Why?

It makes very little sense to me that Halloween is a United States federal holiday. There.

10/18/2015

Weather: Last night we had our first frost and today we had our first snow (just flurries). The road now is bordered with piles of crunchy, colorful leaves.

School: After this week we will have reached the halfway point. Tests coming quickly, interesting labs, interesting readings. . .

Health: I officially caught one of the colds that seem to be going around, not sure when it started though and I seem to be in the worst stages now. Most of the people I know have been sick.

- Silvie

The Weather 9/21

Today's temperature was mostly under 21 degrees Celsius (under 70 F). It felt rather cold. Weather Underground forecasts that we will not reach a temperature above 24.5 degrees Celsius (76 F) this week, with lows in the 8 - 11 degree Celsius range (47 - 52 F).

*In case you did not notice earlier, I have begun to go metric (a.k.a., to use the units of the Système International d'Unités). I am currently teaching my brain to recognize the meaning of values given in grams and degrees Celsius.

An Original Joke of Rather Terrible Quality

Joke:

Person 1 (reading a book of poetry): Aargh, I can't stand all the footnotes in these poems!

Person 2 (innocent bystander): How come?

Person 1: They just make the poems so hard to read - they're so subversive.

End Joke

What may be funnier than the joke itself is that I thought it up while reading my organic chemistry textbook, not a poetry book. I have absolutely no clue what made me think of it.

You will have to let me know whether or not you find it to be funny.

Cheers,
Silvie


Edit: By the way, I remembered why I thought of it. The part of the chemistry book I was reading contained a footnote.

Time and School

Did you know that 18.75% of the semester has already passed? 3/10 of the lab sessions have also already been held. Sometimes if I think about just making it from one week to the next without letting things really get out of hand it seems much more like the semester won't be a disaster, especially considering that there aren't so many weeks to go by (16 for a whole semester). Our experience of time is so subjective, isn't it? Speaking of time, I have not started my papers yet and they are due in about 11 days, not all of which are days that I can use to do school work. Somebody needs to quickly learn to be efficient and not procrastinate too much.

9/16/2015

I am not feeling so well today. I have been feeling like I might be getting sick for about two weeks now, but today I felt pretty generally awful.

Recap of Week 2 (and other stuff)

My first solo lab procedure last Thursday went okay - I did take much longer than everyone to clean up, but I'll probably get better at that. I did not break or spill anything, so that was a plus. A few of us in the lab actually worked together some, asking each other questions and checking on things. I will not receive my huge assignment for this lab until next time (Thursday) since this lab is two weeks long. After that we have our first lab for a full lab report (also a two week lab).
     For JS 101 I have two 4-page papers due when we have class again on September 30th. About two weeks are left for that (aaaugh!), which means I need to get started and work on that while still keeping up on my chemistry.
     Today we had our first Orgo quiz. I think that it went pretty well except for at least three small mistakes I know that I made in one part. I will get that back on Thursday, too. I am starting to get a better idea of what I should concentrate on in the textbook. I will be making lots of review/guide sheets summarizing everything. Maybe I will take pictures of some stuff to share.
      Two Saturdays ago we came home to find what seemed to be a lithobates sylvaticus metamorph sitting on our screen door. It was very adorable. On Friday I went for a short walk and stepped on my first acorn of the season. I also found five baby snapping turtles on the road; sadly, only one was alive. We took pictures of it and then I brought it to the stream. The other four presumably were run over while trying to cross the road to reach the stream. I love frogs and turtles. The turtle's nostrils looked like a miniature version of a puppy-dog nose. It was also cute and very strong, though very clumsy when walking over fallen leaves. It would put its legs up onto a leaf and accidentally flip upside-down, ambling laboriously to the water like a newborn kitten. On Sunday, I think, when I went for a walk I saw a black snake, about 3 cm wide and a meter long.
     I got up only six minutes after sunrise today (6:30). Pretty soon I will be getting up while it is still dark outside. It was rather cold this morning but the height of the day reached about 27 degrees C.
     I have lots of work to do and am very tired, but I am hopeful that I will gain more balance soon.

Best wishes,
Silvie

!שנה טובה ומתוקה

Wishing you a happy and sweet new year,
Silvie

9/8/2015

The first full lab has not happened yet, but things are staring to feel a little more like they are actually happening. Today I had my first office-hour help session, which was very helpful all around. I have some friends in my class and lab sections from last year.

I will stick with string ensemble at least until the show concert on October 14th, the same week that I expect work at the gymnastic club will start (assuming that it will start). Symphonic chorus begins tonight.

I picked more peaches today and when I went in the backyard I saw that the maple leaves had begun to fall.

Second Lab Coming Up

I just found the info for the second lab on Moodle2 and there is plenty of background reading, so that answers that question. Doing a whole experiment by myself will be a very new experience.