Last Names

It’s the start of the new semester and I’m sitting in a class of forty or so people.  The professor passes out the syllabus and then picks up an attendance sheet.  In an attempt to learn our names, he or she decides to call out names instead of having us sign in for the first few weeks.  And so, the professor begins to call out names.  ‘Thomas, John, Sarah, Emily, Natalie, Sarah, Peter, Sarah…’

What’s missing?  Last names!  Why do professors take attendance using first names only?!  It’s one of my biggest pet peeves about professors.  In a class of forty or so students, there will undoubtedly be at least three Sarahs.  It was the third most popular name in 1988.  So, how am I supposed to know which Sarah a professor is talking about when they take attendance?  I don’t want to raise my hand for some other Sarah and give them my attendance point.  And if that other Sarah is actually in class and we both raise our hands, one of us is bound to look like an idiot.

After the first two or three days of class, I can figure out which Sarah I am, the second or third, but that first day is always the worst.  I can usually bet that if one of the first names a professor calls out is Sarah, it’s not me, since my last name is towards the end of the alphabet, but it’s still irritating.

It’s something that’s easily solved.  It’s not difficult to call out last names as well; they’re right there on the list.  Students are stressed enough, don’t add to it by making them wonder if they’ve claimed an attendance point for another student instead of themselves.  Use last names as well.

Although, on the other side of the spectrum, I had a professor use last names and no first names.  It didn’t help me much since my last name can also be a first name and when he called it out I thought he was using someone’s first name.  So, professors, using both names is useful.

Car Shopping

The time has come for me to buy my own car.  For the past four years I have been driving the Saab 9-5 that my parents bought for me to use to commute back and forth from school when I was at community college, and while I absolutely love that car, it’s not technically mine and I need my own before grad school next year.  So, for the past few weeks I’ve been test driving and researching different cars, trying to find that perfect one.

My dad absolutely loves car shopping, so he’s been looking at them online, comparing, looking up crash test ratings, and carfaxes.  It’s really the only kind of shopping he does like and he only gets to do it every few years.  Of course, even after he does find the perfect car, he keeps looking at them online and wondering if he should have bought a different one.

What I really want is another Saab 9-5, but unfortunately there aren’t any at a good price, with decent mileage, and new enough within a 100 mile radius of where I live.  Actually, there aren’t any in all of New York.  There are a couple in New Jersey, but I’m not driving that far just to buy a car.  So, unfortunately I don’t think I’ll be getting a Saab.  Instead, we’re looking at Ford Five Hundreds, Chevy Malibus, and Dodge Avengers.  We had been looking at a few types of Volvos, but ran into the same issue as the Saabs.

It’s always interesting to see the different types of car dealers there are, too.  We looked at a Volvo at this one dealership and the salesman was so pushy.  He insisted on going with us when we test drove it (while that’s common downstate and in NYC, it’s not where I live), which I find incredibly annoying, and he keeps calling us and asking if we want him to ‘run some numbers’ on it.  While it’s a nice car, my dad thinks it’s too old and has too high of mileage to bother getting.

We test drove an Avenger from a used car lot where the saleslady didn’t even ask us if we wanted to put an offer or anything up on it.  She just let us test drive it and that was that.  Then the dealer who had a Malibu as well as a Saab 9-3 was really nice.  He wasn’t pushy, but was friendly and even introduced us to the owner of the dealership.  The owner is actually the one who gave us the idea for the Malibu, which I really loved.  I only got to test drive it for ten minutes since the dealership was about to close, so I have to go test drive it again, but I liked it.

More Than a Book

I have tried my hand at poetry and this is what I came up with.  It’s about LeakyCon.

More Than a Book

Words on a page
Just text and lines
That’s all you see
But I see beyond the spine

When I look at that book I’m all smiles
I think of the memories I wouldn’t have without it
Cities traveled to, far away by hundreds of miles
For reasons contained in those seven books

Enjoyed by millions all over the globe
When most finished reading, that was it
For me it was just the beginning
I kept unraveling the mysteries, bit by bit

A lot found it funny, crazy, and weird
To travel so far
I didn’t care, their opinions didn’t matter
I just hopped in the car

Those four days flew by too fast
The four days when wizards took over Boston
They were filled with dozens of what would become inside jokes
Like fire alarms, GITs, smashed guitars, and bacon

Thirteen of us met there
All at various times
Some would say the number is unlucky
We say, thirteen’s not a crime

We all live far away
In places like Virginia and New Jersey
Brought together by a book
From places even as far as Germany

Too soon it came to an end
We had to say goodbye
To strangers who had become friends
And it was hard not to cry

We had all agreed
Harry Potter was more than just a book
It brought us together
That was all it took

Best New Year’s Eve Ever!

A few minutes into my shift at work on New Year’s Eve, some old guy asked me if I was going to get wasted that night.  I awkwardly told him no, and what I did do on New Year’s Eve was far better than getting wasted.

I never do much for New Year’s Eve, and I didn’t think this year would be any different.  I played Mario Kart with my siblings and one of my friends and then someone suggested we go look at the blue moon.  Once we got outside we realized it was too cloudy, but there was a few inches of snow on the ground and it was perfect packing snow.  We started an awesome snowball fight that only stopped when midnight arrived and we went inside to watch the ball drop and toast in the new year.  Then the fight continued and it was so much fun.  We were all completely soaked by one in the morning, but it was definitely worth it.  Snowball fights are so much fun at midnight.

My youngest sister won best quote of the night while we were drinking sparkling apple juice, when she exclaimed, “If champagne tasted this good, I’d be drunk all the time!”

I Don’t Think the French Language Has Changed…

The other day I sold back most of my books. I wound up selling most of them to a girl in one of my friend’s classes and she gave me $76 for them, which is not bad at all.  However, she was only going to give me $3 for my $200 French text book (the funny thing is she gave me $6 for the workbook that came with it, even though a bunch of pages were ripped out), so I decided to just sell that one back to the school.

The school was going to give me a grand total of $0 for a book that I spent $200 on!  Why?  Because the stupid thing went to new edition.  I really hate how text book companies have books go to new edition every other year.  It’s not like the French actually changes.  Schools and professors get part of the blame, too, because they insist that students get the newest edition, thereby making the old editions worth nothing.  My first college actually decided to stop using new editions of the calculus book they use so that students can keep selling back their old editions and then new students can always get used ones.  Unfortunately I’ve never had another class that’s done that.

So, I went to sell the book back to a local independently owned book store and they were also going to give me $0.  I am so mad about that.  A $200 book and I’m not going to be able to sell it.  I think I’m going to try selling it on Amazon because maybe somewhere out there there’s a professor who won’t insist on students getting a new edition.

The End of 2009

This really awesome blog idea came from Mo Chirdhe, you should check out her blog.  It’s quite awesome.

Favorite Movie:  Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.  This movie was amazing on so many levels and each time I saw it was memorable and awesome.  The first was the midnight showing the day it came out, in which I participated in the Harry Potter Alliance’s What Would Dumbledore Do? campaign.  The second was in IMAX, and I got to see it with one of my LeakyCon friends, as well as my family and some other friends.

Favorite Song:  Tough one!  I’ve had a bunch.  Currently it’s Play On by Carrie Underwood, so we’ll go with that. Favorite Wizard Rock song is Gryffindor Rally Cry by the Ministry of Magic.

Favorite Lyric:  “Play on when you’re losing the game” from Play On.  It’s just such a good motto.

Favorite Line:  “What the hell is a Hufflepuff?” from A Very Potter Musical.

Favorite Trip: LeakyCon, without a doubt.  I can’t summarize that amazing experience in a short paragraph, but I have multiple blog posts on it.  It was just one of the most awesome experiences of my life.

Favorite Moment:  The ball at LeakyCon, when I met most of my LeakyCon friends.

Favorite Holiday:  My birthday.  I turned 21 and my friends made it awesome.

Something Bad:  Probably should have worked on my thesis more than I did this past semester.
Something Good:  Meeting the most amazing people at LeakyCon.
Something you regret:  Nothing, really.
Something you learned:  Who my true friends are.

Someone that changed your life:   All of my awesome LeakyCon friends.  They made me realize that my family and I aren’t the only Harry Potter crazed people out there!

I Think This Means He’ll Get Coal

Yesterday we decorated the church for Christmas.  My brother, one of my sisters, two of my friends, my high school art teacher, and I were assigned to carry the huge, heavy, ceramic manger scene from the basement to the front steps of the church, where we were to set it up.  We were all pretty afraid of breaking them, but we successfully got all of them up, except baby Jesus because we were going to wait until Christmas to put him out.

After that we were told to get the huge fake Christmas tree that takes three hours to put together and set it up in the Fellowship Hall.  We all groaned and joked that we could just stick the branches in randomly so it was an abstract tree.  The tree was in a few different bags that were all packed in a box.  My brother pulled all the bags out while my art teacher held the box.  He got a few out and handed them to my sister and friends and they went upstairs with them.  Then my brother tripped over something and collided with a rickety wooden cradle upon which Baby Jesus was sitting.

Yeah, you can guess where it went from there.  I dove and tried to catch Baby Jesus, but didn’t get there in time and he slid across the cradle and crashed onto the floor, sending pieces flying out the door.  All three of us just looked at each other, unsure of what to do.  Then my brother just said ‘Oh, shit’.

Then the guy who bought the ceramic manger scene came downstairs and my art teacher goes ‘I think we have a problem’.  He looks at the pieces and says ‘Oh, it’s no big deal’.  We were kind of surprised since it had cost so much.  Then he explained that that Jesus wasn’t the one that went with the expensive set.  That Jesus was in a box surrounded by packing peanuts.  Apparently the Baby Jesus that my brother broke was one that one of the old pastors got for free in NYC.

After that we went to assemble the tree.  The directions were lost so we had to make an abstract tree.

December Can Arrive Now

I have officially won NaNoWriMo for 2009!  My novel hit 50K words the other day, but since the NaNo site’s word validator is vastly different than the one on my word processor, I had to keep writing.  The NaNo site said I had 1,500 less words than I actually did.  This is kind of irritating since most people just have a difference of a hundred words or so.  Some people even get words added onto their word count when they put it in the validator.  Lucky, lucky.

 

Today I wrote the extra 1,500 words and put my novel into the validator, and officially won!  However, my novel isn’t finished.  It’s almost finished, but I really don’t know when I’ll finish it.  After writing so intensely for nearly a month, I’m kind of tired of it.  It’s time to get back to fan fiction for a while.

Team Lupin- My Thoughts on New Moon

When I read the first three Twilight books I thought they were decent enough and I enjoyed the time I spent reading them.  I was excited about the fourth one and went to the midnight release party.  However, I was sorely dissipointed in it.  There were many aspects of Breaking Dawn that I disliked, but I am not going to discuss them right now.  I saw the Twilight movie when it came out and was unimpressed with both Kristen Stewart’s acting and Catherine Hardwicke’s directing.  I enjoyed the movie overall because I had enjoyed the book.  I realize that the movie can never even come close to the book.

 

There has been this on-going argument between Harry Potter fans and Twilight fans that occasionally makes me mad but most of the time I just find it hilarious.  If I had to pick I would without a doubt pick Harry Potter, but I prefer to say that people can easily be fans of both.

 

I saw New Moon a few days ago with a few of my friends.  Being the die-hard Harry Potter fan I am, I decided to wear my Team Lupin shirt, which was clearly designed after the Team Jacob shirts.  I felt somewhat rebelious as I sat in a theater full of teenage girls wearing Team Edward and Team Jacob shirts.  However, no one besides my friends noticed it.

 

The movie itself was far better than Twilight.  The scenes were less choppy, everything flowed together, and the fact that Taylor Lautner was shirtless throughout most of the movie just made it all the better.  There were also quite a few funny and witty lines, something that Twilight was severely lacking.

Benny, Meet Benny

Yesterday my dad told me about Benny’s encounter with himself.  Apparently he decided to jump up and put his front paws on the sink counter in my parents’ bathroom.  There’s a huge wall size mirror above the sinks and as soon as Benny jumped up, he noticed the ‘other dog’ in front of him.  He stood there for a bit just staring at himself and then when he decided to jump down, he saw the ‘other dog’ doing the same and stopped.  He kept watching the ‘other dog’ doing everything he did and then he started growling.  I wish someone had gotten it on video so I could have seen it.  I’m going to try to get him to do it again the next time I’m home and if it works I’ll definitely get a video!