Other than having to work, Sunday wasn't too bad. I went a long time without having to work on Sundays but it seems like I've been scheduled for the past several Sundays. In actuality it might have only been the past couple Sundays but it feels like it's been going on for awhile now. I could probably look back at the blog and see for sure but that's too much work.

I think I'm more productive when I work on Sunday because I'm up before noon and I actually get a start on my homework before it gets dark outside. When I'm at home I just sit around and watch TV all day and usually don't start my homework until way after dinner. Now when I work I can spend the majority of my time actually being productive. It's kind of nice. Yesterday I was able to knock out the outline for my part of a paper and read the majority of a chapter that I had a quiz over today.

This was a good thing because right as I was finishing dinner I got a call from my friend. She wanted to know if I wanted to go see Stop-Loss with her and her family. I wasn't really that interested in seeing the movie but I knew I wouldn't be starting my homework for awhile and I wanted to see her so I said okay. The movie actually turned out to be alright. I doubt I would go out of my way to watch it again and it was kind of slow at times but it was a decent movie. I'm glad I saw it.

After getting home I was able to knock out my paper and read a little bit more in my textbook. I could have finished it but I was kind of tired and I figured I would have time in between class on Monday. Which I did.

I got up earlier than I normally would on Saturday so that I could go in and work with Ping Pong and my partner’s rat. I had to work at noon so I went up there at 10:30 so I would have time to spend with both rats before having to go to work. I got up to the lab though and the colony room door was locked. We got keys for the building and for the lab hallway but not for the colony room door. They trust us with the entire building but not with the one room we actually need. I can understand it I guess but it’s still kind of annoying.

I called the lady in charge of the project, both her cell phone and home phone, and couldn’t get her on either. Then I called the next person down on the hierarchy. After already leaving messages with the first lady I wasn’t in the mood to leave one with the second so I ended up hanging up when I got her voicemail. Thankfully she got the missed call though and got back with me before I had gone too far. She was able to come up and unlock the door by 11:00 so that wasn’t too bad.

On Friday I hadn’t really been able to get Ping Pong to leave my arms but I was a little more forceful on Saturday. And by forceful I mean that I put her down on the platform and moved my hands away before she could climb back up. This worked pretty well because she ended up exploring the platform without too much trouble. After about thirty minutes with her I put her back and got out my partner’s rat. His rat is a little more adventurous. She was much more willing to leave my hands and walk around the platform. I wasn’t going in on Sunday but I think that was the day my partner was going to start with the treats to get the rats to start walking down the ladder. I think we’re making pretty good progress even though it’s only been a few days now.

After leaving the rats, it was time for work. Yay work. They recently started the automated system so my job is pretty much obsolete now. Before I just had to go around and push a button. Now I don’t even have to do that. I just have to be there as everything starts to make sure everything goes alright. It’s kind of dumb because if I’m already there I might as well push the button. Oh well. There are still enough problems that I actually have to do a little bit of work so I don’t feel completely worthless. I spent most of the shift downstairs hanging out with my friend.

When I got off I went over to my grandma’s house for dinner. No one had decided on anything but eventually Wendy’s became the consensus. Then my sister mentioned Jimmy John’s and that is what we ended up going with. Earlier at work we had been talking about Jimmy John’s and I thought it had sounded really good but I didn’t say anything when my family was deciding because I like other people to have what they want. If that makes sense. Anyway, I was glad when we decided to have Jimmy John’s.

My mom and I drove down there and she came in with me because she wanted to get a drink. After ordering all the sandwiches we were standing there waiting for them to get everything together and my friend came in with her mom. She had mentioned at work that she might end up going there but I had forgotten all about it. It was a cool surprise seeing her there.

After finishing dinner I helped my sister a little bit to finish the filing cabinet that she and my mom had bought my grandma. Then I took a very brief nap before we left.

When we got home I messed around with some new pictures on my computer for a little while and then called my friend to see if she wanted to come over and watch a movie. She had rented Live Free Or Die Hard so we decided to watch that. I guess technically I decided because I wanted to see it again but she was the one that had rented it so I guess it could be considered a tie. She came over a little while later and then she, my mom, and my sister ganged up on me a little bit. I’m not a fan of girls in groups.

I need to get better at updating this thing every day. Most of the happenings in my life are pretty redundant but I still manage to forget them.

On Wednesday right before leaving for class I checked my email and found out that my first class had been canceled. I'm glad I checked my email. I wanted to do something productive with my newfound time but I ended up taking a nap.

After my second class I went shopping and got a few new CDs. When I got home I was going to listen to them but I ended up taking another nap. Then it was time for Chipotle. It was the second time that I had it this week but I survived.

Sometime after dinner I managed to take another nap. I'm not sure what was up with Wednesday but I was apparently tired. After I woke up from that my friend came over and we watched some TV and then a movie. Good times.

Right after she left I got a call from my friend who's in town. He needed a ride home from the bars so I drove down there and picked him up. At one point he started talking like Sean Connery. Needless to say, he was pretty drunk. Plus he had pneumonia and was on medication so that probably didn't help anything.

Thursday was a pretty decent day. I had a quiz in my first class but that was pretty easy. I think I only missed one or two questions.

In between classes I went and picked up my friend and took him down to get his truck, which he had left at the bars. I didn't want to accept any payment for being his driver but I did let him buy me lunch. I hadn't planned on eating lunch so that was a nice surprise.

In my next class we had a lecture and then got into groups to work on a small project. We have one major project in that class and then two smaller projects, all with the same group. Then we have a few other projects, each with a different group. It's all ridiculous.

In my next class the teacher cracked himself up. That happens pretty often actually but it's funny every time. This time he was telling us about his Spring Break trip with his International Business class. He told us that when they were in London they road on the Piccadilly Line several times and at one point on every trip a very polite voice with an English accent would come on and announce that they were on the Piccadilly Line and then something about a connect to Cockfosters. Every time this happened all the students just looked at each other with smiles on their faces, trying not to laugh. The best part was hearing the teacher go into his English accent and continue to randomly say Cockfosters throughout the class.

After class I had a meeting about the rat training that I signed up for. There is an Open House in a few weeks and every year for the past 30 or 40 years members of Psi Chi have trained rats to walk across a tight rope at the Open House. I thought this was pretty cool so I finally decided to sign up for it.

We met with the graduate student in charge and she went over all the information, including the latest security measures thanks to our university recently making the PETA website. Go us. After all that we went and looked at some rats. First we saw some albino rats that get to hang out in this giant cage with a bunch of different toys. That was pretty cool. Then we went to the room where our rats were. They are black hooded rats and they're pretty cool. We got to pick out which one we wanted and I kind of went at random. I don't really know what to look for in a rat. I had two to pick from and one was kind of curled up in a ball, hanging out at the back of her cage so I went with the other one.

It was my first time holding a rat so I was a little unsure about how aggressive or gentle I had to be. I think I got it worked out though. She ended up chilling in my arms and giving herself a bath. We get to come up with names and afterward we have the option of taking them home. That's pretty cool and I think I'll take advantage of it. As far as names, my first thought was Asper. I like that name but my mom and everyone else pretty much shot it down when they said "Ass?" So now I'm thinking about PingPong. That's what I wanted to call the latest cat that we got but it was shot down. Now I finally get to use that badass name.

After the meeting and dinner I got a call from my friend in Florida. I haven't heard from him in awhile so that was pretty cool. Then I headed over to my other friends house, the drunk one from the night before, and we played some video games. Video games are a lot more fun with other people. We played for several hours and then I headed out.

I got a call from my friends that had gone to see Bayside. They had gotten back early so they were going to preview "21". I decided to join them. It was a good movie but it was really long and I was really tired. I'm not sure it was the best idea to watch it at one in the morning. After the movie I gave my friend a ride home and then went home and crashed.

This morning I got up earlier than normal because one of my groups was supposed to meet with our teacher to go over the latest draft of our paper. Only one of my group members showed up and the teacher was ten minutes late. It was a good start. I like the teacher though so it was okay. He definitely has adult A.D.D. Three minutes into looking at our paper he rolled over to his computer to show us a video of a tiny monkey riding a mini-motorcycle that he thought was cool. I have to admit, it was pretty cool, but extremely random. Then we got back to the paper. Several times throughout though the teacher got a little bored and started asked me and my other group member random stuff that had nothing to do with the paper. I thought it was pretty funny.

The meeting got over right before my first class started so that was good timing. It was a pretty laid back class and was just an open discussion about iPods and Apple and Zune and Microsoft. The underlying theme of the conversation was differentiation. It went pretty well because we have a class that actually participates. I even offered something which is pretty rare.

After class I went over to hang out with PingPong. We have to let them get used to us for a couple days and then slowly get into the training. I've decided I've coddled her too much already because she doesn't like to leave my arms. My partner and I took turns trying to get our rats to stand on the platform. His rat was all about it. Mine not so much. Every time I tried to put her down she would crawl back up my arms. Tomorrow I think we're introducing treats so hopefully that will be incentive enough for her to part ways with my hands.

My second class was pretty average. Nothing worth noting. After class I had work. Yay work. Today most of the movies were set up on a timer so they started themselves. That just kind of makes you feel worthless. There are still some glitches though so I still had to be there as each one started.

After work I had dinner and finished my taxes. Then I took a short nap. Now I'm watching TV and burning some CDs. My friend might come over later to watch a movie which will be fun.

Yesterday I had two tests. I didn't remember I had the second one until about 2am Monday night. That pretty much sucked. I managed to finish most of the study guide for my first test but I didn't really bother with the other one. I looked over it before going to bed but that was about it.

The first test went pretty well. I ended up getting an 88% which ends up being an 'A' after the curve. After that one I went and studied for my second test. Nothing like cramming. Although that's what I do for every test so I can't really complain too much.

I think the second test went relatively alright considering I almost didn't remember it. I wouldn't be surprised if I got a 'C' but I've got my fingers crossed for a 'B'.

My third class of the day ended up only lasting about 45 minutes which was pretty cool. The teacher had gone to Europe for spring break with one of his other classes and his sleep schedule was still off so he had been wide awake since 2am. I always enjoy a shorter class.

After class I didn't really do much. I attempted to watch Dragon Wars. It was pretty much just on in the background. From what I picked up though it seemed pretty decent. Definitely not the best movie out there but I don't regret buying it.

After dinner I worked on filing my taxes. I decided to try and e-file them and that was a mistake. It ended up taking over an hour and then they said I owed over a hundred bucks and that I had to pay a fee to file even though it was supposed to be free. I ended up canceling out of it because it was really frustrating. I grabbed the hard copy booklets and it ended up taking me less than 30 minutes to do both federal and state tax returns. That is ridiculous. It's supposed to be so much faster to e-file but that is definitely not the case. You might get the return faster but it's a pain in the neck figuring it all out. I was a little pissed that I wasted all that time. I should have gone with the traditional route to begin with. Plus, I didn't owe anything and it was free.

When I got all that figured out I headed over to work to give one of my friends her belated birthday present. I got her a DVD that is kind of hard to find to it had been back-ordered and didn't show up until a week after her birthday. Then she was in Vegas for a week. But I finally got it to her. Two weeks late is better than never.

I spent the rest of the time at work with my other friend. The one that I hang out with all the time. We talked for awhile until we closed and then I walked shows with her and talked with her for awhile in the parking lot. Good times.

After returning home I watched some TV and wrote some emails.

Today was a pretty good day.

It was a little tough getting back into the swing of things after spring break but I managed. My first class took it pretty easy so I wasn't overwhelmed with too much information.

After that class I went over to drop off the forms I had to fill out to train rats. I'm assuming it was everyone's lunch time because no one was around the office. That was kind of annoying.

I spent the rest of my time until my next class reading a book. Pretty exciting stuff.

After my second class I made another attempt to turn in my forms and it was a success. One of the questions on the forms was about my last tetanus shot. I had no clue when that was. I asked the guy if they were required in grade school or high school and he thought they were so I went with that. Who knows.

From there I met my friend at Chipotle. He's in town for a few days and we haven't seen each other in quite awhile so that was pretty cool. When we were done eating we went to a nearby shop and I got a couple CDs and a DVD. I went out on a limb and got Dragon Wars. It looks like a pretty cheesy movie but I have wanted to see it since the first previews started coming out. Hopefully I didn't waste my money.

Eventually it was time for work. When I wasn't pushing buttons or cleaning, I managed to finish most of my study guide for the test I have tomorrow. I still need to finish it but I decided to take a break and write this. But I should probably get on it so this is the end.

The rest of spring break.

It turned out that there was nothing to worry about with my friend. As far as I know anyway. We ended up getting to hang out on Tuesday. I finally got a hold of her and we hung out at her house for a few hours. Then we parted ways, her to go hang out with her sister and me to go get some Subway and play guitar at my house. We met up again later that night and watched another movie. I would mention all the movies we watched but I’m writing this several days after the fact so I can’t remember which movies we watched on which nights. Oh well.

The next day we both worked in the afternoon. After work I went and picked up Chipotle because it was Wednesday and that is the day I always have Chipotle for dinner. Or at least most of the time. Probably 99%. After that I called my friend because I said I would. I think that was the time when I talked to her sister because my friend wasn’t there and the sister said she would let her know that I had called. My friend didn’t get the message until about three hours later. I had heard stories about how bad her family was at letting her know someone had called but this was my first experience with it. It all worked out though. She was able to come over and hang out. I think that might have been the night that we watched Clue.

I had Thursday off from work. I didn’t really do much. I probably should have started on some of my homework but that was never really a realistic option. Instead I watched movies, messed around on the computer, and transcribed a song for guitar. It was a pretty good day I think.

Later on that night my friend came over. She brought over a couple movies for me to choose from. I chose at random and it ended up being the movie she really wanted to watch. The only problem was that she only brought the case. She had forgotten that the movie was still in her DVD player at home. We debated for awhile about choosing another one but ended up driving back to her house to get the one she had forgotten. She ended up getting it but she also got Willow, which is the one we ended up watching.

Friday I worked in the afternoon. I can’t remember anything too exciting happening during my shift. Near the end of it, and technically after it should have been over, one of my fellow coworkers confirmed how much of a douche he really is. The story goes as follows: The next day, Saturday, my friend’s sister, who I am also friends with, was having a baby shower. I had been unsure of the time so I hadn’t asked off. By the time I had confirmed the time, the new work schedule was already out and I had been scheduled to work during that time. When I found this out, I asked the before mentioned douche if he could take my shift on Saturday so that I could go to the baby shower. He said it wouldn’t be a problem. This had been on Wednesday I think. My friend also needed someone to cover her shift because she had been scheduled in the afternoon as well. The only person that could do this was the douche so I got someone else to switch shifts with my so I could work at night and he would work in the afternoon. Then all we had to do was get the douche to take my friend’s shift, rather than mine. Well, he waited until Friday night to tell me he had family issues and wouldn’t be able to take my shift. What a douche. If it’s a family thing, I’m cool with that, I can understand. But he’s a lying piece of crap. He always comes up with different excuses when he needs me to work for him or when he can’t work for me. I always assume they are bullshit but I give him the benefit of the doubt. This time he was just retarded about it. My friend was pretty pissed about it and made him feel awkward a few times which was pretty funny. Later, after I had left, for some dumbass reason, he ended up telling my friend that the reason he couldn’t work for her so she could go to her sister’s baby shower, was because he had found out his friend was having a birthday party. That doesn’t sound like a family issue to me. Thanks for lying. Also, the party didn’t start until 6:30. He would have been off work at 6:00 at the latest. Plus, no one goes to a party on time. You always show up late. That was all pretty annoying though. Why would he even tell her about that when that was preventing her from going to something actually important. He’s a dumbass douche. Pardon the language.

To further the douche thing a little. After he told me he couldn’t switch, he then told me that he was watching his friend’s dog for the weekend. The dog has a bark collar so every time it barks, it gets shocked. This douche thought this was hilarious. I’m annoyed by dog barking on occasion but if you have a dog, it comes with the territory. You should be allowed near a dog if you would even seriously consider putting a shock collar on one.

I ended up hanging out with my friend after work and we watched A Mid Summer Night’s Dream. I spent most of the movie trying to convince her to let me take her shift. She had gotten the other guy to switch shifts with me so I had the afternoon off. This meant that I could take the first part of her double and she could go to her sister’s baby shower. She didn’t want me to do that and said that she could hang out with her sister another time and that she wanted me to go to the baby shower. I am friends with the sister but if my friend wasn’t going than I wasn’t going to go because I wouldn’t really know anyone else there. This meant that either I take her shift so she could go or she could keep her shift and neither of us would go. She eventually agreed.

Working a double wasn’t too bad. It was the first time I had worked a shift as an usher in awhile though. My knees really didn’t appreciate the whole standing in one place for six hours thing. I survived though. For the first part of the shift I had to listen to one of my fellow coworkers try to come up with an elaborate scheme of how another coworker was going to ask his girlfriend to prom. The reason for this is that the scheming coworker had previously ruined the surprise that the second coworker had already come up with, by mentioning it to the guy’s girlfriend. The new plan, which was only ever really in the scheming guys head, was way over the top, unrealistic, and completely ridiculous. It was kind of fun giving him crap and trying to add even more stuff in just to see how much he would go along with. I could never get him to agree to bringing in lions from the zoo.

After work my friend came over and we watched Weird Science. That is a great movie. One of the best movies from the eighties.

The other day when I was at the store standing in line to check out, a little boy came up to me, hugged my leg, and then said “Da-da.” It was a pretty odd moment. The look on the mother’s face was pretty priceless, she was definitely embarrassed. I thought the whole thing was pretty hilarious. I just wonder if I look anything like the dad or if the kid does that to any male he sees.

I spent most of work today (Sunday) upstairs. The douche was working and I didn't want to spend too much time around him. I did get some homework done so that was a bonus.

After work I went over to my grandma's house for dinner. I'm still not a fan of family gatherings minus my grandpa.

Now I should be working on my study guide but I can't seem to find the motivation.

Saturday was a pretty good day. It kind of sucked having to get up for work but it wasn’t too bad. While at work, nothing went wrong so that was also a plus. For quite awhile now I’ve had to work doubles every Saturday but recently they moved a couple new people up so I haven’t had a double in a few weeks now. This is a good thing so that means it probably won’t last too long but I’ll try to enjoy it while it lasts. A long while ago I had Fridays and Saturdays off and it was really nice having an actual weekend. Those were good times.

For dinner I had steamed rice and broccoli. It’s a very simple meal but it’s still delicious.

I spent most of my time after dinner playing guitar. I just started learning how to play “Blackbird” by The Beatles. It’s a really cool song and I’m a fan of finger-picking so it’s working out. It was a bit tricky at first but after playing it a lot I’m getting better. My main problem now is the fact that I haven’t played in forever. This means my fingertips on my left hand went all soft on me so I’m having to build them back up. For the past few days they’ve been perpetually red and sore. The worst of it should be over pretty soon as long as I don’t tear one open.

For the past week or so I’ve had a strong urge to play board games. I’m not sure why. I’ve been meaning to go to the store with my friend to buy some but those plans have fallen through the couple times I have made them. Well last night it finally worked out. I went and picked her up and we headed to the store. It took me awhile to choose but I ended up settling on the classics: Connect Four, Battleship, and Monopoly. They had some other cool ones but they were for three or more people and my friend and I only totaled two. Oh well.

We went back to my house down into the basement because there was more room. We put on a French movie called Les Choristes. I’m not really sure what it was about because it’s in French and it’s hard to play a game and read subtitles at the same time. It had something to do with a choir in a school for troubled boys. It was pretty good though, even though I had no clue what was going on.

The first game we played was Connect Four. She won the first two games, I won the second two games, and then she totally annihilated me in the tie-breaker. Then we played Battleship. Right off the bat she sunk three out of my five ships. I was sucking for the most part. It took her awhile to find my last ship and in that time I managed to find four of hers but she got my last one before I was able to get hers. It was good times though. Monopoly tends to be a pretty long game so we didn’t get into that one. Maybe next time.

Sunday. I went to work in the morning and that was pretty much uneventful. When I wasn't starting stuff I was just hanging out upstairs playing guitar.

After work I had dinner, played video games, watched movies, and crocheted. Eventually my friend came over and we watched "Nothin' To Lose." That film is a classic. I've seen it a ridiculous number of times but it's still funny every time. Much like "The 'Burbs."

Monday was fairly productive. At least kind of. I slept in and then decided I wanted to organize my guitar tab. The main reason I finally decided to do this, and I've been wanting to do it for awhile now, is the fact that I keep losing the "Blackbird" tab when I'm at work. I'll open it up on the Guitar World website and then when I go to turn my computer on at work, my computer won't turn on, and when I restart it I will have lost the tab. I tried printing off the tab but that didn't work. I also tried saving the webpage offline but that didn't work either. So finally I decided that there was a pretty good chance I had the Guitar World magazine that the tab was in because I've been getting the magazine for several years. I headed downstairs where I keep all my old issues and after digging through them for a few minutes I found the issue with the tab. As I grabbed it, I decided I'd just grab a bunch and start cutting all the tabs out. So I went back upstairs and started cutting them out with a box cutter. It was a pretty efficient method.

That's how I spent my day before work. I have a lot more magazines than I thought I did. Eventually it was time for work. Again, an uneventful day. I played guitar for a little bit and then started organizing all the tabs I had cut out earlier. I entered them all into a database so I'll be able to quickly see which tabs I have. Now I need to go to the store and get folders to put them all in.

After work I was supposed to hang out with my friend. She had come to a movie with a guy that used to work at the theater and they were still hanging out after their movie talking with another coworker when I got off. She was supposed to get a ride home with the other coworker and he made a joke and she said she would walk home. He said that she had two other friends and I replied "Who are they?" Completely joking. The guy she came to a movie with said he could give her a ride home. I figured she would say something and end up going with me. If we were going to hang out it only made sense that she would just come with me rather than go all the way home just to come back across town. I don't know. I figured that maybe she didn't get to see this guy too often and maybe she wanted to catch up so I let her go. I called her about twenty minutes later but her phone was off. I called her thirty minutes after that and her phone was still off. We're supposed to hang out today but she hasn't answered her phone so I'm going to call her one more time and then leave it up to her. I've got more tabs to cut out.

This will cover yesterday (Friday).

I could have skipped class and gone to lunch with my friends but the teacher hinted on Wednesday that there would be extra credit for showing up on Friday. So I went with class because a little extra credit never hurt anyone. Well, I'm not a big fan of that teacher and another reason why is a lack of extra credit given on Friday. That was pretty annoying. On top of that, the group presenting went five minutes longer than the hour. Awesome. It wasn't too bad though because the group had some good presenters that were actually good to listen to. That's rare.

In my second class we had a quiz. I aced it. Unfortunately, so did everyone else by default. It was deemed a "learning experience" and everyone got full points regardless of what they actually got on the quiz. I enjoy when that happens if I suck on a quiz but when I do well, it's annoying.

I went to work for three hours. Nothing much eventful happened there. Nothing I can remember anyway.

After work I had dinner and then did a lot of nothing. I played guitar and bass for awhile. Then I played Guitar Hero III. I haven't played video games since Christmas break so that was pretty fun. After that I watched TV for awhile before going to bed.

Spring Break has begun.

My Thursday

At the beginning of yesterday I knew that I only had my 9:30 class. My 1:05 and 2:30 classes had been canceled. It would have been nice to skip my 9:30 but we were reviewing for the test. That basically means that the teacher has the test in his hand and tells us what we need to know as he goes through each question. It’s pretty nice. Without that there would be so much crap to try and memorize.

After class I checked with my group members to see if we were going to have a meeting. We normally have meetings every Thursday night but we had one earlier in the week because the latest draft of our project was due on Thursday. There really wouldn’t be a point to have a full-blown meeting because none of us planned on working on the project over break. Rather than having the meeting at 5:15 like we usually do, we decided to move it to 2:30 and only meet for about a half an hour. The main point of the meeting was to talk to two of the group members about their previous work on the project. It hadn’t been that great and there really isn’t an excuse because the program we are using pretty much tells you exactly what you need to do.

So, I got out of class at 10:45 and wanted to go over to the library to work on my 3D bottle. I figured I’d work on it for an hour or so and then head home for lunch before coming back for the meeting. Well, I ended up working on the bottle until 2:20 and I really didn’t make any progress. I felt like I was finally getting somewhere around 2:00 but it was too late for the light to fully come on in my head. I’ve come up with some more ideas though so I’m going to try it on my laptop and then work on it again in the library after spring break.

I headed over to the Union and ran into one of my group members as soon as I got inside. He told me that the two people we were pretty much having the meeting for weren’t able to make it so there wasn’t any point in having the meeting. That was kind of annoying. I had wanted to work on the 3D bottle but my main reason for staying on campus was the meeting. It was annoying that I had been on campus for three and a half extra hours longer than I needed to be.

I decided to make the best of it though and head over to talk to my teacher about my test. The one I had missed one question on. The other day he said he had a meeting but that he would be in his office during the time we normally had class if we wanted to stop by and see our tests. I looked at my watch and it was our normal class time so I went over to the business building. I got up to his office only to find that he wasn’t there. I gave it a minute or two before deciding to leave. I’m sure if I had waited a little bit he would have turned up but I was already annoyed by the group meeting thing so I was tired of school related stuff.

As I walked to my vehicle I was still a little frustrated but by the time I got to my vehicle I decided it was still a pretty good day. It was only about 2:45 and I would have time to go home and knock out a short paper and then have the rest of the day to relax and play music or video games or something. This brightened things up because I haven’t played video games all semester.

When I got home I fixed something to eat and then sat down to watch TV for a little bit. Shortly after sitting down I got a phone call from work. I can’t remember the last time I answered a call after seeing that it was my work on the caller ID. It’s been a long ass time. For some reason I felt compelled to answer it this time though. A week ago I had asked someone to take my shift on this day because I thought we were going to have a group meeting. Then I was pretty sure we weren’t going to have a group meeting but I thought I might have a meeting about the rat training that I signed up for. Then that wasn’t going to happen so I checked with the guy to see if he still wanted to work and he said he could use the money. Well when I got the phone call I figured maybe he had changed his mind and I would have felt bad if I blew him off.

That was a mistake. It was one of my managers and he said one of the workers was having some personal issues (her boyfriend cheated on her) and he wanted to know if I could come in and cover her shift. I really wanted to say no but I didn’t want to be a douche so I said ‘yes’. It was only a three hour shift though so it wasn’t too bad. Still frustrating though.

My day had gone from alright because I only had one class. Then kind of annoying because I could figure out the 3D bottle thing. Then even more annoying after the group thing. And again more annoying because my teacher wasn’t in his office. But then all of that was forgotten with the prospect of playing music and video games. Then back to annoying with having to go into work.

After work I came home, had some dinner, and then rather than starting my homework I took a nap. I think that was a good decision. I enjoy napping and I don’t seem to get to do it as often as I would like. When I woke up I finally got to work on my homework. I was watching a couple movies on TV at the same time so it took me quite awhile to write a two page paper. But I finished it so it’s all good.

The paper was for my persuasion class. We had to pick a persuasive message, analyze it, tell why it was persuasive, and what techniques were used. I picked a 32-second PSA for underage drinking that I had heard a few days earlier on the radio. I got on the website and found the PSA so I was able to download the audio-clip. I transcribed it in my paper but the teacher wanted a copy of the message. I almost emailed it to him but he said his computer was getting fixed so I didn’t want to risk that. My final resort was to burn it on a CD. It felt like such a waste using an entire CD for one 32 second audio clip. I was tempted to add in some music just to fill up the space but I have no idea what type of music my teacher is in to so I decided against it.

After finishing the paper I went to preview. I had the option of watching Never Back Down, Doomsday, or Horton Hears A Who. I kind of wanted to see all of them. It was easy to narrow down the choices though. Never Back Down looked entertaining in a horrible way but the preview gave everything away and I didn’t want to stay up until 2am just for that. The weird guys at work were going to Doomsday and I didn’t really want to sit in a theater with them. I imagine they would sit near me and be annoying. That left Horton Hears A Who. Everyone else going to that so it was a no-brainer. It was a good movie though. The animation was really good and it had some good quotes. My favorite quote was “In my world everyone’s a pony and they eat rainbows and poop butterflies.” Classic.

When the movie was over we hung out in the lobby for awhile and talked. I should have just left. If I had, my keys wouldn’t have ended up in some guys pants, my keychain wouldn’t have been broken, and someone wouldn’t have taken my phone and taken a picture of their man-nipple. I was annoyed by all of that. Eventually we moved outside and talked for awhile longer. I think I made it home and to sleep around 3am or so.

Thursday was an eventful day. More so than I would have liked. It ended on a good note though so I can’t complain too much.

Today was a subtle roller coaster. It involved an early class, two canceled classes, 3D bottle frustration, a bumped up and then canceled meeting, an absent teacher, almost video games, covering someone's shift, a nap, homework, and a preview. I would go into more detail but it's late and I'm tired. I think I'll use this post as a jumping off point tomorrow and go into more detail.

Maybe fifteen out of the close to fifty people showed up for my first class today. We're still doing presentations and those are pretty boring so it's understandable. And it's almost spring break which means there is a lot of crap due. Either way, I like days when hardly anyone shows up because teachers usually give extra credit or take away points from the people not present.

Do you ever look at people and immediately see a caricature of them? This happens to me a lot. It'd be pretty cool if I was actually able to draw well so I could get all of these onto paper.

I worked today for two and a half hours. It's sad to think I only made about ten bucks. Granted that's ten bucks more than I had before I clocked in. And I didn't really do anything. I started twelve movies and showed a guy how to thread. I spent the rest of my time coming up with my part of a group project and then reading a magazine.

It was Chipotle night. Delicious.

Tonight the group meeting was a success. Everyone finally showed up. I was shocked. I was prepared for a frustration filled evening. There still might have been a little frustration but it was far less than I was anticipating. My part of the project was coming up with a couple TV commercials. Not to toot my own horn or anything but I think I'm pretty good at coming up with commercials. It's pretty fun as well. I'm still not sure how I feel about the product we're doing but we'll see how this draft of the paper does.

Tomorrow two of my classes were canceled. Now I only have my 9:30 and we're only reviewing for the upcoming test. It should be a pretty light day hopefully. After that class I plan on going over to the library to work on my 3D bottle. I tried working on it again on my laptop but my version of AutoCAD isn't cutting it. Hopefully I can get it all worked out at the library.

After that I'm thinking about stopping by my Marketing Research teacher's office to see my test. I only missed one question and I'm curious which one it is. If I had missed two or more I really wouldn't have cared but missing just one makes me curious.

The other day I got a loaf of sourdough bread from a local supermarket. I had gotten a similar loaf of sourdough bread there in the past and thought it was too moist but I figured I'd give it another shot. That was my bad. When I opened the bag the loaf again felt moist so I decided to leave the bag open for a couple days and see if the bread would dry out. I figured stale sourdough bread was better than moist sourdough bread. After a couple days I pulled it out and it felt a bit better so I decided to cut it down the middle. Much to my surprise, a good portion of the center was still dough. What the crap? I guess when they labeled the loaf they were being literal.

Last night we didn't have a group meeting. The two members that never show up, never responded to the email setting a specific time so the girl in the group called me and said there wouldn't be any point for just the two of us to meet again. I agreed with her. Now we're going to meet tomorrow night, the night before it's due. I can't stand this group.

Tonight I had another group meeting for my class where we had to come up with a new product and create a marketing plan for it. My group came up with a new soft drink. We ended up meeting for almost four hours. We mainly only made progress revising the first part of our paper which we had already turned in and needed to do revisions on. We figured it was better to spend more time on the revisions for the first part because we could just throw the second part together and get criticisms on that part and work on that for next time. This way we can get the first part revised and hopefully be told that we did it correctly and don't have to worry about it next time. I don't know if that makes sense but it really does.

I spent most of the meeting drawing a 3D bottle in AutoCAD and then putting our logo on it. It sounds like a pretty simple proposition, and it probably is for someone with more experience with AutoCAD, but it was kicking my butt. I actually spent several hours on it last night trying to figure the whole thing out. I eventually managed it at the library but they have AutoCAD 2008 and I have AutoCAD 2005. I think it's easier with the 2008 version but hopefully I can figure it out now at home. If not I'll just go hang out at the library and finish everything out there.

Now I need to work on some other school related stuff. I'm tired of school. Spring break will be nice.

Damn you Women of Ninja Warrior. I got a lot of freaking sleep last night. I'm not sure how that worked out but it felt like I was sleeping in on the weekend or something. Normally I don't sleep that much before a presentation.

I think the presentation went fairly well. We didn't go into as much detail as previous groups so we ended up only taking about 30 minutes and then we had about 10 minutes of questions. Other groups have either barely finished in time or ran out of time. The teacher also came up to us after and said we had a good presentation. Hopefully this is good for us. We'll see.

Currently, I want to take a nap. But, referring back to the first sentence of this entry, Women of Ninja Warrior is on. I have no idea when it actually took place in Japan but it's the 7th season and latest episodes to air over here. I've seen most of the regular Ninja Warrior shows that have already aired but I've only seen a few of the women's version. It's an extremely addictive show. So, rather than nap, I watch the show. I think I'll have time after the show to take a nap before dinner.

Tonight I have a group meeting. A group meeting with my one group this semester that I'm really not into. On the first assignment, only me and the girl in the group showed up for the meeting. We've had another meeting since then and me and the girl were the only ones to show up again. Our main project for the semester is to pick a product that is not a leader and come up with a strategy to make it an industry leader. Our product pretty much sucks. At least that's my opinion . At first my group member sold it pretty well but once we actually started the project I lost faith. Our product is in a niche market and it's pretty freaking strong. It's also hard to find information on it. It would be badass if we dropped the idea completely and started over but odds are good we're going to struggle through it and my grade is going to be pulled down by the effort. Yay.

Something I drew.

Today didn't quite pan out. I got up in the morning, had some breakfast, got ready for work, and then headed out.

Work wasn't too exciting. That isn't really saying much though because it's never exciting. Today turned out to be better than most Saturdays because I didn't have to work a double. I can't remember the last time I didn't work a double on a Saturday.

After work I had some dinner and then called a friend that I was supposed to hang out with. I got her voicemail, left a message, and then watched some movies, crocheted, and played a little guitar and bass. Eventually my friend got back to me and told me that some stuff had come up and she wouldn't be able to hang out. That pretty much sucked. I hadn't seen her in a week and I was looking forward to hanging out. I planned on the two of us going and buying a board game and playing that tonight. For some reason I've had a strong urge to play a board game recently. Oh well. Maybe next weekend.

Now I think I'm going to go to sleep. I could do a little homework but I've got all day tomorrow to worry about that stuff. Sleep is good times.

My calculator died. I believe I got it when I was making the transition from grade school to middle school. That is a long freaking time ago. We'll say a decade. I got tired of typing calculations into Google so I decided to break out the calculator. I got it out of my backpack, opened it up, and nothing. It was very disappointing. I wouldn't really say I had grown attached to it but I'm pretty sure I had.

While staring in dismay at the blank display I noticed that it was dual-powered. So that means solar and battery. I opened up the back and popped out the battery. I'm hoping I can just replace that and all will be dandy. We'll have to see.

Also, I recently drew the following picture for a friend. She likes giraffes and koalas so I figured I'd combine the two. Hopefully she still likes both after seeing the drawing. The drawing isn't that great but considering it was my first attempt at drawing either animal, I'm happy with the outcome.

I sit here at the moment knee-deep in school projects. I should be working on all of them, or at the very least, one of them. But I'm not. Instead, I created this blog. I just can't find the motivation to get started. I would go over the back story about school and my lack of motivation but I've been over it so many times that I can't bring myself to type it out again. There's a good chance I'll get bored sometime in the future though and type it out anyway. We'll see.

Today I had one of my group meetings at a bar. Usually we meet in the library so it was a nice change of scenery. We always have high hopes for our meetings but they never quite meet those expectations. We get stuff done, kind of, so I can't complain but it would be badass if we could just show up and be super productive and knock everything out.

Now I'm going to try and get started on some school work. I've got a group presentation on the General Merchandising Industry on Monday for my Business Strategy class. I have a sick feeling that our presentation is actually tomorrow (Friday) but I'm trying to suppress that feeling. My group members were convinced we didn't go until Monday so my fingers are crossed that they are correct. If not, tomorrow will seriously suck balls.