aka. How to Ruin Your Life

sitting normally is for losers

I’ve had a few people on twitter fall to the collective charms of One Direction, but when they asked me for a primer, everything I had once looked at is now out-dated or comes with a very shippy bias. Not that there is anything wrong with shipping! It’s just nice to have a summary as intro before really getting invested. (Because, lbr, you are going to get invested).

[edited: 08/26/13 - added engagement, movie/tour things]
( crazy crazy crazy till we see the sun )

New York this weekend was fabulous. On Saturday we found the One Direction VMAs billboard in Time Square. Then I got Bagel Bites and we watched Swan Princess and 8 episodes of Teen Wolf. Then Sunday was boozy-brunch where I drank lots of mimosas (but not TOO many cuz I had to get on a bus back to Boston) and caught up with so many people I love. Our waiter was a saint and there was a point where we hijacked the speakers in the room where they put us to play hits like Call Me Maybe and some Spice Girls classics.

I have to say though, that I might need to switch my bus provider. The Megabus departure spot is in a seriously inconvenient place now! It used to be right by Penn but now it's over by the Javits center and that is not cool.

Still no word on TA assignments, although I have heard rumors that SOME people already know... so I am hoping we get them tomorrow. I REALLY don't want to have to go visit the guy in charge of these things.

In other news, Matchbox Twenty has a new full length album coming out next week and the whole thing is currently streaming free on itunes. I am already desperately in love with three of the songs (Parade, English Town and Like Sugar). You should all give it a listen. :D

I basically had the perfect weekend this past weekend. I had a friend visiting me and we sat around watching JGL movies, talking about fandom and life, and ordering all our meals in the form of delivery. We ended up watching Hesher, 50/50, Brick, Manic... and then ended the weekend by watching Reichenbach. (We clearly hate ourselves). Also, I don't think I ate any vegetables and felt like crap for the rest of Sunday, oops.

And now it's back to work. August is almost over and there are an increasing number of undergrads on campus. There's 2 weeks till classes start officially and we still don't have our TA assignments, go figure. I just want to know what my schedule is so I can plan the rest of my life? I'm in the process of applying for a part-time thing with the overnight programs at the Museum of Science. I think it'll be good teaching experience outside of academia, and also potentially fun.

Question though. The application form says that I have to list professional references, so I emailed both of the bio lab supervisors (who have seen most of my teaching) to ask if I could list them. The problem is that one of them has an out of office message and they won't be back till Sept. Is it bad if I list her anyway? What are the chances the museum even contacts any of them?

------

In more fun news, tv is still consuming my life. Teen Wolf ruins everything and I might be writing a thing. If I thought I could make it 15,000 words, I would sign up for the big bang, but right now it's just vague ideas... so I better not tempt fate. Speaking of writing, I have too many WIPs, I should get on that. (There is the Mentalist thing - which I have plotted, but words are HARD, I still have a Grimm Hogwarts AU on the backburner, I promised Manda I would do a 1D thing, ugh).

Grimm started last week and it is SO GOOD, you guys. I just needed everyone to watch this show because it gives me a lot of feelings and thoughts and I want to discuss it all forever. It's certainly not flawless, but the world it is building around the characters is just too good to skip. Can't wait to see where the season goes.

So yes, that is where I am right now.

This is going to be a picture-less recap because I haven't had a chance to sort through them all (from my phone and my camera) and upload them to facebook. Mostly, I need to get the words out while I can still remember everything (and while I am still awake).

And if anything makes less sense than usual, I am blaming my current case of Con-Crud.

( Wednesday: the lay of the land )

( Thursday: zombies and teen wolfs and elementary, oh my )

....I am fading pretty quickly here, so I shall do Friday, Saturday and Sunday tomorrow. After sleep.

Well hello. So I survived yet another family vacation. Go me! There were definitely moments when I maybe wanted to stab everyone, but as usual, I worked through those feelings. Right this second I am sitting in the San Francisco airport, waiting for my flight that will take me to San Diego and a weekend of escapism.

School is.. a thing that is still going on. My project is kinda stalled right now since I basically took a 2 week vacation (I stopped in on Monday and Tuesday, but there was no actual work done) and in theory I am finishing the writing of my proposal. Most of it is in theory because I hate phase response curves.

The rest of my time till now has been filled with pre-con prep - except for Sunday. On Sunday I got to spend the day with Mian, Lyssa, Nic and Ashley since they were visiting. We... ate a lot? We had Cheesecake Factory for lunch, followed by seeing Magic Mike. (FTR, that movie suffered from an overabundance of plot, not enough stripper-mentoring shenanigans and not enough Matt Bomer). Then we piled into my living room and we watched Legally Blonde and painted our nails. The night was ended with a trip to IHOP. I didn't want to look at food for most of Monday.

In convention planning news, I tried to finish making this one dress and it ended up reaching a point last night when I realized that there were too many fit issues to be solved in the time I had left. (Srsly, I ALWAYS make shit too big and then have to sit around trying to size it down). So I only have the one ~dress up~ outfit, but that's ok. I think I will be happy for the comfort in the end. (As it is.... unless there is a major meltdown in the next few days, I WILL be back next year).

And now I need to go hunt down some form of lunch (it's 11am, but my body thinks it's 2pm and time zones are HARD), so I leave you with a selection of my pictures from vacation.

( the beach! )

Drive-by update while I want for the Suits season premiere to finish... acquiring.

Next week is the last week of teaching and I really need to get myself going on finishing this stupid proposal so I can just get on with my life. Now I just need to stop getting stressed and upset when I think about opening the document. Argh. My project is going fine. It will be okay. And yet, whenever I try to write about it... I just shut down. Am I allowed to cite residual trauma from my last lab still...?

In more happy things, I managed to do some fun me-things this week. I added words to a google-doc that has been sitting untouched for months. Tonight I finally pulled all the crafting things out and made myself a nice tote bag. It was meant to be a prototype before I use my awesome fabric, but I have ended up really liking it. Next week I want to make a matching zippered pouch to keep inside the tote since there are no pockets. (I actually know how I would add pockets for next time, but I didn't bother for this). I also got something in the mail that I needed for my planned costume sewing, so I can work on that next week too.

I also bought myself a hula hoop tonight. I know a few people who like hooping and it's like fun exercise, so how could I lose? Plus, it is shiny. I am actually eyeing the mini-hoops now because it's kinda like poi.

Also, I am currently obsessed with Ed Sheeran's album. It's called + and has been out in the UK for a bit, but it came out this week. I bought it on a bit of a whim and have been listening non-stop. It's like.. folky singer-songwriter with some hip-hop and it works.

So yes, now I am off to watch Suits and.... then bed. Yes.

Oh hai.

It has been a bit of a month. Teaching is kicking my ass. It's two labs a week and I'm just constantly playing catch-up because I have learn the material, prep the labs, teach.. and then do all the grading. It would probably be easier if my weekends were less tied up, but.. yeah...

That being said, I am actually enjoying this lab more than I expected. I have never been particularly interested in A&P, but it's a lot more interesting than I thought? I mean, the circulatory system was terrible and I would like to forget it exists, but the rest is actually fun. (We are ignoring the pile of grading that is currently sitting next to me).

As for my weekends... they are all about family time right now until the end of June. My grandmother is here from Chile and she is leaving much earlier than usual. Unfortunately, this means she is leaving right about when my teaching stuff STOPS so I can't even take a few extra days to spend with her at home. The thing that sucks the most is that in general I have a hard time being at home and dealing with... things.... that I don't want to talk about.... so I am going home every weekend to be with her but then I also just hate things and don't want to be there. Ugh. Also, my brother is moving to Colorado on July 10th and things are just very complicated at the moment.

On the plus side, this weekend is the town fair and I am very excited. Kettle corn! Snocones! Art fair and buying pretty things! Food! Library book sale! I basically LIVE for this thing, so I can't wait to spend my Saturday at it. Then I have friend plans on Sunday that will include watching movies about silly boybands and arts & craft time. ...So you can see why I am so swamped with grading otherwise. /woe.

So... that is the state of my life. I am still counting down the days to Comic-Con and starting to wonder when I am even going to have time to finish my costume sewing for it.

Hello LJ!

So I vanished again after announcing my projects, oops. I have gained a few new people though, so welcome! I feel like I should have warned for grad school complaining in my sign-up comment.

ANYWAY, here is my first post for the delicious side of my project.

First up is something easy because I had some ground beef that I needed to use up last week and I always default to either tacos or pasta sauce. In this case, I had avocados on hand, so tacos it was!

( one, aka recipes are silly )

In other news, I woke up at 5am to be at the lab by 6. And I just agreed to meet with my advisor around 2:30/3pm. So that was stupid and there is not enough coffee in the world right now.

So.. remember how last week I was like "I need a Grimm icon"? I should have probably checked my LJ icons before making that statement. Self, you have TWO. shut up, i know i have a lot of icons. Also, I went looking for more tonight and I ended up saving some Sherlock icons instead. My kingdom for a good Captain Renard icon. Don't make me do this myself, internets.

ANYWAY. Last week's episode of Grimm was everything I wanted and more! I already word-vomited over most of the people who care, so I suppose I shall spare you all my ~feelings. The fact remains that I love all their perfect faces.

It was a pretty off day for me today. Mostly it was leftover funk from last night. I was lying on my bed, reading on my kindle, and I ended up passing out for a couple hours. I ended up waking up around 11pm so I could watch last week's h50 with people, but I was in a really mopey mood. The worst part is that I know WHY I was in such a terrible mood, but it's so stupid and petty that I don't even want to talk about it. As a result of my nap though, I ended up barely sleeping from 2am until the sun was up (we're talking like... I could not get comfortable and I woke up every 30 minutes or so). Then the sun was up and I promptly passed out (managing to sleep through all 3 of my alarms) and didn't wake up until noon. So.. that was less than awesome since I was SUPPOSED to be at the lab around 10:30-11. *sigh*

So yes. My life.

In other, more fun, news: I have decided to try the 100 Things Challenge. I will make a new post for it tomorrow, but I wanted to throw my idea out into the universe before signing up and intro'ing it properly... for the 3 people who will care.

The premise is to pick a topic and write 100 blog posts about that topic. I was thinking about it today while avoiding grading and I have kinda chosen a topic. I want to do 100 Awesome Science/Nature Things. It's not going to be super deep. Sometimes I just have moments where I'm like "man, the heart is really awesome" or "i really just want to talk about trophic interactions", so I figure I can use this as an outlet. It could be like mini-science lessons, except with more of me being excited. (OMG I AM GOING TO DO A POST ABOUT BARNACLES AND IT WILL BE AWESOME, JUST YOU WAIT.)

...Have I lost you all now? I bet I have. *woe* I promise there will be lots of pictures?

Anyway, I will think more about it tomorrow and possibly start an intro post for it. Sometimes I feel like being in grad school has made me LESS excited about science and I'd really like to get that back. This project might be a good start. :)

edit: After some thought, I am also going to do 100 Things I Have Cooked. That would will take much longer to accomplish, but I do enjoy documenting new things I have tried in the kitchen.

So, I am alive. That is good.

The semester is coming to a close, but the summer is looking pretty busy.. so this isn't as exciting as you would imagine. Luckily, some of this busy is going to be travel!

HI I AM STILL EXCITED ABOUT GOING TO COMIC CON IN JULY.
I have my registration. The hotel registration thing was this weekend. It was a bit of a shit-show, but we got a hotel room on the shuttle route, so I can't really complain. We might try to upgrade to something walking distance to the con, but I am honestly not too worried. Now I just need to work on buying a plane ticket (although.. perhaps not until my next paycheck oops). I have at least 2 of my outfits planned, so I need to figure out if I'm actually going to try and cosplay (and what I would do). In other news, you should all probably not be friends with me.

I have seen The Hunger Games twice now and IT IS STILL FLAWLESS. I have too many feelings to really express, but let's just leave it at - I love all their faces.

Speaking of flawless.... GRIMM. I still LOVE EVERYTHING that happens on that show. Juliette and Nick are adorable and the preview for next week might have nearly killed me. Every time I get info about the new eps, I just flail myself into a mess, really. I realize that like.. 3 people I know actually enjoy this show, but whatever. I do what I want, Thor.

On the book front, I just finished Discount Armageddon by Seanan McGuire. It was a lot of fun. For the unaware, she's the same person who wrote the Newsflesh series (which.. omg last book soon!). The main character was quirky enough to be interesting, but not to the point of being annoying. The ~romance part was a bit predictable, but the universe that story is set in is fascinating enough to make up for that.

I am still trying to decide what to start next. I have Song of Ice and Fire on my kindle, but I also have Divergent, The Sherlockian, The Fault in Our Stars, Dresden Files, Temeraire, and Chaos Walking. TOO MANY CHOICES HELP.

And last of all.... my whole back hurts and I am weirdly sore all over. I did not want to start this week feeling like I've been hit by a car.

HAPPY MONDAY!