Fear the Crab

Sunday was a work day. I went to Maile’s house afterwards and hung out for a bit. We watched a documentary on sex changes, and saw a man trying to learn how to cross his legs like a woman. I never even knew there was a technique to it.

Monday was another work day. I talked to Maile for a bit afterwards on the phone, but as I had also taken a dose of NyQuil I soon got sleepy. Which in the end was proper, because I had to wake up early for school the next day.

Today was a school day. Attended 241 and learned about language structure. In a sense, using math to figure out a language. Had a 211 midterm today, and I am already anxious to know what my score was. There were two parts to it, basically; a technical part and a coding part. The technical part I think I did well on. At least, all the questions were pretty straight forward and I believe I answered them all correctly. The coding part is where I want to know my score. We were given a bit of code, then asked to write a class to provide functionality to that bit. I’m anxious to know if I got anything wrong, because I spent a lot of time writing out the code and so far that I could perceive, it should work. Still, it would be my luck to forget some aspect, some part in my programming that would crash the whole thing. That programming part had a major chunk of points, too.

It occurred to me that I hadn’t posted in a while, so I will play catch-up now.

Monday was a typical work day. I was assigned to Sunglasses, as per the norm on those days I work the swing shift. While that in itself automatically means it’s boring, at least George was around to talk story, and later Min started work so it was, overall, a good day. I stopped by Maile’s house for a little bit to hang out.

Tuesday there was a dam leak in my nose, as it just kept dripping snot like a leaky diaper. That made it a bit difficult to focus during school, but I still managed to attend. I fucked up on my 211 quiz because I mistakenly believed the correct procedure for an inorder traversal of a binary tree meant I print the internal vertex on the second pass. But the right subtree only had right children, so instead of listing them correctly from top to bottom, I went bottom to top. Later that night I slept over at Maile’s house.

Wednesday (yesterday) I felt very lazy, and the fact that my nose was all clogged up didn’t help. I wanted to wash and wax my car, but I just couldn’t find the energy. I stayed in bed all day while Maile was at work, though Titan kept me company. I discovered that I actually didn’t do too badly on my 211 quiz as they only removed 5 points, though I will check again to make sure. I also received a new homework assignment, but I didn’t start on it because, as stated before, I was feeling lazy. Maile gave me some “body toddy” for my head cold, which I am mainly supposed to gargle with, and it’s supposed to lessen the duration of said cold. It tastes like fermented lemon juice, for lack of a better description, but it does make me feel a bit better after gargling with it. I am left with the decision of whether or not to attend the 241 class on Thursday, as they have an exam and, while I want to take it, since I have a slight cold I am debating whether or not that will be a good idea.

It is now Thursday morning, and I am at school, well in time to attend the 241 class, but I have decided not to. I reasoned that since I have a bit of a cold (still present, obviously), it wouldn’t do to have my sniffling and sneezing distracting those still enrolled in the class, whose grades are dependent on their performance. Instead I will hang out in the computer lab and work on my 211 assignment until it is time for that class.

I plan to wash and wax my car on Saturday, because I have vacation and will have the time. Since I will be at home, I will see if my dad wants the van washed as well. Hopefully such tasks won’t tire me out before Maile’s Christmas party later that evening, but perhaps if I have time for a nap it won’t be so bad.

I almost overslept for school, but thankfully I was only asleep for an extra half-hour. The mere shock of it jarred me fully awake, though towards the end of the day I started to come down from that high. Took a nap after dinner, and now my throat is itchy. Perhaps it’s all the dust in the air and in my room.

So now I’m a bit more awake, but bored. I talked to Maile earlier, and after a very pleasant conversation she went to bed because she has work tomorrow. She also must register for next semester, so it remains to be determined how she will register and work at the same time. I know she can do it.

Now that everybody’s asleep, I don’t know what to do. I’ve done whatever homework there was for me to do, and I don’t feel like studying for the 241 exam coming up next week (which I will not be graded on, since I dropped the class; I just want to see how well I would do). I puttered around a bit on CheesyMUD, but that got to me after a while, and now I’m just twiddling my thumbs wondering what to do next that doesn’t require a whole lot of activity, yet still keeps me amused.

Or perhaps I will just sleep.

I washed my truck today. I hope to get into the habit of doing this once a week, but since this is only the second week I can’t rightly call it a habit, yet.

I took Maile to LCC so she could take an exam for her Psychology class. Since this class is strictly online, all exams are held at the Learning Resource Center and merely have a deadline by which a student must take them. Otherwise the student can go anytime the LRC is open, such as today when Maile actually didn’t have any classes to attend. As for myself, I spent my time sitting on a chair outside, watching the birds dance about the grass and trying to get those images from The Ring out of my head. It’s already been a couple of days since I saw it, but every time I think about that fuckin’ movie I get creeped out. I’ll be the first to admit I’m easily scared from horror movies of that caliber. It’s a brilliant movie, extremely well done; I just wish I didn’t see it. From now on, I’m sticking to strictly Disney movies.

Spent the day at LCC with Maile, as she worked on her ceramics project. She’s making a lamp. How cool is that?! She’s already got the hardware and wiring ready, and now we’re just waiting for the firing of the clay, which will end up being the fancy lamp thing. It’s way more than what I could ever hope to accomplish.

While waiting at the ceramics room, I spent my time trying to figure out my homework assignment. It basically works, but I haven’t really tested it out. That will be later, possibly tonight. I also must remember to ask the professor about a few things on Thursday.

I burnt three of six CDs so far. I must say I have prioritized my time very well, yes indeedy.

I managed to actually reverse into a stall at the UH parking garage. It took me a while, but not as long as I thought it would. And it turned out okay, too. School itself was an ordinary school day, though my stomach was churning the entire time and it hurt.

I talked to Maile for a little bit, but she seemed a bit preoccupied, probably with the amount of homework she has to do. Now I know how she felt a long time ago, when I did the same thing to her. That makes me feel sad.

I don’t feel as sick as I used to, though I am still prone to coughing fits. I should be well enough to go to work tomorrow.

School was its normal self today. I learned things, I did homework, I ate breakfast consisting of two bowls of cereal (Corn Flakes and Special K). Then I went home and did more homework, specifically the new programming assignment that’ll be due next week. Already it seems I’ve completed most of it, and just in time by the look of things. The professor said that next week we’ll be going over different material and no longer concentrating on what the assignment entails, so it’s good that I got the majority of the work out of the way early. It’ll give me more focus towards concentrating on this new stuff (stacks and queues on Tuesday, double linked lists on Thursday).

Still, there are a few weird things going on with my program. It’s a bit complicated to explain, especially since I don’t completely understand it myself. Suffice to say, it “seems” to do the job, but it does it in a rather quirky manner. I suppose so long as it fulfills the requirements I shouldn’t complain, and anything more I want to have would just be cosmetic.

I’m still sick, though it’s bearable. My nose is less runny, but my chest is more clogged, and I seem to spend more time coughing out phlegm than I do breathing. The good news is that I’m getting it all out; I’m just making myself miserable doing it (and I’ll be the rest of the house loves hearing me hack).

I’m still awake, which is bad at this hour because I need to go to school tomorrow morning. Despite having dropped the class, we’re actually going over important material I will see later on in life. I can’t afford to miss these sessions, at least for the next few weeks.

Speaking of the math class, I discovered yesterday that my latest assignment bumped my score up to 50.97, which is above passing (though just barely). Then the professor announced that the next exam (on Nov 26th) will be open-book open-notes. It galls me to think that I may not have needed to drop the class after all, but at least this way, there’s no risk in me failing any assignment or test, and that means less white hairs from worrying whether or not I’d pass.

I’m still sick. I’m glad I didn’t go to work today. My nose has been runny all day, and the plugged-up sinuses gave me a major headache. Now I get to look forward to a phlegm-filled day at school tomorrow, since I still have to go in and learn the material.

I didn’t post yesterday because I fell asleep early. I guess I was just that tired. I woke up 11 hours later and had a nasty cotton-mouth, which is odd because I never drank anything. I think it’s all the vog in the air with the Kona winds blowing in.

Yesterday was a bit eventful, too. On my way in to work I nearly got into a traffic accident as a truck got a flat tire. Unfortunately, the driver decided to slow to a stop as he tried to move to the shoulder, and nearly caused a chain reaction as we all tried desperately to avoid him. Given the heavy rain earlier in the evening, the roads were still slick. It’s a miracle nobody hit anything.

I bought the Kikaida DVD as promised. Not much else to say about that.

Last night Maile and her mom gave Keoni an choice. He could either stay at the house under strict rules (no stealing, lying, or drugs), or he could go out on the street and face whatever consequences there. He chose the street. He explained this choice by saying that since he was eventually going to jail, he might as well do what he likes before then. Unfortunately, his likes involve stealing Maile’s jewelry and trying to swindle the other family members out of money. And he likes crack.

Discovered today that he came back to the house. His excuse was that he wanted to do laundry, and he wanted money. He also gave some sob story about how it’s so hard on the street, but Maile just reminded him that it was his choice. Tonight he’s going to return and the mom is going to have a “chat” with him.

I’ve decided that I will drop my math class, or at the very least, talk to my professor about it. I’m so borderline it’s scary. I’m really worried that the exams will sink me below the level of passing, so I figure I will drop the class now and get a W (for withdrawal), but still attend the rest of the classes so I can get the material. I’m going to ask if I can also continue to turn in the assignments and take the exams, just to get an idea of whether or not I understand this shit. It’s too bad I can’t get my money back, but it’s better than getting a D or F in the class.

Ate dinner at Assagio’s in Mililani. I had a chicken and shrimp special with a spinach garlic wine sauce over a bed of linguine. Maile had the chicken linguine anchovy olio, or something along those lines. Not bad.