The Wheels on the Bus Go Round and Round...

...until they hit someone. Then they stop. For a very long time.

Fridays now are always my least favorite days of the week. "Why?" you may ask - "it's the last day of the work and school week! You should be happy!" Well, maybe I could be if it weren't for my statistics recitation. Any joy and happiness that could possibly come from knowing that it's the last day of work and school for the next two whole days literally gets sucked from my soul by my Dementor-like recitation TA. Don't be fooled by her seemingly meek exterior: this chick is cruel. When I first came to her to get help with catching up (from previous posts, you'll remember that I missed a class and recitation and, as a result, fell majorly behind with homework), she wanted me to turn in three (3) weeks worth of homework plus the homework due the coming recitation all in one day! I'm thinking, "Lady, there are ~20 problems per homework assignment. You do NOT expect me to get these all done in 18 hours." But she did. And when I didn't turn them in because I was so busy with the homework actually due for that week, I asked if they could be turned in late and she wasn't even going to accept them(!!!) until I pleaded with her! She has the grumpiest attitude and makes you feel stupid if you even dare raise your hand to attempt to answer a question but get it wrong. The Hungarian accent only further exacerbates the problem since half the time I can't understand her and am having to ask, "Come again?" or "Can you repeat that?" She gets angry at me because I can't understand her broken English.

Well Expecto Patronum to you, TA. Expecto Patronum to you.

Okay, now that I'm way off topic...

So last-last Friday (two Fridays ago) I had to take the bus home. I literally chased the bus as it was pulling out, but those [expletive] Port Authority drivers wouldn't stop for a little old lady if she were waving them down. So I had to wait an extra half hour for a bus I could have taken immediately if she would have stopped for me.

To make matters so much worse, I board the second bus, it rounds the bend, and he "hits" a lady getting onto the bus. Seriously, we didn't even make the turn fully and this happens. I didn't see the entire thing because I'm so freaking short, but by the talk of the riders who did see, some woman (who they recognized from her daily riding that bus as well) was getting onto the bus, but she claims it was still moving and knocked her down as she was stepping up. One of the passengers thought aloud that she was probably doing it for some good lawsuit money.

Seriously. Of all the buses in downtown Pittsburgh to do this to, it had to be mine.

So the bus driver is trying to figure out if she's okay - "Ma'am? Are you hurt? Can you stand up?" - and, naturally, this lady is milking it for all it's worth and is groaning and mumbling that "[her] back and neck hurt." Well everyone knows that when someone says their back/neck hurts, then you shouldn't move them. Nice move, homie. Twenty-five minutes later, the Port Authority police and the Pittsburgh police arrive at the scene and are asking the lady, the driver, and the other passengers what happened. People are getting frustrated by this point (I already was 20 seconds after her act), and they're checking their schedules to see when the next bus comes. I hear the girl next to me say that one should be coming in about 10 minutes. Ten minutes, huh? Well I gather up my stuff, walk to the front of the bus, leap gracefully over the faking pile of flesh - aka, the homeless-looking woman - and walk all 15 steps back to my bus stop. Within five minutes, I hear the sirens of the ambulance. (It's about time - good thing the woman wasn't REALLY hurt.) Traffic is all backed up now since the bus is straddling two intersections and the ambulance and police cars are hogging up the rest of the road. I see them carry her off on a stretcher and figure the bus is going to get moving after all. But I'm sure you've already guessed it: I walked over, as did two other riders, and waved what the driver must have taken as "bon voyage" to the bus.

Long story short, I boarded the third bus which made it all of 10 stops before declaring that we were going to take some of the second bus's passengers since it's schedule was backed up; and that anyone going straight to Tarentum could go get on the other bus since it was going to go straight there, no stops. Yeah, well that wasn't the most even exchange. We gave two, we got thirty-two. So I rode home next to a man reeking of whiskey. How did I know it was whiskey? Because the guy, with one eye half shut and breath smelling of booze, looked over at me and slurred out, "What a day. When I get home, I'm drinkin' a whole bottle of whiskey."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~*

Fast-forward to this past Saturday.

As you'll see in a soon-to-come post, I took my sister Ali with me to Pitt's annual Fall Fest since I was going to be covering an event there for a journalism project. We had to take the bus. If it wasn't bad enough that our local creepy cross-dresser was on the bus (talking to himself and playing with his hair, as usual) on the way out and back, the bus heading home was driven by the Abominable Snow Monster. We could see our breath on the bus, it was that cold. And he completely ignored the hollers from the back of the bus as two girls called out to him to turn on the heat. But the best part had to be the adventure of Clumsy, the little-known eighth dwarf in Snow White's posse (the guy had the height, the roly-poly belly, the long white beard, and even the funny little hat). The poor guy pulled the "Stop Requested" line and started walking to the front of the bus, but the driver slammed on the brakes and poor little Clumsy was projected forward. Luckily, he was able to grab on to one of the poles and hold on for dear life. But just as he steadied himself and started walking forward, AGAIN, the bus driver slams on the brakes; this time however, Clumsy wasn't so lucky. He went sailing towards the front of the bus, BACKWARDS. He tried to catch himself on anything, but failed and instead landed on his butt then slipped effortlessly into a backwards tumble, knocking his head on something next to the driver. If it weren't so sad, I'd have laughed, and if he weren't so old, I'd have given him a 9 (he didn't stick the landing well enough for a 10). He stood up, and it was at that point with him holding his wrist and rubbing his head that I thought we were going to go through this all over again. I called my mom and made her aware of the situation and that we may be awhile. Ali was mortified. Thankfully, the man didn't ask to be checked out and got off the bus at his stop.

Twitter says it best:

Killing me softly...

...with homework.

Here's how my life has been this week:

Sunday: working until 2 a.m. on an article discussing a book reading for my journalism class.

Monday: class all day, then coming home and working on a critical reading essay and anthropology essay until 1:30 a.m. then studying statistics until 2 a.m.

Keep in mind I leave for work every morning at 6 a.m.

Tuesday: class all day, then working on an article discussing a family selling their farm for my journalism class, then working some more on that anthropology essay until 1:30 a.m. then studying statistics until 2:30 a.m.

Wednesday: class all day, church, finishing that anthropology essay, then being too whooped to even look at my statistics book.

Today: work until 10 a.m. then studying statistics for the EXAM I have today. Yeah. Then anthropology lecture at 11, anthropology recitation at 12, stats exam at 1 (!!!), and critical reading at 2. Then I've got to make a trip to the campus bookstore to pick up the newest book for my critical reading class. Then I have to catch a bloody city bus into downtown Pittsburgh THEN catch ANOTHER one into my town since my dad has a gig tonight (I usually ride home with him). Then I have to work on some homework for stats before going out to the gym to play volleyball until God knows how late to work out all my frustrations. Of course I'll probably just bring my homework to the gym and work in the lobby. It will be more peaceful there than at home anyway.

Lord, help me harness my emotions long enough today to keep from killing someone.

The only instance in which laziness pays off:

I absolutely love Caribou, but I don't like using my debit card there because the receipts are so large and therefore difficult to cram into my wallet for safe-keeping until I balance my checkbook. The solution? 'Bou Bucks, of course! It's like a refillable gift card for yourself. Problem is, I drained mine two weeks ago and haven't gotten around to refilling it yet. So last week I was like the typical alcoholic, not wanting to drink but not being able to help it when passes right by the bar (or in my instance, coffeehouse) each day on the way to work. And dang it, my wallet is stuffed full now of these mile-long receipts that I have to plug in now to my checkbook. (In Caribou's defense, they're only long because either a.) there's a survey code at the bottom or b.) they're attaching a coupon, so it's very nice of them to be so thoughtful, but it gets bothersome after awhile.)

So to address my drinking problem, I've had to come up with an alternative route to work so as to bypass Caribou completely to avoid temptation:



As you can see, my new route (in purple) takes me through the creepy alley behind Caribou. So much better. But hey, I've done it the past two mornings, and I'm still making it to the office $3.48 richer each day than I would have been had I gone my usual route.

See how laziness saves you money?

Just for the health of it.

This past Wednesday was Pitt's annual Panther Wellness Carnival. Each year Pitt hosts a day of carnival-like activities that promote and spread awareness of good health practices. There was free food, candy, games, and door prizes, including a "Go Green" tote, a gigantic magnet with the Student Health Services phone number on it, a gift card to Chipotle (rock on), and best of all? Free OCCs! (Out of Class Credits)
Booths were set up outside the William Pitt Union displaying brochures, facts, and games with prizes to help communicate the purpose of their table.

Here's a t-shirt I got at one of the booths that was promoting wise drinking habits. I still have no clue what OHEP stands for...



And here's the booth at which I got the shirt! You'd pick a rubber ducky out of the pool, tell them the number that was written underneath it, and they'd ask you that number question off the quiz sheet (all of which pertained to drinking habits). For playing, you got a free shirt.




Next booth over was the smoking awareness table. They had a breathalyzer set out to test how much smoke was in your lungs.

As you can see, there were a bunch of local businesses who helped out with donations for the activity. There were lots of prizes involving gift cards (one of which was a $15 Target gift card...I wanted that one).

This had to be the strangest of all the tables. This is the HIV awareness booth. The game involved popping "condom balloons" (yes, I saw the girls blowing up the balloons - and they were ribbed. It was nasty.) with a dart and then answering the question number off of the sheet based on the number behind the balloon you popped (make sense?). To give you a window through which to look through that should tell you a little about myself, I got probably the easiest question: "What does HIV stand for?" and I couldn't answer it. I did, however, get a free pack of condoms for trying (which I nonchalantly tossed back on the table in passing). Go abstinence. :-)

This was the coolest table. It was a handwriting analysis booth. And the guy seriously knew what he was doing. He pretty much nailed me. And not just the ultra-vague "I see that you had a dark time in your past" mumbo jumbo; this guy was very specific. He was able to tell the girl next to me that she had either broken or sprained an ankle in the past year (just based on her handwriting!) and he was correct. He was able to tell me my favorite color, that I sing, and lots of other facts about myself. It was pretty impressive...

This was another cool one. It was a DUI awareness booth where you'd toe the black line as shown then try toeing it again but with the "Fatal Vision Goggles." Seriously, it was hilarious to watch people do this. They would try to walk straight but end up walking off towards a tree or the group of bystanders, not even realizing it.

This guy was especially fun to watch: he nearly fell over twice.

All in all, fun session! I got lots of cool stuff from it, the best of which was an awesome pen. I love pens. I'll steal your pens the first chance I get if I think it writes nicely. Must be a left-handed thing...

Go Pitt!

...like a chicken with its head cut off.

Life went from busy to nearly-out-of-control-losing-my-mind busy (wow, that WORD was busy).

Since the last time I updated (read "really updated"), school has started back up for me here at Pitt. I really love it here: there's such an atmosphere about it. Everything from the buildings like the Cathedral of Learning to the faculty and staff - all is wonderful. Well, actually, I can't say that. But we'll come back to that in a bit.


Anyway, school has also started up for my siblings. In fact, we all started the same day (the 25th). To be honest, this fact alone has made my life a living hell - even trumping my college homework - over the past two weeks. Between my brother needing help with geometry and the twins needing help figuring out how to work the PA Cyber school online program PLUS all of their homework, I barely have enough time to do my own. It's actually resulting in a lot of last-minute (what I like to call) "puke-up" homework where I pretty much BS my way through the assignment to get enough length on it even though I probably didn't do the reading needed to write the essay/paper/short answer well. Alas. But I am apparently good at it though, because I haven't had any poor gradings on them yet.

On the other hand...

I don't think one needs to be a Hindu to believe in the idea of Karma, which is (as one definition reads) "the effects of all deeds actively create past, present, and future experiences, thus making one responsible for one's own life, and the pain and joy it brings to him/her and others." I usually see this mostly in the teams I end up on when playing volleyball on Thursday nights: I get on the elite team at the beginning of the night and we dominate every other team, laughing in their faces and making them kiss our big toes (okay, I embellish); then Karma kicks in and I get stuck with the clumsy, uncoordinated people of the group, and we lose every game.

Anyway, back to how this relates to school.

I'm taking a Statistics course and my teacher is positively off the wall. On top of being down-right scary looking, she's flighty, absent-minded, and clueless to the fact that all the students know it and are making fun of her. I missed my very first recitation for this class due to circumstances outside of my control. I told her this and asked if there were a way to make it up. She told me to just wait a week and go to the next one. I did this (already a week behind in homework, mind you) and lo and behold! No one was there! Apparently, they moved recitation and didn't tell me. So that's two weeks of homework in the hole. Finally, I am able to make it to the third week. The TA is Hungarian and very soft spoken, so I had a difficult time making out what she was saying over the two air conditioners in the room. The period seemed short: she spent the first 15 minutes milling about jotting things on the board and the remainder of the class was spent showing us how to take a survey on the Stats website and assigning a quiz to us (which I ended up taking and definitely bombing). I met with her afterwards to schedule a meeting to get me caught up. The guy next to me was nice enough to give me the website with the homework syllabus on it. I was ready to pull all of my hair out.

So one bogus class out of five isn't bad, right?

...right? :-(

How I'm feeling right now...

So help me, I will update this over the weekend.

Today's Rant: the USPS's Approach to Returning Mail

I work for a research study. One of my jobs is to send out a professional mailing to different area doctors to promote the various studies for which we are currently recruiting in the hopes that some of the DRs/RAs/MAs/nurses will refer some of their suite's patients to us. Technically, it's a "monthly mailing" but in reality - because a life and a million other tasks that are much more important - it's between a bi-annual and a tri-annual mailing. As of the last time I did the mailing, I was still working part time as a full time student and the addresses (of which there were well over 300) were having to be hand-written. You can imagine how long this took me since I was only working four-hour days PLUS juggling the other tasks they would throw my way AND what I was already doing (recruiting, data inputting, scheduling, etc). Now, we have over 500 names on our mailing list, but at least we've come up with mailing labels to save me time. No matter what though, it's always a pain to assemble these. It's perfunctory and very time-consuming stuff.

What really gets my goat - glazes my donuts - harshes my mellow - however you wish to put it - is when the USPS returns our packets to us looking as though they had to tether-sticker it down from breaking free and fleeing. They do this to not only the packets, but also to any boxy item I try to send. If I've been given a faulty address or the person is no longer at that practice, the mail gets sent back to be COVERED in "RETURN TO SENDER," "INVALID ADDRESS," and my favorite "UNDELIVERABLE AS ADDRESSED" stickers. As you can see, it must be like art class when someone gets the chance to return our stuff. They get really creative in where they can put the stickers and stamps and sometimes even draw all over the front of it, crossing out the address, drawing a line through the auto-presorted stamp, whatever they can think up. Anything goes. And this picture isn't even the worst I've seen, really. It just happened to come in today. Usually they've written all over it with a "HE'S NO LONGER HERE" or some such thing in big red letters; the top is often half-ripped as well as if they wanted to take a quick look inside! Which really makes me mad, because I'm all about not wasting; and when they give me one of those giant mailing envelopes back in this condition, it makes me want to slap somebody because there is no way I'm going to be able to salvage it for a second attempt.

*FUMES* But I digress.

In other news, I squashed a cockroach this morning that was the size of a small child. Okay, more like a cell phone (no kidding on this one). I was standing in front of my building's lobby's elevators waiting for one to come down (which is absurd since there's no one in the freaking building that early, but today there must have been because...) when a girl standing next to me nudged my shoulder and muttered, "You know you godda giant bug on yo shoe, miss." Reflex caused me to kick my right foot out violently at this new-found knowledge and I jumped back into almost a crouch. I looked down to see the thing crawling towards me again (Lord, those things are fast!). I've never liked squashing bugs. I don't like the sound, and I REALLY don't like the guts that go everywhere when you do it. But this thing was going to eat me if I didn't act fast, so I took the front cover of my Pitt newspaper, threw it over top of the little nasty, and stomped down as hard as I could (the thing looked practically armour-plated, so I gave it some "oomph"). I pulled the newspaper back to find a splatter of green slime the size of a coffee mug on the marble floor. Where did it GO??? I flashed over to the underside of the paper where I found the little monster. Dead soldier.

Now I'm walking around our suite with extra caution, quickly scanning the room and its corners for critters then slowly proceeding, eyes ever roaming. I'm sitting on my desk chair Indian-style to keep my feet up off the ground. All was going well until about 30 minutes ago when I reached for my jacket and realized it was not on the back of my chair, but on the floor. I grabbed it and immediately started shaking it like a red-headed step child. Then, not wanting to have my hand bitten off, I peeked inside the pockets to see if any little monsters had hidden inside. Fortunately I was safe. Still though, I can't relax. Bugs are so disgusting. Any and all bugs. I hate them all. And I will judge you, by the way, if you've got them. If lice was good enough to be one of the seven plagues in the Bible, then roaches should've been in there, too. And I will avoid you like the plague if you've got either (and especially both). Lice and roaches = filthiness. I'm sorry, it's just the way I am.

Okay, now that that's out of my system, I think I'll go take these data sheets to the back...and I'll be watching the ground the whoooole time...

Party-Hardy

How was your Saturday evening? Good? Great.

How was mine? Glad you asked.

My Saturday evening was spent down at the church practicing an a cappella piece with four friends. Why, you might ask, would people be down at a church on a Saturday night doing nothing but practicing music? Well, to answer your question, we're not organized. That's really all it comes down to. Also, in our defense, the song was picked three weeks in advance to Saturday, which is a real achievement for our bunch. Anyway, we're down there practicing and it's just not happening. We couldn't keep it together for some reason. So we were at the proverbial crossroads: keep practicing our current song and hope it shapes up, pick a different song but one that's familiar to everyone, or...

One of my friends is home from the West Coast. She's in her college's tour group. "There's this awesome song - ah man, you guys would love it - and it's in five parts and it's a cappella too and wow, is it amazing; we should totally sing it!" We all stared and blinked.

"Okay...well, what's the name of it?"

"'Forgiven.' We did it on tour."

Tour groups are big on 1.) picking familiar songs and jazzing them up, 2.) picking really unique songs that you probably haven't heard in a while, and 3.) picking songs that no one in the world knows but the tour group themselves. This "Forgiven" song was obviously falling into the category 3 because none of us had ever heard of this song before, despite her attempt to hum a few bars in case it would jog a memory or two. No such luck. She looked very pointedly at me. "The harmony just flows. You could probably pick it up without ever looking at the music, Sam." At that moment, I saw - not with my eyes, but with my senses - that this was do-able, that this could work. It was just a matter of getting the other two on board (our bass didn't care, he just wanted us to fix it). I drove her up to her house, she ran in and got the music, and we were back down at the church in five minutes.

The song did come together, as I'm sure you figured out by now. If I'm lucky enough, I might be able to swipe a copy and slap it on here. Beautiful song...very intricate harmony, very mellow, but very easy to learn. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

To be safe, we decided we should meet a little early. You know, just to go over the song once or twice before the real thing in case someone needed a little warming up or just all together forgot the melody (which HAPPENED, by the way). Since early would have required waking up earlier, my mom wasn't interested. So to leave them a vehicle, I called to hop a ride with Vick. She said she'd be at my house to pick me up at 8:30. I didn't understand this at first since I live mere blocks from the church and we didn't have to be there until 9:00. But I didn't mind, so I told her I'd see her then.

Fast forward to 8:42. I keep checking my phone to see the time and she's still not here. I finally call as she's pulling up. I walk over to open the passenger door but stop short to instead lean in to see the many balloons floating and bobbing about in her backseat. She glanced back too then turned back to me and grinned. I got in without asking and she explained that it was her Sunday school class's head teacher's birthday today (she's a co-teacher to the class) and she wanted to throw a little surprise party. Vick doesn't do anything "little." So we get to the church with five minutes until practice time. The balloons were being quarantined in a very large clear bag with only the strings exposed (to minimize the chance of them escaping when the doors opened. Unfortunately, she has a small two-door car, so the balloons needed to come through her side with her seat smashed down as low as it would go. I helped by pushing from behind as she tugged from the front. Finally, our worries subsided when the bag exited the vehicle with no popped balloons. She loaded my arms up with goodies for her class then gathered up all she could carry as well. It looked as though she had packed enough food for two classes. So we were able to move all of the goods inside, park the car, practice, perform, and then go to our respective classes. In the second service, we were ready to do it again. We were all sitting on the front row when Vick leans around the back of our tenor and mouths: "OOPS," pointing at my borrowed dress and shrug she was wearing. There against the white was a huge streak of yellow. "The little girls kept hugging me and they still had icing on their mouths!" she whispered intensely. Never a dull moment. Luckily, she had - ba dada da tada - Tide to Go! Thank you, Tide to Go, you saved our lives.

SUCCESS!

Rob's birthday was last night.

For months, he'd been hinting that he wanted a cell phone for his birthday (he just turned 16 yesterday). Then for the past few weeks, he's been simply begging for one. My mother all along had been planning on getting him one but never once let on to it. She's got a great poker face. Much better than mine since, when I try to hide something, my mouth involuntarily contorts into this twisted mess of a smile (which only gets worse when I try to smooth it out into a straight-faced line). I'm so pitifully obvious. Luckily, I can keep a secret as long as no one asks, so my family hasn't completely dismissed the idea of including me on things like surprises.

Anyway.

We sneaked off to the Verizon store last Saturday and went cell searching (kinda like soul searching but more fun). He had expressed interest several times in getting a phone with a full keyboard, something like a Glyde or a Voyager. When we looked at the prices for those though, we came to the quick conclusion that it was a very expensive piece of plastic to ruin in a toilet or lose in a theme park. (Rob is notorious for "misplacing" things such as his wallet, mp3 player, etc.) To see how responsible he would be with a phone, we opted to start him out small. We picked out the Samsung SCH-u340, which is the model directly beneath my Samsung SCH-u410 (it includes Bluetooth), which I love. In addition (to help with the MIA issue he has with his belongings), we purchased him a belt clip for the phone (which he'll hopefully use).

So last night, when my mom got him out of the house to pick up his cake so we could decorate, I wrapped up the box with the cell phone all nice and pretty in pink and blue argyle paper. The twins and I finished decking the dining room with lots of streamers (hung low enough to clothes-line a midget...not sure why we did that) and balloons just in time for him to come through the door.

People started arriving around 6:30. It was a nice little party; mostly just family, though our two of our neighbors (who we're very close to - they're like an extra set of grandparents) came over to celebrate along with one of Rob's friends, Raeven, who may as well be family after the amount of time he's spent at our house this week. Once everyone had arrived, we sang "Happy Birthday" to him and it took him four tries to blow out his candles.

And no, they were not trick candles.

And no, he his not asthmatic.

And no, you do not get as many wishes as chances it takes to blow out birthday candles.

So he started opening his gifts after we had the ice cream cake. He got money from the grandparents and my aunt and uncle's family; money from our neighbors (along with a Matchbox Lamborghini as a joke on the car they wish they could get him, which was cute); a rockin' card and Penguin plush Webkinz from me (inside joke); and...a sentimental card with a pack of basketball cards from my mom and dad. He looked a little down about that one. Well, we were all done with the gifts, so he started piling them in a neat stack and chatting with his guests when all of the sudden: there was a rattling noise and Stewie's voice coming from a little pink and blue argyle package on top of the armoire. Hm, what could that be? *wink, wink*

In a nutshell, he was ecstatic. I had passed out and emailed his number to a bunch of his close friends so they could text him or leave him voicemails to find once he got the phone. I think, in the end, he had about 15 text messages and 20 voicemails. He hasn't put the thing down since. This morning he was asking me about charging it - he wore it down that fast! You'd think it was the first time he'd seen a cell phone before. I guess he's just easily amused. I'm glad he had such an enjoyable birthday though - he's a cool kid.

PHOTO UPDATE

Here are those before pictures I promised (along with a bonus picture of the stenciling we did on one of the walls).

Rob holding the inspiration piece: an Outer Banks hoodie



Rob's closet area before the transformation...

Rob's bed space before the transformation...

Rob's crapped-up corner before the transformation...

An accident befell us Wednesday evening when the paint can tipped over onto Rob's old sheets (which were NOT meant to be drop cloths...but that's exactly what they turned out to be).

"LIVE YOUR LIFE" - American Eagle