Jaws

Yesterday I was walking on campus when I thought I heard singing. I looked over and saw two men dressed in shark suits. They were singing the Jaws theme song and running in circles around a couple. As the theme song progressed, the sharks circled closer and closer. When the song ended, they both suddenly lunged at the couple, then ran away, laughing at the couple's screams. My new life goal is to participate in something of the same nature.

Reverse Colorblind test

These are some websites that have reverse colorblind tests--you fail if you have normal vision. Now, I've always passed regular colorblind tests, indicating that I'm not colorblind. But I also passed these tests. So now I need some other people to look at them and tell me if you passed them also so I know whether they're accurate.
http://www.archimedes-lab.org/colorblindnesstest.html (scroll down about halfway down the page.)
http://www.cs.unm.edu/~aaron/creative/colorTest.htm
Enjoy!

WWSD?

Yesterday I was in my technical writing class and we were talking about persuasion. The teacher decided it would be cool to bring in a theological perspective and talk about Satan, who persuaded people to follow him even though they knew that an omniscient and perfect God had another plan. So we had a long theological discussion, which was interesting. The best part was the last minute of class though. The teacher's conclusion to the entire discussion was "OK, so the next time you're trying to persuade somebody, ask yourself: What would Satan do? And then do that."
Good advice, but somehow I'm uncomfortable making that my mantra.

Blog-sauce

The other day I was with my family in the car, and Josh called my younger sister Kristina lame-sauce. Kristina replied that she actually is a win-sauce. My parents overheard, and asked why they were adding "sauce" to the ends of their words. Kristina started trying to explain, but I could tell my parents didn't quite understand.
At this point, I could see two options. I could either join Kristina in trying to explain, or I could do my best to compound the confusion. I decided option #2 would be more entertaining, and that's what I did. Kristina said you can add "sauce" to any word. So I said, "Yeah, it's what all the young people-sauce say now." Kristina said she meant you could add it to adjectives. So I said, "Yeah, all the young-sauce people say it."
This back-and-forth continued for a while until my dad decided to get in on the joke too. For the rest of the drive, everything was "sauce." "It's foggy-sauce outside. . . . Now I'm hip-sauce for saying sauce." My dad is cool-sauce.

Holiday

Just so you all know, you missed out on a very important holiday.
I came home late one night last week. On my desk was a Reese's peanut butter cup, a bag of jellybeans, and a sign saying "Give Rachel Candy Day! Oct. 20, 2009". I have the best roommate ever.

Am I my cousin's keeper?

If so, I'm in trouble. Yesterday I went to a family party and discovered that my cousins have several children I never knew about. They are all adorable, and some of them are old enough that I'm seriously disturbed I didn't realize they existed. Luke is about 3 months old (I give myself a pass on not knowing about him), Jack is nearly one, and Megan is 15 months old (I have no excuse to not know about her). Way to go, self.

Research

Today I had to go to a lecture about how to do research. The best part was when the instructor told us that Wikipedia is a really good source, especially to find out about original research. I always use Wikipedia, but until today I thought it as an unsanctioned activity, and I would visit the sources at the bottom of the page. But now I know that Wikipedia really is my best friend.

Irony

Today I gave a presentation in one of my classes. It was a pretty big part of my grade, and I have known about it for about five weeks. So, of course, I started working on it yesterday afternoon. All things considered, it went pretty well. My peer reviews were fairly positive. My favorite? "Be more confident. You obviously know what you're talking about." Apparently I faked enough confidence to make myself appear knowledgeable, but not enough to make myself appear confident. Go figure.

OCD

I always get a special warm fuzzy feeling when my inbox has a multiple of 10 emails in it. Right now there are 5500, which is even better.

Grace

Today was not my most graceful day ever. I had to turn in a project by 5:00, and I printed it out at 4:55. So, I was running to try to turn it in, and I turned a corner. There was a guy standing there. I saw him in time to know what was going to happen, but not in time to stop it. (If only my shoes had traction...) So I slid into him in a lovely slapstick-style collision. It was not my finest moment.

Really?

Good news: I am not allergic to wasp stings.
Bad news: I had the chance to find out first hand.
I was walking to church yesterday when I heard a buzzing noise above my head. I don't like wasps at all, so I waved them away and walked faster. Then I heard buzzing again. So I waved them away and ran a step or two. Then I heard the buzzing again. Then I was stung on the very top of my head twice. Seriously. I stopped for just a second to ask myself, "Did that really just happen to me?" Unfortunately the answer was yes. Yes, it did.

How things work

I bought an optical drive to go with my computer, which doesn't have a CD drive. This, I thought, would be perfect. Unfortunately, last week I couldn't get it to do anything. And then I discovered that all the troubleshooting information and instructions are on a CD that was included with the drive. Of course.
The second part to this story is that I understand how things work. So I spent the weekend complaining to everybody who would listen to me about how stupid it is that my optical drive instructions are on a CD. It worked! Today when I tried it again, it worked perfectly. Take that, universe!