Glad she never became a teacher

While I was on a former student's Facebook profile, I noticed she had updated her education:

Oh Yes, I Still Got It!: Eleven Years Later

Please forgive, I started this post 2 weeks ago and finally got around to finishing it.


You'd think I'd know better by now to catch the bus downtown on the block with the bus station and the police station.

After working late at the university, I missed my bus transfer downtown. My bag was heavy, a bit chilly and would be more than a half hour until the next bus came so I decided to sit in the bus shelter. A couple minutes before my bus was supposed to arrive, two very rough looking drunk natives came and joined me in the shelter. One with a broken and bruised lip came and sat beside me[will refer to him as Drunk Dude]. I apologized that my bag was in the way and I moved it so moved it to my lap.

Drunk Dude' Friend: Haha, maybe that's your hope purse.
Drunk dude: [Rolls eyes]
Drunk dude: What's your name?
Me: Janice
Drunk dude: My name is Darling, nice to meet you. [Shakes hand]
Drunk Drunk Dude' Friend: How old are you?
Me: 32
Drunk Drunk Dude' Friend: Aww, you're just a youngin'. I'm 40 and never thought I'd live this long [then nonsensical rambling about rough life]
Drunk dude: [Puts hand on my arm] You are a very pretty lady
Me: Umm, thank you
Drunk dude: Can I have your number?
Me: No thank you
Drunk dude: Why?
Me: I don't know you and I don't give out my number to strangers.
Drunk dude: But how can I not be a stranger if you don't give me a chance to get to know you? Give me you number.
Me: No thank you, I'm too busy with school for dating.
Drunk Drunk Dude' Friend: Hey, want buy a 40[oz] of Crown Royal for $20? [Proceeds to pull a large bottle out of his pants]
Me: no thank you, I'm just a poor student.
Drunk dude: C'mon
Drunk Drunk Dude' Friend: Leave her allow, she's poor like us.

Drunk dude's friend pulls another bottle out of his pants, he opens it and drinks from it. The two start fighting over the fact that Drunk dude's friend started drinking from a bottle they were suppose to sell. They were ready to start fighting in the bus shelter and they were blocking the entrance. They finally settle that they can drink one and sell one.


Drunk dude: I should push you under a bus because you won't give me your number
Me: You don't want to do that
Drunk dude: I'm just jokin'
Me: What bus are you waiting for? [At this point I was ready to catch the next bus that came along just to get away from them as long it wasn't the one they were getting on]
Drunk dude's friend starts telling a long rambling story about where they are headed but never reveals which bus they are waiting for. Fortunately my bus arrives and I can get away.

May-B and I had been texting plans to get together. Immediately when I got on the bus, I texted her to tell what happened. She didn't know how I could turn down "Pants Crown Royal" for $20.*

Read about the time May-B and I were hit on by drunk construction workers at a pool hall 11 years ago.

*For serious, how could he keep 2 40oz bottles of Crown Royal in his pants? How could someone walk like that? How are his pants not falling down?

Math programs giving me low self-esteem

In the program Mathematica, I'm learning how to make a scatter plot and then export it as a image file. This is the result of my first attempt:

Wished I would have remembered 18 years ago

On Saturday, I was trying to figure out something I could kneel on while cleaning the shower floor. I (not so) suddenly remembered that I lent my volleyball knee pads to a girl in grade 8 and she never returned them. Why did I not remember this in 1992?

Things not to do on the eve of your birthday

I wanted to spend the evening getting rid of the clothes I never wear anymore. I had to get rid of my favourite dress.

Me getting ready to present my homeroom class with plaques at grad.

I thought purging my closet would be a good way to start my 32nd year. It mostly made me feel terrible about myself. I had to get rid of three garbage bags full of clothes that no longer fit. It is a reminder that I'm not as skinny, pretty and young as I used to be. Worst of all, it is a reminder of how broke I am to not be able to replace these clothes for a long time. Lack of money just reminds me of the fact I still have not found a job.

You can't argue with science

According to Stupid Fight:

Mouse Toilet (or things I say when I'm tired)

Alana, James and I ordered appetizers to share at a restaurant. After the waitress brought our plates, I explained that they always give their customers "mouse toilets". (Certainly something you would not want to clean your hands with). As Alana pointed out, I "traded diphthongs":
mouse toilet: ˈmaus ˈtoi-lət
moist towelette: ˈmoist tau-(ə-)ˈlet
(My apologies that the pronunciations are not written out correctly, I can't figure out how to do all the characters in html).

The last time we hung out, I had to backtrack on a story with
"Oh wait, not Morgan Freeman... I meant the Hulk." Understandable mistake since they are often confused.

Test Anxiety

Test anxiety USUALLY occurs before or during a test. I get test anxiety after the test (or assignment) I did poorly on. I think there is an expectation from others that I will do really well. I worry that others will be disappointed when I do poorly.

Yesterday, I wrote two lab finals and they did not go great. The exams were back to back for a total of 3 hours. The very first question on my first exam I had to set up an AC circuit with a light bulb. We only had 15 minutes to collect data and I could not get my ammeter to display anything. My lab instructor pointed out my cables where in the wrong inputs for an ammeter. Once I finally had things set up properly, I had so little time for data collection it left me completely frazzled for the rest of the morning.

Last night and today, I'm stressing out about the tests. Mistakes I made keep going over and over in my head.

Injury Update: 2010 Edition

I seemed to be especially injury-prone in 2009 and I was hoping for a better 2010.

On New Year's Day I got hydrogen peroxide in my eye. I tried to think of it less as a bad start to the new year and more as hoping that was the worst injury of the year.

Yesterday the temperature high was -28C. As my car was warming, I tried opening the door to put my ice scraper away but it only opened partially. I won't open anymore or close completely from the outside. I tried opening the door from the driver's seat but I tried using too much force at a strange angle. At first I thought I had dislocated my shoulder I was in so much pain but after a couple minutes it felt like it was probably just a strain. I eventually opened the door by getting into the backseat and using the full weight of my body with my other shoulder. Thinking back that was pretty stupid of me since I tore my rotator cuff almost exactly a year ago. Why didn't I kick the door open?

Regardless of the type of injury, it only hurts when my shoulder moves or touches anything or is still for a long time. I'll wait until my chiropractor is back from vacation to see a doctor about it. In the meantime, I know how to treat it but am not looking forward to frequently using an ice pack when it is -41C with the windchill outside.

All that Work for Nothing

For the last month, I've been organizing a documentary screening for the students of my university and the general public. Upon the advice of a professor who had hosted similar events, I sent out a press release, created a Facebook event, sent an email to all the science students, made posters and advertised on local events pages. I got the impression that A LOT of people were coming.

The DVD and books for the event were supposed to arrive by Friday on at the latest. At the end of Friday, when the package had still not arrived, I emailed the organization. Last I heard was they were checking if they could overnight the DVD so it would arrive in time for the event. I never heard back if it actually was done.

Today, the day of the event, I waited and waited and heard nothing. Nothing had arrived by 4pm so I had to cancel the event. My understanding of the licensing agreement is we can only show it Dec 7-18 so if we didn't show it today, we might not be able to show it at all.

The whole situation absolutely makes me feel ill. I feel like a failure for not pulling this event off. Even though it was beyond my control, I hope it does not reflect poorly on me. I feel bad for the people whose contact information we did not have a didn't find out it was canceled until they arrived at the event site. I worry that we will not be able to show the documentary at all.

I was trying to deal with all of this while trying to study for a test today. The test went poorly because there was no way I would have ever expected questions like those. Sigh, what a day.

Remember that time I was an idiot....

Why did no one tell me on November 1st the title of my post was "And the most creative costime goes to..."? I've changed the title but the URL still says "costime". Oy vey. It seems to be a common theme with me: today in math class I told my prof that -1/2 was smaller than -1.

James' blog as a public service

See if you can spot the problem:


This morning* I was reading my friend James' blog** and noticed his latest post was post-dated Oct 25. I was going to make a joking comment that it was a post from future James and to not drink the coffee. I look at the date of the comment I had already posted was Oct 25 as well but iCal read Oct 22. Opened iCal and suddenly the date changed to Oct 25 but when I closed the program it changed back to Oct 22. Stupid iCal, we'll have to see if it sends me any notifications today.

To quote a infamous James/Janice argument
James: "What day is the 30th?"
Janice: "We've gone through this already: Friday is Thursday."


*at the ridiculous hour of 6:30AM. This is the 3rd time this week that I woke up 2 or more hours before my alarm is to go off. Blah.

**previously known as Blond Derek on this here blog

Ridiculousness Personified

Conversation to myself at school:
"Janice, learn how to spell your name then you'll be able to check your mail."
Janice finally succeeds in logging in
"Argh, NASA! You send too many emails!"
A friend nearly snotted all over himself he was laughing so hard.

Foolish and Costly Mistake

I spilled water on my laptop last night. Not a little bit, probably a little less than 2 cups worth. I flipped it upside down immediately so the water could run out while I went to grab a towel. I wasn't thinking and should have shut down the computer first but the time I was back it was off. I read online that it can take up to 5 days to dry out but I think it is fried.
I bought a 500 GB external hard drive last week and my most recent back up was on Sunday. At most I lost a couple emails that I received since then. I just bought a new hard drive for that computer and was hoping it would last me until next fall.
I have no idea what I'm going to do.

somethings never change

Lessons learned at age 27: three cubed - April 29, 2005.

Things I learned this year in no particular order:
1) I am a music elitist.
2) There is no media conspiracy.
3) Some battles are not worth fighting.
4) Forgiveness is a choice you continually have to make.
5) You cannot lighten hair dyed black.
6) Life is never what you expect it to be.
7) God will humble the proud heart.
8) Patience is easier said than done.

I'm sure I learned some other things but I can't think of them right now.

I learned a lot that year. Yay me! Those were some rough years I went though but I know they were necessary.

Brute Force Method

I finally gave up on trying to export my angelfire blog. As far as I have read it is not possible. I've been experimenting with wordpress to combine my blogger and angelfire blogs but no such luck. I have resorted to copying and pasting old blog posts into blogger. Ten down, 684 to go.* Hopefully soon I will have all 5 years and 1200+ posts on one blog.









*Umm, gross.

Now my tummy is starting to get nervous

I found out about a week ago that my summer job will not be full time as promised. Last summer when I was hired the plan was to job share with another student who had one year of school left. They hired me because they wanted someone with several years left in their degree so that I could continue the same research summer to summer. The plan for this year was the work to be full time (as told to me first when I got the job last year and reiterated up until last month). I had a class with the professor this semester who promised me the full time work and he told me as I was handing in my final exam. He said he wanted to give some work to the student who was graduating and I could just ask the math department for part time work like I did last year. WHAATTT! I was offered 3 jobs over the course of this last semester that I would have loved to have. I turned them down because I had already committed to working for this professor. There was another job that I would have loved to have that I could have applied for. The start date for all of these is tomorrow and they've all been filled. I have no idea what I am going to do.

That's Unpossible

I just finished my chem lab report. Either I made a mistake in the experiment or 125% of the vitamin C tablet was made of ascorbic acid. I hope it is the latter because unlike physics labs, I can't redo experiments.







Update: I made a copying mistake and wrote some data for my second trial under my first trial. At least it is something I can fix easily.

The Lab That Would Not Die

I had quite the week. Not only did I fall multiple times but I also completely forgot to go to a class and went completely brain dead during a physics lab. Not being able to convert centimetres to metres was the first sign that maybe I was lacking the thinking capacity to be performing experiments. We had a horrible time trying to set up various apparatus and barely collected the data before the end of the three hours (or so we thought). The next day my partner texted me to point out that a set of our data was bad -- we had to redo the entire second part of the experiment. Later as I was doing calculations, I realized that the first set of data was bunk as well so I had to redo that as well. Tonight my partner texted me again to mention we failed to make some measurements for our equipment. Oy, so now I have to go back again to my lab instructor tomorrow and tell him that we are still not quite done yet. How embarrassing.

Last semester, I had the best lab mark in the class but I'm certainly not acting like it this semester.

A Little Banged and Bruised

I fell hard on my left hip crossing the street -- the road had a layer of soft snow over ice. I had just got off the bus and was only about a half block from home so I didn't have far to walk. My hip is a little swollen but doesn't hurt even if I touch it. I tried to break my fall with arm and I think I sprained it. My back and neck are stiff and incredibly sore. I'm incredibly grumpy now and just can't shake it.