The sororities and frats have banded together for Greek Week to put on a blood drive, all in the name of finding a cure for AIDS. 
Good cause bad promo.
Blood drive...AIDS....Blood drive....AIDS...
Im in total support of blood donation and AIDS research...but I feel like the juxtaposition has some, mm, you know, negative connotations..
Oh, Greeks.

Am reading Tomorrow's Eve and find it intriguing. Frequently, however, supressing the urge to fling novel into a wall at the dense segments of blatant, non-satirical misogyny:
 "She isn't a good woman?" Edison asked.
 "How could she be, since she's a fool?" said Lord Ewald. "One's only good when one's stupid."
 I'm hating on your woman-hate, Villiers de I'Isle-Adam.

Good weekend, kinda slow, probably should have done more reading than I did, but Mr. He-Man Woman-Haters Club was harshing my buzz. 

Anyway.
It's Monday, nothing to report....


LOVE 

Burned my finger making toast in a crazed fit of procrastination.

Toaster 1, Meghan 0.


Also, the native plant species of California are assy. 
Viva la invasive iceplant!

What's going down:

• Jolien is vacuuming the tile in our kitchen.
• I ate it hard in soccer today.
• Playlist got Garfunkled as a result of "The Graduate" screening in Film Studies. Damn.
• Weather gods are shining down their love over SB. My euphoria, let me show you it.
• Cannot believe it is almost Wednesday. Knock it off, Time.
• Jimmy Kimmel/Ben Affleck video = love. Josh Groben sings the F-word. Silverman/Damon video's got nothing.
• Started off my day with this in Comm:
  
  
  
  
  

 

That's mostly it.

LOVE.

Dear Rain, 

I bet you cant tell which finger I'm holding up inside my mitten.

No seriously, 
Meghan

Quote of the Day: "Are you...also  in the mood for nacho cheese?"
Jolien loves Doritos. Like. Loves them. A  scary stalker ex-boyfriend kind of love.

Past coupla days:
Midterms are over! Great success(es).
You know what's gross? Loud nail biting. Kind of like what the guy sitting next to me during my Complit midterm was doing.  He sat there, not writing, with his fingers crammed up under his gums and all I could think about was thick, shiny ropes of drool slurping onto the desk and tiny shards of fingernail shooting out over the class like a woodchipper.  I found his nervous habits distracting, to say the least.
Aced the test though.
Went home for the long weekend and brought Jolien down with me.  Took the 6:30 train Saturday morning and took Jolien to Laguna Beach after we'd settled in at home. I got her to stick her finger in a sea anemone. We got Gelatto before our parking expired--she's been telling us about how much she misses Gelatto since she got here and I thought she'd about died and gone to heaven when we found the place.
Took her to the OC Swap Meet ("I thought you were saying Swamp Meet!") and Balboa Island on Sunday.  The weekend, it turned out, was a time of much overeating and for the introduction of new foods: Churros, frozen bananas, mexican, snickerdoodles (Tanner, you cookie-eating freak), steakhouse, and M&Ms like nobody's business. Monday was for H&M and Whole Foods and her favorite part about that day? Cheese. I gave her some time alone in the cheese section after I thought I saw her rubbing aged Gouda over her body. I kid you not, she sniffed every wheel of cheese in Whole Foods. 

Today:
Some guy came into class late today and sat down next to me, which isnt so bad at all except that he smelled sharply of cheddar and B.O. flavored corn nuts. 
Grosses me out, homedogs. 

And now I have to go bike in the rain. To play soccer...in the rain.

LOVE

 Aaaand Im back.
Last post was during Week one and I introduced my classes and was complaining about having to go to the Goleta Waste Water Treatment Facility...
Now I'm in the back half of midterms and the gross fieldtrip is tomorrow.  I am excited about neither of these things.

SO. Recently:
Two essays and three midterms: 
The bane of my frickin existence.  Essays were due one after the other, which sucked, but they got done and hopefully the BS was properly concealed.  
      Watched The Fountain to write about for my Film paper and I really enjoyed it. Trippy movie--3 different narratives all out of order, sometimes within each other, all telling the same story. Had loads and loads of very cool motifs and it didnt all make sense until the end. It was one of those movies I kept thinking about afterwards, and not just because I was analyzing it for a paper.
Also this: Hugh Jackman.
      Had to watch 30 Rock for my Comm paper and loved it loved it. Alec Baldwin's character is my new fictional boyfriend.
      Film Midterm was oddly specific and Im not super confident about it, which is a bummer since I did ALL of the readings and attending all the screenings and knew the thousands of millions of definitions...her multiple choice test was wierdly irrelevant. Whatever, thank the lord for Pass/No Pass grading options.
      ES Midterm...Showed up, along with the other 300 students and when it got to passing out the tests, the Prof realized he only had enough for half of the room. There was much spluttering and rage. A TA went off to copy more tests and 15 minutes later showed up...but only enough for half of the half. There was uncouth language and vulgar gesturing. Another 15 minutes later I finally got a test. And it was good.
      Comm midterm was this morning. The girl sitting next to me was a quivering mass of unpreparedness and certain failure nerves. I told her shed do fine but was really mentally pounding my fist into the air as her fear lowers the curve in my favor.

New Job:
      Im picking up 3-4 shifts at a pizza place here in IV.  Im having a lot of fun, especially since most of my shifts are during Happy Hour(s).

Soccer:
      Im playing 5 games a week at this point. Awesome. Meeting a lot of new people and getting a lot of new bruises. Also, boys play soccer...Im just saying.

Sweden!
      Just got the e-mail today confirming me as an unofficial future Sweden Go-er To-er. Verra Nice.

Watched On the Waterfront in Film Studies last week. It is now one of my favorite movies and is, for sure, my all time favorite movie about longshoremen.  Marlon Brando is studly. 

I signed up for next quarter's classes Saturday...I'm taking Communication Theory, an Anthro class about society and technology, a Comparative Literature course about Arthurian legends and heroes, and weight lifting. So far. More to come.

Also, coming home for the long holiday and hopefully bringing the foreign kid. Yey. I thought she was having a siezure when I told her the weather was going to be in the upper 70s.
Tanner--this means you need to record Supernatural or I will use your toothbrush as a tonguescraper for the cat.


Okay, it's almost one a.m. and I have section at 8...but I leave you with this parting gift: http://www.wingmusic.co.nz/listen.html
Let this brighten your day.

LOVE

 Just a quick post to acknowledge what a miserable poster I am let you know I'm alive.
It's been busy lately and now starting week 5 (halfway, woo!) it's getting kind of ridiculous.
BUT this week, probably sometime on Wednesday, I will make an actual, for reals, entry.
Forcast for the week:
This weekend Im writing essays, paper due Monday, paper due Tuesday, Midterm Thursday + new job + I'll need to catch up on all the reading I ignored in order to get my essays done.
SO.
I'll have more later.
LOVE

ETA: Uh, I'm a big fat liar. Have been busy like...a busy busy thing . I feel like the house in that tornado scene in Wizard of Oz.
Midterm Monday
Midterm Tuesday
Midterm Thursday
WILL be updating Tuesday night. Mostly positive. Like, 98 percent sure.

LOVE LOVE LOVE

 Wednesday night I made a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for dinner. It turned out being an excerise in cultural awareness:
Me: *holds up each half of the sandwich, one side PB and one side J* Hey, Jolien, you eat these in the Netherlands?
Jolien: Oh, yeah
Me: Nice. *squishes the two sides together to finish the sandwich*
Jolien: *is horrified* What are you doing?! You put them together?! Why?!!
Me: It's a...it's a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. American kids are made out of this stuff.
Jolien: That is disgusting. Im writing this in my blog.

I made her try it. 
She washed out her mouth.

Now we have a list of all the crap Jolien has to try in the next 6 months. Tonight, we're doing number one: In-N-Out french fries IN the shake. I was explaining to Jolien that sometimes you can dip the fry in the shake, like ketchup. So she said: "Let me tell you something, Meghan, it is not ketchup!" But then went on to tell me about pancakes with cheese. We're making them Saturday morning. 

So, I officially have 16 units (yey!) and successfully crashed my Film class. Sweet!

I had a Comm discussion today and made a horrifying new discovery: duck feet acrylic nails. They're huge, wide, fake nails in a fan shape and I've looked all over the web for a photo, but no dice. They are terrifying. 

Hopefully the rest of the day is less freakish.


LOVE

 Buying textbooks sucks.

Syllabus week is a beautiful thing: Go to class, teacher reads the syllabus aloud, leave.
Neat.

Had my last four classes today...should be an okay quarter, despite the 8 papers.
Comm: Really looking forward to Comm. It's the same prof as my last comm class and most people think she's a hard-ass but I think she's great. Anyone who can keep me awake through 20 lectures of communication research methods is a god.  The paper topics sound extremely interesting and I'm excited to get started. This is good, considering this is my major.
Today's class was good, despite the heebie jeebies I was getting from the nail-biting, knuckle-cracking, cuticle-picker that was staring me down all class. Thursday, I think, I shall sit another row back.
Environmental Science: Favorite thing said this morning: "There will be mild change after the revolution"
My ES class is taught by a tag-team of old men. They made us watch on old Canadian environmental film. It was 20 minutes of Grizly Adams in a canoe in the Great Lakes with narration in ballad form.
Least Favorite thing said this morning: "Also, we have a field trip this quarter...to the Goleta Waste Treatment Facility."
Awesome.
Soccer: P.E. I've decided to drop out and become a college PE teacher and get paid to take attendance.
Every Tues/Thurs I get to play soccer for an hour...for a grade. Love it.
Class went like this after attendance: 
Prof: Okay, get your uniforms by next class. 
Us: ...
Prof:...
Us:...And?
Prof: Um. And that's it. See you Thursday...Good-bye.
Us: That's it.
Prof: Yes! Ciao. Sayonara. Aufwiedersehen....Go away.
So then we played soccer on our own for an hour while the Professor stood on the other field and talked to a man in a scarf.
I straightup took a shoulder to the face and went down like a rock. It's going to be a good quarter.
Comparative Literature: The course is called Making of the Modern World: Minds and Machines.
It promises to be kick. ass. 
It's about philosophical, sociological, technological, conceptual history of man's desire to instill human factors and intelligence in inanimate objects. Creating a mechanism to replace what the mind does. He argued that the origin of computing began 5000 years ago with the invention of writing: Writing something down on paper is inscription for the sake of memory; saving the idea by writing it down, filing the idea, in order to retrieve it later. I've never thought of it that way. It's all very cool.
Or maybe I'm a geek.

I'm still crashing Film Studies. Pretty sure I'll get in. Sat in on the first lecture Monday and by the end of it found that I no longer wanted to double major in Comm and Film/Media Studies. Realized that I'm not interested so much in Film as I am Media Stuides, which is what Comm is, so really, I'm right where I want to be with my single major in Comm. This is good news, since now I'll be able to take fun electives that interest me but have nothing to do with my major. This also takes away a lot of stress for academic planning with Study Abroad. Nice.

Lastly, this: the Neck Beard.



You know how warm, damp places encourage mold growth? Apparently, college is the warm, damp place of horrendous facial hair.
It's not okay. It turns the neck into something dirty, like a facial nether-region. An under-chin armpit.
Not a righteous groove.


Okay. So. Goodnight.
LOVE