A List!

WHO DOESN'T LOVE LISTS??!???!?!
(*If you don't love lists - creating them, crossing things off them, re-creating them - then you can just GET OUT.)

But also, who doesn't love MAKING EXCEL GRAPHS??!?!?!

AM I RIGHT, PEOPLE????

As such, I've got a splendid idea! As many (all) of you know, I am applying to graduate schools this fall. Today I spent ALL GD DAY making a sweet spreadsheet of schools, people to contact, admissions deadlines and other GREAT things. As I delve deeper into the trenches of "no one will accept me!!!"-itis, my preferences for which schools to attend have changed. I figure I can make some sort of sweet graph at the end of how my preferences have progressed, and then make a killer "no one accepted me" pie chart at the end! EVERYONE WINS!

So, as of now, I am just going to state some statings:

Early August:
1. Penn State
2. Arizona State
3. Uni. of Arizona
4. Cornell
5. Uni. of Washington
Others: CU, UC Santa Cruz, Boston University, Uni. of Central Florida

August 30th:
1. Harvard
2. Penn State
3. Uni. of Arizona
4. Uni. of Washington
5. Arizona State
6. Cornell

Emily's Dream

Remember when Emily and I were friends???? I sure don't.

But when we were friends, she had this SCARY (!!) dream where I HATED HER (note: not a dream). It's pretty interesting if you think about it, so while we were still confined to the same, disgusting 10' by 10' pit of despair UM calls "dorms" I had her write it down. Here it is for your reading and contemplating pleasure.

Oh, we also dream-dictionary-looked-up some of the meanings of the things in there, and I have included it for you.

El Dreamo (written by Emily, talking to me):

so I had this dream and it was like...

We lived in the dorm, and you and i were best friends, and we all did something touristy and you brought back all these fish tanks.   Each one had two gold fish in them; one represented you, and the other was someone you were in a relationship with.  Well, you had this pewter lucky charm that you put in our tank because you loved me and it made sense, but it poisoned the fishes, and then....     I was an outcast.  You were quite suddenly best friends with Iva (weird), and I was a jerk/nobody.  It was upsetting.  The fishes didn't represent your relationships, but instead had some control over them.  Which was unexpected.

After reading the symbols that follow, I think this dream is more about me, than it is about you. 

And to Emily's last comment I say... WHATEVER! :) [Emily having a dream that is about HER and not about ME??? INCONCEIVABLE]

But here are the symbols that follow that she is talking about: 

Goldfish

To see a goldfish in your dream, signifies, wealth, success, and pleasant adventures. Alternatively, goldfish represents some important emotional matter or valuable insight.

Pairs

To see a pair of something in your dream, represents the need for balance in your life. The pair may be symbolic of your life partner or soul mate.

Pewter

To see items made of pewter in your dream, suggests that you are holding on to the past. Your ways of thinking may be outdated.

Relationships

To dream about your waking relationships, indicate wish-fulfillment. Your dream relationship usually parallels your waking relationships in some way and may be highlighting something that you are doing wrong. In your dream state, you may be more incline to confront issues that you would normally ignore or are afraid of bringing up. Compare your dream relationship with your waking relationship.

 

To dream about a relationship with a stranger, represents the different sides of your personality. You may be trying to connect to unknown aspects of your unconscious.

Lucky Charm 

To dream of a lucky charm, indicates that you are trying to connect with your spiritual energy. The dream may be telling you that you are putting too much faith on outside sources. You need to look within.

Poison

To see poison in your dream, denotes that you need to get rid of something in your life that is causing you much sickness and distress. You need to cleanse and purge away the negativity in your life. 

 

To dream that you ingest poison, indicates that you are introducing something into yourself that is harmful to your well-being. This may be feelings of bitterness, jealousy or other negative feelings that are consuming you.

Lead

To see lead in your dream, indicates that there is a problem or issue that is burdening you. Perhaps a relationship or some guilt is weighing you down.

 Interesting! :) 

If...

If this was a REAL BLOG in REAL BLOGLAND with REAL BLOGFOLLOWERS...


You would all be storming the castle (my house?) thinking I was DEAD or something (!!!) for how long it has been since I posted.

But since this is FAR from a REAL BLOG, and the only way I get peepses to read my blog is to hold them at knifepoint (EMILY), then... ipso facto, I'm not dead.


LUCKY YOU.

Long story short, I'll post a post. :)

OMG TEN DAYS?!?!!!!!??!?!?

It's been TEN DAYS since my last post??!?!?!?



OH MY GOD. 
 

Well, I'm too drive-tired to get Gus Gus up to write a post now. HOME TOMORROW!!!! :)

Sperm Gets Pounded, Specialist Says

So I was reading some articles from Discover Magazine online today, and I started reading an article about how one of the genes for sperm is 600 million years old. The article is very short, but about halfway through, there is a quote from Eugene Xu, the team leader on the discovery. I would just like to share the first sentence of his quote with you:

“It’s really surprising because sperm production gets pounded by natural selection,” Xu said.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

The article is here.

Phone Talkin' - Part Two, Answering

As I mentioned in the first part, and as some of you might have experienced, I'm super-awkward on the phone. And I'm going to blame the entire resulting conversation on the first five seconds on the phone.

If you call me:
How the BALLS do I answer? With caller id now, I find it superweird picking up the phone and saying, "Hello?" like I don't know who it is! BECAUSE I DO. Every-gd-time I answer the phone, I struggle with this. I usually resort to, "Hey, what's up?" BUT I HATE IT. It's so LAAAAAAMMMMMEEEEEE. Sometimes, if I am expecting your call, I just start talking, but that is weird too. For a tiny bit I tried saying, "Ahoy-hoy" like Mr. Burns from The Simpsons but people didn't understand what I was saying and that caused problems in itself.

So now I'm back to thinking of possible solutions. Here are some things I came up with:
- just making a loud, clearing-my-throat sound (this will be *great* when I'm an old person).
- yelling something in an awkward way like, "OH HI!" or "I'M SO GLAD YOU CALLED" (this serves to remove the unintentional awkward of answering the phone by intentionally answering the phone awkwardly)
- just saying, "Becca." But ultimately, I'd add a hint (read: complete) of inflection at the end so it would sound like a question and the person on the other end will be like, "No, this is Tahlia. You are Becca." Then I would just keep saying, "Becca" because it would be funny. "Yes, you Becca." "Becca." "Stop it." "Becca." "Ugh, I don't even care anymore. Bye." "Becca."
- I could just say, "Hello" without the inflection... BUT THAT'S NO FUN!

So I am welcome to any suggestions.

If I call you:
If I am calling you because I have a question, then there is no problem, because once you answer, I wil just say hey and then start in on my question.

But if I am returning your call, I always resort to the lame "Hey, what's up?" See how lame that reads? It sounds just as lame. But unfortunately, I can't think of any clever way around this one :( Hmm... well, I could always start in on the Beastie Boys song: "Whatcha whatcha whatcha want (whatcha want) I said, whatcha whatcha whatcha want?" Hmm... I sort of like it!

And if I get the "why are you calling me?" response, there's always some good ol' Stevie Wonder: "I just called, to say, I love you... I just called to say how much I care... I just called, to say, I love you..." Priceless.


So that's my part on answering the phone. But you know what's great? This is also not the reason I started a phone post... And what's even greater is that I have completely forgotten what that reason is... so there may or may not be a third installment.

Million Billion Years

Jeezy Creezy! It's been a MILLION years since I posted...! How come the masses haven't arisen? I'm gonna pretend that it's because you have all just been tiding yourselves over by reading past posts, and not because you all no longer crave the intense, orgasmic excitement that comes from reading my sultry words.

Anyway, here's just a little update:

The Droid X is fantabulous, but it's external speakers suck monkeyballs [wait, so they are awesome?] so I never hear it. Hmm... that sucks. Oh well. I may have to yell at Verizon to see if there is anything I can do, but as much as I love yelling, it's getting real gd old driving over there every week to complain.

Nickypoopoobutt is visiting tomorrow! WE ARE GOING TO HAVE AN ACTION-PACKED FUN-FILLED ADVENTURE FILLED WITH WONDER AND EXCITEMENT AND YOU ARE NOT INVITED!!!! Unless you are Albert or Emily, who I invited.

It's been Phone Week (just as intense as Shark Week), and it has been great (despite the post I haven't written yet)! I've talked to many a friend on the phone this week for various lengths EXCEPT TAHLIA, THAT BITCH ["What? She's in the Netherlands? How long? ALL SUMMER? I don't believe you.]

At NASA, I have been doing some coolio things and mainly this is how it goes:
G: "Blah blah blah O2-singlet-delta blah blah abundance profile blah blah blah"
Me: "Totally. I dig it. Right on. For sure."
G: "Go and do."
Me: "Definitely. Easy. Get that right back to you."
Hours pass.... G comes downstairs to my desk.
G: "Did you do that thing?"
Me:

G: "Show me this [names something]."
I show him something.
G: "Why are you doing that? Do this."
G does PURE IDL MAGIC. In my head, I am thinking, "You never told me anything about that."
G: "Ok, now do this and send it to me when you are done."
Me: "Sure, it's easy now."
Hours pass... Eventually, I email something to G.
G responds to the email.
G: "Come to my office."
Me:

Also, he completely rewrote my entire presentation. Meh. Looks good. Today, we had our dry-runs with the director of the astrobiology department at Goddard (Dr. Mumma), and everyone and their mentors [and their mentor's moms, ZINGO! (Dr. Mumma totally said 'zingo' today and it was glorious)], and one of the mentors commented that I shouldn't put a talk outline in it because honestly, he thinks they are dumb. I wanted to do one of those "quick head tilts" at Geronimo because he is the one that put it in there and thought it was 'cool.' I didn't do that, but what I did do was this:


I stand up and look over at Geronimo.
Me: "Who's the genius now, G-string?! That's right, bitch!"
Dr. Mumma (the head of the astrobiology department) and I chestbump. I high-five and fistbump the rest of the members at the table. Boncho gets up to hug Geronimo but Geronimo shuns him.
G: "Not now, Bonch."
Boncho looks defeated and so Geronimo opens his arms and they hug. The rest of the room goes "Awww..." 

So that is what I have been up to. I have a severe backlog of post ideas, so YOU'LL HAVE SOMETHING TO LOOK FORWARD TO.

Kisses! <3

ZZZOOOOMMMMGGG DROID X

I have to say, it's pretty... INCREDIBLE.