Honors Core and all things Dreadful

The weather sucks, my homework sucks, and life in general sucks. My job, on the other hand, was made more exiting by a fight upstairs between a patron and a staff member (I missed seeing it but heard the whole story from the guys who went running up there). And for once, my Honors Core readings haven't been so dry you could dehydrate by reading them. Journals and discussion remain tedious, however.

I was invited to dress up and beat people with padded weaponry this summer; it looks like loads of fun but I'm not sure I'll have the time, nor will the boy, who would not want me to go without him. I understand that, 'cause he's geekier than I am by far :p Still, the summer looks promising. I can get out of finals on the 10th of May, I leave for Mexico on the 13th, get back on the 24th of June, and hopefully can find a job in Pittsburgh and live with the boy till we move in to our new apartment at the beginning of August. Joy! Even if we're both working full-time this summer it'll be better than school AND work, and we'll be together. And it will be warm - oh, I miss being warm.

I am a failure at being organized but I have hope that one of these days I'll actually manage it. So far all I've done is declare Spring Cleaning officially started and sort out some crap from the top of my dresser/desk. Textbooks are next; I need to find a way to put them up so they're not in stacks on the floor and I can get to them easily. Bookshelf? But then I'd have to move some of my beloved fantasy novels... hm. Well, I'll figure it out. Back to the homework.

And so, dear reader(s), I leave you with this:
Excerpt from Gary Marcus, The birth of the mind. (2004) NY: Basic Books.

"...saying that a trait can be "attributed" to genes is not the same thing as saying it is caused by genes; heritabilities are just measures of correlation, and correlation never guarantees causation. Almost all Jedi Knights are male and hence bear Y chromosomes, so statistically speaking, the chance of being a Jedi Knight is tied to the presence or absence of a Y chromosome. But Princess Leia may have the Force, too; perhaps the real problem is not a lack of talent, but a lack of opportunity - maybe the Jedi powers-that-be in her era tended not to give females equal consideration for Yoda's Jedi boot camp (though I hear that equal opportunity could reach the Force in Episode VII). Y chromosomes would then be correlated with who gets to be a Jedi, but they would not be a cause of being one."
p. 10
/random geekitude, from an Associate Prof. of Psych. at NYU. He cites a source, too - a personal communication from a friend.

Bye, Bye, Sunshine...

I hate you, Winter, Oh yes I do,
I hate you, Winter, please just be through.
When it starts snowing, I'm blue,
Oh Winter, I hate you!

Gah. Half a week in New York and it's back to the usual damp, icy-cold March weather complete with IUP-worthy windstorms. The house is chilly, my computer's in the shop waiting hopefully for a faster processor, and I'm feeling ugly (in the attitude sort of way) due to lack of adequate food/sleep/warm bodies to cuddle with.

Today I got up at 6 so I could go down to the computer shop with mom and sit around while she worked and then sit around some more while the guys came in and worked and finally get my computer into a spot on the long bench full of test monitors and such, and work on it. I tore out the two tiny hard drives (10 and 12GB) and they gave me a 120GB drive to replace them. Oh, ecstasy. So with that and a faster processor I'll be purring for a while, methinks. I also put two new office chairs together for them - go me. I am teh mechanicz0r. And yes, I read the instructions. I am not dumb but I do like to get things right the first time.

Spring Break is turning out to be Spring Cleaning/Working/Fighting with Sisters, but that was to be expected. I still have homework to do, too.

Oh, I forgot to mention...

My roommate, who was causing me all sorts of stress because we never talked, finally got fed up, "gave" me the room, and took an empty single down the hall just before Valentine's Day. I have reason to believe that our lack of communication was the main reason she left, although I also suspect that her upbringing in an upper-middle-class family with three brothers (and therefore no one to share with) made her especially unable to share a room with someone who was so radically different. I'm not sure she could have shared a room with her twin without getting bitchy.

I walked into the room one afternoon and she was packing. She said we needed to talk, I sat down, she gave me one short rant about feeling disrespected and my boyfriend having driven her out of the room (he was here once every two weeks, on average, while hers was around once a week at least) and went back to packing furiously. I didn't even bother arguing, because she had the same look on her face that my little sister gets sometimes - the "I dare you to tell me I'm wrong so I can bite your head off" look. It wasn't worth bitching her out if she was leaving and so I just fed her some BS line about wishing we could have worked out our differences and went mildly back to my corner.

Since then we've exchanged two greetings and one half-argument. The time before last time I saw her, we were in line together at the food court and she purposely ignored everything in my general direction. I was almost amused by it. This weekend, she came to the door and pounded on it, and before I had the sense to pretend I was away, I opened it and came face to face with a Puffed Up Angry Bitch. The conversation went something like this: (translations for those who weren't there to see facial expressions, although mine was mostly deadpan/surprise)
"I want my marker back." (NOW. OR I WILL WHINE AT YOU.) *glareglareglare*
*wtf?* "I don't have it. And he (indicating my boyfriend, who she was glaring at around the half-open door) has been here with me all day. (BACK OFF AND GO WHINE TO SOMEONE ELSE.)
"O RLY? Blahblahblah I GAVE you this room (really? You didn't even ask if I wanted it...), you fuck with my whiteboard (um... right. 'Cause I care that much.) and you need to grow up!" (I WILL CRY. I AM NOT ABLE TO DEAL WITH THIS.)
"Well, look. We don't know where your marker is. I haven't done anything to you and I'm not going to." (I DON'T CARE, GO AWAY.)
*stomps off* "Fuck you. Fuck you both." (ANGST! BITTER ANGST!)
"Thank you." (BEEN THERE, HEARD THAT, DON'T THINK IT'S MATURE OR NECESSARY.)

The boy found her whiteboard marker under the water fountain a few feet down the hall from her door - it had fallen off and probably been kicked there accidentally. Shit happens, hon. He put it back sans comment. I would have gladly handed her all four of my extra markers if it would have made her stop hating us and disappear, but she has her mind set and arguing with a pissed-off teenager is like arguing with some Christians: They never really listen to your side as long as they can hear theirs.

The erasing of her whiteboard was not my fault any of the three or four times it happened. The boy did it once or twice and I don't really care, if she has problems with him she can approach him. I'm not his keeper nor his mother, and he can take care of himself. Oddly enough, since one of those erasings was mid-week when the boy wasn't here, I suspect she has problems with more people than just us.

And in other news, I'm halfway to 40 today (March 6). (Thank you, classmate, for pointing this out) It's time for my quarter-life crisis now... :P