hmm...

Quote of the day: I can't speak in any other languages without sounding retarded. -Jetta
Song of the day: Soak Up the Sun by Sheryl Crow

3/3/09
So, I started this post a while ago and never wrote anything. I've been a little MIA for the past week because of swim and school stuff. I'll write about all of it....prepare for a plethora of posts!

Mardi Gras

Quote of the day: You know what I just realized?! It's Fat Tuesday, and I can't drink!! - Rob
Song of the day: Middle of Nowhere by Hot Hot Heat

<----- check it out, the Riley elevator is no longer expired!! Way to go WPI! Until 2/22/10, anyway.

I'm really excited for ECACs this weekend. I feel good in the water and I think I'm going to go fast. Paul wants us to rebreak our 200 medley relay record...I think we can do it. :)

I'm not-so-secretly-psyching-up Carl for boys NEWMACS now. I made him a pink poster and put it up at the pool deck next to the clock. It's awesome!

Sam and I went looking all over for purple hair dye today. It was a huge struggle. We went to a bunch of stores and finally ended up at Sally's Beauty Supply. We were originally aiming for a certain semipermanent purple hair dye but ended up with several bottles of varying brands and shades of purple and red. Tomorrow the girls are dying our hair, and it should be fun. I'm pretty excited!!

Happy Mardi Gras!! daka was all decked out today. They were making cotton candy and popcorn, and there were decorations all over. And all the food was Mardi Gras themed. haha.

At swimming today, Karen did a perfect relay start. The clock read 0.0 ...it was amazing. My fastest one was 0.03 seconds. Lee's first one was 0.01. It was cool, I love that touchpad/block pad relay start thing so much!!

In other news, we got some stuff figured out today. Excellent. =D

BEST MEET EVER!

Quote of the day: Just have fun. - Paul
Song of the day: I Feel Good by James Brown

AWESOME WEEKEND AT NEWMACS!!!

Here's what I did:

Friday

50 free - 25.51 in prelims, 25.55 in finals; 16th place; 25.6 in time trial, just missed the school record (25.49, hence the time trial)
200 free relay - split 25.34 as anchor; 7th place; New school record with Jess, Karen, and Kaitlyn! 1:43.

400 medley relay - split 59.59 in the 100 fly; 5th place; New school record (by 13.8 secs) with Toni, Karen, and Kaitlyn! 4:07.

Saturday
100 fly - 1:00.4 in prelims, 1:00.20 in finals; 6th place; New school record in the 100 fly and the 50 fly for my split - 27.7 (I think); Qualified for ECACS next weekend at Harvard - One more chance to break a minute for real.
200 medley relay - split 26.65 in the 50 fly; 5th place; New school record with Toni, Karen, and Kaitlyn! 1:53.

Sunday

100 free - 55.23 in prelims, 55.66 in finals; 14th place; New school record. Kaitlyn broke my record in heat 5 of prelims and then I got it back.
400 free relay - split 54.72 as anchor; 9th place; New school record with Kaitlyn, Jess, and Karen! 3:45.

I was roommates with Kaitlyn and Therese. It was awesome. Every day between sessions Kaitlyn and I had naptime together and sent each other "sleepy vibes." We talked about swimming a lot and it was fun! On Sunday night Andrew and Lee visited us and we took many funny group pictures. =D

Some notes about the meet in general:
- WPI came in 8th place, our best placing ever.
- I got to wear a cool lzr legskin which was pretty intense and awesome!!
- Our team was so supportive, guys and girls. A bunch of the guys turned out to cheer and time for us, they painted their chests (best thing ever - I looked up at the stands before my 100 fly and saw "KICK ASS" on the boys' backs :)

Everyone had great swims and best times:
Karen swam faster than she ever has in the 200 IM and 100 & 200 breaststrokes and broke her own records. She finished 4th, 4th, and 7th. She also swam her best 50 and 100 frees ever in the relays.
Toni made consolation finals in both of her backstrokes. She finally went 1:04 in the 100 and 2:20 in the 200, and beat her best 2 IM by 5 seconds.
Kaitlyn swam her butt off and went 25.32 in the freestyle leg 2 medley relay, the fastest 50 split on the team. She went 25.5 in her 50 free, 55.6 (?) in the 100, and 2:02.8 in the 200.
Colleen dropped about 40 seconds in the mile.
Racheal dropped over 2 minutes.
Lauren swam best times in the 100 and 200 backstrokes, and the 500 free. 6:10 woohoo!
Kelsey broke a minute in the 100 free, followed by a 58 in the 400 free relay. She also dropped 2 seconds in the 100 fly to end up with a 1:06.
Jess finally got her 26 in the 50 free.
Therese swam faster than she did in high school, for the first time since she started college.
Morgan was only .3 away from qualifying for nationals in diving.
Adriana dropped 4 seconds in her 100 fly.
Sam dropped over 10 seconds in her 200 free.

Jetta dropped almost 30 seconds in the 500 free.
A Jenks rocked the 500 free also.
A Blom pr'ed in the 200 IM and reached her goal time for the 100 breaststroke.
Jenny broke 31 in the 50 free and took off time in the 100 breaststroke.
Mel dropped 3 seconds in the 100 back.
Our B 200 medley relay swam as fast as the A relay did all season.
The B 400 free relay broke 4 minutes!

The boys were the best teammates ever.

I LOVE MY TEAM

:)

Days Like This are Few and Far Between

Quote of the day: It looks good. - Paul
Song of the day: Let's Dance To Joy Division by The Wombats

SUCH AN AWESOME DAY TODAY.
Why? See below.

1. Next year I am living in a seven-person apartment on campus with some pretty cool girls.
1a. It's the apartment Lee lives in right now. lol.
2. I got the lzr racer that I will be wearing at NEWMACs and though it took half an hour, successfully put it on.
2a. I swam in the suit for a few minutes and felt absolutely amazing.
3. Last swim practice of the year today.
4. No classes today!
5. I wore my new flipflops that were given to me by my secret psycher.
6. I wore Lee's hat all day.
7. The first thing I did today was go shopping at Target.
7a. At Target I bought secret psycher stuff and a really cute bag.
8. The boys shaved/dyed their hair. It's so ridiculous it makes me smile.
8a. I haven't seen Lee's hair yet... I wonder what color it will be?
9. I had trouble with my CS homework but we passed it in anyway.
10. Nick did our linalg homework so I didn't have to.
11. I'm about to shave and get ready for NEWMACs.
12. I'M SO EXCITED!!!

Better Than Yesterday

Quote of the day: "What are you two laughing at?" -Toni "....us." -Me
Song of the day: Here (In Your Arms) by Hellogoodbye

So, met my academic advisor today. Cool. I like him.

Two tests today. Didn't go too badly I think. Hope so, anyway. Also got the lin alg test back from yesterday. Not super, but better than the first time. I'm taking a similar test again tomorrow and my professor's going to average the two grades together. Hoping to improve my grade!

Swim was good today. Went a teeny bit faster in my 40s! 21.5 and 19.8. woowoowoo!
I'm getting so excited for NEWMACs. And my secret psycher decorated my locker a little!! It's cool, one Canada cap and one USA cap. I like it a lot. :) And Minh, my psycher from the men's team, has been emailing me and stuff to get me excited. It's pretty awesome!

Work went well today too. Started editing some swim videos, which I just think is cool.

MNC was fun, though Berge wasn't there so I played with Kaitlyn as my partner instead. We lost 4-2. Oh well.

Lee seemed a little down today so I went to visit him to try to cheer him up. I'd say it was a success. We played with his keyboard for a while, first playing piano songs then setting it to drumset and finding random sound effects, then hung around with his roomates for a bit. It was fun.

Well, I need to go to sleep so I can swim fast this weekend. night!

Absence Makes The Heart Grow Fonder...of Frostys

Quote of the day: I'm just kidding....wow, you're a mess aren't you!?
-Paul
Song of the day: Down by Blink-182 (who I heard is getting back together...sweet)

I ate a frosty today. It was SO good. Nick didn't want to let me have it because of the no dessert thing, but I checked with Lee and got the okay and Karen lent me money. it made me happy. I had kind of a 'blah' day today so it made me feel a bit better.

I tooke Ellen to breakfast at 830 and Earl made me "the usual." Yes, I've ordered the same thing so many times that I now have a "usual" at te daka grill. YAY.

CS was okay. Kind of frustrating. So I just sat there with Karen and Spencer the Recruit and chatted a bit.

At 11 I at lunch with a bunch of swim kids. Then I almost died of boredom in stats and took a linear algebra test. Definitely went better than the first one but still not super. Eh. Then I met up with Ellen again and got her stuff from my room, and she left WPI. I really hope she comes here in the fall.

At 2 I attempted a nap with Tang the bear but it didn't really happen. So I packed my stuff and went to Paul's office. He wasn't there but the door was unlocked...so I went in and used the computer for a few minutes. haha.

Practice today was awesome. I felt not bad at the beginning but I went really fast in my 40s off the blocks. I finally broke 20 in the 40 free! 19.97 baby! and 21.6 in the 40 fly. best times for both so I'm pretty psyched. I'm so ready to go fast this weekend! =D

After practice I ate dinner and then went to a stats review session with Toni. For some reason all my teachers assign tests on the same days. I hate that! Lin alg today, stats and CS tomorrow. After stats Toni and I went and saw Paul for a bit. Then I went looking for Karen.

We were supposed to meet up to study for CS for tomorrow. So I texted/called her but she didn't respond right away. I knew she'd either be at Kaven in a computer lab or at her apartment. Anyway I didn't know where she was so I called Minh to find out and he suggested Kaven. As I was hanging up with Minh, Mason calle dme, and I accidentally hung up on him too. So I called him back and he said he wanted the lin alg book for his test Wednesday. I was on my way to Kaven so I told Mason to walk towards me and I'd walk towards him. So we met in front of Riley and had the book trade. Then Karen texted me back and asked me where she was because she was going to go to Starbucks before we got to work. So I waited in front of Riley for a while until Karen and Nick came and picked me up. We went to Starbucks and then Wendy's, where I got my frosty. Now I'm at Karen's apartment avoiding studying. yippee.

So, a good day by any measurable standard, but a long one that took a lot out of me. I can't wait to go to bed.

The Valentine's Day Laundry Failure

This is the story of the
Valentine's Day Laundry Failure of Juliana and Alana.

Here the story is told in excruciating detail, in the words of Juliana Rose herself. In the third person, for dramatic effect. Enjoy!


So, Juliana and Alana had to go do their laundry because they were out of underwear and jeans. They hiked all of their laundry down to the laundry room, and as they opened the laundry room door they were hit with heat of tropic proportions, and started sweating simultaneously.

They loaded 7 washing machines (between the two of them) and started to turn the machines on after scientifically sorting the laundry. They started turning the machines on, and finally only one machine was left unagitated. Juliana loaded her detergent into the detergent receptacle, and started depositing quarters into the machine.

After two quarters, the machine started spitting Juliana's quarters back at her, violently and unnecessarily. Juliana proceeded to bitch-smack the machine and throw a childish tantrum. She picked up another quarter to deposit into the quarter receptacle. Alas, this quarter was accepted. Yet, when Juliana tried to add the fourth quarter, it again would not take. Through deductive reasoning, Juliana determined that the quarter receptacle was merely overloaded with quarters.

"Yet," Juliana thought in her head, "how will I fix such a problem?"

Juliana, backed up by Alana, proceeded to determine that the only way to solve the overwhelmed quarter receptacle issue was to call campus police. Unfortunately, Juliana and Alana were not in possession of the campus police extension or cell phone service in the basement. To fix the problem, they proceeded out of the hot as hell laundry room and upstairs to the lobby of Daniels Hall. There, they searched frantically for the campus police extension. The number was nowhere in sight, so Juliana proceeded to dial random numbers, hoping that one would be correct. She was, unfortunately, mistaken.

Luckily, at the opportune moment, three kind WPI students walked into the lobby of Daniels Hall. Sensing and opportunity, Juliana pounced and asked the girls if they happened to know the number of the nonemergency line of the WPI campus police. Eureka! They did.

Now in possession of the number, Juliana called campus police and told them of her sad story. Unfortunately, the kind operator at WPI campus police was absolutely no fucking help and told Juliana that she would have to wait until Monday to fix the problem, but that she would be happy to report the laundry machine number to facilities.

A little bit ticked off, Juliana and Alana proceeded back down to the laundry room. Juliana aggressively collected her laundry from the overwhelmed machine and transferred to a newly empty washer. Here, she proceeded to load quarters, but the second quarter refused to load. Juliana was appalled, while Alana was hysterical.

"How is it," Juliana demanded, "that every washing machine has too many quarters!!?!?!"

Again, Juliana tried to load the quarter into the second overwhelmed machine. Sensing something was not right, Juliana's next step was to pick up and examine the quarter in question. Then, the moment of truth: It was a Canadian quarter! Juliana could not believe her eyes. The whole time, she had believed that overwhelmed-quarter-machines were her problem, when in fact she was simply using foreign currency.

In her frustration, Juliana chucked the Canadian quarter at its rightful owner, the Canadian. At her wit's end, Juliana rescooped the laundry from the second washing machine, returned it to the original washer, deposited two American quarters, and slammed the door shut.

Then she pressed "bright colors" and all was well.

Valentine's Day and the next

Quote of the day: I'm going to Stoddard and I'm so excited!!! -Juliana
Song of the day: Sleeping In by The Postal Service

hmmmmmm..... let's work backwards.

Just saw the movie Role Models. SO funny. It was awesome. Go see it. :) Saw it in FLAUD with the swim team woooo! Oh, and the two recruits we have tonight.

So, a recruit from Pennsylvania is staying with me tonight. Her name is Ellen. I like Ellen, she's cool. She stayed over last night, too. Then today she went to the open house activities. After the open house we came back to Riley and she did some work while I worked on something for the secret psycher thing for swim (ooooh!). I figured she could probably use a little downtime and she didn't seem to mind. Juliana has a "pre-frosh" tonight who's staying over from the open house, but J had a meeting so Ellen and I hung out with Juliana and another girl's "pre-freshmen" for a while until we handed them off to a girl down the hall and went to dinner.
At dinner I met the other recruit, Spencer. He's staying with Alford and Mason tonight. They had work to do though so I took Spencer after dinner for a couple hours until the movie. Ellen, Spencer, and I walked around campus a little and metup with Juliana and some other people (and visited Stoddard... Juliana had never been there and was pumped). We told them about WPI and blah blah blah. Then we went to the movie.

I met Ellen for the first time last night. On Valentine's Day! Anyway she arrived on campus at 8 pm. At 830 we went to Steve's for game night. I played some rummy with Dan, Morgan, and Lee. Dan quit after like 2 rounds and Morgan quit when the game of MEGA monopoly began. So, in the end Lee won. Oh well.

I didn't stay for the whole game of mega monopoly. I left Ellen there and trusted Kaitlyn to bring her back to Riley. And she did. yay!

So, Valentine's Day was good. Productive and fun. Juliana and I did laundry. I'll write about that separately, because we struggled and it was hilarious. I also went with Toni to visit our stats professor about our homework. Go, us.

Went to dinner with Leeeee and it was delicious. Spent some time with him which was nice. Still trying to think of name for the teddy bear :)

This morning I took Ellen to Harrington for her registration for the open house, then came back and slept some more. It was awesome. Brunched with Juliana, then swam for a while to "keep a feel for the water" and it wasn't too bad. Hung out at the campus center for a while until Ellen was done with her open house thing.

Very scattered rendition of the past day and a half. Ah well!

In other news, the Riley elevator is officially expired. So is Daniels Hall (since July) and Morgan Hall (since 2006. yes. 2006.) Way to go WPI. You fail again!!!

The Underwhelming Truth About Elevators

Quote of the day: If you try to use the snorkel that way, you will drown. -Ass Coach Matt
Song of the day: Elevator by Hot Hot Heat

Bobby was right. :(

I tested it out in the Riley elevator today. The >l< opens the "rear" door that you use when you go in/out of the elevator on the ground floor. I opened and closed it a few times.

The and >ll< <> I don't really feel the need to test that out, to be honest.

Another interesting thing, the Riley elevator expires today. If it's still expired tomorrow...WPI fails again.

Orange Crush & Elevator Expiration Dates

Quote of the day: Yeah when I walked in this morning I said, "YAY! Decorations!!!" -Paul
Song of the day: Orange Crush by REM

Today, I went in the elevator in the campus center. IT'S EXPIRED!!! the sticker was up 2/11/09. WPI fails. I took a picture...but it didn't save....so later I went back and took another. Check it out. Look at the date!!!

I got a Crush from my crush today. Engineers without Borders did a valentine's day thing where you can write a message and send it with an orange crush to your crush or somebody. It was cool. I liked it. I sent my roomates crushes too. Juliana was absolutely pumped haha. And, I just discovered that the glass crush bottles are completely perfect for making music with.

At swim practice I swam a 56.0 in my broken 100 free. I'm really happy about that because I felt pretty crappy yesterday. Only one week 'til NEWMACs!!

<--- These are the flowers Lee gave me for Valentine's day :)

Elevator Theories

So, apparently some people have a problem with me writing about elevators all the time.

Bobby: I got tired of hearing your hypothesises about the elevator, so i posted the extremly underwhelming truth. Personally, i like the rapid and fast close theory. Too bad its false.
Yes, I am being a fun sucker right now.

Me: there's two sets on each side of the elevator bobby. the two pictures i have are from opposite sides of the same elevator!

Bobby: im telling you, both sets talk to both sides of the elivator. its really dumb and worthless, but thats how it goes. try it out

The underwhelming truth:
"Ok here is the lowdown on the elivator.there are two doors, right? ready for this... two doors, TWO sets of open/close buttons! Check it out, one set only works on the back side door, the other set only works on the front side door! Sorry to bust your bubble and ruin your experimentation."

Whatever Bobby. I'll have to set up an experiment. I'll let you know what happens.

Also I was first in line at the grill again today. The special was ham and cheese so I got a variation...ham and egg and cheese on the good bread that's over by the soup. I took a picture but apparently didn't save it on my phone...maybe another day.

3/3/09 - FOUND THE PICTURE!!!

Looks delicious doesn't it?!

Filing Cabinets and More About Elevators

Quote of the day: Way not to fail. -Paul
Song of the day: No Such Thing by John Mayer

So, pretty good day despite the rough start. Woke up at 10:01 for my 10 am class. oops. Made it there only 10 min late though, so not bad.

After class I rushed to daka because I was starving and I was the first person in line at the grill. I was holding a bagel as I approached, and Earl said hello and grabbed an egg - he knew what I was going to order! It was so awesome haha and delicious as usual.

At 2 pm when I usually go back to my room, I went to Paul's office instead - I'm trying to cut down on walking during taper. Anyway, he assigned Rob and I the slightly ridiculous task of replacing his 4-drawer filing cabinet with a 5-drawer one. We were supposed to do it tonight at work but we started early and "trashed" Paul's office in the process. Whatever. We accomplished our goal after practice and there's now three drawers of files, one of food, and the top one's empty. EMPTY. so, he still has 4 drawers worth of stuff either way. dumb.

"Paul wants us to replace his filing cabinet so he could have one drawer for food and one empty drawer." - Rob.
This had Paul chasing Rob and me laughing my butt off on my way to my 3 o'clock class.

Later, when I was actually at work and during the filing cabinet episode, I actually got the video thing to work! Paul bought an external hard drive, and like magic all the videos transfered from the camera to that. Well, I hope they did. It was taking a long time so I left in the middle of the process. Here's hoping it worked!

I did really well on the elevator front today. I took the elevators all around campus. I also took a new picture of the elevator in Riley - check out the buttons.... >ll<...>l<........what's the difference? I asked Nick about them and he told me "one is fast, and one is rapid." But I'm pretty sure those mean the same thing. He meant that one button will close/open the doors faster than te other one. This may need experimenting. Then later Lee told me that in Fuller (I think) there is no line between the arrows, it's just ><>. So I'm not sure what that's all about.

I also got some beautiful flowers today. Picture tomorrow maybe. They were left for me on my computer when I came back from work. So sweet. =D

Elevator Follow Up

So I don't know what's up with this elevator control panel.. See on the bottom right...TWO CLOSE BUTTONS. but they're different!!!! and next to them...TWO OPEN BUTTONS!!!! this picture isn't great but it's the best I could do with my phone at the time.

Cake

Quote of the day: You are the best sister ever. -Karla

Song of the day: Slide by The Goo Goo Dolls

So, that is my little sister, Karla, from big brothers big sisters. She's in third grade and is pretty darn cool. I went to visit her today, and it was awesome because we made each other valentine's day cards. Hers was really sweet. I was pretty pumped about it. It's hanging on my wall now!

Otherwise today wasn't all that exciting. Lab, conference, swim, homework, the usual. Although lunch was pretty interesting. I waved at Earl and he nodded at me. Told you, we're bffs.

Anyway at lunch Bobby kept trying to get Lee and me to eat this delicious looking piece of cake. (I didn't write about the dessert thing yet. But I will.) Freakin' Bobby kept pushing it towards us whenever we pushed it away. Well there was this random kid sitting at the end of our table and this is the conversation I had with him:

Me: Hey, do you want a piece of cake?

The Kid: No, I'm all set.
Me: Take it anyway. (slides plate of cake towards the Kid. The Kid gets up and leaves.)

Super. I don't know what happened to the cake later. I think it ended up on a chair. Thanks, Carl.

Grilled Cheese and Elevator Doors

Quote of the day: Not here! What are you doing down there? Get up. -Lee
Song of the day: Smile by Vitamin C

So, first blog. Ready, go.

I had a really interesting (hah) story about the sandwich I ate for lunch, but compared to the rest of the day it's really not that exciting. In short, they had delicious bread at daka tdday, and I had the genius idea to get Earl, (the best cook there, who works the grill) to make me a grilled cheese on this bread. When I made this suggestion to Earl he got all excited and said someone else got an egg and cheese on this bread, which of course was fresh from the oven, so I told him to make me that instead. Man, was it delicious. So delicious that I went back and told Earl that I loved the sandwich. He seemed happy about that. Earl usually seems really grumpy (but her makes delicious egg and cheese...I usually get it on a bagel) so I was pumped that he was in a good mood.

I struggled at work today. Paul's computer is so full that there's no room to put any more videos on there anymore. I sat there for a long time and had a lot of trouble. I don't think the details are really necessary here.....

Something cool:
So today while I was in the elevator (now that I'm on taper, I'm all about the elevator...no stairs!) I was wondering what the difference is between the two different open/close buttons. Yes, there are two of each button. One has one line on each side of the arrows and the other has two. Maybe I'll post a picture later. In the meantime I looked up 'elevator buttons' on google and found this neat study/project thing somebody did about elevators:

http://www2.isye.gatech.edu/~jjb/misc/elevators/elevators.html

The end of my day was the best part. Relaxing and being happy :)