• Feeling: slack
• Listening to: “The queen is dead” – The Smiths
• The weather outside: 293 Kelvins
• Obsessive-compulsive challenge of the day: Organize your bookcase by the Dewey Decimal system.

I should mention right now before I start that this entry is going to be all over the place. Please be patient and remain seated. Your cooperation is appreciated.

Recently I’ve noticed an alarming trend regarding my motivation and enthusiasm for pointless projects whenever I have exams approaching. Normally I’m fairly restless and don’t do terribly much on any particular task until some sort of obsessive manic phase kicks in, but now that I don’t have time to do much besides memorize diagrams and definitions, suddenly “now” seems to be the time to work on all the little things I’d been putting off for months. Shockingly, I was even struck by the urge to clean my room, which clearly goes to show that virtually anything is a better alternative to studying. The thing is though, that I actually really enjoy the stuff I’m studying; I find it all quite fascinating, but knowing that all the pouring over the books and scribbling notes until my hand cramps is because of an upcoming exam (something that strikes a substantial amount of fear into my heart) makes it seem like much more of a chore than it is usually. I’m trying to be diligent with my revision, but it’s just so easy to get distracted! And speaking of distractions…

I discovered how to make those little animated video gifs using GIF Ninja and Smiley Generator’s GIF Resizer, which wasted a considerable amount of time the other day, but was far too amusing to tear myself away from. The ones I made (below) are really just ones I made for myself (hence the narrowing of subjects to only things I’m interested in, lol), but just in case anyone else wants to use any, I’ve put them up for grabs here too.

This is the reason I can’t remember the difference between a nocireceptor and a proprioceptor.

Left to right, top to bottom: The dancing dwarf from Twin Peaks, Fred Astaire dancing to “Putting on the ritz” in Blue Skies, two scenes from The Big Bang Theory, the Tom Cruise undie dance from Risky Business, Garth (from Wayne’s World) singing “Foxy lady”, Morrissey’s infamous “Marry me” scene from Top of the Pops (hehehe), more Morrissey (gotta love that brow raise!) and King Julian singing “I like to move it” from Madagascar.

I’ve also been baking again. Cupcakes from packet mixes of course, but still, that’s “baking” by my standards. It seems these days though that the main appeal of baking cupcakes is just to draw on them, lol. I’ve been practising my lettering again, and also experimenting with a few new silly designs…

1. Just in case there was any doubt that it’s my cupcake. 2. The geekiest cupcake of them all…it’s a double helix! 3. Pac-Man makes a comeback in my foodstuffs. 4. The flames didn’t work out so well, but this is my Twin Peaks cupcake. 5. Reference to “Panic” by The Smiths (“hang the DJ” is a line in the song). 6. Moz = common nickname for Morrissey. <3 7. I assume I would love New York if I got a chance to go there! 8. Trying to copy a poker chip design I found online for my brother’s upcoming birthday.

I know, I’m a dork. In all honesty though, I am – the Venn diagram below proves it!

Swiped from Great White Snark.

I actually stumbled upon this little gem via the hosts of the Breakfast with The Smiths radio show on L.A’s Indie 103.1FM (true to my declaration of dorkitude, I am obsessed enough to stream the show online at 2am on a Monday morning!), when they were discussing said topic, mostly in relation to whether Morrissey/The Smiths fans should be classified as nerds, geeks or dorks. Of course I’m more inclined to describe us as something more flattering, like connoisseurs of fine music or devoted disciples of Saint Morrissey, but what can you do?

In other news, Gypsy Heart (my racehorse) had his second start last Sunday, but once again didn’t run a place. I know I shouldn’t be expecting too much though, since he’s only very young and doesn’t really know what he’s doing yet, but I hope he settles down soon and improves quickly. According to the trainer he’s very stubborn and not terribly well-behaved. Yeah, thanks, that’s exactly what I wanted to hear. *sigh* He came 6th again in this last race, and as my mother pointed out, I’d better hope he doesn’t place 6th in this third race too…that sounds like it could be a bad omen. Well, it would be if I believed in that sort of stuff.

Anyway, I suppose I should be getting back to my studies. My 20 minute break was over half an hour ago…

Can’t forget the questions though!

1. At school/university, do you prefer assignments or exams as your assessment?
2. According to that Venn diagram, are you a nerd, geek, dweeb or dork?
3. Deep question: does the body rule the mind or does the mind rule the body? (Or, should Aly stop listening to The Smiths before she drives everyone insane? )

Adios amigos. Wish me luck on my exam (it’s on Saturday morning – yes, Saturday!). Be excellent to each other!

My lovely commentors: Tiff K, Julie, Caity, Kelsey, Georgina, Simply Precious, Vanessa & Angelica.

• Feeling: sick
• Listening to: “Welcome to the Pleasure Dome” – Frankie goes to Hollywood
• The weather outside: 293 Kelvins
• Enivornmentally friendly tip of the day: Have your car impounded to cut back on carbon emissions

Yeah, I know, I just can’t help throwing The Smiths lyrics into conversation at the moment…I’m going to end up like Chris Packham on Springwatch…

Okay, that probably made no sense at all if you’re not a Smiths fan, but I wanted to share it anyway because I have this compulsion to push my taste on to other people (most of whom metaphorically spit it out though…*sigh*).

Anyway, I have a feeling you’re all about to stop me because yes, you have heard this one before, umpteen times: the “sorry it’s been so long since my last blog” post. Well don’t worry, I plan to forgo it this time. Mostly though just because I’m actually not sorry for neglecting my blog. Since the uni semester started two weeks ago I’ve actually been productive, so I didn’t want to break my momentum when I didn’t have anything to blog about anyway. That said, I’m really enjoying this semester so far. The stuff I’m studying at the moment is really interesting (to refresh your memory, that “stuff” would be anatomy & physiology), I’ve ended up with a really competent, enthusiastic lecturer (quite the rarity in academia these days!) and am still feeling surprisingly motivated. I know, go me. The only thing I dislike about this semester so far is having two classes starting at 8am, including one on Monday. If you ask me, that’s just cruel. When I was studying business I never had any lectures starting earlier than 10am (though admittedly I did have an 8am tute for one class, but I maintain that’s different!), but it seems the folks in timetabling are not as kind to the science department. Anyway, these 8am lectures result in me having to leave home at around 6:30am because the bus from my house doesn’t start operating until after 8am so I have to get a ride with my workaholic dad when he leaves for work. And leaving at 6:30am means getting up at 4:30am: an hour to shower, wash/dry my hair and get dressed, plus an hour before that to make/drink coffee, rub my eyes blearily and stumble around the house mumbling ‘braaaaains…’. Because of my insomnia (that often results in not getting to sleep until an hour or so before I have to get up again), it’s seriously hard for me to get going because 1) I’m tired as hell, and 2) sometimes getting up conflicts with the time my first REM cycle is supposed to start and my body freaks out and gets confused. Seriously though, it’s bloody awful. Last Monday I actually went back to bed when I got home at lunch time, lol.

Aside from uni, what else have I been doing with my time? Well as much as I wish I could say my life of late has been fabulously exciting and eventful, sadly that’s not the case. I’ve actually been sick with a bugger of a head cold since mid last week, so I haven’t really felt like doing much anyway. Mostly I’ve just been whining about how crappy I feel, studying a bit (or at least trying to) and watching movies. I’m usually not someone who watches a lot of movies, the honest reason being that unless a movie is really spectacular (well, what I consider spectacular!) I just can’t focus on something for that long. I have a really, really short attention span! But being sick and really not being able to do much else than lie around in front of the tube seems to have helped that somewhat, so I’ve been cramming in as many movies as I can before I get better again and feel well enough to do other things again. I watched He’s just not that into you on Friday night (quite good, but not one I’d rewatch), Music & Lyrics (actually very enjoyable, even if just for the hilarious spoof of an 80s pop video featuring Hugh Grant singing an embarrassingly catchy little song called ‘Pop! goes my heart’) and Four Holidays (very funny, and for some reason it was released as Four Christmases everywhere else) last night, and then Smart people today (quite good; it was interesting to see Dennis Quaid playing such an asshole since I usually associate him with such wholesome good guy characters!). I’m a little movie-d out now to be honest, but then I just saw in the electronic TV guide that there’s a made-for-TV movie based on one of my favourite books when I was in about 8th grade (Stranger with my face by Lois Duncan), so I’ve set that up to record tomorrow while I’m in class. I’m always very keen to see film adapations of books I’ve enjoyed, though usually just out of curiosity because in most cases the book is far superior. That said though, I really enjoyed the movie versions of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, The Picture of Dorian Gray and The Da Vinci Code, just because they were actually really good movies. Oh, and To kill a mockingbird! I loved that old version with Gregory Peck.

Just realized how much I’ve been rambling, lol. Making up for lost time, that’s all. Anyway, instead of asking questions at the end of the entry this time, I want to play a little game. I’ve seen a number of people playing this ‘which is false’ game where they give you a number of statements about themselves and you have to guess which one is a lie…well, because I just like to be different, I’m going to do it in reverse. Put simply, instead of picking out the one lie amongst the truths, you have to pick out the one truth amongst a bunch of lies.

Which of the following is true?

• The first CD I bought was U2′s Achtung Baby.
• Gossip Girl is one of my favourite TV shows.
• I always make my bed in the morning.
• I have never had any wisdom teeth.
• My first boyfriend turned out to be gay.

Answer in the comments, of course.

By the way, for all my fellow nerds out there, today (March 14) is Pi Day, as well as Albert Einstein’s birthday. Woot, time to celebrate! Get your geek on, people!
I know, I really just said that…*covers face*

Anyway, must go and prepare for that 8am class tomorrow morning. *bangs head* Adios amigos. Be excellent to each other!

My lovely commentors: Caity, Jamie, Vanessa, Simply Precious, Deanna, Whitters, Monkee, Julie, Charley, Gel, Angelica, Tiff K & Stepherz.

• Feeling: a bit stressed
• Listening to: “Whip it” – Devo
• The weather outside: 299 Kelvins
• Mantra of the day: I doubt, therefore I might be

If you don’t know what “jIyajbe’ tlhlngan” means (*gasp* how could you not?), it’s Klingon for “I don’t understand Klingon”. Sure, my (fake) resume claims I speak it fluently, but like most people, I was just lying to improve my (imaginary) job prospects. I am starting to learn a few phrases here and there though, thanks to The Klingon language institue and Hol ‘ampaS – I can say nuqneH, qaStaH nuq? (meaning “Hello, what’s happening?”), but more importantly, essential phrases like nuqjatlh?, jIyajbe’ and nuqDaq ‘oH puchpa”e’ (“Huh?”, “I don’t understand” and “Where is the bathroom?” respectively), which should help me somewhat if I ever end up lost in Kronos and need to pee. Unfortunately though, my pronounciation is positively horrendous. All the sounds that require unusual mouth and tongue movements seem to come out sounding like a footballer spitting on the field at half-time, or worse, no sound comes out at all. Maybe I should stick to learning French. *sigh* Though the sad thing is that I actually know almost as much Klingon now as I do French…so you can imagine it’s not much at all. Oh well, best yet would probably be perfecting my English, lol. Heavens knows I should try to master that first, haha.

Back to more earthly matters though, I had my (Dis)Orientation Day at uni last Thursday. Even though I’m not actually a first-year student, it’s my first year studying science at this university, so I went along anyway and tried to blend in. I actually did have to be there for a while to go to a lab safety seminar (which I’d been told was a lab safety test, but apparently the only on-campus bit was a boring seminar and the test was just an easy online quiz – sweet!). As well as the lab safety seminar (during which I embarrassed myself by tripping down the steps in the lecture theatre – way to stay safe, huh?), I also went to the faculty & lab tour, and attended an information session for the commencing biomed students. I was quite shocked to see how few people are actually studying this course (there would have been a couple of hundred people at the general science faculty sessions, but there would probably only be 30-35 biomed students, tops), but the info session itself was actually really interesting…and dare I say, exciting! I must have looked like such a dork, sitting there with this look of rapture as the professor told us about her research (she’s growing a human heart from adult stem cells – how kickass is that?!) and about all the other projects going on in the biomed community. It was really motivating, and I’m so glad I went to that as well as just the compulsory lab safety thing.

One interesting thing I did note when we were looking at these electron microscopy pictures, is that up close (very very close!), a white blood cell looks exactly like a Raffaelo chocolate. No kidding, the resemblance is quite amazing! I don’t know how widespread the popularity of Raffaelo chocolates is though (they’re made by the company that makes Ferrero Rocher and so forth), so I got some pictures from Google Images and put them side by side for you to compare.

Cool, huh? There were some other really cool electron microscopy pictures we saw too, including some really pretty colourful ones that remind me of those fractal graphics people make in Photoshop, but I couldn’t find the same ones online. Bummer…I wanted to use one for my desktop background, hehe.

Anyway, moving on, I’ve updated the poetry section today. Yes, yet again! What’s left behind, Murdering a dead man, Zoo, Senseless, The whole house is an attic, Tearing down the sky and Requiem for Lana are all new, and as expected, the usual teaser. I’ve been watching U2′s Zoo Tour, lol.

Zoo

I believe you, do you believe me?
we’re going to watch the world end
on a big plasma screen TV
and with high definition audio
the trumpet sounding will be
crystal clear
so clear!

I believe you, do you believe me?
I place my trust in the hands of politicians
and oh, I know that when I hunger
they will feed me
all the sweet lies that keep me nourished
and when I’m ill it will only be because
I put my tick in the wrong box
my mistake!

I believe you, do you believe me?
there’s a golden star within my reach
if I pay the price they’re asking
and I will walk with flowers
blooming at my feet
if I wear that shade of lipstick
and drink their brand of cola

I believe you, do you believe me?
please stop it if you do
because everything I know is wrong

And before I go, a few more questions for you.

1. Random question: Do you ever dunk food in your coffee (or tea)?
2. Another random question: What is your favourite cartoon strip? (Online or print)
3. tlhIngan Hol Dajatlh’a'?

Must start getting stuff ready for class tomorrow now. The first day of semester always makes me so nervous! Adios amigos. Be excellent to each other!

My lovely commentors: Vanessa, Jessica, Simply Precious, Deanna, Kate, Caity, Jamie, Julie, Mary, Tiff K & Rachel.