Thursday, April 18, 2002

I feel the need to write this because most of my blog is me ranting about stuff, not what actually goes on in my life. It's such a shitty excuse for a diary in that respect- I won't be able to read this over several years later and remember things that happened, because I never write about them.

Quote of Yesterday:
(while writing thank you letters to the mentally ill patients who talked to us at Springfield Hospital)
Alex Dudley: Dear Walter... thank you for talking to us.. we had a crazy time..

I think I did go insane. Springfield Hospital was as boring as mud. I was (unsensitively, probably) hoping/expecting that it'd be like at Bellavue, with loony people yelling, "I HATE THIS PLACE. THE MEDICINES DON'T WORK. I'VE BEEN HERE FOR SEVEN YEARS. I HATE THIS PLACE." but it was a nice, happy place. With really boring staff members making presentations. Though the guy who talked to us, Walter, was really cool once you got past the fact that he had a hard time talking because his meds got his tongue swollen. Now that I think of it, he wasn't really as funny as we all remember him (having gotten our group to break out into spontaneous laughter), it's just that he was really cheerful and animated, and the mood spread. And when asked about the opportunities for patients to have relationships, a staff member said that they didn't officially condone relationships but some patients would go out on the hospital grounds for "bush therapy." That brought the house down. But it's not as funny when I tell it. Nothing ever is.

Springfield looked/felt like an elementary school. It was the horrid yellow bricks. Rob had suspected it used to be a college, but it wasn't- it was always a mental institution. I still wouldn't like to live there. It was, however, unlike RM for the last two days, completely air conditioned.

The bus ride was real good. It was fun talking to Rob but Nick was cranky and antisocial on the (airconditioned charter) bus the whole time, and just slept. The scenery was marvellously pretty (I suppose anything's pretty in spring), even though Rob observed that landscapes like that were a dime a dozen in Maryland. I don't think that's a bad thing.

But we got back by seventh period and I ended up going to math anyways even though I just could've skipped, and I didn't have my homework or my AP problem done because I hadn't expected to be going to seventh. See, see, it's not irresponsible like when you don't do your homework because it might snow the next day. On the sheet, it said that we were excused from seventh, so I'd thought the night before that I wouldn't have to go to math and didn't do my homework. And I didn't get to feel morally superior to the people who did skip either, because the only reason I didn't skip was because I thought other people would go, and give me away. Oh, and Mr. Willard said I couldn't retake the physics heat test at all because I already used up two Mulligans last quarter, and I think I'm getting a C. So I was real cranky. Heat does that to me.

But I did good on today's math test. Wazzah. Thus ends my boring, boring blog entry. I'm beginning to see why I don't talk about my life much.
Shall say that most irritating line, because it fits.. "Hot enough for ya??" I should have brought that water shpritzer to school.

Finished Time After Time. Better than I could write, but one of the worst books I've read in a while. Someone needs to learn how to plot.
Am now reading Ender's Shadow. Makes me feel a bit dumb and depressed, but fortunately it's not One of Those Weeks (Days, Months, Years, insert one of those times), so it won't make me UberDepresssed. This book needs a catharsis though. You can't be angsty all the time. I wonder if Orson Scott Card is chronically depressed. It occurs to me that I'm probably of below average intelligence, since there seems to be a difference between being intelligent and being educated, and I'm the latter. Took a look at IQ tests and ilk in Psych, and they basically seem to be a tests of basic spatial and verbal skills, which seems more like education than actual intelligence... having a solid grasp of situations even while being in the midst of them, being able to know people and know where they stand, using information objectively and analytically, knowing what course of action to take and how to go through with it, and how people/things are likely to respond to it. Aka, Ender. I'm pretty clueless. I'm glad I'm dumb though- I imagine being smart sucks. But if Scott Adams is to be believed, imagining being smart is pretty pointless too, because it's impossible.. like being a bug on a 2D plane trying to imagine the third dimension. Hell.

Tuesday, April 16, 2002

Bloody hell. Came in to school at 6:25 in the morning to retake the physics test (cuz I'm going on the psych field trip and won't be here at lunch) but Mr. Willard forgot, and was displeased with me dropping in on his room at like, the Crack Of Dawn (tm). So I'm taking it tomorrow at lunch, but still got saddled with hanging out randomly at school for 45+ minutes. Spent it sitting next to the elevator on the third floor watching people come in. I can sympathize with guards on night watch now. Honestly, it'd probably be less boring to just fall asleep. I spent some time making profiles of people.. 'blonde white girl, hair in pony tail, pink tube-top, khaki pants.' A note about descriptions. You really can't see people's eye color from far away. You just can't. I don't see why people consider eye color so integral in descriptions of people, since it's basically worthless.

Monday, April 15, 2002

The ship drawing tutorial. Step 1. "Get a good book on elementary perspective which can be understood." DOH! -_-

It's sort of funny. It's like a "Shakespeare for Dummies" thing or something. Shakespeare for Dummies... Step 1. Learn to read.

I found this particularly amusing, though probably no one else will.