Why Must You Do That, Saab? June 16, 2008

My car stalled on the way to work on Saturday, although I didn’t know that’s what it was doing.  I was driving down a hill and all of a sudden the steering wouldn’t work and neither would the brakes.  It was scary.  There was a curve coming up and I managed to steer it around the curve, but then the check engine light, the warning light, and the change oil lights all came on the dashboard.  The steering was getting worse so I decided to try and pull onto a side street.

I managed to get it onto the side street and pull over, but the brakes weren’t working at all.  I actually remembered that in Driver’s Ed my teacher told us to pull the emergency brake if that happened.  So I tried it and it worked and I stopped the car without crashing into anything.  I was freaking out at that point, but very happy I didn’t crash.

I called my dad and told him what happened and he came to check out the car.  I called work and told them I’d be late.  That was the second time I was late this week.  I thought I didn’t have to work Tuesday, but turns out I did, so I was 45 minutes late that day.  I hadn’t ever really been late before Tuesday and now I’ve been late twice in one week.  I didn’t get in trouble or anything, though.

My dad came and he restarted the car and none of the lights came on.  Of course it worked then.  Nothing appeared to be wrong with it, but I didn’t really want to drive it.  I took my dad’s car to work and he took mine home.  He drove it around a few times and nothing happened.

Turns out, it just stalled and I didn’t know it since it has never happened to me before.  I’m just glad it’s nothing that needs to be repaired.  I took it to work today and it was fine.  It was just scary because nothing like that has ever happened to me before.  I just hope it doesn’t happen again.  Come on, Saab, behave nicely.

BaO, BaO, Wherefore Art Thou BaO? June 11, 2008

Broomsticks And Owls, the first Harry Potter forum I ever joined is not working.  It’s driving me crazy.  I’m thoroughly addicted to that forum and rarely go a day without visiting it.  It stopped working last week and was down for a few days before the administrator fixed it.  But it was only fixed for a couple days and now it’s broken again!  Come back to me, BaO, come back!

Damn Mosquito June 3, 2008

Only a few short hours after I posted on yoon’s blog that I haven’t seen many mosquitoes this year, I saw one flying around the office.  The blood sucking pest was flying next to the wall, a perfect place for it to be squashed by a shoe.  I grabbed a nearby slipper and tried to hit it about five times.  The damn thing got away.  I saw the thing a couple more times while I was on my laptop, but it always got away when I grabbed a shoe.  I still haven’t gotten it.

On a related note, my brother told me last night that there had been a mosquito in his fish tank a few days ago.  Apparently the fish pulled it apart.  Go fish!

Graduation May 23, 2008

Well, it’s official, I am a college graduate.  I got my Associate’s Degree in Liberal Arts last night, aka the degree for those of us who had no idea what we wanted to major in.  The ceremony was nice.  It was very long, though, it went until 9:30pm and it started at 7:30pm.  It was a bit calmer than my high school graduation.  People were loud, but everyone was quiet while the speeches were taking place.  In high school, everyone talked and screamed through the speeches.  At this one, we didn’t have very many speeches.  Just the college president, state assemblywoman, and one of the students.  During graduation practice, someone announced that there weren’t going to be any long speeches and everyone started cheering.

The worst part was having to stand outside the building for 45 minutes until we started the procession.  It was chilly and rainy, but that’s to be expected.  It rained during my high school one, too.  Heck, there was a major flood just a few days after my high school graduation.  But once we were inside it was nice.  People were throwing beach balls around and they had a bunch of balloons that got dropped at the end.  There was a group of people playing the bag pipes as we left the building.

Graduation practice on the other hand was not nearly as fun.  First, I had to drive to the nearby city (my dad drove during the actual graduation) and I hadn’t really driven downtown before.  I managed to find the place, but then had to park in a parking garage.  Not something I want to do again anytime soon.  I drove in and had to pull a ticket out of a machine, but I couldn’t reach it.  I had to unbuckle and lean out the window to get the ticket.  Then when practice was over it took me over 10 minutes to get out of the garage, and then I had to pay $2 to get out.  I’ll take winding country roads any day over city driving, thank you very much.

I don’t have my actual diploma yet.  It’s going to come in the mail sometime in July after they’re sure I’ve met all the requirements for graduation.

It’s Finally Over! May 20, 2008

Today was judgment day in calculus.  I took my final at 9:50 and it took me about an hour.  I actually knew what I was doing for most of it.  The last couple of problems were pretty hard and I guessed on them.  But after the test I was talking to one of my friends about it and I asked him what this one formula was that I couldn’t remember.  He told me and I realized that I actually guessed correctly.  So, I think I passed and I may have done decently.  My professor said she’d have grades up tomorrow.  The only thing left to do is wait.

Now I’m officially done with the semester and done with community college.  Graduation is on Thursday.  I tried to sell back a whole stack of books at the book store after my test.  They bought half of them and I got $44.50.  After that I decided to go to another book store to see if they’d buy the rest.  I had heard rumors that that book store buys any books.  Apparently the rumor is not true.  They bought one book out of the six I had left.  It was my walking class book and they gave me $2 for it.  Ugh, if I had known that I wouldn’t have bothered going, since I’m sure I spent more than $2 in gas to get there.  Now I am left with 5 books that no one will buy.  One is my chemistry book that I have tried to sell four times now.  No one wants it.  Maybe I’ll try Craigslist, although why anyone would want to buy my text books is beyond me.

But enough about text books.  Now I get to sit around all summer and hope to make more money than I spend.  Ah, summer.  I hate the insane heat, but love the vacation.  However, it doesn’t feel like summer yet.  There was a chance of snow last night and I am sitting here in a sweat shirt.  Gotta love the weather.  A few weeks ago it was almost 90 degrees, and last night it was 33.  I just hope I did decently in all my classes.  I’m sure calculus brought down my GPA, but hopefully the other classes helped off-set that.  None of my grades are up yet, so I’ll be checking quite often the next few days.  I’m guessing I won’t even know all my grades by the time graduation comes.  That’ll be pretty funny, graduating without even knowing my final grades.

Failure is Imminent May 14, 2008

The question is not ‘did I fail my calculus test today?’, it is ‘how badly did I fail my calculus test today?’  Today was our fourth and last test, not including the comprehensive final next week.  I tried to study last night, but I just couldn’t concentrate.  There were so many other things I wanted to do, such as write fan fiction, so I only studied for about a half hour.  Of course, it did not help that my professor squeezed a whole chapter into about 2 and a half weeks of class.  I knew as soon as I saw this chapter that I would fail the test.

So I knew I would fail last night, and the day pretty much sucked in general.  I got to school and realized that I left my copy of the Constitution and the Articles of Confederation at home, sitting next to my laptop.  Since I live 20 mins away from school and there’s only 10 mins between classes, my choices were either hope that my history professor would not choose the Constitution essay, or run to the library in between classes to print them off.  I chose the latter.  I get to the library and luckily there was a computer available.  Unfortunately, it was an extremely slow computer.  I finally print off the documents and run to class.  I arrive at the classroom, out of breath, but prepared.  I needn’t have worried, however, because the professor decided to just let us choose which essay we wanted to write.  I wanted to write the one about the Revolutionary War, so the documents were unnecessary.  I left them sitting in the lobby of the building in case someone else forgot them.  They were about 20 pages long all together, so I kind of feel bad about killing a tree, but I know if I hadn’t have printed them, the professor would have picked that essay.

Then, after history, I’m walking to the dining hall and realize that I left my books in my history classroom.  I had to walk all the way back to that building and get them.  I then eat lunch and go to my walking class.  This was fairly uneventful, except that we had to walk up a monstrous hill that was steeper than the hills in my neighborhood, and that’s saying something.

I got to calculus hot, sweaty, out of breath, and thirsty, but I was on time.  I looked at the test and realized that I didn’t know how to do the first 4 problems.  Not good.  I go on to the other problems and found a couple that I thought I knew how to do.  Then I found one that I was really confident about.  It was a plug numbers into a formula and find the integral and I actually remembered the formula.  However, I plugged the integral into my calculator and the calculator’s answer was two more integrals!  It couldn’t do the problem.  I was ready to scream.  The professor wrote on the test that we were to do the integral on the calculator.  I was going to ask her about it, but I ran out of time.  I wrote down a bunch of random stuff on the remaining problems and hoped some of it was right.  Now all I can do is hope for partial credit.

Afterwards, my friend and I went to the store I work at and bought gummies.  Candy was necessary after this horrible monstrosity of a test.  I can only hope that I do better on the final.

My New Favorite Bushism… April 29, 2008

Today, our lovely president was talking about high gas prices.  Being someone who lives in an area where gas prices are above average, I am very sick of paying so much to drive my car.  I got gas on Sunday and paid $3.65 per gallon, which was a sale price.  There are a few stations near me that have gas sales on a certain day of the week.  I try to buy my gas whenever there is a sale.  It cost me $44 to fill up on Sunday and it wasn’t even a full tank.  My tank is 18.5 gallons and I did the math today and found out with the current prices, it would cost me about $67 to fill up my whole tank!  Most stations near me are at $3.70 for regular and a few stations have supreme for over $4.  I’m so glad there’s only 3 more weeks left in the semester.  Once school is over I won’t have to drive as much.  And next year I’ll be living on campus so I’ll hardly be driving at all.

Anyway, back to Bush.  Today he said, while talking about gas prices, “I firmly believe that, you know, if there was a magic wand to wave, I’d be waving it, of course.”  I just started laughing.  Of all the things to say about gas prices, that’s what he said?  Of course he’d be waving a magic wand.  If we could just wave a wand to decrease gas prices, I wouldn’t even be driving anywhere.  I’d be Apparating to school and work and I wouldn’t even need a car to begin with.  I do believe that this has become my new favorite Bush quote.  It has surpassed my other favorite,  “It’s getting harder and harder for gynecologists to practice their love for women in this country.”

All I can say is, I can’t wait until January 20, 2009.

Way to Rip Off the College Students April 22, 2008

As if text books weren’t enough.  You now have to drop an entire paycheck just to participate in the graduation ceremony.  The other day I went to the book store to buy my cap and gown.  Cap/gown/tassel cost me $38.  Your standard black gown, black cap, and gold tassel.  I get a gold tassel because I’m graduating with honors (as long as calculus doesn’t bring my GPA down that much).  Otherwise, you get a black tassel.  Then, since I’m in Phi Theta Kappa, I get to wear a little gold piece of fabric around my neck.  That cost $25.99.  Tell me how a three foot by 3 inch piece of fabric could possibly cost $25.99.  Yeah, somebody’s making a fortune off this.

In high school, if we were in National Honors Society, we got to wear a white piece of fabric around our necks that cost $25, but if we brought it back to the school after graduation, we got our money back.  They don’t let you do that in college.

Of course, my parents agreed to pay for all of this anyway.  But it’s still a ridiculous amount of money for something you’re only going to wear once.  I wish my college colors were the same as high school, but they’re not.  For high school, I had a blue gown, now I’ve got a black one, and for my next college graduation I’ll have to buy a green one.  I’ll have a nice rainbow by the time I’m done.

Also, only slightly off-topic, I look like Professor Snape in my gown.  Due to this, I’m calling it a robe from now on.  Yesterday, I put it on and went up to my little sister saying, ‘I am Snape, the Potions Master.’  Yes, I am a dork and proud of it.

Of All the Days… April 18, 2008

To forget my calculus stuff, it had to be today. I woke up at 8:50 and my first class (English) is at 9. It takes me 20 minutes to get to school when the traffic is good, so I decided just to skip English altogether. He only gives one quiz a week and we already had it on Monday so I figured I wasn’t missing much. But I had to rush to get to school by 10 for History. So I wound up forgetting to bring my calculus stuff.

Unfortunately, this included forgetting my take-home quiz that was due today. Almost the entire class failed the last quiz, so she gave us a take-home quiz to get some extra credit. I got a 7/20 on the quiz so I needed the points. I didn’t have time to go home and get the quiz, nor did I want to since it would be 40 extra minutes of driving and gas.

So I go into calculus and I beg my prof to let me bring it in on Monday. I did the thing yesterday and I managed to convince her that it was finished. I was practically down on my knees begging. Luckily she said yes. I’m so relieved. But we have a big test on Wednesday. I hope I don’t fail it. I’m so done with calculus after this semester.