Loose Ends...

School: This semester feels so different from last semester. I don't feel like I know what's going on in my classes. Part of the reason is that I don't have enough time to study. I'm studying just as much as I was last semester, but the material is harder and much more dense and I'm at the point where if I devote another minute to any one thing, everything will come crashing down. If I don't do enough studying, I won't do well in school and I'll feel like crap. If I don't do enough relaxing I'll go crazy and feel like crap. If I don't go to work I'll get behind on rent and starve and feel like crap. But enough whining. I got the grades back from my first Chemistry test and I got an A. And then I forgot to take an online quiz this weekend and I got an F on that. Fortunately, the grade will be dropped (the lowest grade is dropped) but it's a testament to my mentality this semester. My head isn't where it should be and I can't afford that.

In other news, school is at least amusing. Seen in the student center:

Other: J is sick and has been for almost a month. I feel bad for him. It's on and off sinus-y stuff with intense headaches and vomiting thrown in. The vomiting occurs when there's a headache and the headaches stem from the sinus infection. He's taken antibiotics already, but either they weren't strong enough or there's no sinus infection. He's taking another round of them starting today...the stuff that's for anthrax poisioning. I hope they work.

Weekend: We hosted the "Big Lebowski Bathrobe Birthday Bash" this weekend. It was a birthday party for J and a bunch of other people whose birthdays fell in the first two weeks of February. It was also a going away party for my friend Danielle, who's going to spend her first out-of-country experience in South Korea for an entire semester. The party involved bathrobes, caucasians (white russians) and of course, The Big Lebowski. It was a decent time...I tend to not have so much fun at alcohol-centered events. Speaking of...the 3rd was my recovery anniversary and I've now been clean/sober for six years.

Cats: Echo and I played "hide the Ewok" this weekend. She won.

Pictures

I love taking pictures and I probably take about 10 per day... pictures of sunsets or food or cats. Especially now that I have my brand-new camera. I usually don't post pictures because it's a hassle to connect my camera to the computer at work (on my lunch breaks, of course). Well, I've had a bunch of pictures I've wanted to post, but haven't gotten around to...until now. So, for your viewing pleasure (or mine, really), I'm going to post a bunch of pictures! YAY!

First, some cat pictures. I firmly believe that most bloggers, even the most sciency bloggers, regularly post pictures of their cats. And why not? My cats are like my children, except I don't have children, and my cats aren't as demanding and didn't emerge from my uterus. Anyway...


















I caught Echo the other night trying to steal The God Delusion, which I'm struggling to find time to finish right now. Notice the pom-pom tail...she got shaved about a month ago and still looks like a puny lion. Oh god, the cute, it burns.





















For the most part, the cats don't get along...but sometimes, they just need company. That's Zeus on the left, Echo on the pillow and Emily in front. Emily is curled up with Dinosaur, my favorite stuffed animal that I got when I was five. He's had major surgery several times, but is still kickin'.



















Here's a close-up of Emily. I just love her...she's so little and sweet.

















J has been sick for about a week now and on the first night he felt ill, Echo decided to do a little healing. She's not as sweet as Emily...any territory is her territory and she'll OWN it.
























I just think this is a testament to how sweet and timid Emily is. And how flat her face is.





And of course, some non-cat photos:




















On the way to my car after work, I passed this car. In case you can't read it, the bumper sticker on the right says "My dog is smarter than the President." I felt an immediate kinship with this person...



































J's sister, C, went to Florida and brought us back this wooden Triceratops puzzle. After reading th back of the puzzle, which stated "Even T-rex gave Triceratops some respect," J came up with a new hand sign for ghetto Triceratops. Don't go flashing the hand sign around museums, though, as you might upset the real Triceratops gang.

A post for Zach...

Zach from When Pigs Fly Returns left a comment on my blog a while ago and we got to talking about the Jurassic Park action figures. In the spirit of our conversation, I wanted to post a few pictures of those figures. Unfortunately, I only took one picture of the action figures and then took a zillion pictures of my apartment (mainly the dinosaur living room) and a few of J. Still, I wanted to share them all... So, without further ado, a montage of images from my life, as of this morning and a picture of my old Jurassic Park toys:




First: This is our bookshelf. Notice the PostSecret books, which I am completely addicted to. Displayed are my old JP toys. There's a juvenile T rex, a couple of Dilophosuarus, "Velociraptor," Procompsognathus, Stegosaurus, and a Pachycehpalasaurus. I was about 11 when Jurassic Park came out (the movie) and I was so in love with it.

Second: This is the dinosaur living room. It's where we hide all of my nerdy dinosaur paraphernalia. Notice my cat, Emily. She can't NOT be in a picture, especially in the morning when she hasn't been fed. We have a huge "dinosaur" panorama poster on the wall (we like picking out the non-dinosaurs). You can see the bookshelf and my dinosaur coasters (in the window). The bottom picture is a close-up of them. My friends Christy and Alex made them for me for my birthday. I talk about them in my birthday post. They're beautiful!

Third: This is the cast that J and I made at Dinosaur State Park on Labor Day. It's from a trackway made by a Dilophosaurus-like dinosaur called Eubrontes. We still have to put some polyurethane on it and paint it.



J hesitantly agreed to let me take a picture of him even though he had woken up only seconds before. In the second picture, Emily is trying frantically to get off of J's shoulder, while it takes me a million hours to snap the picture. She scratched him pretty good. J's got some really nice tattoos (the mirrors on his forearms and Celtic knot on his wrist). My favorites are his ammonites (which he says are just shells, but I call them ammonites anyway) and his birds. The birds are on his chest and they point down and in towards his sternum. I've thought it might be a good idea to get two Quetecoatulus northropi on my chest...