Reading week…

Reading week is becoming definitely for reading.

And relaxing. I’ve been relaxing a ton, doing things like making elaborate dinners and catching up on some Shugo Chara. (I’m addicted to the cute, but Fred can’t stand the voices..)

I probably need to be doing more homework tho. But its like I just know that its gonna be nonstop schoolwork as soon as class starts up again so yeah… 

I really wish the warm weather we just had had stuck around. Things are getting freezing again, and its so disheartening to see the sidewalks covered in ice again. Ah, well.. spring will be here soon..

Fred and I picked up cupcakes from the cupcake shoppe on Monday…

Omg, they were so delicious…

A return

Yeah...its been a while.

I set this up for Nikki and I to keep in touch and I haven't really kept my side of the bargain. Although I have no real excuse, school has kept me busy.

How is life in Toronto? Its good, good. It was a crazy move here, from the chaos of packing and actually moving our things to the new apart, to getting sick my second week of school with the plague.

Things have calmed down and we've settled in. How does life with Fred feel compared to before? The same. Living together hasn't provoked arguing or tension between us. We've developed a small rhythm to our weeks and just relax most weekends. I've tried really hard to contribute as much as possible - doing our laundry (which can get rapidly out of control as our washer is 1/5 the side of a regular one), cooking dinner (Fred likes good food and budgets for it, so needless to say, I eat well here - very well ), cleaning, and running errands.

My classes are interesting and challenging.

Intro to Modern Astrophysics - I enjoy this class the most, but its also the most challenging of my classes. Its been so long since I took regular astronomy, so I've had to do a bit of reviewing. Also, the class draws upon physics and calculus, so its nice to feel my education coalesce.

Linear Algebra - This class was ridiculously simple the first 3 weeks, but now we've moved onto vector spaces and I'm realizing my ability to write proofs is perhaps not as high as it should be. I scored quite highly on the last quiz, but that was just manipulating matrices, no proofs.

Fundamental Physics Lab - Oh my, this class. I'm not sure what to think of it. Its a half credit course stretched over a year. It consists of 5 intro exercises that you do first which teach you to use various lab apparatus such as oscilloscopes, wave generators, vacuum systems, etc. We're set in pairs and nearly every exercise has had problems. The lab write ups have also been weird and strangely graded. I grew up being taught that write ups were to be formal and outline-like. My TA likes a more freestyle fashion that's different from what I naturally do. The experiments look awesome tho. Lets hope that they involve more reliable equipment.

Soc of Religion - Mom would love this class. The thing I like about it is that the prof doesn't strongly focus on each religion, he more so forces you to think critically about the role religion plays in society and while its so prevalent in human culture. This class is my break from all the science and math. Its a complete 180.

What else is new? Well, Purple for one. UPS shipped my computer and broke the hell out of it while. Fred gave me his old processor (Core2 Duo) and upgraded his. He also picked me up a new mobo and a video card, and in a bit of mad irony, I got his Zalman fan. (A loooong story involving him needing to RMA his Striker2, and Asus sending him back a revised mobo where an additional heatpipe prevents him from clipping this crazy, 70$ cpu fan. He now runs stock cooling ) Purple's been upgraded so wildly, he doesn't feel much like Purple anymore. I'm sure once I Hello Kitty the shit out of the new case door, it'll feel more natural.

Its incredible tho, to finally have a running tower, with access again to my data. Makes it finally feel like home.

Dinner tonight? Mango chicken with coconut ginger rice.

hm.

So you want to be an astrophysicist...

Where was this when I was in high school...?

Not that it says anything more than what I already know.

Science, Math, Science, Math...

My advice? Find a school that offers it, a real one, that won't leave you with some Astronomy Degree you can't get a job with.

And funding, find funding.. its harder than it seems.

I've recently chosen my university for transfer, U of Toronto.

Why the hell would I choose Canada? Its funny, I never imagined myself the type to do this. Never. I suppose we're all "the type" to do everything eventually.

But I do have about 30seconds everyday that I sit frozen, thinking: "What exactly have I chosen for myself?"

Its not to say that this was a quick choice, in fact, the majority of people who know me would say this was the longest decision in the history of time. I'm pretty sure decisions to declare war have been quicker than my decision on transfer university.

But I don't care much how long it took, because it is my life, my education. And my loans. Ah, loans.

Its to be asked, what the hell is wrong with America? People die to be American, live American..and you'd think, from that, that America was so together with things, but we're not.

So I'm going to Canada. Where my insurance is 69 bucks a month instead of 300. Where my international student university bill is 10 grand less than my IN-STATE RESIDENT BILL. (Albeit, no I'm not eligible for grants).

The neuroses of mine still fester. I feel like now that I've decided that there's 105 different questions I should have asked but never thought to, and I hate myself a bit for it. I don't feel prepared for anything and the pressure to prepare would make you think tomorrow I move out.

And they say these are "the best years".

Confusion

So...new Blogger Beta theme. I've been working on upgrading the blog template from Classic to XML.

In a word, I hated every minute of it.

New blogger seems to be broken anyway, and after I'd given up on on trying to create my own beta template (what a freaking joke that was - I mean, I know CSS, but the whole wrapper thing is lost on me. And widgets? I didn't like the term when we used it in Calculus, I don't like it now.) I browsed various sites hosting prefab'd templates.

Only, an interesting thing...Blogger failed to load any of them.

I received over 100 bx-blah errors, probably. After about 30, I google'd it and learned its apparently some massive Blogger glitch. It seemed to have something to do with browsers and caches, because a few people were able to upload by either rebooting or clearing their cache.

Not me. I sent it to Nikki and she was able to upload the first time.

An afternoon later, this pink, sakura theme is nearly finished. The base is leeched off a Goldfish layout, that I replaced the images and theme on. Nikki and I decided on something spring-y.

All that's left now is the content.

-H