I did totally own my calculus exam. And my physics one. Next on the list is Linear Algebra, Circuits, and the ever-present Chinese. Rinse and repeat. And repeat. And repeat.

Somehow I feel like I'm taking more tests in the last month of class than I did in the entire first half of the semester. But enough about that. Let me rant to you about the piss poor planning of the SEDS chapter at my school.

I offer to help with the last minute planning. I'm thinking, organizing the volunteer schedules, adjusting any time crunches between lectures, oh no a lecturer canceled what do we replace him with, etc etc. Actual last minute planning. What they hand me is an email and a request: "Can you email the district manager of Einstein's and arrange the coffee order? Donation would be great, or else look into other places. We'll buy as a last resort."

TWO WEEKS.

That's how long before the conference they've given the coffee places to process our order, which we are asking them to donate. I estimated some numbers; we're asking them to donate over 80 gallons of coffee for this weekend. That's a lot of coffee! I can't ask one place because they have a 30 day minimum to process donation requests, the other place is too small to handle this kind of volume, and the Einstein's people have said they are unable to donate it at this time. That's just swell. so I asked for a quote and they haven't responded to me yet. Great. Just peachy.

^$&*%&*@&

So, I have to tell the club tonight that as of right now, we might be able to have coffee for the mornings, but not all day. Which, to be honest, why are we providing coffee all day? Maybe have it out for an hour in the morning, and then again around 4 or so? Or even just an hour around lunch as well. I don't think we're providing dinner, or lunch for that matter, except to the especially prestigious lecturers. Everyone else is fending for themselves.

The planning of this committee is going to give me a hernia.

In other news, with a planning team that I admire to no end, my Comicon manager emailed me the other day. The season of the convention has begun. However, the manager is stepping down and a new guy is taking his place. Both of them are fantastic. But the best part is that coordinators are stepping down from their positions. Which means there are openings. I can begin climbing my ladder. The only problem is I'm worried how much more work this will place on me, so I have to inquire as to what the exact duties and responsibilities are of a Coordinator, and see if I'm up for the challenge. Not to mention I'm sure there are plenty of more veteran moderators that are also looking to move up in the world.

But who cares! Comicon is coming. Granted, it is 6+ months away, but you can never start too early. Right, SEDS? -angry glaring vaguely at club members- And NaNo is right around the corner (two days holy crap I'm not ready), Thanksgiving at Jackie's in two weeks is looking to be a blast, and just a month left in the semester. I have cosplays brewing in the background, panels to hopefully host at the next small convention, and a paycheck to be coming just in time for the Christmas season. And movies! So many movies!

Hooray for the little things keeping my sanity when the big things crash and burn. Cross your fingers and hope the SEDS conference doesn't implode on itself.

So, guess who's taking 22 credits next semester?

This masochist. Though in all fairness 5 of those credits are going to be an audit, which means I don't get graded for it and it doesn't affect my GPA. The main problem was that two of my required engineering courses were at the exact same time as the two offerings as Chinese 202. So after hashing it out with both my counselors and a handful of professors, they decided that I can take the accelerated Chinese (meaning 202 is offered half the semester after Spring Break) with the stipulation that I take the accelerated 201 again in the first half of the semester.

Well, damn.

I mean, I guess my Chinese will get amazing, but that's a two hour lecture. Every day. And it's going to be a little tiring because I'm already passing 201. Taking it again is going to feel so repetitive. But that's my life now. Squishing the classes into each other and pulling loopholes out of the woodwork to make my life have some semblance of organization. It was a funny conversation though, with the Chinese counselor.

"So what's the problem? Which class should we bump 10 minutes?"

"That won't work."

"Why not?"

"It's not that the ends are bleeding into each other. The entire class of one, overlaps with the entire class of the other. I need a whole new class time."

"Oh."

"Yeah."

And that's how I managed to cause two departments and a half dozen faculty to scratch their heads and then shrug at me. Ah, college.

In other news, I think I just completely owned my calculus exam today. Now to study for the Chinese one tomorrow, and the Physics one on Friday. Excuse me while I go fall into a study coma for the next few days.

Until next time!

Homecoming was fantastic! Everyone looked so wonderful, and our tent was the most visited one there. We had actual fighters from the Renaissance Festival come out and do demonstrations, we had actual royalty wandering around (which is easy to do when the secretary is the prince of the court every year in February), and we had REAL SWORDS at our tables for people to look at and pose with.

Have you ever had those dreams where you "wake up" and do an entire day's worth of work, only to actually wake up and then have to redo the entire day? Because that happened to me with the last tunic. I thought I had cut and pinned it, and I just needed to trim it. But as I went to grab the almost finished tunic, imagine my surprise when all I pulled from the bag was a giant bolt of fabric? Lo and behold, nothing was done. It was 8:30 the night before the festival, and the tunic was still just a lump of fabric sitting in my bag.

I have never made a garment so fast in my life. I measured, cut, pinned, sewed, and trimmed that bad boy in two and a half hours. And I hopefully will never make another piece that fast. It turned out great, indistinguishable from the other one, and I'm rather proud that I could sew straight lines while I was so tired, but that was physically draining. Never again, I promise myself, as I mentally think about the time crunch between the end of school and the next convention. It's nice to know how fast I can bang it out though, if I'm ever in a time pinch.

Anyways, the festival was amazingly fun, and while we're packing up this little boy who I had to convince to hold a sword (what little kid says no to holding a toy sword?) runs up and is like "I remember you!" I would hope so, there's only two vikings here and one has longer hair than the other. But he was so sad to see us packing up, and Noah (prince secretary) asks him if he'd like to be a knight of the royal court. That kid's eyes lit up, and he got down on one knee to be knighted. Even if no one else had come by to talk to us, I'm glad this kid had such a great time. And then we all bowed to him, and his sister became a handmaiden of the court, and they both ran off practically flying.

To understand how good Noah is at this staying in character job, let's just say that the most common theory amongst the club is that his Ren Faire costume isn't a costume at all; he's a time traveling victim of a witch's spell, and that's the outfit he landed in. I sometimes think he forgets what era we're in, as we've more than once had to instruct him how to use his phone and how to post the minutes to the club website. He just seems so confused. But he's really good at period acting, so we'll keep him for now.

In other news, for the first semester in my life my registration for classes went smoothly. No paperwork to fill out, no petitions or meetings or exemption requests or audits. I clicked on a button and I was registered. Brought a tear to my eye. Granted, I may have to do some shuffling later, but for now I'm enjoying the ease. Why are all my classes only offered in one time slot? I had to finagle some scheduling to make it fit, because my required classes were at the same time as my other required classes. If it wasn't for Chinese, it would be ridiculously easy to fit everything. Or if I was only a Chinese major. If you stay in your department/school, they seem aware of the other classes, but too damn bad if you're doing literally anything else.

Oh well. I'm registered, we'll see where it goes from there. This Saturday is free comic day, one of my favorite authors will be there, NaNo is coming up, Halloween is around the corner, my classes are making so much more sense. Fall is finally here, SpaceVision is in just 3 weeks, the good movies are starting to hit theatres. Everything is just falling into place, the only way it could get better is if I could find a damn job.

Until next time, readers.

Look, I told you I'd be back soon!

Anyways, everything is steadily coming together. After wrestling with the monster that is my scheduled plan for the next four years, I have finally managed to wrangle something together that my counselor and I can actually agree on. Unfortunately, my end of the bargain was that I can't go to China this summer, and instead I am taking courses here to get back "on track", which, I was never off track in general. I was just not taking one class in the required semester, and that made the computer system practically crap itself.

It's okay, though, because in all honesty it's better for me in the long run. Flagship can only fund one summer trip, if you take more you have to find other grants or pay for it yourself. Now I'm only going to need them for the one summer. Plus, now I don't have to worry about what order of classes I'm doing it in, since everything falls into a nice linear pattern that makes perfect sense. And staying here for the summer is wayyyy cheaper than a study abroad trip.

Plus it guarantees that I'm still here for Comicon this summer.

But that's just an extra bonus. And now that I think about it, I can apply for more jobs around here since I'll be able to stay here for the summer months and work more hours than during the normal school year. My counselor was just worried about the pre-reqs for all of my classes, but it really worked out in all aspects for me. This is awesome!

And this weekend is homecoming. I'm so excited to be a viking. Everyone's costumes look so good, and Tristan is starting to get so pumped about costuming; he wants to do all the costumes for all the conventions. Maybe we'll just quit school ad run off to become convention famous. I'd like that. Though I doubt very many costumers get the chance to work with space programs. It's hard being interested in so many things. At least once a week I find myself asking if I'm really wanting to do engineering. I think I would make a fine Art major, as well as a Space and Earth Exploration major. But then Tristan talks about his history lectures and I remember how kick-ass history really is. And then I'm back to thinking physics is the coolest thing since sliced bread, and the week starts all over again.

And then there's that little voice in the back of my mind, muttering from under a tin-foil hat that I could be a famous author, I should just elope with my books and try and make a living off them. But we all know the likelihood of that is close to zip, and I just sigh as I dig into my calculus homework.

SWEET JESUS. It's almost November! NANOOOOOO

Yes. I will be participating yet again this year. I'm on a hot streak, and I'm not stopping now. I don't know how much time I will have for it, and this might be the year I pull a c-c-c-combo breaker, but I won't fail from a lack of trying. Plus, you know, Thanksgiving weekend is perfect for month end sprints. And we all know how good at word sprinting I am; last year's NaNo saw me pump out 17k on the very last day before submitting the word count. I wrote over a third of that entire novel in 1/30th of the allotted time. Pretty sure I crashed for 14 hours after that.

But I'm stoked. This semester is turning out to not be that bad. College in general isn't that bad. Granted I remember to feed my fish more often than I remember to eat dinner, but that's okay. These years are great. Not to mention, I know just how much everything is going to suck come graduation, so I'm enjoying it while I can. No more word of graduation for a few more years though (and -shudder- grad school), just gonna relish it while I can.

Halloween, NaNo, costumes, conventions. Yeah, it's a good year. Until next time!

I know I've been a little lax in the whole posting thing, but every night I think about it and tell myself, "Tomorrow night, when I have less homework due. Tomorrow night, when I have more time, and more to say."

Well, I guess it's finally tomorrow night.

I still have a ton of homework, still have so much to study. Three exams, a handful of quizzes, and a final project are all due this week. But I guess this is my way of avoiding all that nonsense for a little while at least.

Met with my adviser today. Apparently I'm going to be doing some juggling here real soon, or I'm going to be stuck in school forever. Curse you, prerequisites and the absurd order in which I am forced to take you. And somewhere in that jumble of engineering courses I need to fit my flagship classes and my honors program. Hoo-ah.

In all honesty, it's starting to look like it would have been easier to double in Mech and Aero engineering with a minor in Chinese, more so than all this nonsense. But anyways, I just sit in bed and think about my life before I go to sleep every night. As awesome as everything is, it kind of sucks from time to time.

But back to the old grind. Homework is staring me down from another tab, and I really should be going to bed sometime while it is still today. Sorry for my absence, but in all honesty my life is sort of on a long slow burn at the moment, nothing interesting to report for the most part. all I can say is that sleep is for the weak and ice cream has to be one of the greatest inventions ever.

I hope to get back with more to say once I'm caught up (haha, never) but Fall break is coming soon, and that will maybe give me a breather. Until next time, dear readers.

It's raining right now.

I don't want to do homework. I just want to make some hot chocolate and read a book and listen to the rain outside my window. Of course, I also want it to stop raining so I can run to the store for some groceries, but I can do that later. Why, physics, must you torment me so? I suppose I could do homework to the sound of rain, but that just feels like blasphemy.

Classes are going along swimmingly, coming up on a midterm for my programming class soon, can't wait for after fall break because then I'll have one less class to worry about. Hooray for half semester classes. Being a TA is great. I don't think I even have to be there for a few weeks because my professor is teaching the next couple lessons. I think, if I figured this out correctly, I get paid $50 a class I teach. Because I only have to be there 5 times for each course, and I'm TA for two courses, and I get a $500 stipend for being a TA. So all in all, not bad.

STILL no word from the space building position. I want to email them, but I don't want to sound bothersome, but they said they'd be done by the middle of the week and now it is the next week already. Aargh, I know I'm not eligible for work-study, but I hope that didn't put me out of the running for the position. I really like the job, I was hoping to get it, I think it would be super fun. Not to mention, having a paycheck is kind of nice.

Friday was fun, though. After my proficiency testing for Chinese (that was a laugh and a half), a few friends and I headed downtown to the art museum for this thing they do called "First Fridays". Admission is free, so you can just go in and wander the museum. It was really awesome, and they have an exhibit currently called "The Art of Video Games". It was okay, but it was more of a history of the medium rather than an art exhibit of the games themselves. Which was a little bumming, since between the four of us, we knew most of what they were showing. There were a few game surprises that were interesting, but for the most part the rest of the museum was more interesting than that exhibit.

In other news, the medieval club I'm in is going to start preparing costumes for the homecoming festival (apparently there is a football game that night too, who knew?) because the history cultural group managed to reserve a tent along one of the busiest stretches of the festival, and so they want members out in costume to bring people over to the tent. Tristan and I are going to be Vagarian guards, viking mercenaries who were often hired by the Persians and other Mediterranean armies. They have really cool cloaks. Everyone else in the group is being the usual Ren Faire royal gown get-ups. I wonder if we're allowed to have fake swords. Hmm, I'll have to ask about that. But I can't wait for the sewing parties, it's going to be awesome.

And other than that, my life has been pretty uneventful. Which is good. Don't want anything too crazy happening, I have classes to pass, dammit. It's still too hot for people to be calling it autumn, and I am not looking forward to the festival if it is still this hot out when we have to be in costume. Why didn't I apply to go somewhere out of state? Why didn't I apply myself harder in high school to get better scholarships? Why am I still in this hell hole of a state? Ugh, just three more years till I graduate.

It's going to be a long, hot, three years.

And now, an update of Sam's escapades in the kitchen: he cooked a spatula.

I had stayed late to work in the library and lab on some projects, so I hadn't come home until evening. I open the door and find Sam in the kitchen frantically trying to clean a pan that was full of boiling water."Sam, what are doing?"

"I cooked a spatula."

Apparently, he had been making some chicken, when it was done he cut it up and set it in the fridge and went back to his homework. A few minutes later, he says, he smells something burning. Upon entering the kitchen he finds the handle of the spatula on the floor and the main piece bubbling in the pan. He had left the stove on and the spatula in the pan. The pan had melted through the handle, and completely destroyed the part in the pan. I liked that spatula. But at least it was his spatula, or he might have found himself in some serious trouble.

Yesterday I had my first oral quiz in Chinese, and I was super nervous. This time, we had to make up the conversation on the fly with no scripting or knowledge of which prompt we would get, and then we would be randomly partnered for this conversation. I knew the grammar, I knew the vocab, but conversational Chinese is probably my worst subject. So when get up to the front to act out our skit, I'm thinking I'm just gonna stutter through it, forget half the conversation we rehearsed for two minutes, and then sit down and listen to everyone else raise the bar too damn high.

So imagine my surprise when as I'm sitting down the teacher compliments my partner and I on our naturalness. We were the most convincing, and non-awkward conversation to perform the prompt. And as everyone else finished, I noticed they all just sort of stood there and said the bare amount they could get points for. Needless to say, I was feeling pretty damn smug. But now I have to study extra hard because the teacher will be expecting that from me. Oh well.

And finally, I received an email from the professor who was in charge of hiring docents for the space building. Apparently they had a different budget from what they had been expecting, and so they were taking longer than expected to sort things out. Which means I might have a shot at still getting the position. I know that my hours have changed since I applied because I accepted the TA position, but I think I can do both. I don't even have to TA every class. I'm only expected to be there half the time, so I can definitely fit my schedule around it. Cross your fingers even tighter, because I need to save up for my summer camp in China, and getting a job could definitely help in that area.

That concludes this blog post, as nothing else of import has happened in the past few days, but I'm hoping to hear back from the professor sometime this week as to whether I'm hired or not. And you will be the first to hear the news, good or bad. Farewell, readers. Until next time.