Ah, the sweet month of November.

The first week has gone relatively well, my NaNo WriMo might have fallen behind by a day or two, but that can easily be made up this long weekend. School comes first, always. And speaking of school, I just had the latest night of my life for schoolwork.

If you had told me I would stay up until 1 trying to write a lab report at the beginning of the semester, I would have laughed at you. But I now see that it is in fact a reality. Late nights are the bane of my existence. Thankfully, it was the first time I had to resort to such drastic measures, and hopefully the only one for a long time.

But enough about that.

Satellite club has put the major project on hold for now, until the Goddard Institute gets back to us on the details. In the meantime, we're going to work on something called a CanSat. Basically, they give you a simple mission, you create the satellite from scratch, and they launch it up as high as they can and then the satellite "delivers" a payload to a martian surface (ie: back to earth). We were looking at the design requirements the other day, and the club was just in tears laughing. Compared to the big project, everything looks laughably easy. I can't wait, because the whole point of this project is to give new team members hands on experience. Which means me. Heck yes.

And in other news, I am one step closer to world domination. If you count being a Community Assistant in the dorms world domination. We had a small party for the engineers out on the lawn last nigh with s'mores and cocoa and a fire. It was fantastic, and I helped make the whole thing work. The CA's are starting to love me, especially after the trick or treating I did on Halloween for the floor. And I'm busy planning one more event so I can just rock the interview and resume for the application. If I don't get to be a CA next year, I don't know what I'm going to do.

Other than that, my week has been relatively uneventful. Long weekend ahead, I think some well deserved rest and tea and Star Trek is in order.

Why hello. One last post for the month before we roll over into November. Let's just start this post off with an apology like I have been for the past few weeks. It got busy because every single one of my teachers decided everything would be due around the same time. But I'm past that now. Time for the super ultra spooktacular Halloween special post.

First off, this campus is creepy. Like, all sorts of creepy. From the weird people who wander this campus (need I remind you of the magical man who appears out of the blue on his majestic motorcycle?) to the weird places in the buildings (I have yet to find a basement that isn't suspicious looking) this campus is quite possibly the best place to be for Halloween.

To stat off with the basements, let's look at the math testing center. It's located underneath the physical sciences building because math is totally a physical science. I have to take a test there about once every three weeks. This is the nightmare a descend into every time:

Seriously. That is the sketchiest looking place I have visited so far. The actual testing center isn't much better. There are exposed pipes and electrical boxes and what not that make terrifying noises, flickering lights that would give even the sturdiest of brains epilepsy, and dead end hallways that lead to no where. I half expect to see a masked murderer every time I go to take a test. Ugh. But I didn't have to go today, so that was most excellent.

Next, I didn't dress up today. I figured, you know, being college, people restrain themselves a little better than they do in high school. Nope. I saw so many costumes today, it was great. I saw three Doctors, and one of them was wearing a fez. Needless to say, my day was made. There were quite a few clever ones, and a lot of really well made ones. I was impressed. Next year, I am definitely going all out.

Then, once I got back to my dorm, I decided this darn pumpkin sitting on my dresser was going to get carved today. I set out to clean it, think I may or may not have clogged our drain oh so slightly, and made a terrible mess of everything. It was delightful. And now my room smells like pumpkin. But here is what I managed to carve before starting homework:

Slendermannnnn!!!!!! The creepiest character from a video game ever. Ramesh and I are quite proud of ourselves. The seeds will be roasted/devoured tomorrow, and everything will be right in the world.

Speaking of tomorrow, November is here! Which means NaNo WriMo! Which means another book and a long month of delicious victory. I'm super excited. So, wish me luck, this side of the mad dash to completion. If I'm not writing, I'm doing homework so there is very little free time to be had for this, but I'll keep it up as best as I can.

 And to top off the end of the night, I ran around my floor in costume and handing out candy. I got so many confused looks. Many people started to apologize for not having any candy to give me before I could explain I was giving them candy. My community assistnt was impressed, so I'm super excited for when they interview for the community assistant positions. My plan is going along excellently.

Come forth, brisk Novemeber air. You cannot deter me from my quest. I will have another book with me name across the cover, and there is nothing you can do about it.

See you on the other side!

Wow, I am really bad at this blogging thing.

In the past two weeks, I had the best/worst weekend of my life, the best Chinese lesson ever, got around to actually draw something, went to a lecture by one of my professors, and actually contributed to the satellite club by correcting a calculation. Let's rewind a bit and elaborate on my nonsensical adventures.

The night after I last posted was Friday. I got back to the dorms, homework due by midnight already done. I figure, with all this time on my hands, I better do some more work so I can get ahead in case things get busy again. So I did every homework assignment available to be done. That was like two weeks worth. It felt great. Then I saw physics had some work. So I did that ahead of schedule. While I was watching Supernatural. I plowed through like an entire season on Netflix that night. And Tristan had made a joke that day, prompting me to draw it in my productive night. I was all alone in the room, seeing as Ramesh had decided to go have a scary movie marathon in the lounge.

It was really hard keeping track of time, and I swore to myself I was going to blog it, but I was getting hungry so I went to find Ramesh and see if she wanted to go get food too. Her face when I walked into the lounge was priceless. "What are you doing still awake?" I don't know. I was doing...stuff. I was productive, I know that much. Why? I'm hungry. "Nothing's open right now." What? It's like 11 or 12 at night. There's plenty of stuff open this late.

"It's 4 in the morning."

Oh. Well. We then discovered that Taco Bell is in fact open that early/late, and everyone was satisfied. We even got a show with our food when a catfight broke out on the patio between some other patrons. The streets and campus was eerily empty, but considering it was the wee hours of the morning, it was to be expected I guess. Jeff was spending the night, so we set up the sleeping bag for him and put on Netflix once more to go to sleep to. We wound up not falling asleep until 6 in the morning. That's when I usually wake up on the weekends. It was weird sleeping in until noon. Half the daylight was already gone by the time I was moving around. How do people deal with that?

Saturday wasn't much better. Skyelar came over, and we planned our NaNo WriMo on a cork board with all the little strings attaching people and events to each other. That only lasted until 4 in the morning. I was getting better at sleeping at a decent hour. Sunday I was responsible and went to bed at 11. It was the best weekend adventure I had ever had, but it completely wrecked my semi-normalized sleeping schedule.

That week was fairly uneventful, except I learned how to calculate heat transfer, had a meeting with my professor about an honors contract, and I think I found another thermal professor who might be able to help out with the calculations. I also had to report our findings in Thermal to the rest of the club, which was super awkward. Jordan was doing a lot of the work, and I was trying to follow along, but it was like trying to cling to a flyaway train. It just wasn't happening. And when I finished, it sounded like the rest of the club was extremely patronizing, like I didn't know how to do my job. They sounded like they didn't believe our results (although I can't really blame them. All I really said was that our numbers were messed up and I would have to re-do them to get a better result. Oh well. I'm the only freshman in the club, and the only other lower classman who had been there stopped showing. I guess I'll have to deal with them treating me like I'm incompetent (which, true it might be, they don't have to be so obvious about it).

This past weekend was the fall break, as much of a break as you can call it. It was weird going from two and a half weeks to just two days off. But I spent them wisely. Saturday, oh it was nice. The house was all mine for hours. It was quiet and I did my required reading and I cleaned. And watched more of Supernatural.I'm so far ahead of Skyelar I needed to stop so she could catch up. People need to watch shows faster, dang it. My dad is behind in Breaking BAd, and I just blew past him last night in Eureka. I need more shows to watch. Finished Sherlock, Doctor Who, maybe I'll get started on the twenty other shows in my instant queue.

Sunday was a homework powerhouse. Turns out my professor doesn't like putting homework out early, so more showed up when I thought I had done it all last weekend. Oh well. And my chinese portfolio is due this week. Cranked that out in a couple hours. And I drew some more.  All that work left Monday free for me to just play around on Monday. I made a waist cincher for my steampunk cosplay. And the way I stitched it made it reversible. Once I get the eyelets I need, it'll be 100% finished, and maybe I'll put a picture up of it.

Oh, speaking of pictures, I completely forgot about seeing the unicorn again. That's what Meredith has started calling the homeless looking wizard man on the unicycle that walks his teacup chihuahua. And I remembered that I can put pictures in my blog.

And I managed to snap a picture of him when we were walking. Meredith treats him like a shooting star: every time she sees him she makes a wish. Now you can see the absurdity that is a college campus. I thought it was going to be a little more sane than high school, but I can see now that was wishful thinking. 

Tuesday, Ramesh scared the crap out of me when I got back to the dorms. It was like a quarter to 7 in the morning, and she rolled over when I opened the door to greet me back. I wasn't exactly expecting her to be awake or even really conscious when I came back. Our room was definitely interesting when I came all the way in. Someone had drawn little pictures all over my closet (with dry erase markers, it's cool, easily erased, I do it all the time myself), and there was a huge bike just sitting in the middle of the floor. I wanted to clean but figured I should let Ramesh sleep. So I went to do laundry.

I found heaven in the laundry room.

This is what heaven looks like. Every single washer and dryer was available. And there was no one upstairs. I will never see this again I bet, but damn it was nice while it was me up there. I stayed way longer than my laundry took to do, because I was watching Eureka. Fabulous little show, it's like a mixture of X-files, Pushing Daisies, and Big Bang theory. You should watch it if you haven't seen it already. Anyways, no one showed up for ages, the laundry room was all mine. I sat on every single chair at least once. Because I could.

Once that was finally done I went to go eat. who decided the dining hall shouldn't open until brunch on weekends and holidays? Absurd. And thank you, lady at the POD market with barely intelligible english. I wanted a meal exchange, which meant I can only get specific food items but I don't actually have to pay money for them with the money on my student card, it's included in my meal plan. The conversation went a little something like this:

-places stuff on counter-
Me: Morning, I'd like to meal exchange, please.
Lady: -scans in items- Use money, yes?
Me: No, I'd like a meal exchange.

Lady: Money, yes. -takes card and starts to swipe it-

Me: No, ma'am, I want a meal exchange, please.

Lady: -hands back card and receipt- Thank you, have nice day.

Now I have less money on my student card because she charged it instead of exchanging, but I feel like trying to correct it would have just led to more money being lost and confusion being had. Oh well. Ramesh woke up around noon, we cleaned like crazy, and our room looks magnificent. I'm thinking of rearranging, but I have to see how long most of my cords are and if it's feasible. Then Jeff came back over to get his jacket, and to write an english paper on comic book heroes and how their creation mimicked the social environment of the time. Or something. But he doesn't know anything about heroes or comics. He's super lucky I'm Ramesh's roommate. We had a very interesting conversation, and he had an excellent paper done and turned in six minutes before the deadline.

The night wrapped up fairly quickly and I even went to bed responsibly at 10. Not that it really mattered. There was a fire alarm at midnight, and I'm pretty sure the smoke was on my floor. But it wasn't actually a fire because they sent us back in fairly quickly. At least, I think we had a fire alarm. Now I'm not too sure because no one else has mentioned it today, so maybe I just dreamed it? I distinctly remember walking out in my slippers though. Maybe I was sleepwalking. I'll have to confirm it with Ramesh later today.

But that has been the week and a half since I last posted. Though now that I wrote it, it seems a lot busier than I remember it being. Guess I'll have to write more often to actually remember anything.

Well, long time no blog. How absolutely rude of me.

I've had some major tests scattered in the past week and a half, thus lots of studying and practice, ergo not a lot of free time to just blog the night away. I passed all of my tests, so it was worth it. Classes are still the same, though the engineering lab is starting to pick up as we get closer to working on our actual project. I have a legitimate role in the satellite club, as a thermal analyst for the project (one of them). It's pretty darn hard, every single piece has about ten calculation that go into it, plus calculations for every point of contact between any of the pieces, and then all of those for an entire range of temperature fluctuations. I hope we get a program soon to help with that. Not to mention it is heavy upper division math I'm learning to help out with it. Not that I don't mind.

Campus is still great, I can't believe anyone thought there'd be trouble with living on campus. I love the gym, I love the student center, I love biking around to all my classes. Now if only I could learn to love the pedestrians. The teachers are awesome, my roommate/suitemates are great, there is almost literally nothing to find a problem with. Did I mention that my roommate reorganized and let me borrow her extra monitor? Pretty sweet, and a cable later I was rocking a two monitor set up. I can't even begin to describe how helpful it is with homework.

Went back to the house for another weekend, pretty interesting with my cousin and his friends up for the weekend. I got a new phone. It's alright, I guess. Darn touchscreen smartphones, invading every aspect of my life. Fingerprints, fingerprints everywhere. I don't know how I'm going to live with it.

Still, not much has happened, aside from me adding weights to my bench press and squats. But I do homework and run around and probably don't sleep nearly as much as I should but oh well. I eat good, I feel great, my classes are going better than I could have asked for, and NaNo WriMo is right around the corner. Don't know what we're doing for Halloween but I'm sure we'll figure it out when we get there. Halfway through the semester, and still going strong!

Wednesdays hate me, and I try to love them. It's a very abusive relationship. Not even counting all the classes I have to sit through, it's also the day when I have to go to the one class I don't enjoy this semester, the one day my club meets up, and the day Meredith and I go to the gym. It's my second lab in a row and also the day before most of my work is due in Chinese and my studying frenetically for the test.

This week's particular Wednesday was particularly nasty. The class I despise was in a completely different building on the farthest corner that I have never seen before. In the basement. A super sketchy basement where horror movies start. And then it was a chemical engineering advising class, but being a mechanical engineer, the advisors just gave me a sheet to fill out and ignored me. Not that I minded. It was a 4 semester plan for this and next year. Guys, please. I have every semester until graduation planned out. This is just rude thinking I don't know what I'm doing for even next semester.

And then Chinese, which was interesting. Meredith and I are not the youngest in that class, like we had originally thought. Pretty nice. But I had to book it from class to the calculus test I was scheduled for, in the testing center that was once again in a horror-esque basement hallway. Seriously, we have all these nice new building but we can't install an extra light or two in the dark poorly lit basements that everyone needs to use? Whatever, but the testing room was packed to full capacity. I have never seen so many people be so eerily quiet. Oh well.

Human event was after that, I still don't see the point of that class, if I wanted to take a philosophy class I would've signed up for one. I'm not good at philosophizing, it's just awkward. And then homework jam session in Meredith's room. Back to my room while she was off on some group event with her mentors, and then we hit the gym. It was freaking packed. Who are all these people, and why are they out at eleven on a Wednesday night? I don't understand these kids.

Thursday, my lecture is cancelled, so it sound like I might be doing a major homework jam in-between my two classes so I don't have to do anything this weekend.

Monday was pretty uneventful, aside from the fact that I was never in my room until I went to bed. Between classes and watching the super religious zealot preaching away on the stage by the Student Center (which, by the way, I am now apparently a Sin Devil going to hell for all eternity) and studying for tests I just remembered were this week, I just didn't have time to go back to my room.

Let's start with the screaming Jesus-Man.

He's been here for a couple days now, screaming scripture and other such nonsense at everyone who walks by. Because everyone on campus is either a pothead, gay/lesbian, muslim, a porn watcher, or a masturbator, and we are all going to hell. The entire campus. I guess that should make for an interesting party once we get there. But today he was on the main outdoor stage, and quite the group of people had congregated around to argue with him. One girl asked why he was there to interfere with how she was living her life (and no, don't ask, it wasn't me. I was just there to watch for the giggles). He claimed to love her enough to tell her that she was going to hell and there was really no way to do anything about it. Also, apparently only Christians can be judgemental of others, but non-christians who judge are hellbound. It was pretty amusing to say the least. I hope he's here again soon.

I have a Calc test tomorrow, and I'm hoping it's more like the written work than the online work. Because the online questions are ridiculously absurd. Hopefully the fact that I sort of took this class last year can help me. But it's been a long study session this week so far, so that should pay off.

Engineering lab today was amazing. We were learning to use a program by writing programming into it to plot and calculate long bits of data for us. I have to say, it was pretty cool. Except one kid in my class can barely work his online school account, so it was kind of tedious teaching him how to program in commands. I still don't think he got it.

High school lied when they said they were preparing us. Tests are held in completely different ways, labs are written in completely foreign ways, and my human event teacher told us to write our paper in first person with pronouns if we wanted to and that we could cite however we wanted. I think the entire class had an aneurism when that tumbled out of his mouth. He basically told me to forget the past six years of english classes and write like I once did in 4th grade. I still can't believe it. I think he's trolling us.

Still haven't made cookies, between my never being in my room and when I'm there Ramesh is always off on some sort of adventure. But we did have an awesome study jam session tonight for everyone's classes: Calc, Bio, Chem, Physics, I kind of studied Chinese by myself. But it's getting late, my physics lab was finally printed, and I think I need some serious sleep.

I guess there are only so many ways I can say I went to class before my blog starts to get boring. But, Sunday did start an interesting battle of wills. It started when Ramesh messed up Ben's computer settings when he left it on and logged in. So he and his friends moved her bed out to the hallway. And jack was on Ramesh's team, so they took all his dorm doors off the hinges. Aly and Valerie, my suitemates, were feeling left out until someone covered their entire door in Sticky notes. So they covered Brady's door with pictures of flowers and Justin Beiber and unicorns. And when Logan was visiting us, Aly took his glasses he had left laying around. So he joined Ramesh's team, and we switched their mattresses and dressers. Like, with the bedding on them and everything. And that's the story of how I am now in the middle of a prank war. I pray nothing goes too terribly bad, and this doesn't escalate completely out of hand.

Monday, classes, blah blah blah, went to my subsystem meeting for the Satellite club, and am now working with half to team to do Thermal analysis. As well as modelling in a program that I still don't have access to because of my newb-ishness to college. Which is a shame. But the club seems really nice and patient with me, despite the fact that I am the only underclassman there. Not even any sophomores to bridge the gap.

Tuesday,engineering lab, we made an embarrassment of a bridge that had quite possibly the worst weight ratio I've ever seen. Wednesday, lots of classes, lots of running around. Brought John with me to SDSL, he seemed super interested in the project. We talked about various things, fundraising mostly, then I went back to my room to do work until Meredith showed up and we went to the gym. I can add weights to my bench press now!

Thursday, not much happened. It's Thursday, what would you expect from it? Friday, Tristan and I went to the magical Science and Space building. I seriously want to just move in and live there. Got next semester straightened out, I can register as soon as classes are released. Ate lunch in Barrett, with lots of gelato (I love this college schedule) and played Magic until I had to go to Chinese. Afterwards, I found out my dad was coming home, so I threw some clothes in a bag and hopped on the intercampus shuttle with Tristan, whose mom was kind enough to drop me off at home. Found the house empty aside from my sister, so I just did homework until everyone got home.

Made a new pot of tea, and tried to watch Star Trek but it was just too late. Saturday, I had the house all to myself for the first half of the day, and finished most of my homework for the week. With tea. Lots of tea. Never enough time in a day for tea. Got ready, went to lunch with the rest of the family for my mom's birthday, and had an awesome time out for the weekend. Sunday, faced my brother with a brand new Magic deck and pretty much played the morning away after an awesome breakfast made by my mom. Then it was time for me to head back to the dorms.

First we went shopping around, returned some useless cords to Best Buy, I got some more workout pants, and lots of baking stuff. Tons, actually. Can't wait to actually make it. However, Ramesh had dinner with her family so we didn't make any last night. Sadly. I did laundry instead. As much as I enjoy going home, I can't do it often. Messes up my schedule too much. Laundry om Sunday night is not advisable. It's why I do it at like 6 in the morning. No one is awake for hours. And Meredith and I hit the gym after that. But no. No gym for me in almost a week. For shame. Hopefully she's feeling better tonight and we can go. Poor thing is sick today.

So now it is Monday, and I realize I haven't posted in a week. Apologies again. I'll try to be more regular than that, but not as much as every day. Classes are finally starting to kick in, so I have things to do with my time besides just piddling away on the computer. As much as that saddens me. So, see you tonight, maybe, or tomorrow. Off to homework!