week 2

it is now week 2 and i am convinced that nothing this quarter will be able to stir my interest. i'll surely eat my words later on, but for now it seems like winter quarter is shaping up to be another, long, dark, and tiresome 10 weeks. i have an early draft of a paper due tomorrow.

my least favorite teacher so far is my oceanography lecturer, not because she's mean-spirited--she is in fact a sweet woman with a youthful sense of humor--i just don't absorb as much information when she lectures. the information itself is interesting, but it wouldn't hurt if she presented the information with equal interest. although she did tell us this nutty story about this one cruise she took into the pacific where she and some other female scientists used a box core to pick up sediment from the ocean floor. when they inspected the sediment, they weren't familiar with it, so instead of investigating it, they used it to make mud-masks for their faces! who does that?!! they don't know what's in this sediment, it could contain some kind of toxin from oil-tankers or other garbage barges that has sunk to the bottom of the ocean, and they put it on their faces!! i ask you!! i laughed only because it was completely surreal.

in the past, my choir class has been my only solace from the tedious duties of other classes, but this quarter it is not. the class has been separated into two groups, one for those going to London and a smaller one for those not going to London. all the people i looked forward to seeing every week, i see no more. its not that i don't like the people in my group of about 15 people, its just that i'm not particularly close to any of them--a lot of them being music majors. this disappointment plus the added blow of not being able to go to London has actually made this class a source of...unhappiness for me. i used to be able to say "just get through monday, and then tuesday you'll have choir". i don't say that anymore.

on other news, my boss gave me a raise. when this information actually sank in (i just got home from work and was in the kitchen) i burst out laughing. a raise! i didn't know whether to be happy or chagrined. its a very paltry raise, but at least i know my boss sees how hard i work--to please her and to please our customers.

when i got home from work on monday, the bed i had been sleeping on for 15 years was gone. over the weekend we had talked about finally emptying my sister's room and setting it up with bookshelves for all my books and for the TV. i was to get my sister's bed and be rid of mine since she got hers more recently. but i didn't expect to see an empty space where my bed used to be when i got home! what's more, we changed the configuration of all my furniture to accomodate this bed since it is not a daybed like my old one. i now sleep with my head to the wall, facing the window and this makes me uneasy because when we first moved into this house, i slept like this and had a number of sleepless nights. my dad says its because my head was facing a corner. i have had three sleepless nights since i got my newer bed, not because of bad dreams, but because of my neck and shoulders! i don't know what it is--it might be the absense of the bed rails that propped up my pillow, it might be that this mattress is actually straight--but i've had an aching neck and shoulders these past few days. so, when driving, i have to turn from the waist up to change lanes because i can't swivel my neck its so painful. this is also the third time i've moved furniture in my room in the 5 years we have lived in this house. every time i have to get used to the new layout and it makes me sad that change can happen so quickly.

i've been reading Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen these past few days. i tried to read it senior year of highschool but couldn't get past the first few chapters--it wasn't as gripping as Pride and Prejudice, which i first read in 7th grade. but i've learned that if you wait a little, you might be able to pick up that book later and actually enjoy it. it's happened with To Kill a Mockingbird and The House on Mango Street, so i picked this book up last week and have been reading it since. my reasons for wanting to read it was because the movie was so good, but now i'm reading all the nuances and little character details that you can't observe in a film and i can't help but admire Elinor's self-command. i can't help but despise Lucy Steele for her petty attempts at drawing envy from Miss Dashwood. i can't help but be annoyed with Marianne for her selfishness, although she truly loves Elinor which is a redeeming enough quality. so far, i think the book was adapted well for the screen, although i wish i could have read the book first since all the moments that should have been surprising were--painfully--not.

this is getting be a little long.

the only interesting brain-wrinkle i acquired had to do with my bio anthropology lecture with the esteemed Egan. he made the point several times that science has nothing to do with the pursuit of truth. science is based on assumptions, just like religion, just like everything else holding this world together. and he stressed multiple times that utility governs science and not truth, and not necessarily fact either. we were given the examples of the pitfalls of Newtonian physics. even though some of these theories have been disproved, we still utilize Newtonian physics because it is useful. it has worked for us in numerous endeavors--the impressive bridges of the late 19th, early 20th centuries and whatnot. but to think that plenty of the things we have been able to accomplish were all based on faulty theories and assumptions. is that why man is considered great? because despite all our faults we manage to accomplish so much? i say we are truly blessed and Someone is definitely looking out for us.

recommended book of the week: Kenneth Oppel's Airborn.