Some of my favorite people

• The guy who works at Baby Doe's in the UMC who stands at the counter between the two cashiers and always asks in an entirely too ingenuinely chipper tone of voice, "can I get you anything else? No? Ok, we'll run you up right over here then." He asks people that are 2 or even 3 people away from the cashier still, and it always annoys me that he tells me where I will be rung up because I am perfectly capable of figuring that out for myself. I would prefer if he would only ask whoever is right at the counter, in a more somber tone, and then not tell people where they are going to be rung up.
• The girl in my American Foreign Policy class who wears too-short shorts and likes to preface her comments with, "I have my homepage set to BBC World News, so I read the news every morning before I even do anything else" to make herself seem better and more informed than any of the other 40 people in the class who probably also read BBC on a regular basis. Then, as a nervous tick, whenever she finishes making her comment and while the teacher is responding to it, she takes a big sip of her big coffee that she always has with her. Oh, and she wears Uggs.
• The girl in my American Foreign Policy class who obviously has a big crush on this other guy in our class and always tries to talk to him and sit by him, but it's almost just as obvious that he doesn't like her back. Her voice is a little too high and ditzy sounding, and her comments are too.
• The guy in my American Foreign Policy class who knows WAY TOO much stuff about international affairs and political science and such and is always contributing all of his entirely too well-developed ideas to the class discussion and I'm always thinking, "dude, save it for grad school. we don't want your smartiness here."
  
• The middle-/high-school kid that rides the DASH bus some mornings who really needs to comb/cut his ugly red hair, and sit up straighter.
• The guy in my Introduction to Linguistics class who sits up front and blurts out commentary to the teacher because he thinks he's funny and clever. When he's not interacting with the teacher too much, he's wearing dirty socks with his Teva wannabes and is eating his hair, and trying to discreetly pick his nose.
• The guy in my Introduction to Linguistics class who sits even further up front and also blurts out commentary to the teacher, but at least he doesn't eat his own hair or wear dirty socks with his Teva wannabes. That's probably because he's a military guy and he keeps his hair cut very short.
  
• The old guy that sits in the UMC reading (or looking at) every newspaper available there, and then piling them up on the table he's at. When he's not pretending to read a newspaper, he's having conversations with pretty young ladies in the UMC. These conversations are awkward and uncomfortable just to watch from a distance, I can't imagine what they are like to listen to or even be part of.
• The old guy that sits in the UMC and... well I don't know what he does there, but I don't like the sweat suits he wears and his scraggly red pony tail.
• The old guy that sits in the UMC and always looks just really disheveled. He actually spends most of his time in the UMC in the computer lab. One time he stood up and asked everyone in the lab, "Does anyone else seem to have lost connectivity? Excuse me! Does anyone have connectivity?!" It probably doesn't sound very annoying just reading about it here, but it was annoying, trust me. Another time, he tried crossing the street not at the crosswalk and not when the light was red. He almost got hit by one car and then another driver yelled at him for being an idiot. As I stood there witnessing the event, I just thought to myself, "There goes that disheveled old guy that always sits in the UMC... Heh heh heh, serves him right."
• The girl in my Problems in International Relations class who can't seem to say more than 5 words without adding a "like." Every time she talks I wish I could record it and go back later and do a linguistic analysis of it measuring how often she actually says "like" and how much shorter her utterances would be if she took all those "likes" out and just said what she wanted to say.
• The guy in my Problems in International Relations class who has such a creaky voice that I have a hard time understanding him. Every time he talks I wish I could record it and go back later and do a linguistic analysis of it and figure out why he sounds like that.
• The guy whose office is accross the hall from my American Foreign Policy class who brings his Corgie dog to his office. He leaves the door open with a child gate in the door. The dog growls at anyone that comes within like 10 feet of the door, and then the guy comes out and tells everyone how his dog is, "just the nicest dog!" He then proceeds to tell everyone in the vicinity, whether they want to hear about it or not, about the history of Corgies and how they are such wonderful dogs and how they are guard dogs but they are very loyal and yadda yadda yadda, and I'm just thinking, "dude, I don't give a crap about your stupid looking dog but maybe you could leave him at home or close your door because I don't even like to look at him, much less hear you brag about him."
• The stalky/butch security guard lady in the UMC. I'm pretty sure her only real job is to walk around with her butch hair cut drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes and holding her arms out a little bit so she looks real tough and thinking she's cool because she has a walkie-talkie and a jacket that says "SECURITY" on the back. I don't know about anyone else, but I don't feel any more secure thanks to her presence.

Well, that's all for now. Sure, I'm overly critical of some people, and sure, there are probably people who would put me on their "favorite people list" too if they had one. I'm not denying that.

What was I going to say?

Hmm... I was going to write something today, but now I don't remember what I was going to write about. I had an idea this morning when I got up but I didn't have any time (I never have any time anymore), so I thought to myself, "that's ok, I'll just write it later." Well later has arrived and I still don't have any time to write anything but that's ok because I've forgotten what I was going to say anyway. Maybe it will come to me and next week when I have some time again maybe I will write about it, that is as long as I don't forget what I was going to say again by then.

Anyhow, just for my own benefit so that I can maybe remember later, these are a few of the topics I think I might have been wanting to write something about

1. blood pressure
2. summer plans
3. etymology class
4. Ides of March
5. 22
6. the news
7. 中文
8. forgetfulness
   

Healthy Pebbles

For the most part I've been eating pretty well for the past few months, but tonight when I was at the grocery store I had a moment of weakness and bought a box of Fruity Pebbles. Then when I got home I ate half the box.

I Might Be Insane

As if I'm not busy enough with school, I am applying to a part-time job that wants 20 hours a week. So let's see... (18 hours of class) + (6 hours of tutoring) + (at least 13 hours of homework) + (20 hours of new job) = a lot of work per week.

This job pays $20/hour though, and so that would mean I would be making $400/week before taxes, which for me would be almost like winning the lottery. The job is a transcribing job (similar to the one I had a few years ago). It is for a company (Infoture) that is doing research on child language development and it would utilize some of the linguistics stuff I've been learning this semester. My job would be to transcribe Mother-Child interactions and use IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) to transcribe child utterances that deviate from standard pronunciation of a word. It might be a cool job, it might be a tedious job, it might be more hours than I can actually dedicate to a job, but for $20/hour I think I'd be willing to make that sacrifice. I was trying to think seriously this morning about the time commitment and really it wouldn't cut into my homework time that much because I don't do much homework in the afternoon/evening anyway because I prefer to do it in the morning. Really it would just cut into my lounge-around-the-house-thinking-about-how-I-should-be-doing-my-homework time. So... I don't know. What do you people think?

Another Fun Dream

I was taking the bus home after a long day at school when after driving south down Broadway, instead of turning EAST on Table Mesa Drive like it is supposed to, it turns WEST because the little old lady sitting up front tells the driver that she is going to the grocery store and hates having to cross the street to get there, so the bus driver says, "ah heck, I'll just take ya there then." and she gleefully swings the bus across Broadway to turn right instead of left. She then proceeds to drive up Table Mesa the wrong way, going completely past the grocery store, past the church, past my aunt's house, past Bear Creek Elementary School, all the way up the hill to NCAR where I was hoping she would turn the bus around, drop off the old lady and get on with it. But she does not do this. Instead, she proceeds to drive that bus straight up the Flatirons and then uses them as a launching pad for the bus/rocket. Next thing I know, we are all being launched high into the sky. I look around the bus to see what everyone else seems to think of this. One man is sitting in the back corner listening to his iPod and pretending to do the crossword puzzle in the paper; he doesn't seem to concerned about anything. But I see that a few other passengers, like myself, are starting to get a little T-O'd that the bus driver is blasting us to Utah at Mach 5 because we all have places to be and things to down back down on EAST Table Mesa Drive that the bus driver doesn't seem to care about even in the least. One person asked me if we were being abducted by Mormons. So then I decided that something probably needed to be done about the situation. So I went up to the driver and asked her if I could drive for a second, and she readily obliged, saying, "I don't even know how to drive this thing!" So I sat down in the driver seat as we were rocketing into space and turned that bus right back around. As Boulder approached, I scoped out Table Mesa drive and aimed for it. I landed that bus right on Table Mesa drive in front of the grocery store and let the little old lady out who was happy that she wouldn't have to walk across the street to get there now. Then the bus driver drove us the rest of the way down Table Mesa EAST and I was able to go home and get on with my life for once.

Delightfully Dead

Last night was another one of those dream-filled nights but I can't really remember many specifics. One of the major themes, however, was that I was dead. I don't know how I died, but being dead was really cool. I was able to fly around really fast. I was immune to different temperature changes. I could fly/walk through things. I could eat anything I wanted. I got to hang out with other cool dead people. One of them taught me how to make doughnuts out of... well basically he taught me how to turn just about anything into a doughnut (he used some old pork chops). We also got to drive around in really fast cars but we never got pulled over because we were dead; what can the cops possibly do to someone who is already dead?! I was also able to swim in the ocean as much as I wanted because not only was it really easy to get there because I could fly so fast, but I also didn't have to worry about holding my breath or anything.

Yeah, being dead was pretty cool actually and I don't think people should be too afraid of it.