Yay Teknowlogee!
Classes here started yesterday. I am done with my formal coursework but there’s a class in the electrical engineering course I want to take because it will help with my research as well as be fun. Unlike most graduate students, I enjoy taking classes. I think it’s that whole brain needing to learn new things issue that I have. But, since in graduate school anything below a B is considered a failing grade I just want to audit the course. I heard it’s a pretty killer course and I don’t want to screw up my GPA by getting a B- or lower so auditing allows me to sit in on the course as well as protect my GPA because I don’t get an actual grade.
So, I called the professor, who teaches the course, several weeks ago and he gave me the go-ahead to sit in on his undergraduate version of the course. It’s one of those classes where the graduate students and the undergraduates are in the same lecture/lab but the expectations of the graduate students are higher. Since I’m a chemist and not an electrical engineer the prof wanted me to take the undergrad version. That’s fine with me since I really haven’t the foggiest idea about anything eletrical engineering — my idea of electrical engineering is changing a lightbulb. 
I kept trying to register for the course and it wouldn’t let me. I kept getting errors with the online registration system. So on Monday I went to the electrical engineering office to talk to the ladies there and see if they could help me. They sent me down the hall to the Dean’s office and said the woman there could help me get registered for the course. That’s pretty much where the whole ordeal started to go down hill.
The conversation went something like this..
Me: Hi, I’m a 4th year graduate student in chemistry and I was sent here by soandso in the EE office because I need to Audit the Undergrad version of Dr. BlahBlah’s class.
Her: You want to audit a course?
Me: Yep, the undergrad version of Dr. soandso’s class.
Her: You’re a graduate student?
Me: … Yea, 4th year chemistry. (I totally am the smartest person in THIS room)
Her: And you want to take an undergrad course?
Me: Yes, becuase Dr. SoandSo suggested it since I’m not an EE grad student.
Her: But you’re a graduate student.
Me: OMG haven’t we established this already? (ok I didn’t really say that)
Her: I have no idea how to do that. *picks up phone and calls like 3 people*
Me: *stands around for 20 minutes*
Her: Go back to the lady who sent you here she can help you.
Me: *walks back down the hall*
Other Lady: Sorry about that, here I’ll do it do you have the numbers for the course?
Me: *gives numbers*
Other Lady: Ok I have you registered but I can’t set it to audit you so you’ll have to do that yourself.
Me: Uh, the classes aren’t showing up in my schedule if I refresh.
Other Lady: Oh it’ll take like half an hour.
Me: The chemistry class I added this morning showed up right away but okee dokee. Is there a way you can just give me paperwork and I’ll go over to the registrar’s office and register the old fashioned way?
Other Lady: Sure but they won’t take the paperwork until the online registration closes.
Me: *blank stare* (but inside I was saying… Are you f’ing kidding me?!) Ok can you just tell Dr. SoandSo what is going on so I can make sure he doesn’t boot me from his course, I already paid 140 dollars for the textbook.
Other Lady: Sure, let me know if you have any more questions.
So it’s 2 days later and the classes still aren’t in my schedule which means I’m not registered for them. I will just talk to the professor today when I show up to his class. Since I’m auditing the course I don’t get credit but I wanted it on my transcript to show that I did sit in on the course and have the skills the course covers but I’m thinking this likely isn’t going to happen without a huge ordeal and I just don’t have the energy to care enough to do it.
Blah. On a positive note I got a new textbook and some new school supplies. I love the smell of new textbooks. Yes, I’m a geek. Class starts at 2pm, wish me luck!
You’re Usually The Smartest Person …
Sorry about the blog break without warning. I got into a new game online called Last Chaos and I’ve been playing it quite a bit and then I got a nasty migraine that lasted like 4 days and THEN I got a weird stomach bug that last 2 days so I have been busy with reality. I want to take a moment to thank Jay for shooting me an email and checking up on me. I just got it today even though you sent it several days ago. So <3 Jay, thanks for caring. 
I now bring you back to my regularly scheduled blogging…
In the midst of my migraine, last week, I had to go in for my quarterly review for my fellowship I do with the whole bringing real world science to k-12 classrooms thing. The lady who does it always likes to ask psycho-babble type questions and try to analyze me (and I’m sure the other ppl too) and at one point our convo went something like this:
Her: So, Tali… you’re pretty smart.
Me: Ok…
Her: I’d venture to say you’re probably the smartest person in a room when you’re in it with a group of people.
– Now let me interject. What the hell kind of statement is that? What was I supposed to say? “Hell YEA I am! People are fucking MORONS and it makes me CRAZY!!” It’s a double edged sword there if you ask me, I can’t say “Duh” because that’d make me sound like an arrogant ass, and even though I *am* an arrogant ass I don’t want to sound like one to the person who sort of indirectly writes my paycheck. I can’t say “Well no, that’s not true…” because … well … it is true. What I really wanted to say was “Well, I’m sure the smartest person in THIS room.” But I didn’t. *snicker*
So how was I supposed to respond?? Well… The only way I knew how. LOL
Me: *blank stare* *one-shouldered-shrug*
Her: No really, I’m sure you are. I’m curious, how does that make you feel?
Oh lordy the psycho-babble again. So I replied something about how it can be frustrating because being smart requires that I be a natural leader and take charge, which I’m fine with, but that when I make mistakes people are often more disappointed in me than they would be some random other person because I’m often held to higher accountability standard.
I think that sufficed.
But it also got me thinking about something else. I’m having huge… and I mean HUGE … ADD lately. I can’t seem to stay on task and I don’t really want to. I am totally bored out of my skull with my research. When I was in Arizona, I did environmental chemistry and looked at radioactive crap in the environment. Yea it was interesting but regardless of if I was looking at something from Chernobyl or the dirt from your back yard, the process was the same. It became exceptionally repetitious and it bored me.
So when I left Arizona I decided to change from Environmental chemistry to what I’m doing now which is nano-technology based. And here I find myself again, feeling like no matter what I do it’s the same thing over and over and over. I could teach a monkey how to do my job because you don’t have to understand the fundamental chemistry behind everything I do to make it work. You just have to do the steps involved. Maybe it will get better once I’m done with my PhD and I have my own lab or maybe it won’t. Maybe I’m doomed to be constantly bored with my job for the rest of my life because my brain is constantly craving something new and eventually everything becomes boring and repetitive.
So it’s official, I am usually the smartest person in the room… I’d like a web banner for that now please.
Breaking Dawn - The Rant
This post will contain lots of spoilers. Lots. Pretty much the whole book. Don’t read this post if you haven’t finished the book and you don’t want to be spoiled. You have been warned. Oh, I’m also likely to offend you, so suck it up because really, I don’t care.
This post is going to be disjointed and not flow very well… but who cares? Stephenie Meyer just got paid gazillions of dollars to publish a disjointed piece of trash so I guess it doesn’t matter if my post follows that feel, now does it?
Also, for the people who read this blog that could give two shits less about this post — feel free to skip it and not feel guilty for not leaving me a comment.
And here we go …
I loved the Twilight Series. I read Twilight, New Moon, and Eclipse and just fell in love with the story and the characters. It’s a chick book. Very typical — girl meets boy, girl falls in love with boy, girl finds out boy is a vampire, boy tries to not love the girl and fails, falling hopelessly in love. I’ve always had a soft spot for vampires and Stephenie Meyer’s twist on vampires made this series very interesting to me. Eclipse left you at a point where Bella and Edward (the two main characters) were engaged and Bella desperate to have Edward turn her into a vampire.
I waited many months for Breaking Dawn to come out. The final book in the saga, the final book that would answer all our questions and finish the series. As I said in a previous post, I even got my friend Elisa to come out from Virginia to go to the book release party at Barnes and Noble and our friend Cathy drove 2 hours from her house to go as well. We stood in line for hours waiting for our book and finally I had it in my hot little hands.
I, of course, rushed home and read the first few chapters and went to bed confident that this book would fulfill my desires. Then I started reading the next morning and the whole thing just went to shit. I am seriously waiting for a press release from Stephenie Meyer (SM from here on out) saying something like “OMG! How did my niece’s horrific fanfic get submitted as my book?! No no no, this is all wrong, go back to your bookstore and get the right copy!” Because this is what the book read like — horrible, teengirl fan fiction.
Firstly, the book was totally predictable… 100%. Ok, I know it’s Teen Fiction but still, predictable much? To the people who didn’t see the pregnancy or the Jacob imprinting or even the Alice bringing back a half-vamp I ask — are you 12? There was no shock value to this book, there were no “twist and turns” and if you didn’t see it coming you’re a complete moron… or you’re 12. 12 is forgivable. Moron is not.
The minute she started having dreams about a baby I knew she was going to get pregnant. What I didn’t know was that the pregnancy was going to be some stupid hyper-speed 3 week long pregnancy complete with the “alien” bursting through the stomach thing.
And let’s not even go there with the Renesmee crap. Seriously. Renesmee Carlie? COME ON! I was having flashbacks of Albus Severus from the epilogue in Harry Potter #7. This is why teenagers shouldn’t have babies — because they name them dumb shit like “Renesmee Carlie”. *rolls eyes*
The thing that really pisses me off about the baby is that it’s really crap to me that SM decided to re-write the rules of her vampire “world” in this book. I wouldn’t be so mad if she hadn’t already said that it was an impossibility. I would have thought it was cheesy but I wouldn’t be so mad.
In an interview she said:
“And since we’re talking physiology…I’ve had tons of people ask if vampires can have babies. The answer is no. When someone becomes a vampire, it’s as if they are frozen exactly as they are in that moment. His or her (and we’ll go with her because it’s more central to this discussion) body no longer experiences change.”
Oh but here’s what everyone is calling the “loophole”:
“Most human fluids are absent in my vampires. No sweat, no tears, no blood besides that which they ingest–they don’t have their own blood. They do sort of have saliva–the venom makes their mouths wet, at least.”
So, vampire men can’t make tears, or sweat, or saliva but they can still make sperm? Oh wait no, not all of them, Edward is a special type of vampire — he’s an incubus and so he can make mutant super-baby growing sperm and knock up unsuspecting human women. Convenient much?
The baby totally 100% ruined this book for me. It lost its believability to me — well as much believability as one can expect from a book about vampires. I sat there and thought “Ok it can’t get worse from here, I’ll just deal with this 3 week long pregnancy and suck it up, if it’s the worst the book has to offer I’ll still be ok.” Yea… no… it got worse.
Not only does Bella’s “Alien” through the stomach pregnancy last roughly 3 weeks, the baby also ages as a rapid rate not only physically but mentally as well. The baby is reading by 3 months old. Yep. Reading. And talking in full sentences before that! Wowza, someone sign that kid up for MENSA!
Then the creep factor with Jacob just really skeeved me out. But again, I saw it coming, I was just hoping I was wrong. Jacob runs out to try to get over Bella and find someone to “imprint” on and can’t find anyone. Comes home, Bella spawns the evil critter and then wow, wouldn’t you know it — imprints on Bella’s kid. *gag*hurl* I never liked that Quil imprinted a 2 year old in the other book, I always thought that was a big “funny uncle” type thing, personally, and this just skeeved me out even more. And they sit there and try to justify it as not being a “sexual” thing at this age but then why does Jacob give her a “promise ring” for her first Christmas? She’s 6 damn months old and he gave her a PROMISE RING! EWEWEWEWEW!
The Volturi. *sigh* I don’t know what to even say there. SM wrote and wrote and wrote and WROTE pages upon pages of buildup for this epic battle that I knew never would happen and again, I was right. It didn’t. It was exceptionally disappointing to have at least a hundred pages of buildup and no climax. If I was a guy, I would have blue-balls.
One semi-positive thing — Bella turned into a vampire. THANK GOODNESS! I knew all along that Edward would never willingly turn Bella into a vampire — that he would only do it as a way to save her life; however, I was hopeful that I would be wrong. I was hopeful that it would be written that Edward would do it willingly as a way to fulfill his promise but without the provocation of having to choose between a dead Bella and a vampire Bella. It didn’t really bother me that he made the choice in order to save her life (since I already expected it anyways) but the circumstances surrounding it — that it had to be done to save her life after the alien baby shot through her stomach — really did add another level of annoyance to the book. And again, I already expected Bella to not be the typical blood-crazed newborn vampire because it was the only way to continue the book without a “fast forward 10 years” type setting. So that whole “twist” neither shocked nor bothered me. I will say that I loved the first hunting scene that Edward and Bella shared. I thought it was the only scene in the book that brought back the characters we loved and adored from the other books. Of course, the ending of the chapter had to be ruined by bringing up the stupid baby.
I just couldn’t get into this book and several times had to fight the urge to throw it across the room. I had no real preconceived notions of how I wanted it to turn out (aside from the Bella is a vampire thing) and I was just exceptionally disappointed by it. The characters were horribly flat and not the same characters from the other books. There was no plot to this book either. I’m still trying to figure out what exactly required 750ish pages to accomplish.
I also really didn’t like how Bella was able to end up with everything. Her love. Her best friend. Her family. That’s not what the entire series eluded to. It was about choice and sacrifice and that no matter what choice she made she would lose something as well as gain something. The message to this story is: Get married young. Have a baby right away. And everything will be perfect. Bologna.
I really want to return the book but I feel like it’s wrong to do that. I got what I purchased even though it was crap. I feel like returning it after reading it is sort of akin to buying a dress, not taking the tags off and wearing it out on the town and then returning it the next day.
I will never read another book by SM again. I will not see the Twilight Movie that comes out in December. As of this moment, I officially resign myself as a “Twilight Mom”. I can, no longer, in good conscience, suggest this book series to anyone ever again. This saddens me as I adored the first 3 books in the series.
Time for me to dust off my Harry Potter books and re-read them. At least JK Rowling had the balls to kill off some of the most beloved characters in her final epic battle and Voldy didn’t go running away with his tail between his legs.
Breaking Dawn
No spoilers. Only one comment. Horrific. Ok two comments… Horrific and disappointing.
I swear, Stephenie Meyer is sitting at home right now exactly like this:
I will write a nice spoiler-filled review soon… after I’m over my desire to burn this book and mail the ashes to Stephenie Meyer.
Weekend Fun
My friend Elisa is here, from Virginia, for the weekend. Elisa and I have known each other online since I was pregnant with Ciaran and she was pregnant with her daughter a few weeks older than Ciaran; but, we’ve never formally met. She came out here so we could go to the Breaking Dawn book release party together.
Another online friend of ours, Cathy, also was forced to read the book series enjoyed the Twilight Series so she decided to drive from her house about 90 minutes away to also go to the book release party. I had this brilliant idea to hold up a sign for Elisa at the airport like the limo drivers do; however, I wanted the sign to be as embarrassing as possible. I pondered for a while and then Cathy came up with an idea that would totally pwn any idea I would have come up with.
But due to some airport snafus we didn’t get to use our sign the way it was intended. *cries* Oh well, it’s still a cute souvenir. Here’s a 2.5 minute video of our airport fiasco.
We didn’t let our airport fiasco ruin our fun and we went back to my house and dropped off her stuff and headed to Barnes and Noble. Barnes and Noble was giving out wrist bands that told you where you were standing in line once the book was being sold at midnight, starting at 6:30pm even though the evening festivities didn’t start until 8pm. We got there about 6:45pm and we were already #110, 111, and 113 in line.
When I went to the Harry Potter book release parties they were geared towards kids and adults and I was hoping/expecting this book release party to be the same. Wrong.
Here’s a 3ish minute video…
We got back to the B&N at 11pm and they started lining everyone up about 11:15. It was amazing the number of people that were there… at least 500. Having to stand in line for 45 minutes before you can purchase your book affords you an opportunity to meet those standing around you. We met this girl who was 13, although she was so tall she could easily pass for 16, and chatted with her for a while. We convinced her we were 23, 22, and 21 — Hey I can pass for 21! Er not. But there was no way we were going to admit we were 30-something and standing in line with 13 year olds and she was 13 what the hell does she know?
Once the line started moving we were out and back in our car within 15 minutes, so those B&N people know how to bust through a huge line.
So the party itself was totally lame. The “activities” they had were just so stupid. But, either way, I have my book. We had a good time. I’ve read 50 pages. I went to bed at 2am and got up at 8am. I’m seriously going to need a nap.
