Caffeine, Adrenaline and Poor Choices

Hello, all!

As those of you who follow me on twitter may have realized (due to my frequent tweets hashtaged #MBUdiaries), Friday night and all of Saturday I spent working at Merit Badge University, which is an opportunity for thousands of boy scouts to descend upon the university (rather like a plague) and earn a few merit badges.

It was rewarding but exhausting, and rather like an experiment for me, since I'd never been awake more than 24 hours before. Friday night was MBU overnight, which started at 7pm and which was APO's opportunity to staple things, sort things, and do whatever else needed to be done before the boy scouts arrived. (We were able to rent space in the business school, so it was also an opportunity to make fools out of ourselves in front of business majors who apparently do homework on Friday night. What?!) Nobody slept more than an hour or two.

We were done with all major work by about 1am, which was apparently quite unusual for an MBU overnight. At 5am, we were put to work again, moving everything from the business school across the street to the UTC, the building where all the classes would be taught and where our volunteer headquarters would exist. We met the sunrise (we couldn't WATCH the sunrise like I hoped because it was cloudy) in the throes of caffeine withdrawal and exhaustion.

The boy scouts were supposed to arrive at 7am, but many showed up at 6:30, because apparently boy scouts can keep time and do things like show up early. Volunteers were fed donuts and coffee and sent to their rooms around 8. At this point, I had little concept of time but I was happy to go to my classroom armed with both a soda AND a cup of coffee. Double the caffeine! Weeee!

Now, a few weeks ago I 'tricked' Mom into agreeing to teach a class called Personal Management (money and time management) for MBU. I don't know how I would have done without Mom, who allowed me to sulk at the lectern with my computer and not speak much. Somewhere in the middle of the first class, I lost my grasp on the concept of "time", except that every once and a while I would glance at the clock and calculate how long I'd been awake and how long it was until I'd go to sleep. When at some point during the day Mom asked me how I was feeling, I'm pretty sure I told her that I was doing well, but running on caffeine, adrenaline, and poor choices at that point. There's a point where you stop feeling any more tired, and you're almost tricked into believing that you aren't tired at all.

So by the time I got to sleep, I'd been awake for 34 hours. Not doing THAT again anytime soon! I got home and slept from 6pm until 9am, and at that point I decided it might be a good idea to get up and shower.

MBU was a huge success, and Mom said she'd be willing to teach again next year... so even though I 'tricked' her, she hasn't yet disowned me or cut me off. Yet, anyway. ;)

Well, despite the fact I gave APO 23 hours of my time this weekend, I'm off to the Sunday meeting and then off to study. I think I'm ALMOST ready to become a functioning human being again, given a little more caffeine.

Coffee Zombie

If I were a zombie, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't crave brains. I'd crave coffee.

I've been less productive in my apartment recently, and so rather often, I migrate over to this coffee shop about two miles from my apartment that has delicious and cheap coffee to do homework. It's open 24 hours a day, so there's no threat of imminent closure - which I am a fan of.

At the moment, I'm reading a lot of the Old Testament for my Bible class. It's tough to wade through and thoroughly exhausting. Usually by the end of the night (somewhere around midnight or 1am for me) I crawl home and collapse. No matter how recently I had a cup of coffee or tea. Mentally spent, I fall asleep quickly.

This week is unusual because Emma and her family are on vacation, so I do not have to go to work. It tricks me into thinking that I have spades of extra, spare time which which to goof off, but in reality, it's not that much.

Well, I'm off to go back home now. No more coffee for me tonight!

Fanfiction, danube-ing, and the stinking Texas weather

Recently, I have stumbled upon someone who writes fanfiction on fanfiction.net (a site which I, rather predictably, frequent often). This person has written 247 stories since late 2008, and while I usually have a problem with ridiculously prolific writers, I suspend my judgment for Hans von Hozel.

He is a German from Berlin, and he supposedly writes to "make an improvement of his English". (I love people whose native language is not English; I think their sentence structure is something beautiful that native English speakers generally can't replicate.)

However, poor Hans von Hozel's English is not improving through his fanfiction-y endeavors... really, he just makes a fool out of himself and his poorly constructed English. And he really doesn't know anything about the categories which he writes about, he just takes the titles and goes with them. What is so brilliant about Hans' stories, however, is how hilarious they all are! His poor grammar makes for some seriously side-splitting moments:

For example, his fanfiction about Beethoven (supposedly the dog, but he makes it about the composer):

Beethoven were try to make a musics but no musics went on the paper.

"Oh no I have run out of musics!" say Beethoven, sit at piano.

Suddenly, Mozart ran through the door.

"I have a potion!" say Mozart, "To make your composings of the better!"

"Is goodly!" say Beethoven, and a drinking of a potion.

"AHAHAHAHAHAH!" laugh Mozart, "IS WRONG POTION!"

The potion made Beethoven loose all his music skills.

"AHAHAHAHAH!" laugh Mozart, "NOW I AM THE BEST AT MUSIC!"

And Mozart went away.

"OH NO MY MUSICS!" say Beethoven, make a sadly.

Or of Waterloo:

One day, Napoleon was trying to take many Swedens.

"NOT OF THE TAKING SWEDENS!" shout ABBA, as they danube to where Napoleon was, "We must defend our ABBA Empire again!"

But Napoleon had become equip with many horses.

"Nay," say the horses, as they prepare with their horseshoe!

"Ha ha ha," say ABBA, "But the joke has made itself onto you, as we make a poison into your horses apples!"

"Nay?" ask the horses, and they all make a fall down.

"OH NO!" shout Napoleon, "I HAVE MISCALCULATED MY ERROR!"

ABBA danubed closer to Napoleon.
"No!" say Napoleon, "Stay back you malfunction!"

And so ABBA made a lazer beam over Napoleon and Napoleon made explode.

"Is a victory to the making!" say ABBA!

ABBA gave each other high fives and danubed again to Swedens.

For some reason, he uses danube as a verb? I don't know how to danube, but I can only imagine that danubing is some kind of awesome dance or something!

Do visit his profile and click through a few of his stories... They are SO FUNNY.

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Back to homework for me! I'm having trouble concentrating tonight as I have the whole internet at my disposal! I am certainly ready for it to be Friday! Last night, I crashed at 10:15 and slept right through till 9:30, and as I feel like I might be getting a little sick (probably something to do with the weather, which vaulted itself from below freezing to seventy degrees and then back to below freezing TWICE in the last two weeks) so the sleep was much appreciated! I hope to get to bed before midnight again tonight. :)

Texas Snowpocalypse!

It's happened! Ally and I ventured out of my apartment at 3:30am and walked around for an hour... it was AWESOME.

The snow was BEAUTIFUL. The campus was incredible - students out, playing, shouting "TEXAS FIGHT!" all over the place. I dunno why they were shouting it, but hey, pride in one's school, right?

We've just got the notice that the school is officially closed tomorrow, so we'll be staying in, staying warm, and probably reading a lot.

But TONIGHT... We moseyed over to campus!

And then the capitol building! :D

And into the streets! (Hell yeah I'm in my pajamas!)

And then we got home at 4:30am and attempted to get warm.

In a, um, variety of ways...

Stay warm, everyone!

Coldpocalypse

The Northeast may be going through Snowmageddon... Well, Texas is going through the Coldpocalypse. It may or may not become the Ice or Snowpocalypse... It's supposed to snow on Thursday night. Fingers crossed?

Yesterday, I finally turned on my heat, considering the temperatures hovered around the high 20s and the low 30s, with the windchill as low as the high teens. This is weather that not many Texans know how to deal with, especially considering most of us were in shorts and tshirts over the weekend. Today is even colder (the temperature was 18 degrees outside with a windchill of 4!) and when I woke up, expecting to feel cozy and warm, happy to have waved my white flag and conceded to central heat (I have been telling myself that I, too, have been participating in a sort of "Furnace Wars", a competition that one of my favorite knitter celebrities, Stephanie Pearl-McPhee (the Yarn Harlot) created years ago with her family. It's a competition to see who can last the longest each winter without turning on their heat. This is a much harder war to win up in Canada where she lives though!) when, to my surprise and immediate chagrin, I noticed my nose was cold. If my heat was on, why was my nose cold? The answer came quickly: my heat wasn't on. Actually, nothing was on. I had no power. (Also, it was 48 degrees in my room. BRR.)

Hooray, Coldpocalypse!

The entirety of Texas has turned their heat on and so the entirety of Texas has been exepriencing rolling blackouts. I still had school this morning, though, because my fancy university has its own fancy power plant and so it generates all it's own electricity.

The funniest part of the Coldpocalypse has been my friends' Facebook statuses. They are things like:

"18 degrees with rolling blackouts in Austin? Ladies and gentlemen, hell is freezing over."

"I can't feel my face! I can't feel my hands or feet AND I can't feel my body! OMG I DON'T EXIST! WAIT... 'I think, therefore I am.' Thank you, Descartes for the only affirmation of my existence today."

"I really think weather forecasters shouldn't give the temperatures like they do. 'Oh, it's 31 degrees... But it's gonna feel like 19 because of wind and no sunlight.' Really? Which one of those is more important?"

"I totally woke up this morning hoping for a barely lukewarm shower by a single dim candle followed by the inability to charge my phone. FALSE. I wished for none of these and would like a refund please."

"I would like to thank the rolling blackouts for my day off work and the roaring fire that I have every excuse to have. Huzzah!"

Everyone stay warm! I'm going to burrow under another blanket and revel in the power I temporarily have!

Country Night

Last semester, my friend Ally was lamenting to me that she never got to go out and take advantage of the fabulous live music scene here in Austin. Deciding it was a good idea to climb out of our dark little university holes, Ally found us a show and out we went!

We went to Antone's, which is a venue on 5th street, and somewhere I had never been before. It was pretty much everything a music venue could be - stage, dance floor, and two very long bars with booze aplenty.

The Turnpike Troubadours opened, and had some really fun, catchy songs. Ally knew some of them, I just pretended I did.

While we were dancing and enjoying the music, my love of fiddlers was rekindled. String instruments fascinate me... violins and fiddles are so expressive and I wish I knew how to play. Anyway, any man with a fiddle is my new best friend, (since it's not exactly cool to be a groupie of the fiddler in the band...)

After the Turnpike Troubadours, Jason Boland took the stage with the only song I knew of his ("Blowing through the hills", which is super catchy and highlights my new favorite instrument!) and the rest of the night was filled with more dancing and singing.

I think my new favorite thing about going to live shows is the way that people raise their drinks more frequently toward the end of the show. The more they drink, the more they toast.

(FYI the Lone Star wasn't mine. I was "classy" and drank Dos Equis instead.)

(Also, let the record stand that for the first time in my life I was bought a drink by someone who was neither related to me NOR my friend prior to the concert. Momentous moments, indeed.)

An update long overdue

Hello, darling readers!

This update has been long overdue. I haven't been interested in blogging recently because I guess I've been more interested in living my life than writing about it. It's not to say that I haven't thought about it, just that I haven't been able to draw the words up out of me and pour them onto the page. I've long been considering what I want this blog to be, but every time I try and change it, it does not happen. Perhaps because of my readers, perhaps because of me.

The fall semester ended catastrophically, (to be a little dramatic - in reality, it only ended catastrophically to me, having began with high hopes). I didn't fail anything, but I sure didn't get the grades I wanted to get. I could have done better, perhaps if I had sacrificed sleep and entirely replaced my blood supply with coffee. I'm pretty sure I was running on caffeine by the time finals ended.

My friend Danny (from Las Vegas) came to visit after finals ended. It was the first time we'd met face to face ever... in the nine years that we've been speaking on the phone and on the internet, I never expected things to head south so fast. We haven't talked in more than a month; I don't think our friendship is going to ever be the same again. He, as a person, disappointed me, but that was bound to happen, as we had both built the other up over so many years of communication. The odd thing was that the things I found endearing and interesting about him over the internet (like that he is incredibly creative and inquisitive about anything and everything) I found annoying and abrasive when he was here. He hurt me and I hurt him. C'est la vie, I suppose. I hope he is doing well.

Christmas was awesome. Super awesome. Beyond awesome. I loved everything about it: being home with my family, the gifts I received, being away from the city... It was exactly the reset button I needed.

I went with Mom and Duncan to visit Gramma for her birthday on the 14th. We came back the 17th, and I found it ironic (and a little disappointing) that it began to snow as we were literally getting on the plane. Mom was glad that it didn't snow... I was hoping that I could dance around in it at least a little bit. Seeing Gramma was awesome - I didn't realize how much I missed her in the last three or four years since I was last in Maryland.

School resumed on the 18th (so, a week ago) and is already in full swing. No easing in for my professors, it would seem. I'm taking twelve hours this semester (Shakespeare, Children's Literature, English Grammar, and a theology course called "The Bible and its Interpreters") and so far I am really enjoying the classes and staying on top of everything. At the moment, I'm taking a break from reading the Bible to write this blog. I figured I'd take advantage of the desire to blog while I could.

On a completely different note (and one I just have to write down to sort out my thoughts on the subject... So sorry if none of this makes no sense at all), Ally and I have been anticipating the release of the latest Karen Marie Moning book for quite some time now. Moning is a fantasy/romance author who wrote one of my favorite series of romance novels (about Scottish highlanders... cliche, I know.) The thing that drew me to her books was the way that all seven of those books were interconnected. There was a larger reigning plot to those books that had to do with some Irish mythology about the Tuatha De Danann, supposed faeries and settlers of Ireland long ago. Each book layered upon the other the framework for this second series, the Fever series. Instead of what I expected (more romance), it turned out to be so much better. In these books, the darker race of Tuatha De Danann faeries (the Unseelie) had escaped their prisons when the magical wall (erected by the Seelie, to protect mankind) between man and faerie fell, and had designs on ruling the world. The main character, MacKayla (Mac) began the series as this sweet young woman from Georgia, all rainbows and sunshine, and finishes the series as the complete opposite, getting progressively darker and more jaded as the books go on.

So Ally and I have been hypothesizing and guessing and attempting to figure out the fifth book, Shadowfever, for ages. Last Friday, we finally got to sit down and read the darned book (in one sitting - 600 pages took us 8 1/2 hours to read), and I have to say it was simultaneously one of the most enjoyable and frustrating experiences of my life to read this book with her. We both had our own copy of it and read it on opposite ends of my couch. We read at about the same speed (very fast), so it wasn't so hard to keep up with each other. Moning blew me away with the plot twists and reveals. I, usually a quiet reader, exclaimed aloud, screamed profanities, and nearly threw it across the room a few times (Mac made some really dumb decisions throughout the book, to put it mildly). In the end, I think it ended exactly as it should have - although I spent the entire book wondering how it could not end in disaster. It certainly looked like there would not be anything good for her ever again. It kept me guessing until (quite literally) the last few chapters, when everything - or most things - were revealed and explained.

I can't wait to see what Moning has up her sleeves next. In the meantime, I'm going to dream of the day when I can reread the books and go back to catch everything that I didn't get the first time around. (A lot, I would imagine!)

For now, I will leave you to return to my studies. I have the book of Deuteronomy, two acts of Midsummer Night's Dream, and a book called Sign of the Beaver to read tonight.

I promise another update soon. Possibly with more specifics about my classes.