The Greatest Country in the World

Whoopsie daisy! It has been quite awhile hasn't it? Either I've had a packed week and a half, or I have encountered zero things that are blogworthy. Clearly I've been busy.

Well actually, it's a little bit of both. Slash school and that whole continuing my education thing have gotten in the way of allowing my brain to wander off and phrase things in a semi-comical way as I sit around and do nothing. The sitting around doing nothing thing doesn't often happen...therefore, the phrasing is lacking.

Anyways...the construction is still clanging, pounding, and banging loud and proud over there. I have even taken the time to record it and post it on people's Facebook walls, just so they can appreciate the musical jingle of hammers on metal beams, saws through who knows what kind of material, the wonderful vocals put on by men in hard hats yelling (a million David Hodos running about the area), and that joyous deafening clickety-clack of the crane. Golly I can't wait until Fall of 2010...the projected end date for this wonderful project, but considering we're dealing with the University, well, let's be honest, that probably will not happen. This better be one heck of a parking garage by the time they're done with it. Sigh...

Naturally I've been wearing my USA garb about campus for various reasons:

1. We live here.
2. I look pretty decent in the red and navy...the white tends to have Casper the Friendly Ghost effects upon my skin tone...
3. Uhhh did you hear my sister went to the Olympics? Yeah...
4. It's generally a good conversation topic or interesting tidbit if asked
5. I have plenty of it!
6. It's mainly in the t-shirt and comfy clothing realm...so I can wear it every freaking day if I really want to.
7. I occasionally receive comments by random passers-by via bicycle...[okay, so this only happened once while I was on my way to class and some man rode by on his bike. But I gave a little greeting nod plus half smile and first received a very robust "USA!" followed up by what I think was a comment on how it's the greatest country in the world--then again I cannot be sure because we were traveling in opposite directions and were relatively far apart by this point...oh and I also had my iPod going...more than likely with Miley Cyrus' "Party in the USA..." ohhh the irony...]

In other news...the Class of 1959 (such cute little old people) adorned the steps of Angell Hall today for a beautiful group photo op and were spotted all over campus today...I'm not sure what the dealio was, but hey, it's kind of fun to see that. Hard to imagine that I'll be that old someday, but hey, hopefully it'll happen! Hahaha.

Skyline volleyball home tournament tomorrow, bright and really early...here we go Eagles!

Long Live The Squirrels

Today I witnessed a newsworthy event in a state of complete and utter amusement as I crossed the four way stop at E. Jefferson and Thompson: A woman driving a Honda Civic Hybrid made it through the intersection and then after making a complete stop for a SQUIRREL, she honked at it, waited until it was clear of the danger of her tires, and then continued on her merry way. I started laughing out loud, but was quickly silenced by quite a few not-so-nice glares...it might not have helped that I had my iPod in...who knows. Judger McJudgersons.

In other news..."Your Cosmic Context: An Introduction to Modern Cosmology" by Sirs Todd Duncan and Craig Tyler is one of the most entertaining textbooks I have encountered in quite some time. This might be due to the fact that it was really late last night, the construction was blaring at its usual noise level, and I was kind of delirious, but there are so many little tidbits stuck in parentheses throughout that are straight up hilarious. They are things I think in my head and laugh to myself about, but are never actually written. It was great! Naturally, I was laughing out loud. RM was questioning my sanity, buuut it's alright. When is someone not questioning my sanity these days?

A couple prime examples for your enjoyment:

"If you had all-encompassing power over the world, and you wanted to quadruple the gravity force felt by the rest of us lowly earthlings, just to amuse yourself, how would you do it?"

"The idea of being bound is simple. It means that, without acquiring some additional energy, you can't escape. Without additional energy provided by a large rocket engine, your body is bound to Earth. (Of course, your mind can go higher by studying cosmology.)"

Invisible en Espanol

Today my spanish professor stopped me in the middle of some sort of human bingo game (AKA get out of your chair and talk to other people in the class in spanish) and asked if I was new. I clearly had a very confused expression on my face and accidentally threw out a "What?!" (as opposed to a "¡¿Que?!") and she repeated the question, and I replied with a "No." She goes "Oh this is the first time I've seen you in my class! What's your name?" I managed to blurt out "Andrea" accompanied by half a chortle, and then moved back to my seat.

Let's review. I have been in class every single day (allll five of them), I have made eye contact with this woman every single day when she takes attendance, I have raised my hand and answered multiple questions on various days, annnd NO, I am NOT new.

I guess I'm just a little more ordinary looking than I thought. Who knew it was so easy to fade into the white cinderblock wall?

School. Is. Back?

It's about time I update this...it seems like it has been a long time, even if it has only been a whopping four days. Classes have begun, and have taken over life! As most people know, the first week of class is just straight horrible. It's syllabus upon syllabus, technicality upon technicality, ice breakers that don't actually do a thing to break the ice and sometimes just make things even more frosty, and occasionally a realization that you must get out of a certain class (ahem, complex systems). Onward and upward!

We finally started taking some legit notes in Women's Studies (Perspectives in Women's Health, mind you) which was highly exciting (yes, I'm aware of how high a caliber of nerd I am)...annnd yeah. That's about it for real stuff that has happened...IN class. Outside of class there is already a boatload of reading and homework and whew! Everything all over the place! Skyline is a pretty large time suck, but I'm thoroughly enjoying it. Get my little volleyball fix (which isn't exactly little) and I am thrilled to get a chance to hop in for a drill every now and then. Little do they know, my life happiness increases by several percentage points when they let me do anything remotely close to playing!

In other news, the construction across the street is still insanely loud. Imagine loud construction for a moment. Now, amplify that sound by about six. There ya have it. Among the yelling men, clanging on metal structures, sawing, beeping (from trucks in reverse mode), smashing concrete, dumping concrete into a metal dump truck, driving around backhoes and bulldozers, and the general traffic noise I am awoken every morning prior to 8 a.m. At the moment I wake up, I typically peel back the beautiful curtains (a Maj Original Creation), flick off the construction workers, let out a grunt and general sounds of angst, and then roll over. I am then kept awake (slash sleep in two minute intervals) until I actually need to get up. Not the greatest.

My master plan for tomorrow is to wake up, march across the street (in my pink reindeer pajama shorts, Melvin the teddy bear under my arm), knock on Sir Construction Worker's hard hat, and inquire as to when they will be complete with their large scale arts and crafts project that seems to be producing an obscene amount of noise. The likelihood that this will actually occur? Very slim. But, there is a chance. There is always a chance. (Especially if I wake up to that stupid backhoe slamming into the concrete ground over and over and over again....on another occasion. Then, someone is going to be wishing they hadn't become a construction worker...)

An Awesome Elevator Exchange

I traveled over to South Quad last night to visit my roommate from last year, the lovely YZ, and had a bit of an issue with entering the elevator. No big deal, just typical Andrea behavior, but slightly embarrassing. Not that embarrassing really gets to me, considering I am actually a walking embarrassment to myself since I am highly uncoordinated and tend to make comments to people I don't even know...yikes. Maybe I should work on that...

Anyways. So we're on the first floor attempting to get up to the sixth floor. The elevator bings open and two dudes get in, then the doors start to close when YZ goes in (but opens again), and then I followed after her, but the doors had already started to close again causing me to slam into the one, yell out an 'Ow!' and then realize that there were other people in the elevator. So this was followed up by a thorough explanation of how I am secretly terrified of the doors closing on me and then the elevator actually still moving while I'm stuck in the doors, etc. etc. Boy #1 then commented on what a coordinated move I had just made, so I had to reply with yet another explanation of how I'm not coordinated on land...and that it makes life a bit difficult. Hahahahaha oh my goodness. Thank god the elevators move quickly in SQuad and that I can babble on and on and on and on...I officially talked through the entire ride about ridiculous things that no one else really needs to know about...and continued it on the way out of the elevator. It was a really great thing that they didn't get off on the same floor as we did...

The upside is that one of the boys, Boy #1, thought I was funny and chuckled the whole way up...the other one, mmm not so much. He seemed to be rather terrified and gave me the "Why Is This Crazy Chick Not Taking Her Meds?" Look. Oops! Sorry sir! Didn't mean to frighten...I just feel the need to verbalize things...and I absolutely hate those awkward silent rides in elevators. If I'm going to share oxygen with multiple people in a very small space, it's fun to at least have a semi-comical exchange, or at least a friendly one. Then again, I'm pretty sure I've been intimidated by some outrageous people on the elevator in my day, so who's to say I've never pulled the Boy #2 Look? Hard to say.

Hard. To. Say.