I'm getting to the point where I can talk about Mindy more often without crying, and I'm remembering lots of silly, good things about her. Friday I'd taken a big pine cone and slathered it with peanut butter and tied it to a tree for the birds, and the peanut butter, being organic and lacking thickeners, kept dripping off the pine cone to the ground. Mindy of course immediately discovered the peanut butter drippings and licked them up, but not before some of it fell on her head. XD Mindy truly was an awesome dog. <3

Work has been difficult, though. Both Monday and today I moved very slowly all day and had trouble concentrating on more than one or two things at once, and kept forgetting things. And whenever anyone asked me to do something in anything less than the cheeriest tone possible I felt almost under attack, despite that never being the case. I found myself tearing up at random moments, but today was much better than Monday for that.

Luckily I haven't seen any dogs that look like Mindy yet -- there's one, a Lab mix named Molly, that looks about 90% like Mindy and I imagine when I see her again, it will be hard. But that probably won't happen for a while. And we didn't have to do any euthanasias this week, so that helps. But I was still pretty down all day and not like myself. I only really cheered up when Preston demanded I load myself onto a dolly so he could roll me down the hallway, because I felt like Hannibal Lector and it was goofy. :-P Other than that I was a pretty gray little Gina still, but at least without so many tears. Which is a relief... Saturday I got a little stye on my eyelid, which was irritating enough, but then with all the crying on Sunday and the irritation from the stye, my eyelid was three times its normal size :( It's finally getting back to normal, thank God.

No letters from vet school yet. Washington said they'd be sending them out last Friday. It's fucking Wednesday, bitches. Get the fuck with the program!!!!! Not that I'm antsy or anything... it just would've been nice to have SOMETHING good happen this week. :(

I'm finding it extremely difficult to care about my classes. I skipped nutrition last Thursday, barely studied for the test I had Tuesday, and didn't come back to class after I'd finished it (yeah, the teacher thought we were going to come BACK to lecture AFTER a test? wtf???). Then of course I also had an ornithology take-home test of 21 essay questions due tomorrow, and wasn't really able to concentrate enough to do any of them until yesterday, because, hello, my puppy died :( I just half-assed them and am hoping for the best. Hopefully tomorrow's catching-birds field trip should help some with my mood and my inspiration for the class.

Also, hopefully I will get a letter tomorrow, goddammit!!!

Ugh. I think I'm actually going to go to bed early for once in my life. Maybe I'll get lucky and see the old Mindy romping through my dreams. Wish me luck. <3

I need to take better care of myself. Sunday night I got 5 1/2 hours of sleep, Monday night 5 hours of sleep, Tuesday night 5 1/2 hours of sleep, last night 5 1/2 hours... I just can't go under 6 for more than one night in a row and function properly, but I can't seem to make myself go to bed any earlier. Today I fell asleep several times in ornithology, and as soon as class was out I went into the biology lounge and laid down on a couch and slept for an hour.

I feel a bit better now but am still skipping my nutrition class because I don't feel like going is all that useful -- the Powerpoint lectures follow the book extremely closely and the professor covers the lectures with almost no deviation. The material is interesting but I could read the book and not miss anything. It's a little frustrating because I can tell the prof's quite intelligent and really knows her stuff, but I feel like she's dumbing it down. Which to be fair isn't exactly her fault; some of the people in that class are absolutely retarded. One girl was horrified at filling her water bottle out of a city bathroom tap because "the pipes are... like, dirty!" Professor: "Dirty how?" expecting the girl to say something about bacteria or minerals. Girl: "They're just... you know... dirty!" Professor (paraphrased): "Um, hi, this is the US, we don't get cholera here."

Yeah, some people are dumbasses. What's really scary is that the reason there's 250 people in that class is that so many people have to take it for nursing. ...I hope to God there are not nurses out there that are that moronic...

I think they lie when they say that REM sleep doesn't happen until 60-90 minutes in. I often dream during naps, I've even dreamed during 5-10 minute sleeps in class. (Once I thought my calculus teacher was a monster.) Today during my nap I dreamed that my coworkers and I were in a breakroom sitting on a couch and watching the news, and I called one of them, one of the new ones who's very sweet but also sassy, by her name. She was like, "OMG, and you DON'T need to call me my name anymore, Gina" and I'm like "WTF" and apparently she changed her name to some Chinese symbol of hope and then neglected to tell me and then got mad when I called her by the name she had been using before. Then a kindly sedentary black man was sitting on a couch knitting an orange and purple afghan with both needles and a Race for the Cure knitting loom (I don't know) and I showed him my knitting and he got all excited and gave me tons of tapestry needles and a loom of my own, along with some new knitting needles.

Take that, sleep researchers. Is it silly if I want to be in a REM study and see if my extraordinarily vivid dreams show up any differently on testing equipment than do others'? Maybe I have like 500 bajillion REM cycles a night, lol. Although I'm guessing the past couple of days I've woken up in Stage 4 sleep, explaining some of the grogginess/irritability. I felt much more refreshed after my nap when I woke up after receiving my free knitting gear. :-P

Anyway... yeah, I need to get more sleep. I think that's why I've been so down this week; that and worrying about vet school. I think I'll feel a lot better about it if the letter from Washington comes soon and I get in... that way I won't worry about whether or not Oregon is the only one to take me, and I'll know that even if I don't get into Western I'll have a plan. *crosses fingers* It'll also be nice to finally get the fuck out of my family's house. I'm sick of it. I want my own place with my own decorations and my own grocery list and my own set of quirky glassware and my own TV and my own schedule and my own use of my own money and yeah. I'm so done with living with them. -_-

I should probably go grab a snack before my ornithology lab. Alas, no field trip today, I think we're just doing measurements in preparation for capturing birds next week. Good times. Good times.

I'm taking Intro to Molecular Bio, Intro to Genetics, and Cardio Kickboxing. LOL. It bumped me up to a half-time student so I went for it. Yay keeping student loan collectors off my back another quarter... :-P

Anywho, wish me luck tomorrow. And critique my poi comic, dammit! :-P

Somehow I managed to scrape a 73.5 on my biochem final. That means I got a C in the class, baby! Hells yeah! Finally, not a D on a test in that class!

I did D my physics final, but I think I still have an A with my extra credit. So go me, bitches. Go me.

I am never again working 26 hours a week, taking two hardcore science classes (shut up, physics 3 is so hardcore), and spending about 50 hours a week with the boyfriend, though. o_O In the fall I think I might try and go down to 2 days a week if I'm taking 2 classes... otherwise, Gina's brain go splodey.

- Ben and I were fiendish today at school. Muahaha.

- I got 25/25 out of my first (online) biochem quiz. Yay! Perhaps the class will not be quite so terrifying as I first thought.

- I am getting rather distressed about my inability to stay awake while on the bus or in class. It used to be that I chose whether or not to fall asleep on the bus on the 40-minute ride to Lombard, but now I can't even keep my eyes open on the 20-minute ride to PSU, no matter how hard I try. And my classes? I fell asleep in both of them during both class sessions this week, for substantial amounts of time -- at least half an hour of complete slack-jawed, cross-eyed, groggy stupor, for each class. I don't understand -- I usually get no less than 6 hours of sleep a night, usually 7 or so on school nights. I don't feel particularly tired when I wake up, and I usually dream. My exercise isn't great but I've been more sedentary than this with less overall sleep and I still didn't fall asleep in class nearly as often. My diet is the same or even sometimes a wee bit better than before, and there's no real stressors right now except being poor and having vague worries about the future. What's going on with me? I've even gotten sleepy while driving :(

- Am driving down to Salem tomorrow. Plz to cross your fingers that I will not fall into microsleeps and kill somebody/myself. o_O

- Ear continues to heal. County still hasn't managed to get a hold of me (having tried my home and my work Monday/Wednesday). Called this afternoon, the woman there had no idea what case I was referring to and couldn't find me in the system.

- Went to Wunderland with Lindsay and Tom on Tuesday. It was freakin' awesome. Lindsay and I kick ass at Dance Maniax!

- I bought 20 Cadbury creme eggs on Monday, 4 for a buck! Hell fuckin' yeah!

- And with that triumph, it is bedtime.

I think things will be going better this term than last, for the most part. I ended up getting a C in my physics class, an A in the lab. My new physics prof offers extra credit for 15% of the available points in the class... d00d, that should help significantly, if I just get off my ass and make myself do it. And biochem looks like it will be interesting, if very very fast, and rather intimidating -- there's 250 people in the class. O_O

The only thing that didn't leave me optimistic about the new quarter was that my old physics lab partner isn't in my lab this time (and neither are the nice guys who sat across from us), and tonight I got stuck with a creepy partner who barely talked and had limited personal hygiene. We're talking long fingernails, whiffs of some kind of malingering odor, and facial moles with small forests' worth of hair sprouting from them. Also we argued about how to do things, and I ended up being wrong. Normally that wouldn't bother me because it's physics and I suck at it, but I just found myself getting really enraged by him. With my other lab partner I'd been wrong before and never took offense about it, but something about this guy really rubbed me the wrong way. Last quarter, the first lab I had a guy for my partner instead of the girl who was my partner the rest of the time, and he pissed me off the same way and was also creepy. I think I just can't do male physics partners unless they're very clean and also funny, instead of being silent or know-it-allish. Next week I'm going to try and snag a girl... I'd been afraid of getting another creepy guy, and I got one. Boo. To be fair, I was also an enormous bitch to him in terms of being quiet and resentful (not that I actually said anything, but anyone with an ounce of intuition could see my impatience and my "get away from me!" vibes screaming from across the room, I'm sure). :-/ Although I did try and introduce myself in a friendly way at first, asking him how he liked physics and such. I think I started getting pissed when he barely responded and then didn't say another word, I guess. Gah. Hopefully I shall find another partner next week, because I really did feel like I was going to kill this guy if we had gone 15 minutes longer. O_O

So I'm a horrible person. Oh well... isn't everyone, in some way?

I think I will try and get my ass up tomorrow and see about possibly getting a fire performance art permit from the city. I'd like to try and spin while at PSU (meet some folks, get to show off in front of new people, lol), but I think campus po would be a lot cooler about me doing it if I'm all, "Oh, I have a permit, it's cool, yo." I spun unlit tonight after physics lab and had a chat with some nice guys about it, which was fun. It's good to meet new people, even if you never see them again. :-P And I spun lit tonight out in the yard -- fun times. I have plans to try and cook up some special fuel to make green flame, too... muahaha. Already have the colorful ingredient, just need the solvent now.

Ben and I had an awesome time this weekend, even if we fell asleep at like 10 PM Friday night, haha. We both had long days on Friday. On Saturday we went and saw Pan's Labyrinth -- OMG, so gorgeous/creepy/wonderful. Ben spent a lot of the time afterwards trying to figure out what the movie meant, what its point was -- whereas I was content to take it at face value, since I'm a dope who rarely sees the symbolism in things unless I try really, really, really hard. Ben: "So at what point did you realize this character was really X?" and I was like, "...they were? Oh, I guess that makes sense...." Ben: "Oh Gina...." I did get a verbal gold star from Ben when I mentioned something I had thought about the Pale Man, and Ben said, "Hey, I hadn't thought of it like that... I like it!" I felt all warm and fuzzy inside because perhaps I wasn't really as hopeless at this symbolism thing as I thought. ;) It's an awesome movie, and anyone who likes fantasy/fairy tales/dark movies should go see it. There's some graphic violence, though, so don't let "fairy tale" make you think "children-only" -- in fact, kids probably shouldn't see it at all. If I'm feeling contemplative I shall make a post specifically about it, because it was pretty damn cool.

We also spent the day at Goodwill (they have an Atari. we may need to make a purchase.), having dinner at the Old Spaghetti Factory, and picking up some delicious dessert from Gustav's. We ate our dessert while watching the Mr. Bill video we'd picked up at Goodwill, then spent the rest of the night snuggling, asking silly questions, and canoodling like mad. Sunday we went to work so I could feed the cat staying with us, and we had breakfast at Elmer's, and spent a good three hours driving around Washington Park, looking at the rich houses and savoring the cool misty air amongst the green, green trees. We also checked out some music stores, a necessity for Ben. :-P We went back home after some ice cream and cuddled until it was time for Ben to go home. A wonderful, wonderful weekend spent with my best friend. <3

One of the unexpected good things about this weekend was that my navigational skills were superbly on target! There were one or two mixups with streets that weren't really my fault (like 122nd Ave being 4 lanes, 35mph on one side of the light and 15mph winding wooded road on the other side, and thus leading to nowhere) but overall I knew exactly what cardinal direction we were heading in the whole time, and more importantly, what lay in that direction and where we wanted to go. This is not something that happens often with me, so I am happy, haha.

I should probably go to bed soon and get up nice and early and get things done before work. However, I am also fundamentally lazy. We shall see what wins out first.