brokenrecord

So I spent most of the past week watching all seven seasons (plus the two new episodes from last Tuesday) of Scrubs. It's a good show. In terms of comedies, I like it more than 30 Rock and The Big Bang Theory, but less than Arrested Development and Green Wing, and probably as much as The Office, maybe a little less. I actually don't like it so much for the comedic bits as I do for the more dramatic moments. Anyways, now I feel like watching Green Wing because it reminds me of that show, and I haven't watched it in ages.

After watching all those episodes, my list of TV watched this year so far is kind of ridiculous (I'm at 170 episodes so far). I'd say that's abnormal and only resulted from watching all that Scrubs, but then I remembered that I marathon shows I've never seen before all the time. Two summers ago I spent over a week watching all of The West Wing, and I watched Merlin in early December, The Big Bang Theory and True Love in November, and several shows in the summer. So the list probably is a fair representation of how much TV I typically watch. Anyways, I'm keeping track of that, how many movies I'm watching, and some other stuff at Listography now if anyone cares to check how I'm doing on that stuff. I'll still end up posting the lists here at the end of the year, anyways.

I'm turning 20 on Wednesday. It feels very weird. I feel like I'm not mentally old enough to be turning 20. I think I'm still around 17 in my head. I also feel like I don't look 20. I mean, ok, I'm a terrible judge of age, but still. At the movie theater over the summer where I worked, when people would ask me how old I was and I told them I was 19, they were all like "Really? I thought you were like 14." Also, I feel like I'm nearing the age where I have to actually decide what I want to do with my life or at least what I want to do after college. I'm just so indecisive. =/ Also this birthday sucks because I'm still at home, but all my friends from home will be back at school. I think I'm going to convince my mom to take me shopping and buy me clothes so my birthday doesn't totally suck.

Finally, this is a little old news, but I'm so happy that Franken is ahead after the recount! I know that Coleman is going to sue, but it actually looks good for Franken despite that! That makes me very happy. :D

Yesterday was kind of awesome.

First, I had been stressing over those two tests I had last Wednesday since I didn't feel like I prepared enough for either of them. I got both back yesterday, and on one I got a 97 and the other 100. The 100 is especially ridiculous because that's better than I did on the first test, and I definitely didn't study more for it. This is why my study habits are terrible! The less I study, the better I do! There's something wrong with my brain, I think.

Second, President-Elect (!) Obama had his first press-conference since being elected and seriously, it ridiculous how excited and giddy that made me. It's not like I typically (meaning, ever) watch the press conferences George Bush gives or that Clinton gave (then again, I was 11 when Clinton left office, and even if I was interested, there wasn't youtube or anything like that, obviously). Part of it is just because it makes it more real that he's actually going to be the president. It still hasn't sunk in. But also, it's nice listening to a president who can string words into coherent sentences and sounds thoughtful and intelligent and can pronounce words correctly. And I'm still all politics-obsessed (if you hadn't noticed. If you don't care at all about politics or hate Obama or whatever, don't worry, I'll get over this soon enough and start obsessing over something else) so anything that feeds my political obsession is good news. And I totally loved him seriously discussing the type of dog they were planning on getting and him referring to shelter dogs being mutts like him, and asking about how that woman hurt her arm and all that.

Anyways. Other things that made yesterday awesome: I turned in my major plan to the registrar! I'm officially a psych major!

Also awesome was working on a math project with my group. I really like my group, for one. But also, I managed to figure out a problem entirely by myself while both of them had no idea and it just felt really great figuring it out on my own and being able to explain it. And honestly, I just really enjoy doing math.

And this has led to an important decision. Ok, originally I was going to major in psychology and minor in math. But... I think now I'm going to try to double major in psychology and applied mathematics. ( Babbling about school. )

The MN senate race is still ridiculous. Thursday I mentioned the gap had narrowed from 700 something to 342. Where is it at now? 221. How is it even possible that a race with this many votes is this close? I'm trying not to get my hopes up too much, but it's SO CLOSE, and I think the recount is supposed to favor Franken (if only for two reasons: one, the machines used in the Twin Cities and possibly Duluth are the same ones as these ones in Michigan that were found to be making errors reading the ballots, and these areas favored Franken, and two, when doing a recount, they can count ballots where the person did a checkmark for the person or circled the oval or something else that the machine wouldn't pick up as intention to vote for the person, but an election official can decide counts to whoever, and theoretically people more likely to make these mistakes are immigrants and first-time voters, which should also favor the Democrats). And there was a governor race in... Oregon? Maybe? Or Washington? I think Oregon. And it was super close like this and the Dem was behind before the recount and after they were up by a very tiny amount of votes. So who knows. Here's to hoping!

Also, I'm thinking I'm going to buy one of Franken's books due to how obsessed I've become with this race. Also I'm pretty sure Emma loves Al Franken and told me like last year that I should totally read one of his books. So, anyone have an idea which one I should get? I believe he has like three out.

Everytime I just stop to think about the fact that Obama has been elected, I just break out into a grin.

Unfortunately the victory is a little bittersweet today for several reasons. First, that Prop 8 passed. I'm sadly not surprised, but it still sucks. The only thing that gives me hope is that according to exit polls, the youth were massively against it, so someday this will get changed. Also sucky is Franken being down by like 700 votes to Coleman in Minnesota. This is so ridiculously close! There'll be a recount, but I doubt the result will change. Also, wtf is wrong with Alaska? Seriously, Alaska wins as my least favorite state this year. I mean, first you have Palin being from Alaska and having huge approval ratings from there. But then you have Senator Ted Stevens who has been charged with several FELONIES still managing to win! ALASKA, YOU SUCK.

I'm watching The Daily Show/Colbert Report election special from last night, and oh man, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert being on the same show brings me such happiness. Also, STEPHEN HAS A COCKATOO ON HIS SHOULDER. I have 3 cockatiels, and cockatoos are pretty much like big cockatiels, so I find this especially awesome.

Apparently being really nervous and anxious over the election is really good for my study habits. I've already figured out the answer to a Mutivariable Calc problem I didn't think I could solve, finished all my German homework up until Wednesday, and have made flashcards for my German test that's on Friday (usually I do the flashcards the morning/early afternoon before the test). I just keep trying to distract myself from worrying about the election, and I find myself actually doing work. It should be election day everyday! (Not really. I don't think I would be able to handle the stress.) I might even clean up my room which I've been meaning to do for weeks now!

Anyways, I wish that I could have voted today instead of doing it early, but obviously that wasn't an option if I wanted to vote in CA (which I did, mostly just so I could vote no on Prop 8. Otherwise I would have voted here since Obama won't win MN by as much as he wins CA, although I'm 100% sure he will win MN, and so I could vote for Al Franken). If you can vote, then VOTE. I remember wanting to vote when I was 11 and finding it unfair that I couldn't, and it seemed so weird to me that people who were able to vote chose not to. I mean, it's not like it hurts you to vote, even if you think your vote doesn't make a difference. Your vote definitely will not count if you don't vote. I'm not telling you who to vote for, just VOTE (unless you live in CA, in which case, VOTE NO ON PROP 8 or I really can't be friends with you. This is just one issue where I cannot see the other side. Allowing same-sex marriage absolutely does NOT affect straight people's marriages or lives in any way, but banning it does hurt MILLIONS of people and takes away their rights. Not that I really think anyone on my flist is against same-sex marriage, but still. Just want to be clear on this).

The girl I'm tutoring wants to meet at 6:30 PM tonight, and I really don't want to because results will start to come in then, and I don't want to miss that. Hopefully she'll only want to meet for half an hour. And I think I'll bring my computer and leave it open to the page at the Daily Kos that refreshes with live results as they come in, so I can pay attention to her but glance at the page when she's working on a problem, because there does tend to be some downtime during tutoring.

All right, I'm going to try to kill half an hour and then go to my German lab and then try to kill more time before the results start coming in.

Apparently my school decided to make up for me not being able to see Michelle Obama this afternoon by having Martin Sheen come on Tuesday afternoon. He's coming at 2:15 and I do have a midterm at 4:30 (ugh I don't even normally have the class the midterm is in on Tuesdays, but he wanted everyone to be able to have as much time as possible) but I'm thinking it won't take that long. I mean, I'm basing it on the Kal Penn thing which was only a little over an hour, and even if this thing is 2 hours long, I should be able to still make it. The weird thing is... like, I would expect him to come for Obama, but the flyer I read said that he's coming to support Al Franken (the Democrat running for Senate in MN). But whatever, it'll be cool to see him. And I support Al Franken (even though I'm not voting in MN, I'm voting in CA). So hopefully I'll get to do that.

Also, Wind Ensemble today was canceled, so today is a little less crappy then I thought it would be initially. Not that I don't like Wind Ensemble, but having an hour or so more to get stuff done today is very desirable.

So I have to declare my major in the next three weeks instead of at the end of May, like I previously thought. I'm kind of panicking. I mean, ok, here's the thing. I've known since like early high school I was going to be a psych major, and after being in college for a little over a year, that hasn't changed. But I thought I had until the end of next semester. This whole semester I've just been "I am going to get through this semester and hopefully do decently and then I'll worry about declaring a major and all that fun stuff." I just didn't want to deal with it now. But apparently by AP credits put me as a second semester sophomore right now, which means next semester I'm going to be a junior. And you have to have your major declared before you register for your junior year classes (and registration is the first week of November).

I'm also kind of freaked out by this because even though I knew I had advanced standing, I didn't realize this meant that I would have to declare early, and now I'm assuming this also means that I'm going to graduate fall semester of 2010. I've been thinking I'm going to graduate in May of 2011, but apparently, I'm going to graduate in December of 2010. And even though I'm kind of tired of school, I'm also freaked out about having to enter the real world and get a job and all that sooner (especially with how crappy the economy is. Hopefully Obama will be elected and he'll get the economy back on track and it'll be ok). ugh.

But yeah, like, just declaring a major isn't so bad because I know I want to be a psych major. But it also means that I have to deal with switching advisers because my adviser is a Geology professor and I really like him but he can't help me at all with psych stuff. And that means I have to ask someone in the psych department to be my adviser, and I know who I want to ask, but I'm afraid they'll be like "Oh I have too many advisees right now" or whatever and then I'll have to find someone else. And I'm shy, okay? I don't want to have to do this. Plus, declaring your major means you have to fill out a sheet with every class you're planning to take, and I don't want to have to fill that out now. I mean, my feelings about what I want to take change with every semester, you know? Plus, now it turns out I have one less semester of classes I can take, so I feel like I can't take as many fun, random classes. And I REALLY feel like I should have taken Cognitive Psych instead of Developmental Psych this semester because Developmental Psych doesn't help me for my major, but Cognitive Psych would, and then I could take this other class going towards the psych major next semester. And both Cognitive Psych and this class next semester are taught my my Research in Psych professor, and he's really awesome, so that would have worked out. I mean I like Developmental Psych, but it only helps me if I want to be an education minor, and I don't really see the point of that anymore, especially since I have 4 less classes I can take. And I did kind of want to be a math minor, but I don't know if that can happen either.

Also, I got several new pairs of cute socks (I never have enough socks) last week, and I've worn this one pair only twice and there's already a hole in the heel of one of them. This always happens to me! This is why I always need new socks! ugh. I feel like I must have razors in my heel or something that keep tearing through the socks.

Also, I'm finding it really amusing when crazy right-wingers try to insult Obama and scare people from voting for him by saying that he's a socialist and a fascist in the same sentence. Just... no. I do not think those words mean what you think they mean. So I'm mostly amused by that, but then I just get sad that people actually believe that and furthermore aren't educated enough to know that those two things are not the same.

Ok I have a three-page paper that is half done that I need to finish in the next two hours, so I'm going to do that now.

So I did end up going to the Kal Penn thing for Obama on Saturday (even though it wasn't in the location they said it would be - this is probably why I wasn't able to see him last time he was here). I got a picture but it's pretty blurry, so I may or may not post it later. It was pretty much just him talking about how he's an Independent and he was really cynical about politics and other backstory stuff until hearing Obama speak at the 2004 convention and finding that he really believed in him and he looked up information about him and all this stuff. It was interesting too, that because of the writers' strike last year, he didn't have a job for a few months, so he ended up going to Iowa and volunteering for the Obama campaign by making calls and all that. He actually has met Obama (I'm not sure how many times) and has asked him about his policies and stuff. It was really interesting. It was less a "Vote for Obama!" event and more a "Be sure to vote and be sure to get all your friends to vote because the youth vote can really make a difference!" event. So yeah. Before the event, the mayor of Minneapolis went around and met every single person in the room (ok, there were only like 200 of us, so not quite as impressive as it sounds) and asked us where we were from and then told us whether Obama needed our vote more in our home state or in Minnesota, which was pretty smart because I think a lot of people wouldn't really think about that stuff. I would totally vote in Minnesota (since obviously Minnesota needs my vote more than California), but I really want to be able to vote no on the proposition to ban gay marriage since Minnesota is relatively safely Obama's.

Today and tomorrow is the poster sale at school. I'm glad I bought some posters during the allposters.com sale since these posters were more expensive than the ones there. I got 2 posters for $22 rather than 6 for $33 like I did at allposters.com. Then again, at least I didn't have to pay ridiculous shipping costs. I got one of Moulin Rouge and one of Amelie (two of my favorite movies of all time). The guy said he'd be there again tomorrow with some more posters, so I might check it out again. I really want to get more movie posters, especially older movie posters, but they only had a few today. My room is in such disarray right now, though. I don't remember if I mentioned this, but I put up a lot of stuff on my walls so it does look nicer, but I'd rather have these posters up there, so I'm probably going to have to take some stuff down and rearrange things. sigh. I also (VERY STUPIDLY) decided to take my mattress from where it's lofted above my desk and put it on the ground because I really wanted to have a bed on the groud this year rather than lofted. Of course, I did this and then had no time to tidy anything else up and so now it's just impossible to get anywhere in my room. sigh. And putting the mattress back up is a lot harder than taking it down. Oh well. I'll probably leave everything how it is now and then mess with it more this weekend.

Anyways, Wind Ensemble starts today. I think I am going to end up being glad that my German lab isn't on Monday nights anymore since today already feels like it's going to be really long just with Wind Ensemble. Plus, I would have had to find time to do my lab homework sometime today which wouldn't have been fun.

Is it weird that the thing I probably hate Palin for most right now is that she threatened to fire a librarian because the librarian wouldn't agree to ban books that Palin said some of her supporters felt there were "innappropriate words" or something in? But, I mean, I can see where people disagree about abortion (even if I don't agree with it) and other issues, but... who supports banning books in this day and age? That's just flat-out wrong. I wish that would get more attention in the media.

It kind of scares me that it felt really cold today since the temperatures went down to the low to mid 60s for most of the day. That should not be cold. In April that would have been like boiling. I don't want to have to get acclimated to the weather again.

I had my first German lab yesterday, and I think it might be my favorite class this semester. I mean, I already like German. But then there's also the fact that the lab is only me and this one other girl who's a first year who I had already talked to a bit last week and she's very nice, so that's nice. But the main (100% shallow) reason is that the guy who runs the lab is this 20-something year old (I think he's in grad school) who was born in Germany and has a slight German and slight British accent and he's very tall and very attractive and... yeah. I'm incredibly shallow, ok? And I kind of have a thing for accents. But whatever, it's fun anyways. Especially since there are no tests or anything in the lab, and we do have homework for it, but it's not graded and basically we just talk and answer questions and he helps with pronunciation and everything. It helps to make up for the fact that I wanted to have the lab on Monday and I got forced into taking the Tuesday afternoon lab.

I watched the first half of 90210 last night and thought it was pretty awful. I'm going to watch the second half later, I just stopped because I wanted to watch Greek and I realized that I could wait to find out if Ethan hated Annie forever for telling her brother that he was cheating on his girlfriend. Or whatever. At this point I don't think I'll keep watching once the other shows start coming back (my Tuesdays are actually the second-most packed night of TV of the week, I think, which is surprising. I would've thought it would be Thursdays. Although I probably will drop 1-2 other shows from Tuesdays in addition to this, so that might help), but we'll see. I also wasn't going to keep watching Gossip Girl and almost didn't finish the first episode, but now I'm totally in love with it.

I got the posters I ordered today so I'm going to put them up and maybe rearrange my furniture and finish organizing things and once that's all done I'll post some pictures of my room.

Ok, so I have to rant about politics related stuff again. ( Politics Rambling )

I totally know nothing about politics outside of what I've learned just from watching the news and from taking political science in high school, so keep in mind that this is all just based on my opinions and my reactions. And I'm totally biased to Obama, I'm admitting that, so if you're a Clinton supporter... don't hate me? (I don't think anything I said would cause you to hate me, but I feel like I needs to be said anyways.)

Anyways. Essay test tomorrow, other test Friday, need to study. Have I mentioned how much I want it to be Friday? Because I really want it to be Friday.

The past two days have made me happy:

1) Democrats take the House, and quite possibly the Senate!

2) Tuesday my English teacher told me that my grade (an 85) is a lot lower than it should be based on how good a writer I am and that I just need to boost my multiple choice tests and rock the next essay, and today she told me again today I'm one of the better writers in the class. I was feeling super unconfident about my writing, so that makes me feel much better. I'm going to reread Woman Warrior this weekend and really pay close attention and annotate it and crap and know it inside and out and do awesome on the essay Monday. Hopefully.

3) I enjoyed Veronica Mars last night (not one of my favorites, but I still thought it was pretty good, and next week looks awesome), and I have episodes of Studio 60 and House waiting to be watched.

4) I got my first A on a chem quiz in like a month today. This new unit makes me happy. Let's just hope my test next Friday goes the same way.

5) The girl I was going to tutor in FST realized she didn't need tutoring in FST because it's super easy, but she's struggling in honors chem because she has Mr. Tran, so I'm going to be tutoring her every week in that instead.

6) This isn't really about the last two days, but there's no school Friday and we're marching in a parade at Disneyland that day, so I'm looking forward to that.

And, lastly, 7) Rumsfeld steps down!

Good couple of days. :D