Butterflii.org

Seasonal clothing?

Amber — Thu, 17 May 2012 04:39:21 +0000

I keep seeing people online talking about how they have to pack up their winter clothing or change out their clothing, something along those lines. Would anybody care to explain to me this seasonal clothing change? Arizona doesn’t have seasons, it has unbearably hot and nice, probably not actually cold but cold for an Arizonan. My clothes are the same year round. I mean, I have one long sleeve shirt that I guess I wouldn’t wear in the summer, although it isn’t very thick. In the winter I wear I jacket or hoodie, on particularly cold nights when I’m actually out (which happens maybe once or twice) I have a heavy jacket. But that’s really the excess of my “winter clothing”. I don’t even wear close-toed shoes that often, the entire year I’m probably in flip flips 98% of the time. Then when it gets around 70-ish I stop wearing a jacket and there is my spring/summer clothing.

It has been hectic these last few days trying to pack. I’m running out of room in my bedroom for stuff, so I’m at a standstill until I get some of this crap already packed out of here, but today I did a lot of the kitchen and living room.

Also, my brother brought me back a root beer float from Culver’s, which I’m assuming he ate lunch at after he returned his uniform. He also keeps letting his hamster roll into my room. Twinkie is freaking adorable, and he really gets around in that hamster ball, but it changes nothing. He still owes me my damn money and he’s still an asshole, and I still refuse to be in the same room as him.

I did it

Amber — Fri, 11 May 2012 04:47:55 +0000

I can’t believe my luck, I really can’t. First, today I find out that despite rushing through a ten page exam in twenty minutes I still got an A on it, giving me a very solid A for my final grade in my classics class. A good GPA booster. Then just right now my genetics professor posted what the curve is on the Facebook page. I nearly jumped out of my chair for joy when I found out that I passed the class. I got a strong C. In reality there’s a voice in my head not too happy about that because it’s going to mess up my major GPA, but I was so scared, so sure that I could possibly fail the class. I didn’t though, I passed. I’m still going to burn my exams from that class though. I still have my physics final at the community college to take, but I’m not too worried. I have a solid B in there right now, and I just need a C for it to transfer over, it doesn’t affect my GPA. For some reason my genetics lab TA is taking forever to grade the final, despite taking it a couple weeks ago, so I’m not sure what I got in it, but I’m guessing a B. Another good thing that happened is that I got off the wait list for physics over the summer and into the class. I didn’t think it was going to happen, because I was 4th on the wait list at one point, but I got in. Better get back to packing now.

contacts, buses and finals

Amber — Fri, 04 May 2012 04:53:16 +0000

So the professor for microbial genetics put up the grades as of now, and what they are with the curve. I’m not doing as bad as I thought. I have a D without the curve (I thought I had an F) and with the curve I’m just one point shy of a C (I’m at a C-). So now all that’s left is the final… I’m not going to hope for anything better than a C. I want one, I’ve always wanted one, but I’ve known it’s not possible. All I need to do on the final is get around what everyone else does, and I’ll get my passing C. I’ll never have to look at microbial genetics again.

I feel I should write a bit about yesterday, which was horrible. I got something in my left eye like halfway through the day, and since I had my contacts in I couldn’t rub. Normally I tear up for a few minutes and whatever was there gets flushed out, my eyes are good at taking care of themselves. But whatever this was, it wasn’t coming out. All through physics, and the hour and a half it took me to get home, I was in some of the worst pain I’ve ever been in. When I finally got home I took my contacts out and flushed my eye with water for like five minutes. By the evening the pain had almost completely gone away.

Things wouldn’t have been so bad if the buses did suck ass. I knew I’d have to wait like a half hour for the bus because I always just barely miss the one to go home after getting off the first one. However, the one that I was expecting to catch was full, so the drive just drove right by the stop. Another half hour of standing in the sun and heat, with my entire head in pain. Then it got worse. A few minutes before the bus got there I nearly blacked out from everything. I felt like I was going to vomit for a few minutes, I was starting to lose both my sight and hearing and my entire body went tingly and numb. I have no clue how I managed to walk up to the bus when it got there, but luckily some guy gave me his seat. I really wish I had a car, then I would have been home way earlier and in general wouldn’t have to deal with the shit the buses put me through. Well, back to studying. I got a few hours in today, want to get through at least half of the recorded lecture tomorrow.

Damn kids

Amber — Wed, 02 May 2012 04:12:58 +0000

Next apartment I live in…well the next apartment I live in will be a one bedroom, so that will probably help quite a bit, but I’m going to make sure it isn’t overflowing with damn kids. Obviously two bedrooms as opposed to one bedrooms are going to have damn kids all over the place. I think children should be required to have rigorous finals as well, because they’re annoying the hell out of me. It’s getting to the end of the year for everyone, and college students are locked up somewhere studying their asses off for finals. What are all the damn kids doing? Going outside, from like 5-10 or even later at night, being loud. And it gets worse. Some of them are even coming upstairs where I live and running around, creating even more noise. It’s annoying as hell. For the past couple days around 6 there’s just some little girl screaming at the top of her lungs for no reason. One time I was tempted to go out there and scream to show her who’s boss, but then I remembered I already went through puberty and can’t scream that high anymore. I can still scream loud, but without the high pitch it just isn’t the same. Then I was reminded of this one time in elementary school, I think maybe first or second grade, maybe even kindergarten because I feel like I was in the area (the memory is hazy), when for the hell of it some and my friends and I screamed at the top of our lungs during recess for the hell of it. Completely different situation. Also, I lost The Game earlier today, and just lost it again. Damn. Sorry, since you just lost it too. Haha! And if you don’t know The Game, don’t look it up. You don’t want to know. Just like I shouldn’t have looked up rule 34. I did, and now…the interwebz will never be the same again. Wait, point of this post? Damn kids being loud. I have a passing grade of the line dammit!

Emotional drain

Amber — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 01:22:41 +0000

I’ve gotten through the thick of it. There’s only two more weeks of class left, then three finals and I’m done for the semester. But this past week has just drained me emotionally. I really should say microbial genetics has. Since genetics had me so tired out and my parents were here for the first part of the weekend I only had one day to study for my physics exam Monday. I was worried I didn’t do well, but I ended up getting a B. Apparently that isn’t good enough for some of the people in the lab, because they were complaining during it, but I will gladly take a B. Hell, I would take a C, that’s all I need for it to transfer over to the university. The reason I was so drained was because of the sequence analysis poster project for genetics, that my partner made me nearly shit myself over because she wanted to get together the weekend before it was due and then didn’t even have any of the research done, thus taking up my entire weekend (I don’t think I wrote about this). I worked hard on that damn project. I gave it my all, and although I knew I wouldn’t get the full 300 points, I was hoping for somewhere around 220 or so. You know what I got for all my hard work? 180 points. Barely managed a bloody D. There have been a few classes (2nd semester o-chem, cell biology) that have made me think about just giving up and quitting everything. Giving up on being a microbiology major, just giving up on college. However, this class is just the nail in the coffin. I so badly want to just give up, I’ve lost too much emotionally. I won’t though. I just need to get through the final for the class, just get a C. I may have another year of school left, but all that’s standing between me and my hard earned degree is one physics course and two biochem courses. I just wish I could find the strength to keep the drive going strong, but right now I’m puttering along.

Updates

Amber — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 03:27:00 +0000

I have most of my school stuff done for awhile so I decided to go around updating stuff on the site. If you come here regularly-ish you’ll noticed I’ve suddenly aged 2 years from the sidebar. It’s been about two years since I’ve updated anything, so pretty much anything info-wise that could be updated was.

I give up

Amber — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 01:20:11 +0000

I have two and a half weeks of class left, then a week of finals, but I’m…urgh. My microbial genetics professor finally posted grades for the third exam. I don’t think I wrote here about that, since I was busy studying for it, so I will now. I went to every lecture and recorded every one. I would then hand write the notes from the slides at home and spend over an hour on each lecture re-listening to it and writing in extra things he said in class that wasn’t on the slides. Writing all the notes probably took about four or five hours, plus about nine or so hours listening to the lectures. So roughly thirteen hours just to make the notes. Then there was the studying. In the week before the exam, I probably went over the notes, explaining them to myself for two hours a day, so figure that took about another eight hours of my time. For the pictures in the slides, I used my whiteboard and would draw them out, explaining the stuff to myself out loud as I did so. That was probably a couple hours. So, altogether that was close to twenty-five hours of studying for this exam. I skipped watching a couple of games for this exam, and it was March Madness. I don’t ignore the Madness. I wasn’t happy with my grades on the previous two, so I made sure that I knew the material. Then on the day of the exam I got there around fifteen minutes early to start it early and just barely managed to finish. Unlike the other exams, I answered all but one question on this exam, and was confident enough. I was hoping to get at least in the 90′s (as in ninety-something out of one hundred fifty). But I didn’t. I got 70/150. I did worse than the first two. Sad thing is that’s around what most people got, and it’s a C with the curve. Looks like no matter what I try I’m getting a C in this class. I guess I should be grateful. Then again, there’s still the final I have to not completely bomb.

Maybe it doesn’t have to suck so much

Amber — Sat, 24 Mar 2012 06:44:52 +0000

I’m sure I’ve posted before, several times I feel like, how I’m pissed that I have to spend an entire extra year in school because of stupid biochem. Well, now I can look forward to next year a bit more, after looking over things. I was really angry because I wanted to take more Japanese badly, but it and biochem were at the same time. Well, I decided to work on my schedule for next semester some more tonight and found out that biochem was changed to mornings, so now, at least as long as I study my ass off over the summer so I pass the placement test (since I had to take a semester off), I get to take Japanese. Then I was looking at some of my classes to GRO, since I haven’t used any of my credits yet. I also looked at my major GPA, which isn’t actually too bad. It’s those two math classes I took that are screwing my overall GPA over, but my major one is pretty decent. I’m going to retake general microbiology next semester because I know I can do better than a C, in reality it should be an easy A this time around with all the upper division mic courses I’ve taken. That’ll easily bring it above a 3.0. And then I already planned to retake cell biology which I got a D in, and if I can just get a B in there my GPA will go up even more. Right now it looks like I’ll end up with a C in microbial genetics, so I might just take that over next spring too, because I have yet to settle for anything less than a B in my upper division courses (with the exception of cell biology, but I’m taking that over because I refuse to be happy with that D). If I do as I want in those courses then I should get my major GPA around 3.4 or so, which would look a lot better when applying to grad schools. I also need to figure out over the summer where I should apply, and of course take the GRE. That’s all for now, I’m trying to get some of my notes for micro genetics taken care of.

Uh-MAZING

Amber — Mon, 12 Mar 2012 07:09:28 +0000

I thought it would be best to make this a separate post, because it has a completely different mood to it. Yesterday, which will actually be two days ago when I post this because it’s almost midnight (so Saturday night), I went to see Wicked. I believe the title of this post says it all. I have wanted to see it for so long, and my aunt, through connections, was able to gets tickets when they were on special sale, so she managed to get center stage seats, row 26. The stage wasn’t itty bitty like other times I’ve seen Broadway shows, it was easy to see and right in front of me. I was anticipating going for so long, and I finally got to see it! I cannot even describe how amazing it is, words cannot describe how amazing it is. In order to understand the amazing-ness of it, you’d…you’d have to be able to feel what I feel, or go see it yourself. Seeing it yourself would probably be easier. It was so…it was hilarious, yet tragic and painful, yet suspenseful, yet incredibly surprising. I hated characters at first, then loved them, then hated them again, and felt for them by the end. I’d have to say it’s probably taken over as my favorite musical, and I really enjoyed Les Mis. I also enjoyed the Lion King, but it wasn’t on this level, and the Phantom I saw was probably too Vegas-fied for me to be able to compare it. I would love to see Wicked again to see what a different cast brings to it, like if Galinda/Glinda (the Ga is silent) is always so…yeah.

Haters gonna hate…

Amber — Mon, 12 Mar 2012 06:56:00 +0000

And bandwagon fans will jump off just as fast as they got on. Today was Selection Sunday. I don’t think it really needs to be said, but I had issues with some of the selections. First off, I will say I was disappointed in Arizona’s play last night. Their defense was AMAZING through the first couple of games of the tourney, but then it just slipped against Colorado, and lost us that automatic bid. That would not have been a problem if they hadn’t lost to…er, if that day of darkness hadn’t happened. I won’t say who the loss was to at the end of regular season, but the fact that I refuse to mention the team by name should make it obvious (or maybe not). If we hadn’t lost against that team, then all Arizona would have needed to do was not get knocked out of the first round of the tourney and we would get in. It wouldn’t be the best seed, but it would be in. UW was in a similar situation. They were the regular season champions but got kicked out first round by Oregon State (who Arizona then beat) in the first round, ruining their chances. What was my point again? Right, Arizona should have been in over some of those teams that were chosen at large. Although the real main point I was getting to was how when it mattered most the team couldn’t pull their defense together. They have the best defense in the conference, yet on that dark day the other team scored a season high 87 points, and for some reason yesterday against Colorado they were not sticking to their guys. I have to point out Mayes in particular, mostly because the last points that won it for Colorado were a dunk by the guy he was defending because he seemed to be somewhere else. I understand that he’s never been the best defensively and the tourney is the first time he’s played in awhile since his foot injury (which may not be healed completely yet, but when your starting PG continues to fail to grow up and gets suspended for the tournament, the back up point needs to come in), but he just would not stay on his guy. I’m not a coach, so I don’t know the reason for it, but I think Miller should have gave most of the time at point to Johnson, then had Fogg at the 2 and Lavender at the 3 instead of giving B-Lav what seemed like limited minutes off the bench (his defense has improved this season).

So Arizona didn’t make it to the tournament. But they got a 1 seed in the NIT instead. People are pissed that they accepted, saying that Arizona is too good for the NIT. Then they get off just talking shit about the program and about Miller. Well, dear haters, I bet you weren’t saying anything bad last year when Arizona made it to the Elite 8. I bet you weren’t saying anything when we were on a winning streak, or when we swept the bay area schools away. But now that the team has accepted something so low, you’re pretty much saying screw it and walking away. Well, I’ll tell you right now bandwagon fans, when you jump off please make sure it’s over a bridge with a dried up river, because I’d prefer you not try to jump back on. So what is they didn’t get into the tournament? They did great this year, considering everything that’s happened. The top two scorers on the teams from last year leave (one being the number 2 pick in the NBA draft, the other transferring to a mid-major that somehow got into the tournament this year). Not to mention that one of those players we lost was the go-to guy who you could depend on to get the shot needed. One of our best returning players, one who especially plays a key part in the emotional support of the team, gets shot before the season even starts, and right when he starts to get back to how he played last year he suffered a broken foot and is out for the rest of the season (and I’m convinced we would have beat Washington had KP been able to return for the second half). There was the issue of being greatly undersized, with a 6’7″ center and 6’6″ PF. Then of course the team lost early one of the freshman, whose size would have been helpful this year, and the highly touted point guard that is still there doesn’t understand that there are consequences and keeps getting suspended when his team need him (and all the support out there to Miller for doing so and trying to teach Turner a lesson, even when the team could use him). Despite all of this, the team still managed a 23-11 record, and four of those losses were decided by two points or less. The NIT may not be what the “fans” expect of Arizona, but it’s a good learning opportunity for the Cats. The seniors, the amazing seniors who have given it their all this year to fill in the gaps left by D-Will, get post season play before their time is over, and since they’re a 1 seed they get to play at McKale in front of their fans. All of the returning players, especially the freshman, get to play more and gain some more experience to put to use next year. Next year, when Arizona has the top recruiting class coming in. Let’s see people talk shit next season. I doubt anyone will though, they’ll just hop back onto that bandwagon as it comes rolling through town.