Sam’s Blog

Poor neglected blog. *pats it*

The winter RA job has been uneventful thus far, and this suits me just fine. It’s nice to have a few weeks to relax a bit. The sleep deprivation from this fall semester was starting to get to me a little… I kept getting sick, which normally does not happen more than once or twice a year. So I spent the first week of break sleeping about 10 - 12 hours a day. I feel much better now and am hoping that my immune system will be appeased by this offering of sleep.

Christmas was nice, though full of allergies. It was nice to see the relatives again. Unfortunately we gathered in a house where 2 cats live. After about half an hour of socializing inside, I decided if I wanted to continue breathing* I’d have to eat outside. ‘Twas a bit chilly, but nice. I did spend the entirety of the 26th sneezing, though. Ah well. The food was good, as was the company.

Now that I’m not dead on my feet or Christmasing, it’s time to get back to work. I went into lab today for the first time in a while (other than feeding the fish every day and the occasional tank cleaning) and it was nice to get back into the groove. Two weeks of vacation is about all I can handle before I start getting cranky.

Need to get medical experience.
Do not want.
Will do anyway.
Same with the MCAT. I’m taking that January 25th. Wish me luck! And ask if I’ve been studying if you see me / talk to me online. I need motivation.

My dad and paternal grandma visited for a couple of hours today and I was very pleased to see them.

I look forward to moving back to Honors. I’m in a temporary room in Couch for the break, and while it is nice enough, it just doesn’t feel right. The AC makes weird noises, as does the vent in the bathroom, and the “hot” water never gets past fairly warm. The view from the 11th floor is amazing, though.

In case I do not blog again before then, Happy New Year!

*For random passers by:  I am very allergic to cats.

Claybord is pretty interesting stuff to work with. It’s basically a wood composite panel coated on one side with bright white clay. I’m using white with a smooth finish, as opposed to the kind coated in india ink for scratchboarding. At first it acts like paper. Really bright white, smooth, hard paper attached to wood, but still paper. But then it starts acting all crazy. Colored pencil layering and blending works differently; the stuff hasn’t gotten saturated yet, even after I’ve applied a mix of 2 - 10 colors (depending on which area I’m working on). And, the part that inspired this blog entry: colored pencils erase! Layers of color and pencil outlining all gone with just an eraser! This is very convenient for me, since color mixing isn’t my strong point and I chose the wrong shade of shadowing for a highlighted area. So we shall see how this turns out. :)
I also picked up some watercolors and 3 5×7 panels of aquabord to try my hand at painting again.

In non-art nerd terms: I am drawing a pretty flower for my Grandma’s Christmas present. It is mostly pink and I am using colored pencils on that stuff I jabbered about in the above paragraph.
I’m having trouble figuring out what sort of things to purchase for family members, so it looks like this Christmas will be mostly handmade stuff (provided the bords cooperate).

Eating cereal with a fork because I forgot to buy spoons and keeping the broken keyboard tray (upon which I wish to set my cereal bowl) on the desk at a somewhat level tilt by balancing it on a package of sandwich baggies I have resting on my thigh.  And eating a banana, because it is full of potassiyum.

I should probably buy spoons since I got 2 boxes of cereal last night…

Gah, Christmas is here in less than a week!  MUSTBUYPRESENTS  *flails*
I’ll drive home early Christmas morning and then drive back here Christmas night since I work both the day before and the day after.

My truck bed is NOT a trashcan.

Especially not for your nasty empty cigarette carton.

I’d ask if they were raised in a barn, but country kids know better than to throw stuff into people’s truck beds.

Norman is a giant icicle.  It’s beautiful and otherworldly, dangerous and destructive.  Small soft wood trees are bowing as they should, to avoid being cracked down the middle like many of the hard wood trees.  My truck was *not* smashed by falling limbs, but a lot of vehicles were.  I’m hoping that not too many trees will be permanently damaged, but we’ll see what happens.  Millions of new cars are made every year, but a tree takes a lifetime.

The viewer system was cooperative today and let me finish this stage of the experiment I’m running.   :)

In other news, my truck was a solid block of ice this morning.  It took me a while to get my door open to get at the ice scraper… We were 20 minutes late for church, but I think they started later to allow people to get there.  I decided while I was scraping merrily at the ice that my tolerance for being wet, half frozen and covered in ice chunks was a good indication that I am better suited for a chillier climate.  I’d prefer being a bit warmer, but there’s just something amusing about ice… Even if it does screw up finals week with Monday finals being canceled.  This is partially amusing but mostly irritating.  Oh well.  Kicking frozen grass is really funny.  :D

I stab at thee, intractable viewer system!  Why do you refuse to track 28mm fish?!

*bites it*

Finals week is coming.

I got the winter RA job.

I’m rather tired, but pleased. Lab was very productive today… I’m getting about as efficient as it’s possible to be while doing these trials. I think I just lost about 10 minutes today (in 6 1/2 hours); I got distracted a couple of times, and had a little trouble catching the gender and size of fish I needed. Anyway, 16 trials finished (20 minutes each) and 6 fish tanks emptied, cleaned, and refilled (mostly while the trials were running). Much data and rejoicing is to be had. :)

Of course, I still need to work on the experiment for another 4 or so hours tomorrow and about 1.5 on Saturday (and clean all the fishtanks), but that’s fine. Lab can get pretty tedious, but I still like it overall.

The next few weeks:

1. Make good grades on finals
2. Check my residents out of their rooms. I’m happy that I only have 33.
3. Get housing somehow for the break (hopefully with the winter RA job… but if that doesn’t work I’m still staying here this break even if I have to live in the library. I reeeeeally hope they get back to me about the job tomorrow, since the deadline to sign up for winter housing is tomorrow.)
4. If I get the job: Work at job and earn some food money
5. Data collect like a madwoman to finish this portion of my project
6. Study for MCAT with cool new review books that just came in
7. Stalk a professor that does biomedical research so I can see if I want to do that
8. Try to figure out what kind of research I want to do
9. Register / study for GRE (after MCAT)
10. Find info about summer research programs to get more experience and have something cool to do this summer instead of sitting at home or being a waitress again
11. Frolic in the snow that OU might get?
12. Finish digital painting I’m working on
13. Uh…
14. Read the cool books Dr. Mroczka loaned me
15. Whatever I forgot to put on the list

Busy busy, but happy. As most of you know, too much free time = cranky Sam.  There will be very little free time this Christmas break.  I consider this a good present.