shes a maineiac

what have i done with my life

2009-06-18T17:50:00.000-07:00

since i was 12, i have babysat every summer of my life. i am now 20, and i haven't found a proper job yet.

mostly because i like the under-the-table money. no taxes. sweet.

anyways, i babysit this 8 year old math prodigy. i imagine one day i will be able to say that i babysat for the next steven hawking. or carl sagan. or einstein.

or mr. heim.

(high school math teacher/ex-CIA agent (we think.))

so anyways, this kid could talk shop (calculus) all day long. he just name drops limits, integrals, and odd/even functions as if everyone talked that way.

yesterday, in the car on the way to go bowling

digression: he wanted to go bowling on the first day of sun we've had in 2 weeks. WHY.

so we're driving, and he says he has a question for me. i say, shoot.

"what is the limit from zero to positive infinity of f(x)= 4x ^ (2/3)?"

he was quizzing me.

on calculus.

expecting me to do mental math.

while driving.

OF CALCULUS!??!

he knew the answer.

thus concludes the tale of why i have clearly gotten nothing out of my 17+ years of education. An 8 year old can know calculus, memorize 45 digits of pi, know the atomic weights of most of the elements, know how to convert from celcius to farenheight to kelvin, know the stats of all the red sox players AND beat me in bowling.

epic fail. dylan FTW.

hah.

things i learned today

2009-06-10T19:55:00.000-07:00

in my unemployed state, i have alot of free time. i spend some of it on sporcle, the world's greatest distraction. here are some of the things i learned today.

the collective noun for a group of walruses is an "ugly." as in "an ugly of walruses." for owls, it is "a parliament of owls." for unicorns, it is "a blessing of unicorns."

the czech republic consumers more beer per capita than any other country in the world.

there are only 10 countires with only four letters in their name: cuba, iran, iraq, laos, togo, mali, peru, fiji, chad and oman.

there are only 7 US states with only one member in the house of representatives (due to low population size- remember all that from APUSH?) alaska, delaware, north dakota, south dakota, vermont, wyoming and montana.

monaco is the world's most densely populated country. singapore is the world's most densely populated country with atleast 1,000,000 inhabitants.

swaziland has the world's highest HIV/AIDS rate of infection, with about 38% of the population being infected.

also, i had a popsicle and the joke was "what does the alphabet like the best about the beach?" "the c shells."

lamesauce.

the doldrums

2009-06-07T15:19:00.000-07:00

i hope that the relationships i form in my lifetime never become mundane enough that the most interesting thing i have to talk about is the quality of produce at various supermarkets.

...

i still don't have a summer job. it's not to say that i haven't tried to get one. i have tried. the past two summers i was a hostess and then a waitress at the same chain, greasy american food restaurant in my town, so... i have experience.

haha.

so, having wanted to work on my college campus this summer, after four or five tedious job application, eloquent cover letters on why i so desperately wanted that office job, and subsequent fruitless job interviews, i found myself at home once again this summer. i really did not want to spend my sophomore summer babysitting and waitressing again, but that's all that's looking up right now. i've filled out the applications at many restaurants, but have yet to secure an interview. they're giving me the same lines that i used to give to eager applicants in my restaurant days: "the manager is busy, call back later." or "we're not hiring right now." or "certainly fill out an application! a manager should call you tomorrow."

bull-shit.

it's hopeless.

in other news, spent the day in boston with a few friends yesterday and saw a rather harried looking italian yell at a poor woman, "PUT THE PLUM DOWN. PUT. IT. DOWN." she was merely admiring the 8/$1 plums he had for sale; i really don't think she was about to steal it.

and now i'm back to produce.

jeez louise.

home life

2009-06-04T18:55:00.001-07:00

"check your pulse it's proof that you're not listening to
the call your life's been issuing you
the rhythm of a line of idle days"
-john mayer

the only way i can remember how to spell 'rhythm' is from the pnemonic i learned in high school music class from one c. samuels : "Robin Hood Yelled To His Men." bam. it works, try it.

anyways, i'm home for the summer now. with no job yet. it's really awesome. i spend my days catching up on tv shows and reading cookbooks. and pretending that all my shit from my dorm room is unpacked/stored away.

so sitting all on my lonesome all day has given me a lot of time to think, mostly about home. there are certain sounds that always remind me of home, usually lawn mowers. i don't really know why, but whenever i hear a lawn mower, or any similar buzzing/motor noise (aka airplane, dull roar of traffic, insects...whatever) i think of my house. weird, right?

i feel like half the memories i have of home take place in the summer. today, i was outside watering some plants for my mom, and i walked through our side yard where our swing set used to be. we gave it away to our little cousins a few years ago, because my brother and i older now, and i guess i got a little bit nostalgic. i can remember playing on that swingset with my neighbors til it was dark, sometimes we'd play outside in our pajamas. one time i twisted my ankle from jumping off the swing when it was too high. i was wearing purple hercules pajamas, i remember that.

it's just really weird thinking that in a few year (two) i will be graduated from college (FUCK) and i don't know if this will still be my home, or "the house where i grew up." my family has lived here for 15 years, and most of my childhood memories were formed at this house or around this town. it's really bizarre to think that it will all be totally in the past in a few years. it's not to say that i won't be able to call this house 'home,' but i'll probably have another 'home.' this will be 'my parents house,' not 'my house.'

being here sometimes i feel like a transient. i have used the phrase "i only live here 3 months out of the year" before...and its starting to feel more and more true everyday. i don't know where anything belongs anymore. anytime i notice that something is different in the house, someone will scoff and say that it was been like that for a while; it is new to me.

i always feel weird bringing my college friends here. my "home" as they know it is my dorm room, and that is more me than this house is. this house is my mother's house through and through. it's always strange bringing my college friends through a colonial home up to my clean, empty-walls bedroom when they're used to seeing the squalor i live in at school. it feels like bringing them to a bland hotel room- a space that isn't mine.

i don't really know what i'm trying to get at here, but i've just been thinking about the future alot, and what is going to fade and what will grow. will this house stay how it is? or will it too fade with time? i don't think it will, but what happens if my parents sell it once my brother goes off to college? what if new people live here? will my memories still be here? will they scrape off the paint in my room and see my handprint my dad traced when i was 5 years old? will it mean anything to them? i doubt it. they're probably just paint over it again. used houses are kinda weird to me too.

summer's only 5 days in and i'm already wanting to go back to school. i'll have to find something cool to do around here... there was always something to do when i was younger.

defining moments

2009-02-08T10:35:00.000-08:00

i have always been one of those people who is unrealistic about growing up. about alot of other things too, but being in college makes you think about the ever-approaching day when you graduate and become an adult and have to live in the real world.

in the real world you can't swipe a card with your picture on it and get unlimited amounts of food. you can't go to a free clinic and have a wide range of health services provided to you. you can't take your broken computer to a library and have some techno-geek fix it for you. you can't cancel appointments and not go to class/work if you're sick. you don't get to live with all your friends. you don't have entertainment provided for you every weekend.

i don't want to grow up. it sounds miserable.

anyways though, i was thinking alot about what i actually want to do with my life. as evidenced by this blog, i really like science. it's kind of just something i'm interrested in, but i wasn't sure if i just though biology was really cool, or if is something i can picture investing my life in.

friday, i knew it was something i had to do. needed to do. genuinely wanted to do.

it was a fantastic moment.

i have a terrible cold right now. i'm all stuffed up and my throat kills and i sound like i've been a chain smoker for roughly 80 years. i can't breath that well with this cold, and i was dreading the endless stairs up to the microbiology lab to check on my experiments from the previous day. it should've taken no more than 20 minutes, but i ended up taking an hour and a half. not because i was procrastinating or was slow, but because i was in awe of the bacterial growth. i know its so gross, but it was really beautiful. even though i don't think i want to be a microbiologist, i left the science building friday afternoon with a sense of purpose. it was the first time in my life (well, maybe just college career...idk) that i felt like i was doing what i was meant to do.

science is my thing, and i felt so good about that.

also, last night while i was drunk (still) at 4:00 am, i aparently wrote myself a note on my whiteboard saying "study for bacty YOU DRUNK BITCH. you gotta get into dental school!"

hahaha.

i talk about science too much

2009-01-31T22:26:00.000-08:00

so i'm taking this bacteriology class this semester and i'm pretty sure it's turning me into a hypochondriac. i mean, i've always been kind of a germophobe; not to the extreme where i won't share drinks (which is bad, i know...but i really don't care if you're not sick)- but to the point where i'm obsessed with purell and am probably one of the individuals responsible for its declining anti-biotic powers and and slow uprising of microbe resistance.

...i used to have a purell keychain on my lunchbox in highschool. (there are several things wrong with this picture...but...

...lunchbox? hahaha wtf.)

anyways, so i'm a bio major and i'm a total science nerd, and am unashamed of that. i love science. i love my bacteriology class. it is absolutely fascinating. did you know that in order for the naked eye to be able to see a cloud of bacteria (even just a speck) in a test tube in culture, that means that there are over 10 million bacteria in that little speck?

mind blowing.

so each week in lab we use potentially very dangerous bacteria (e. coli...yum. staph aureous? staph infections are the leading cause of deaths in hospitals i believe...tight.) and even though i wash my hands obsessively, i am still afraid that i am going to contract some crazy disease and will need to be shipped to the CDC headquarters in south carolina (i think) to be cured.

ebola? mrsa? idk.

so last week my nose piercing got a bit infected, which is disgusting, but it happens, and i was convinced it was at the hand of my negligence in not getting all of the bacteria out of every pore in my body. i frantically went to the health center on campus, who are so advil-happy it's insane (they think advil can cure a sinus infection. and strep throat. and pregnancy.) and i was half expecting them to give me a pack of ibuprofin and send me on my way. but there was actually a competant doctor on staff who gave me alcohol wipes and it cleared up right away.

this week, i got a stomach flu. it's been going around campus and is fondly called "the plague." i thought maybe i got this wretched virus at the hand of karmic retribution for making poor decisions while inebriated. i also thought maybe i had a seizure, licked a bacterial culture in lab, then hit my head on the lab bench, got amnesia and forgot about it, but this scenario is unlikely.

someone would've told me about that.

haha.

so i've been subsiting on a diet of toast and gatorade for two days, and someone just ran outside my door saying "WHO WANTS TO FUCK ME I'M FUCKIN HORNY"

charming. with my luck that's probably the guy i'll end up marrying and i just missed the opportunity to meet him.

creation

2008-09-28T20:11:00.000-07:00

as i sit here procrastinating from studying for my biology test in less than 10 hours, i am pondering the origins of the universe.

dna...deoxyribose nucleic acid...

...is fucking fascinating.

seriously. how can a series of sugars, phosphates, and four different nucleotides make up the genetic code for all of life on earth? how can what is inside every cell in my body be made of the same stuff that composes a simple virus? or a palm tree? or a python?

blowing my mind.

strangely enough, science makes me believe in god more than anything else ever will.

i can't even wrap my head around how life started...with two sets of chromosomes encased in an egg and a sperm converging in a beautiful reunion to create an organism that is alive...that utilizes oxygen to perform metabolic functions, and remain an integral part of life on earth...incredible.

things like this make me sit in silence like a wonderous child, but things like that very same sperm housed in the boner champ eager to make out with me last night makes me want to peace the fuck out (ptfo.)

little children

2008-09-23T12:39:00.000-07:00

in one of my classes we have been spending time talking about how freud relates to fairy tales, which is aparently in numerous ways. we first, however, had to discuss the pillars of freudian psychoanalysis, inclding the oedipus complex. basically, it is when a child harbors a hatred towards their parent of their sex to get closer to their parent of the opposite sex, much like oedipus the king (kills his father, marrys his mother.) you get the picture. anyways, the professor of this particular class had no qualms about sharing with the class various examples from his own son's childhood which "cleary demonstrated" how "nicholas" harbored a deep-seeded desire to destroy his father, my professor.

....what?

he compared his child's emotional burden to the fairy tale of the three little pigs. normally, children are supposed to identify with this story and learn from the piggy who built his house out of bricks that hard work pays off. however, some "emotionally disturbed" children identify with the villan, the wolf. my professor's son identified with the wolf, and aparently wanted to appropriate all destructive and evil powers of the wolf in order to over take the wolf, who, in the child's mind, was represented by his father (my professor.) in short, my professor's son had an oedipus complex and wanted to kill his father.

i'm just really not sure i buy all that. i really do not think that children have the knowledge and capacity for learning to properly comprehend the concept of death/killing/hatred. i believe that little boys might identify with the wolf in that story because he's powerful (like a superhero or firefighter is powerful.) and i also do not agree with the notion that every single child that has ever been born or ever will be born on this planet had/has/will have an oedipus complex.

this is the same class in which we discussed how the act of breastfeeding is a way for an infant to experience sexual pleasure.

....

i'm a little disturbed.

on a lighter note, i got another mysterious magazine subsciption in the mail, this time to cosmo, which i nor anyone i know is paying for. sweet.

gender inequality

2008-09-21T17:28:00.000-07:00

i was thinking today about how expensive it is to be a girl. it literally is far less expensive to have a y-chromosome. for one thing, society compells us to wear makeup to be aesthetically pleasing, and as the material girls that every single one of us secretly is, we comply, and buy out the whole line of sephora merchandise. and jewelery! engagement/wedding rings (seriously?? 2??) earrings (i have 6 holes...it add$ up) necklaces, bracelets...it just goes on. and any other beauty regiments that many women get on a weekly basis... manicures? facials? massages? jesus christ. we also have to have nice hair cuts. high lights used to be popular. and even just the things we use to mask said haircut? hair elastics? headbands? barrettes?

and what about biology? periods? do men have to purchase wads of cotton with a plastic applicator to stick up their penis' to stop the flow of blood once a month? no. or buy various medications/chocolate to placate thier erratic mood swings during said time of the month? no, but they should anyways.

driving me CRACY.

......what do hermaphrodites do? i was just thinking about whether or not they get their periods...
true hermaphroditism doens't exist in humans, but if it did? that would be weird. what if you gave birth to one? would you give it a gender neutral name?

hahahahaha.

i need to do homework. by the end of the night i'll probably be fluent in french i'll have been studying it for so long.

also, watch this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1136E4h5UQ
it blew my mind.

S&M

2008-09-20T13:36:00.000-07:00

it is saturday. it is cold in maine. after waking to the joyous sound of gavin degraw streaming out of my cell phone at 6:20 am, i was suprising ready to row this morning. trudging through the fog and duck shit that obstructed my path on the way to the gym, nothing could put a damper on my mood. i had gotten 8 hours of sleep, the party down the hall had been broken up before i fell asleep; things were going my way. we got into the vans, listened to bottoms up about 50 times- it was a great day.

then it wasn't.

what kind of torturous creature gets college students out of bed at 6 am on a saturday, making them forfeit partying on a friday night, to do an AB CIRCUIT?

it was then that i discovered the true meaning of sadomasochism- i truly was being subjected to unpleasant and painful activity to derive pleasure on the behalf of the administrator, my delightful coach.

and thus is the story of another day when i woke up really early for no good reason.