succeeded in adding “scheiße” to my vocabulary.

New Years was spectacular. I went to a swing-dancing ball in Toronto with The Boy: some dancing, some drinking, and a generous amount of delicious food. Because of alcohol and an impending storm, we booked a hotel room in TO for the night. So basically we were playing grown-ups for a night. It was fun.

Umm pictures eventually. Maybe. I don’t really upload “normal” photos anywhere… maybe I’ll just hotlink from Facebook. Teehee.