Midterm Torment

Alright, it's been a little over a week since my last post but cross my heart I'm actually going to post today rather than starting and then hitting save draft and coming back a week later. Tonight shall not be in vain! (In the sense that I'm going to actually post and entry, not in the sense of Fake...)

*edit*
I wrote this introduction on Monday and guess what, the night was very much in vain and I did indeed save it as a draft and come back almost a week later. So here is a new, better intro where I really will not hit save an come back a week later.

So I know I haven't written in forever but it's because I've had midterms spread out over three weeks. I know at first that may sound awesome, having them spread out, but trust me, it isn't. The past three weeks have gone something like this. Astronomy test, big family history project, biology midterm, American Heritage paper, Book of Mormon midterm, astronomy midterm (Tuesday), astronomy project (Wednesday) and now since it's been so long all of the classes the had their midterms first are now assigning projects so... another big family history project, biology quiz, another American Heritage paper, and by the time I'm done with all of that chances are good Book of Mormon and Astronomy will have more tests and projects for me to do. So, with that excuse on the table, here's what I've been up to.

First and formost, I want to give a shout out to the HBLL, that place it awesome! It's a ginormous library of course but the media center is essentially like a mini free blockbuster. I'm pretty sure they have every movie under the sun there. Well, except for Enchanted, which is what I was going there to get, and West Side Story, which I was also looking for, but in the defense of the HBLL, they at one time had West Side Story but it was lost. It wasn't a big deal though because once I went to the media center I just walked over to the Music and Art  center and got Nine, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, and Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.

Last Monday (Oct. 17th) I mentioned that we had a cleaning check. We easily passed. Our inspector guy served his mission I think somewhere in Africa but the language he learned was a click language. He taught us the three different kinds of clicks and we spent like a half hour just sitting around trying to click properly. Later that evening Alexis had bought sparkling cider to celebrate our glorious triumph over dirtiness. We decided that things should be more interesting so we got some plastic shot glasses and decided to race. We did it once but still had left over cider and decided that the first time wasn't good enough so we did it again. We recorded it and put it up on facebook. If you saw it.. I'm sorry. If you didn't... good job I guess.

Tuesday I was supposed to have my debate but thankfully it got pushed to Thursday since the other team wasn't communicating with us like at all so we still didn't really know what it was that we were supposed to be debating .

Wednesday I carved a pumpkin with Aaron and Autumn. That's right, the three of us carved one pumpkin. I don't know why, but when we got to the creamery they were all like "NOOOOOOOO!!!! We only want to get one pumpkin!!!!!" and now that poor pumpkin has three horrific faces carved into it and is one of the ugliest pumpkins I and everyone who walks by my apartment have ever had the misfortune of viewing. We then walked up to campus so Aaron could go to a BYUSA meeting but by the time we got there it was almost over so we walked down to Legend's Grill but it was closed so we went all the way back to Wyview where there was a talent show with a hot chocolate bar. We left after awhile with the intention of watching Napolian Dynamite but ended up just looking at stuff on youtube.

Thursday I had my obnoxious debate. I realize that in real debates, you don't know what you're going to say until you get there, but I'm not taking a debate class, I'm taking an American Heritage class. The assignment was that we tell the other side our main points so that we could write a rebuttal. The other team didn't and so we didn't know what to say until we got there. I found it kind of annoying, but it worked out alright in the end. The class actually ended up supporting our position, which I was a little surprised about since we were supporting the Fugitive Slave Act.

Friday I spent most of the day doing homework. I had a Family History project that was due at 5:00 and I ended up working on it until about 4:30. The rest of that evening I spent studying for my Biology midterm that  I was taking the next day. It was parents weekend as well. Alexis' parents were here, Karen was spending the weekend in Colorado, and most of my associates were with their parents as well so I really didn't have much else to do anyway. I suppose it was for the best though since I really did need to study. That evening, having been cooped up in my apartment for hours on end alone with nothing but my Biology notes, I attempted to go see a movie with Aaron but for some weird reason the theater closed at 11:30 so that ended up not working.

Saturday morning I went to the Provo cemetery with the service group I went to the apple orchard with a few weeks ago to rake up leaves. Working in the cemetery on a fall morning really reminded me of Austin's eagle project, especially that one day when Riley, Austin, and I went to the graveyard after school and just worked there all day and then that evening went to the ward Christmas party. At least we were only raking though so I didn't get soaking wet. Speaking of fall, it's a little odd to have it here. I know we have fall at home and all and weather wise it's actually pretty much the same. The big difference here though is that there are leaves everywhere! I know that's kind of a dumb thing to say, I mean after all it is fall, but I think there are only like 5 evergreen trees in the entire city of Provo, so all the other trees are dumping leaves. They're all over the place! It's kind of cool. Like people here probably actually use the rakes they own and could make a giant pile of leaves and jump into them if they felt like it.
      Saturday afternoon I took my Bio test, which took 3 hours and made me miss the football game. It was nice to have it done though. I spent pretty much the rest of the day studying for my Family History midterm which was on Monday. That evening however Autumn and I walked down to Provo center to go to a "Haunted Asylum." It was pretty good, very well designed and the actors did a good job. On the way home Autumn decided that we had to stop at 7-11 so that she could get a slurpee or the world would explode, but aside from that we just went home and I went to bed.

Sunday I don't recall doing anything particularly exciting. I went to church and spent the rest of the day studying for my Family History midterm.

Monday I got up and took my family history midterm and went to class. After class I declared my major (pre-communication!) and went to the HBLL where I got those movies I mentioned earlier. I was planning on watching Nine before writing a paper for my American Heritage class. Nine ended up being a blue ray though so I ended up watching Napoleon Dynamite with Autumn who also brought Aaron. It turns out however that I poorly calculated the amount of time it would take me to write my paper and I ended up staying up all night writing it. Thankfully I didn't have class the next day until 4:00.

Tuesday evening Karen decided to make fried rice on account of the fact that 1) she is awesome and 2) She had promised to make french toast for dinner a few night ago but didn't and I had be whining about it. She cooked  about 6 cups of rice and we ended up with an insane amount. It was really good though. Since we had so much about 6 different people came over and all had some and we still had enough left overs that it lasted us a  few days. That evening Seth, Aaron, their friend Ryne (no, it's not Ryan it's Ryne like, watermelon rine), and I played with mentos and pop.

Wednesday after class I studied for my Book of Mormon midterm and Autumn and I were going to go to an accapella concert but we started watching Marble Hornets and walking a mile to campus in the dark no longer sounded like such a great idea. Instead I continued to study for my midterm while Autumn made fry bread and talked about  how much she loved and was excited for Christmas. We also spent a little while listening to Disney music and trying to discover if Bishops had to be married. Our investigation was inconclusive. One of the questions on the questions on my Book of Mormon review was highly confusing and after not being able to find the answer online and Autumn refused to ask her RM friend, I asked Aaron if he knew the answer. While we were on the phone, Autumn attempted to use her mind control to make him come over and eat all of the fry bread that she had made. He finally decided to come on account of the fact that I had shared with him the secrets of withdrawing from a class. Once he had eaten a significant portion of the fry bread Autumn then decided that what we really needed was ice cream (did I mention that she's obsessed with ice cream?) so we stopped by the creamery and watched "how it should have ended" videos.

Thursday resulted again in my being shut up in my apartment alone with my notes studying for hours on end. This time however it was my Book of Mormon notes.

Friday in jujitsu we ended with six five minute live training sessions. In the first round I split my lip, in the think the  fourth round my opponent decided she needed to bite me and elbow me in the face ( don't worry, I got my revenge with multiple arm bars and americanas) and in one of the last rounds I got hit in the knee and hurt it, but it was still really fun. I also successfully did a take down, which was pretty awesome. After class I spent 2 hours in the library studying for my Book of Mormon midterm and then I went and took it.
        I got home about 7:00 and Autumn and I decided to go to the store since we were both down to pretty much peanut butter. While we were at the store we saw coconuts for pretty cheap and she decided to get one. On the way home we also stopped at the "frozen yogurt" place (you see? Addicted!). We drained the coconut milk by repeatedly stabbing the eye with kiddy scissors and then we opened it by smashing it against the edge of the concrete stairs until it split open enough for us to pull it apart the rest of the way. Then we scooped out all of the insides, which was slightly more difficult than I anticipated. The meaty part tasted like, believe it or not, shredded coconut, and the coconut milk kind of tasted like coconut extract diluted in water. To bad we didn't have any pineapple. We could have made some kind of awesome nonalcoholic pina-colada esq drink. 
     After we had dismembered the coconut we went over to Aaron's apartment since he had invited us, Seth, and Ryne to watch Captain America. He and Seth were still at Seth's intermural soccer game when we got there, so Autumn and I waited for them there with Aaron's roommates and their fiance's. The five of us started watching it in Aaron's apartment but then he remembered that we could watch it in the club house which had a bigger tv (it was almost exactly like the one at home) so we went there. We were there for about 10 minutes before we got kicked out. Apparently the club house closes at 10:00. Why does everything close so early here on the weekends? We went back up to Aaron's apartment but his one roommate who isn't engaged was watching a movie with a date so we ended up at my place.
 
I think my plans for today are to write some letters, study for my astronomy midterm (last one!), go to the Halloween party Wyview is having, and maybe finish watching Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.

Oh, I've got one more rant before I go. We talked about diffusion and osmosis in biology Friday and I just have to say the I absolutely hate it when people say that you can "learn something by osmosis". Every time I hear someone say that I just want to yell at them "You are a biological idiot!" I mean really, do these people even know what osmosis is? Osmosis is the diffusion of WATER. WATER!!! So, what you're saying is that you want more water in your head?? Also, do these people even know how diffusion works? The idea of diffusion is that it creates an point of equal librium so stuff flows from an area of high concentration to low concentration until is it equal or as close as possible. So even if you could gain knowledge through diffusion it would mean that the person with the knowledge would loose his intelligence and give it to the person without it until they reached a point of equal librium (both would posses and equal amount of intelligence). So, yes, the dumb person would gain more intelligence, but at the cost of the person who originally possessed the intelligence losing it. Really? That's really what you want to happen?

So... yeah.... rant over. I don't know, for some reason people saying that really bugs me. I mean, if you're going to make some kind of ridiculous statment like that at least moderately know what you're talking about. Actually, that makes me wonder, since I assume the one person losing intelligence and another gaining it until they reach a point of equal librium, what exactly do these people think osmosis and diffusion are and how do they think it works in cells?