Ladybug Ladybug

I still have a lot of work to do, but my weekly homework planner (which consists of pieces of sticky-notes, one per week, with a grid on each one - the axes are Homework, Project/Quiz, Reading on the x-axis and the class names on the y-axis) has lots of Xs. That's a good sign.

Also, since I use one sticky note per week, I can see how many weeks are remaining, and there's not many! I think there are four plus one during finals week, which is really only one day. Guessing since I'm not looking at them RIGHT NOW.

I have the slackingest group for my CM class, and I have decided to never take a construction management senior level class again. It's one-fifth of our grade, and we've had four weekly meetings, and NOTHING has happened. It's the same every week. One of the same two people is gone (sometimes both) and the third CM senior is a self-important douchebag. Then it's me and Fady, the guy I went to Jordan with, and we're waiting on the CM people to give us their part, as they keep saying, if I just give you this, it will halve your work! And then they don't give it to us. Other than that, I'm learning some good stuff about scheduling and resource management, which is very relevant to my future job-plan. But srsly guise, fuck this.

The other classes are going well. Waiting on the instructors to return some big stuff for two classes, so they're kind of on hold for now. Then the last class of mine is pretty much the same every week. I need to do some research for the law class, but it's boring and I have some other make work (reading, a short opinion paper) that I can do instead.

Also: Stressed over another big thing.

On a bit of scrap paper I laid out the projects I have to do this quarter.

*580 group project
*580 paper
*LCA
*411 project
*574 paper

*411 weekly homework
*580 occasional homework

*411 "quiz" (really, it's a final)
*580 final

I finished the 580 research paper - which ended up being 9 pages of opinion about tolling, and which form of tolling would be best for the Puget Sound region. I'm not talking just toll booths - think fun alternatives like the congestion zone in London, or the 167 HOT lanes.

I have a topic for the 574 paper, which will be a survey of condo defect cases in three states. I need to get to researching, but it's not due until the very end of the quarter so I can take a bit of leeway on that one.

The LCA is the one I'm really stressing about. Honestly, I have NO idea what's going on in this class. At least I've started my technology matrix, and I sent it off to the professor for review, since OMG WTF.

The two projects are group projects, and will inevitably cause me more stress than anything else but hey, that's a group project for you. At least one project has been started, I only have a group for the other one. We're not even on a speaking basis yet...Way to go, random assignment of teammates.

Also, interestingly, you may notice that only one class in there is a low-level (i.e. senior) class. So if you're wondering why I no longer text or IM with you much anymore, there it is. I'm FUCKING STRESSED OUT. It means that when I get time to relax, I'm probably killing things in WoW. Or, I'm catching up on paid work that I've been delaying since the quarter started.

At least next quarter, I've established that I can take a free zone of thesis work, anywhere from 1 to 10 credits. So I will have to start my thesis research over holiday break at the latest, and can sign up for a pittance of credits (2 perhaps), fill in the rest of my minimum time with thesis work, and go in to campus only on Fridays. Winter quarter ftw?

So I made this sweet schedule this quarter, where I came in to class from 9-9 on Monday and 9-4 on Wednesday. There's plenty of breaks in there for food, working on homework, etc. I love the fact that I only go in to the UW twice a week, since it gives me plenty of time to do other things. However, I'm not managing my sleep quite properly and am having a tough time staying awake in class. It's pretty embarrassing, in a small class of graduate students, to be the one sleeping out of oh, about eleven.

I haven't gotten called out by a professor yet, but I've slept in two out of four of my classes. I'm upping my caffeine intake significantly on those days, and attempting to get to bed at ten pm the nights before. That's been sort of working, kind of.

( Here's detailed descriptions of each class )

Crush is cute, in that it's all in an old remodeled house. You can totally tell, though they've used the upstairs and downstairs space in the probable best way for the restaurant, without losing the charm of it being in a house.

They seem to have the exact same music taste as me, in that they play upbeat jazzy house - there was only one song that I heard in the course of the evening that wasn't in my music library.

Unfortunately, xamichee and I had the tasting menu, which should have been outstanding. Instead of being outstanding, it was only good. There was a squash soup with tarragon oil that was quite tasty - it had a little cold crab salad in it that was a bit better after you mixed it in and warmed the crab. Some little savory profiteroles with parmesan and chives on top were astounding. After that strong start, it pretty much went downhill.

There was a pork belly that was tasty and soft, some black cod in a wagyu broth that was very good and quite salty (but in a good way), an unremarkable lamb dish, a berry sorbet with marshmallows, a cheese course that was different for Sean and I (I got an outstanding blue, and he got something hard and pale that I can't recall the name of), and a dessert course that was again different for both of us, but neither was particularly great - a blueberry tart with lemon curd and a peach madeline with marshmallow sheets to help build the tower up. The last course was a few cookies that were pretty dull, and a marshmallow.

Marshmallows kept showing up and after the third course with marshmallows, Sean was very much over it. I personally hate marshmallows in any form, even though some of them were hard and small and others were larger and fluffier. We agreed that a tasting menu should be the best of the best, and while everything was quite tasty (the cod was so tasty I could take only very small bites - some would call this over-salted, some would call it delicious) it should have all been outstanding, or at least, above average.

Their cocktails were well done, though. Sean had a maple syrup sweetened bourbon, and I had something with rum and egg whites which was quite light and sweet without being cloying.

Great taste in music though, guys!

I was driving along Denny after a coffee date with enth when I changed lanes - after yes, checking my mirror - but I guess I misjudged something and scraped a guy's passenger side door. Oops.

I tried to pull over, following the other driver, but this tall guy in a blue car also stopped right in front of me and got out. I asked him to move so I could pull off the road, but he kept looking at his bumper and looking at me. I questioned his motives a little, as politely as I could, but he said (while looking at his pristine bumper) "I think you hit me."

I'm like, "No. I didn't hit you. I hit the guy that pulled off the road." I pointed. "That guy. Can you please move so I can pull out of the road? You're fine." I gave him a weird look - like, WTF DUDE are you trying to get money out of me or are you just stupid? After a bit of that and me creeping towards his bumper a bit, he pulled off and drove away.

I parked illegally in a parking lot and went over to the guy who I did scrape. He had a nice scratch on his passenger side door. I asked him if he's ok, and handed him my insurance card and a pen, asking if he'd like to exchange information and get this settled. He walked off.

Ok....What...

So he called the cops, and whistled at another police car as it drove by. We spent some time doing this weird dance where I try to make some sort of connection with him beyond thrusting my ID card at him. He kept about a 30 foot radius away from me, even as I was sitting on the bumper of his car. All in all, he called the cops twice and whistled them down twice. It started to look like they don't care.

I was still trying to forge a relationship with this guy, as it was probably best for me (and xamichee's insurance, honestly) if I can just convince him to get an estimate and have me pay for it. It's just a scratch in the paint on his door. We'd been waiting at least 20 minutes for the police to come by the time I simply walked up to him and ask for his name. I introduced myself as well. He has an odd name that sounds a lot like a more common name, so I had to ask him a couple times before I get it right, but I smiled when I got it, and that got a smile back from him.

We waited some more, and I started to try small talk. When he didn't really respond, I backed off. I pulled out my ID and the insurance card and asked him if he had a spare piece of paper, as we might as well get that part over with while we waited.

He dug around in his car for a bit and I wrote down everything about me and the car that I could find written or could think of. I then asked him for his full name and phone number. He started to ask me about my life and history, you know, where I lived, whether I worked, etc. He was wearing a UW hat, and I said that I was actually a student at the UW. He's from Texas originally, and I told him about the family I have there. I started to get more smiles from him and we commiserated about what a crappy way that was to meet, because we're both nice people and sometimes bad things happen.

It turned out that he was on his way to work and was late. We mutually complained about the cop's response time. I kept offering, from time to time, to just pay for it if he got an estimate. He was very hesitant about getting screwed without a police report. I kept chit chatting with him - he started flirting with me. I brought up Sean and Rian, and he said that there was always room for him, so I called him a devil and laughed. He laughed too.

Then, he kept flirting with me. He told me where he lived and worked, and asked me to come visit him at work sometime. I laughed it off and continued to be nice and sincere. After more than an hour had passed, and we were pretty good buddies, I told him that it was entirely up to him, but we had better things to do with our life than sit around and wait for the police to come say hey. I also reminded him that I was good to my word and there'd be no trouble like he was afraid of. Finally, I said that I totally understood if he wanted to keep waiting, though.

He said, we can wait a couple more minutes, but he was getting antsy about being so late to work even though he'd called in and told them he'd been in an accident. I could tell from his sighs and body language that he was starting to really stress. So we shot the bull for a bit longer, and finally, he called my cell just to make sure I'd written down the real information. I laughed and called him a bit suspicious but then jokingly had a phone conversation with him. We hugged and drove away.

I got back to Snackpalace fine but started shaking immediately upon sitting down. I had just had a hell of an ordeal - I am, in my head, neither persuasive or confident, but I had completely bullshitted my way into a new friend, sort of. I had also gotten everything I had wanted just by smiling and being persistent. This is new to me, world.

It's Rian's first day of school today!

I arrived 5 days early to set up an art project - Stimulith. However, there was a bit of an error with the post holes, and we were trying to install it on a gusty day. It fell over onto our burn platform, which at the time was a pile of decomposed granite. If it weren't a pile yet we may have been safer, as the pile busted through the front face of the monolith and ruined it.

Ah well, we had fun tearing it apart the next day and we burnt it anyways. It would have been really cool to have a monolith on playa, though.

We actually arrived earlier than the truck, and it got a bit hairy for a while with nothing but 2 gallons of water and some snack foods. Sean and I did put up the Bacon Dome, his tent, and surveyed the site, but all the other equipment, food, water, and infrastructure arrived the afternoon after we'd come in ourselves.

We built our camp over the next several days, and rode a friends' camp's art cars around an empty city. One of the art cars was actually a bus, the Birthday Cake, and the other art car was also a monolith! It was hilarious and awesome.

One evening we rode a new art car to the gate entry as the gate opened for the first time to the public, and danced and said hello to all the people that were entering. It was quite the show. There were tons of art cars, bikes, people dressed up, and of course all the greeters were there letting folks in and covering the newbies with playa. We also hitchhiked back to our camp with a couple in a sweet RV - and the female half of the couple was named Celeste as well!

So, the photos from Jordan are still on Fady's laptop, but I noticed that he happened to post a handful of them on Facebook. If you're curious, most of them are captioned.

I'm really excited to see them all, once he and I get together after he gets back to the States.

Another OkC email:

"Your appearance switches me on. Poly wanna get together for a geek seek and take a peek session?"

And then a big wtf:

"I know you don't want children. I didn't either. But I think you're really cute. And I like your profile.

Anyway, this is so stupid, because I'm hung up on the kids thing and I think you're interesting, because we like a lot of the same things..."

If I slept with him, he'd poke holes in the condoms! That's just freaky.

So apparently research states that women who enjoy watching romantic comedies have unrealistic expectations in relationships. I have spent a couple minutes trying to figure out where I read this, seeing as I haven't read a lot of things today, but it's lost in the intertubes or something.

I am very, very amused by this - in a wry sort of manner. I love romantic comedies. I wonder what unrealistic expectations are, according to this study? Because I know I can be a bit fatalistic, and somewhat paranoid (this is from my fluctuating self esteem). I generally put on a happy face, because that's the kind of person I am, but now I have further fuel for the fire when it comes to second-guessing myself.

Go me. HEY, am I being unrealistic NAO, guise?

I just am completely mystified by the second to last paragraph. Does he have some sort of pregnancy fetish? Or what? I'm very confused and quite frankly, turned off.

"Kinky geeks unite! Ack, humor aside - looking to engage with similar minded individuals - I'm in the unfortunate circumstance of not knowing anyone presently I can hold a conversation with and maintain interest.

Computer science primarily - I spent my off hours pondering what life in the eleventh dimension might be like, abusing a guitar, or out on my motorcycle - although I've been working a metric-fecal-ton for a long time now trying to wrap a project.

Errm. Being up front, I'm a pretty forward guy, admittedly perverted. Which is interesting itself (the whole animal, I like to pretend like I'm mating thing, contraceptives be damned).

Thats about it, that's my heartly hello. :)"

So, I'm visiting an electrologist. I've always kind of been uncomfortable about my dark body hair and my super-pale skin. Needless to say, that's all I will really say about *what* I'm getting removed, but hey.

What I wanted to mention is two things: one, when you get an electrologist, they refer to your "project" - the hair that you and the girl with the zappy gun are removing. I am vaguely uncomfortable with this euphemism but I can't come up with a better one.

The second thing that I though was odd is that they have a bowl of candy at the reception desk. I picked a piece of candy with the appropriate happy noises, and the lady at the desk said, "If that's lunch, take a couple!"

I really have no response for that - I just stuttered a bit - because seriously, that's fucked up. What is happening to American women that three pieces of candy even constitutes a meal in any way?

(Who am I to speak, I'm getting permanent hair removal. I already had Lasik, another permanent cosmetic surgery. I feel like my narcissism knows no bounds, but this will really make my beauty regimen like, 1000x easier every day.)

Also: my electrologist is SO CUTE. I just want to eat her up.

Another postscript: the discomfort of electrolysis is about on the same level as a tattoo, but the feeling is a bit different - more of a hot pull than a rugburn. I am sort of nuts about tattoos because I like the pain, it's just a happy pain. I can really see myself enjoying this electrolysis thing. I may be getting into it as a sort of replacement for the desire to get another tattoo, which is something I can't see myself doing until I am in the professional world permanently.

We spent four days in Cairo - originally to visit the Pyramids at Giza and perhaps to visit some friends and a former professor. We changed our plans slightly upon getting there, and never visited the professor, who we didn't get a hold of.

( Cut for brevity )

So, today was a lazy day. We went to Jamila and got a temporary crown fitted (it was going to be my permanent one, but as it turns out the ceramic piece was made a bit too large and broke while we were fitting it. Suddenly it's temporary!) - a process which was funny and tragic at the same time. Saturday the next version will be ready.

After the dentist, we went out to Jafra, a very traditional restaurant, up on the second story of an old building in downtown Amman. In order to get in, you walk through a courtyard where when you look up, you can see in through the cracks in a wooden floor that form the bottom of the gift shop and library that comprise part of Jafra. The stairs are also wooden. Once inside, you realize that the tables, chairs, balcony, all are made of wood - which means that at some point in time the restaurant was either ostentatiously wealthy or started out as not a restaurant at all. Wood here is rare, so the use of it is a sign of wealth.

We had some food whose name I can't remember - pastry with various toppings, zatr (oregano and sesame seed, a very common flavoring here), a salty cheese, or egg, and one pastry that was filled with meat. We also had cocktail, which in Jordan means something like a fruit juice smoothie - often milk powder is added, or banana, or peanuts, something to make it smooth, along with mango, strawberry, guava, or other juices. The one at Jafra was average, I heard. Other specialty places make a cocktail that is better.

It was a nice, light breakfast, and gave us the opportunity to look down over a relatively busy downtown street and observe the traffic and, "all the beeping!" as Evelyn likes to say about the honking Jordanian drivers. They get so close to one another, bare centimeters away, and beep to announce that they're there, or to ask permission to go, or beep a lot to express their dismay at what you're doing. Basically, people honk a lot here!

Afterwords, we spent a bit of time looking at the shops downtown and Evelyn haggled for me. I got some key chains that I will dissect in order to make Christmas presents - the beads they were made of are too cool. We tried to find a hat for John, but he wants a straw cowboy hat, and not the tidy kind they happen to have downtown. We also saw a lot of cool textiles, said hi to a gold merchant, and talked about how much of what we saw would be way cheaper in Egypt. I guess you go to Egypt to shop for bargains, the 16% governmental tax on items in Jordan is pretty steep. Also the exchange rate between Jordan and Egypt really favors the Jordanians.

I dropped off the latest (possibly last?) batch of postcards, in a yellow Jordanian postbox. No one here uses the mail, since it's way cheaper to ask the guard at your house to run to the electric company or water provider and drop your payment off - he works off a monthly fee and doesn't even expect too much of a tip, since he provides the same service to the other residents of the house-building (remember, a house here is like a condo in the States).

I've been desperately afraid, after Jamila mentioned the possibility of a root canal, that I might actually need one. This evening, we went to Fady's favorite place, Books@Cafe, which is just called Booksat most of the time. It started as a bookstore and expanded to internet cafe, restaurant, bar, and of course, the bookstore is still there. It's really nice. It used to be someone's home, and is in the very old part of Amman - thousands of years old. There's a balcony that faces over the city and has a great view of the moonrise over the hills of Amman, but we sat on the larger patio in back of the building, under pine-nut trees.

We ordered drinks and hookah (ever the hookah!) while more of Fady's friends came to visit - mostly girls this time. Walid was there again, with his girlfriend Zaina, Fady's ex D...(no clue, how to spell or say her name, it's one of the Arabic sounds that doesn't exist in English), and a girl named Nancy, a decidedly unusual name for an Arab girl.

I had a Tanqueray and tonic and tried to socialize but I only got about 5 or 6 hours of sleep last night and my tooth is hurting, so I was pretty much shattered. I ended up getting a ride with Ala (he came later, and there's supposed to be an apostrophe on one of those a's) to Evelyn and Ghazi's (Fady's mom and dad's) place so I can take a Tylenol 3 and pass out. It's pretty early to go to bed, especially considering we've been staying up till the early-mid a.m. lately.

But tomorrow, we go to the Dead Sea! I can't shave tomorrow, Ala showed me some badly-healed wounds he still has after swimming in the Dead Sea last weekend. Basically the salt will prevent an open wound from healing. Shaving just hurts badly when the salt gets in it. Everyone describes the Dead Sea as being oily with salt, a concept I am not quite prepared to get my head around yet.

Jordan's third king, the late King Hussein, really loved driving. He drove cars, motorcycles, helicopters, and go karts, possibly airplanes too but I can't recall. He even placed in at least one rally race (I saw 3 trophies but could only read one in the trophy case).

So of course, he had a ton of cars! We visited the Royal Automobile Museum and saw several of them, along with vintage and new motorbikes, an Amphicar amphibious vehicle, and the aforementioned go karts. I enjoyed myself, though I was somewhat disappointed that the lights were relatively dim and I am a flash photography hater. In spite of the need for a flash, seeing that many old and new cars was pretty sweet. Some of the cars were one of a kind, some were brands I've never heard of, and some were just sexy.

We also got to see footage of King Hussein driving in a rally, along with other short movies relevant to his interests. One of his leather racing outfits was also on display. This is a post that will be better served by the Flickr photos that will be up after I return to the states. Needless to say, I enjoyed myself.

Afterwards, we visited a neighborhood where you go to get your car repaired, called Wadi al-Seer. It seemed fitting. There are mechanics everywhere! And tons and tons of shops, beater cars, car parts, wheels, it's just visual chaos. Fady mentioned that in Jordan, they don't know the word, "totaled." That of course is a bit of an exaggeration, but we saw a car that had rear ended another, judging from the damage, and the mechanics were working to save it, in spite of the intense body damage and crowded engine.

Two of which contain chickpeas: (and all of which I have enjoyed!)

*Candied cooked dried garbanzo beans, similar to Jordan almonds (which are not called Jordan almonds in Jordan) - insead they're called coated almonds (in Arabic of course). So these are coated chickpeas.
*Vegetarian lasagne made with green peas and carrots, along with a white sauce and a red one.
*A falafel sandwich with dry pickles, green pepper, mint, hummus, shredded cabbage, and tomato.

One not-so-strange thing I'd like to eat over and over and over: a hummus topper made of chopped hot green peppers and lemon juice. The peppers are chopped up tiny and mixed with the juice, and this concotion is laid on top of a bowl of hummus with cooked garbanzos in place of the more common (at least to me) olive oil topping.

So this afternoon, after a late lunch which is the biggest meal of the day in Jordan, we took me to the dentist. My dentist's name is Jamila, and she's a family friend of Fady's. Her office is in one of the poorest parts of the city, though Jamila herself is successful. The area was, in the late 40s, a refugee camp for Palestinians, and has since been built up into a crowded market of perfumes, used and new clothing and shoes, and groceries from herb teas to fruit.

( I'm really trying to avoid the whole wall of text thing here. )