Non-standard Operations: Guinea Pig-dom and Death Marches
Yawn. So, yeah.
I am officially now a disgrace to everything in general. I got busted by the sandwich police. Now, let me preface this by saying that it was 8:30 in the morning, so I wasn't technically "up" yet. Anyway, what happened was after eating breakfast, I went up to make my sandwich as usual. Except for some completely unfathomable reason, I decided to bring my little tupperware box with me. And I remember thinking that I probably shouldn't bring the box along, but by that point, I was already halfway there and too lazy to go back. Now, I had previously identified two authority figures (The Man and The Woman), but I had failed to notice The Older Woman, who busted me for carrying the box. I wound up eating the sandwich there, although in retrospect, I probably could have still walked off with it after she got done yelling at me. Anyway, I'm going to have to be a bit more careful for a while since I may or may not be on The Radar now.
The main highlight of the week has been the composition interviews. In these, I attempt to explain my piece to (insert interview-ee here) who in turn grills me on why my piece makes sense. This is done in front of the entire composition department (as in past, present, and future teaches, other music bigwigs, and a few grad students) over the span of 25 minutes. No pressure. I just have to keep in mind that I'm not technically the one on trial. Sure, the grad students might mutter amongst themselves about how hairbrained my piece is, but since when do I care what they think? The professors seem to like it. I've done 2 of these, and there are 2 to go.
The bike remains in the shop. Little known fact: A threaded fastener in which both components are made of the same metal will eventually fuse itself together. This has been a problem in the past, and it's presently keeping them from disassembling my pedals and fixing whatever's been clanking for the past six months. Best of luck to them. In the meantime, I've gotta walk everywhere. Now, walking is the third most inefficient form of transportation there is. It is exceeded, in turn, by firing oneself from a cannon, going back, dragging the cannon to the place where you landed, and repeating; and sitting on one's lazy ass and hoping to be moved either by a gust of wind or divine intervention. It just takes #*@&$ forever to get anywhere.
But I digress. The grandest of what seems to be a series of increasingly long death marches involved my internship. Seems I need a drug test, and the drug testing place is way the heck down past the southeast end of campus. It wound up being a half hour long death match... all to pee in a cup. On the way back, I was tired of walking, so I ran for short periods, walked, and eventually caught a bus. Turns out I'm reduculosly out of shape and can't run for more than, call it, a minute at a time. What a pity.
Most pre-break homework is done, but lab work continues. We did this week's lab on Monday, which resulted in massive unpleasantness since that made us one of the first groups, and the TA didn't know what the heck was going on. So that writeup will be a mess, but that's a post-break problem. This week's writeup is still due tomorrow, and was finished this evening without incident. That leaves one class worth of homework due tomorrow, DBF work, and whatever comp does before break. Call it homefree at this point.
I am officially now a disgrace to everything in general. I got busted by the sandwich police. Now, let me preface this by saying that it was 8:30 in the morning, so I wasn't technically "up" yet. Anyway, what happened was after eating breakfast, I went up to make my sandwich as usual. Except for some completely unfathomable reason, I decided to bring my little tupperware box with me. And I remember thinking that I probably shouldn't bring the box along, but by that point, I was already halfway there and too lazy to go back. Now, I had previously identified two authority figures (The Man and The Woman), but I had failed to notice The Older Woman, who busted me for carrying the box. I wound up eating the sandwich there, although in retrospect, I probably could have still walked off with it after she got done yelling at me. Anyway, I'm going to have to be a bit more careful for a while since I may or may not be on The Radar now.
The main highlight of the week has been the composition interviews. In these, I attempt to explain my piece to (insert interview-ee here) who in turn grills me on why my piece makes sense. This is done in front of the entire composition department (as in past, present, and future teaches, other music bigwigs, and a few grad students) over the span of 25 minutes. No pressure. I just have to keep in mind that I'm not technically the one on trial. Sure, the grad students might mutter amongst themselves about how hairbrained my piece is, but since when do I care what they think? The professors seem to like it. I've done 2 of these, and there are 2 to go.
The bike remains in the shop. Little known fact: A threaded fastener in which both components are made of the same metal will eventually fuse itself together. This has been a problem in the past, and it's presently keeping them from disassembling my pedals and fixing whatever's been clanking for the past six months. Best of luck to them. In the meantime, I've gotta walk everywhere. Now, walking is the third most inefficient form of transportation there is. It is exceeded, in turn, by firing oneself from a cannon, going back, dragging the cannon to the place where you landed, and repeating; and sitting on one's lazy ass and hoping to be moved either by a gust of wind or divine intervention. It just takes #*@&$ forever to get anywhere.
But I digress. The grandest of what seems to be a series of increasingly long death marches involved my internship. Seems I need a drug test, and the drug testing place is way the heck down past the southeast end of campus. It wound up being a half hour long death match... all to pee in a cup. On the way back, I was tired of walking, so I ran for short periods, walked, and eventually caught a bus. Turns out I'm reduculosly out of shape and can't run for more than, call it, a minute at a time. What a pity.
Most pre-break homework is done, but lab work continues. We did this week's lab on Monday, which resulted in massive unpleasantness since that made us one of the first groups, and the TA didn't know what the heck was going on. So that writeup will be a mess, but that's a post-break problem. This week's writeup is still due tomorrow, and was finished this evening without incident. That leaves one class worth of homework due tomorrow, DBF work, and whatever comp does before break. Call it homefree at this point.
posted by Kevin H | 11:14 PM
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