cookies

My mother has gone to India for a couple of days, which means I have to be all responsible and do things. More than the usual, anyway. It's tiring. I keep checking the list that's stuck on the fridge to see if I haven't done something. Which reminds me, Charlie needs his medicine.

But today my brother and I made chocolate chip cookies. Seeing them stacked up in a container felt satisfying, but I'm still really tired.

of wars and being lost in translation

This post is extremely overdue, but here's the second and third parts of our most recent trip to Thailand. Read Part One here.

We had breakfast at the hotel on the morning of Day 2 after I took some random pictures of the grounds.

Then, we took our taxi thing to the Bridge on the River Kwai which was about 10 minutes away from the hotel. My mum flipped when she saw it. There was this movie made about the events surrounding the construction of this bridge that she watched growing up, so she got all excited.

Being on the bridge itself was quite cool, cuz it's part of an actual, fully-operating railroad track. Two people can't really stand next to each other - someone has to move, and through the gaps in the bridge, you can see the River Kwai below you. There are these platforms at certain intervals , which is where people have to stand when the train crosses the bridge. We had planned to take the train to the Death Curve, so while we were waiting we walked across the bridge, which actually is a lot longer than it looks. We also checked out a little market. The train was all wooden and things, but man, it moved so fast! Hurtling through the countryside was an experience - we passed fields and farms and rivers. Every now and then, it would stop at what seemed like the middle of nowhere, with just a little bus-stop looking thing, and people would get off and begin their trek to wherever it was they were going. We passed a school, and a group of little girls waved at us. Also, people would walk through the carriages selling souvenirs but more interestingly, ice-cold drinks and food. We bought a packet of these miniature things that looked like curry puffs, with a sort of peanut stuffing. It was really, really good.

The Death Curve was about an hour away, and we had arranged for our taxi guy to pick us up from the station there. This gave me plenty of time to think about the poor people who were forced to build this railway. Back in the day, it was nothing but a jungle. They had to make their way through the wilderness, in the intense heat and build it from scratch. It's no wonder that so many of them died. They don't call it the Death Railway for nothing. The Death Curve is a part of the railway in which on the right side of the train is nothing but the face of the cliff, and the right side is a drop to the river below. At this point, everyone on the train rushes to the left side, and when you stick your head out the window, you see a line of heads and elbows.


We got off at the station just as the train was pulling away, cuz we weren't exactly sure if it was where our driver would be. Arranging the whole thing did take a while.Unlike the last few stations, this one was bigger and had little shops selling things like wooden, hand-carved objects and pictures made using buffalo skins. We met up with our taxi driver and after a quick drink, we set off for a waterfall. The journey took quite a while and we were famished when we reached our destination. I can't for the life of me, remember the name of the place. It's either Sai Yok Yai or Sai Yok Noi. We wanted to go to this huge, gorgeous (from the pictures, anyway) one, but for that you had to take a boat and all and we didn't have time. So we had lunch, and then made our way up to the waterfall.


It was all pretty and very shady, and my brother, my mum and I went all the way up. After wandering around for a bit, we got back into the taxi thing for the trip back to the hotel. After checking out, we stopped by the very well maintained War Cemetery. Everything was so neat and orderly. So many of the soldiers who died were really, really young.

After that, we were dropped off at in town, where the buses to Bangkok depart from. We picked up reinforcements (Lay's, which is ridiculously cheap in Thailand and comes in the most outrageous flavors like Seaweed, Extreme Seafood...or maybe Extreme Barbecue, cant' remember...and Bacon & Cheese. And yes, I had Original...), and settled in for what was supposed to be a two-hour journey. Just after the bus pulled away, a Thai karaoke video started to play. Loudly. It was hilarious. My mum said by the end of the two hours, we'd be able to speak fluent Thai. I think that was when I started to read The Devil Wears Prada (and loved every page). The whole journey took over two hours, and the sun was setting when we reached Bangkok. Restlessness was in the air - from my side of the bus, you couldn't see the road signs, so I had no idea where we were or how long more it would take. The early sunset made it seem later than it really was, which was quite frustrating.

The next task was to get a taxi and get to the hotel, which was the most harrowing experience I've ever had while traveling. The first taxi guy had no idea what we were saying, but the second guy said okay. He turned out to be a little...odd. He kept talking to himself, and we begun to wonder if he had any idea where he was going. He didn't, and we made him stop at the first major hotel we saw. The concierge proceeded to give him the wrong directions, and at this stage, I was ready to scream. I wanted out of that taxi so. bad. He was getting quite creepy, so when we saw another famous hotel, we made him stop, and this time, we got out. The people at this hotel were able to call ours and let them know we were on our way (which was really nice of them), and after a whole bunch of taxis turned us down cuz the area we were staying in would have been a little hectic, we finally got into a taxi, and we finally, finally got to our hotel.

We were exhausted, and after showers, we left for the Suan Lum Night Bazaar that we had visited on our last trip. It hadn't changed, and we wandered around deciding where to have dinner. We settled on this outdoorsy place, and as we were leaving, Home by Michael Bublé started to play. I had an 'awwwww' moment, until the guy started singing with a Thai accent. Then, it got funny :) We hit the shops, and I bought a whole bunch of things, including my now-favorite t-shirts (one says 'Hate', but 'Love' when you look at it in the mirror, and the other says "I'm not spoiled, just well taken care of...). The guy I bought them from was really nice, spoke perfect English and had the coolest t-shirts. We took a tuk-tuk back to our hotel, and crashed.

The next morning, we walked to the nearest BTS (their version of the LRT, which is a really, really good idea. You avoid the crazy traffic and the crazy heat) station, and left for Siam Square, which is where we stayed the last time. It was really nice to see all the familiar places, like the restaurant where we had amazing food twice and Hard Rock Café with it's tuk-tuk embedded into the front of the building. We had breakfast at the same waffle place and Orange Julius, then we walked to MBK, which is this shopping mall that everyone goes to. I bought my now-favorite pair of jeans there, and they altered it for me in half an hour. I also ran out of Bahts, and had to borrow money from everyone else. Lunch was McDonald's, which was so strange cuz they had all these pork burgers (Samurai Pork and a burger where instead of buns, you get glutinous rice). After spending more money than I had and a quick trip to the supermarket to pick up some green curry paste and a glass Coke bottle for my cousin (he collects them), we left for the hotel. My brother, my dad and I walked to 7-11 for more reinforcements (Lays for my friends and sandwiches for us), and after showers, we checked out and left for the airport.

Near KL, I started throwing up, which at the time, I thought was the strangest thing. I've been flying since I was 1, and I don't remember ever being sick on a plane. I didn't think it was strange when I didn't stop throwing up for nine or so hours - it definitely wasn't travel sickness. A trip to the doctor rounded up a difficult night.

Overall, this wasn't the easiest holiday we've been on, and there were definitely moments where we were all stressed out. But there were also moments that made it all worth it :)

"Not all who wander are lost." -J.R.R. Tolkien

the more things change, the more they stay the same

I was adding a link list, and I found this. It was interesting to see how I've changed in the last two years, and also how I've stayed the same...

11. I love music
12. I love animals
13. I want to travel all around the world and see everything

--That hasn't changed one bit :)

15. I am told that I am extremely picky when it comes to food

--My friends will attest to this ;)

21. I don’t drink coffee

--I wish. I was converted during the semester of Advanced Quantitative Methods (Summer 2006).

22. I’ve been contemplating getting my nose pierced since last December

--I did get it pierced, on my 19th birthday.

26. I don’t like healthy food – I don’t go anywhere near muesli, oats, and the like. Horse food should be eaten by horses, not humans

--Hahah! :) I still refuse muesli bars.

37. I remember really random things, so why can’t I remember what the five elements of the OCEAN personality test are?

--I still remember really random things, but Openness to Experience - Concientiousness - Extraversion - Agreeableness - Neuroticism. Wooo!

48. I want the Nokia 7260

--I don't even know what the Nokia 7260 is now. What I want is right now is Island by Michael Kors.

49. I never thought I’d have a blog

--I still call this a non-blog blog. I don't like the connotations associated with the word.


I am a firm believer that your experiences influence who you are as a person, so I suppose this shouldn't come as a surprise. But this is exactly why I do this. More for myself than anything else.

the last four months...

This is a review of last semester, which was the last of Year 2. It now seems like it started such a long time ago, until you realize that it's practically May, and four whole months have flown by. Classes were fun (courtesy of a very amusing lecturer), extremely difficult (quizzes on Monday based on pre-reading, plus case studies due), and difficult to sit through (reading slides verbatim is not lecturing, sorry...). There were some good times, but at the end of it, all I felt was completely drained. There were so many assignments and projects and quizzes and case studies, and the workload was consistent - no breaks. As someone put it, a test of human endurance. It felt like torture at the time, so I'm just really glad it's over. That said, we really did learn a lot, and some of the assignments were fun. I tried looking through my older posts to link stuff to this one, but there's waaay too many. Seriously. It shouldn't be that difficult to find, though. I did bitch about the semester a bit ;) I don't remember if I put a lot of the good stuff in here (like getting 100 on an essay...).

For Abnormal Psychology, we had to perform 15 hours of community service. These were taken on a visit to a shelter for women with backgrounds involving prison, drugs or AIDS. We were assigned to the kitchen cabinets. The boys were assigned to the men's home, where they washed cars and spent the rest of the afternoon chatting with the person in charge.

The cabinets weren't in the best of conditions. That glass was swarming with those...creatures, and there were a whole bunch of glasses. Viv really got into the whole thing, and went all Buffy on a cockroach. Hilarious :)

The nosy cat belongs to the lady in the picture, who lives at the center and helped us with the cabinets. Lavan got "friendly" with it (check out what she's doing in the second picture on the top), and Hannah (who also doesn't like cats, we found out...) taught undomestic-me the coolest way to squeeze a mop that doesn't involve you having to actually touch it. My latent obsessive-compulsive (using that term loosely, now that I know DSM criteria for the actual thing...) tendencies surfaced - I kept washing the grime and dead bugs off my feet every couple of minutes.

We made many trips to Petaling Street. The first time was for lunch on a Friday in between classes, and the place we headed to was a shop that specializes in beef noodles. The beef comes in three variants - balls, meat and insides. The first time we went there, I happened to be sitting right by where they assemble the noodles, so I just watched as the lady would cut these chunks of red, raw meat, toss them them in the soup along with some stomach bits. The stomach bits were...peculiar. They looked so strange, I can't imagine what they must taste like. We went there again, after our second community service session, and to another shop selling the same thing after the first session. While my friends had their noodles, I had McDonald's twice, and a strawberry filled donut once.

Top L - R: Hannah took this picture while we were waiting for Lavan at the Pasar Seni LRT station before one of our sessions. We always ended up walking through Petaling Street, so my friends could satisfy cravings for air mata kucing, soya bean, watches and the latest season of Grey's Anatomy.

Bottom L - R: The lady at the shop. Check out the insides! Lavan with my lunch.

Some of the random pictures that were taken e we were walking to/from the centers. The Bottom R picture was taken outside the Street Fellowship center.

This is the place where the Urban Feeding is conducted. It's basically a long tent that's erected and dismantled every weekend, in an area notorious for its drug-related activities. The food is contributed by a church (rice, chicken curry, and stir-fried cabbage) or sometimes, by The Chicken Rice Shop. Volunteers fill up rows and rows of plates before distributing the food to avoid any arguments or fights, and there's also Chinese tea and teh tarik available. The people who come here are homeless, and we recognized a few of them from the Street Fellowship. The first time we were there, it was extremely hot, and the tent didn't help. The second time we were there, it was pouring. Both times, there were many, many people who had come there for a hot meal. We learnt that this has been going on for nine years. It made me wonder how many people actually knew that things like this were going on all this time.

We helped by serving and distributing the food, and later by collecting used cutlery. We were quite drained at the end of the first session, probably cuz of the intense heat. Viv actually asked for Mentos. She usually doesn't go anywhere near anything that isn't sugar free.

This semester we had elections for the very first Student Council of the B.Psych program. Hannah was nominated as President, and we set out to make sure that she won :) But by the time we actually got down to posters and stickers, a lot of other people had already started campaigning. We made posters that described her accomplishments, and handed out stickers that said 'Vote Hannah Lim for President!'. Somewhere along the line, we were talking and a light bulb went off, and we came up with the idea for the pink poster. We laid out the paper on the floor of DSA in Wisma HELP, and she lay down on them, and I traced her outline. The place was pretty deserted, but it would have been interesting if there were heaps of people there. All our hard work paid off, cuz she won! Later, I was elected as the Secretary.

I think it was right before the Chinese New Year break when apparently it was decided that everyone was going to wear red. I don't wear a lot of red. I think I have like...one, red t-shirt. And I was pretty damn sure Lavan wouldn't wear red, but she surprised us all. They made me hold Lavan's Sponge Bob (it was a present) for not comforming. The picture on the right is of our prize-winning (!!!) poster for Human Personality, and was taken just after we finished pasting everything. It was a content analysis of personal ads from a website, and Viv had this really cool idea of printing out the ads (or the bits where they described themselves anyway) and cutting hearts out. It looked very, very cool.

That was also when the hecticness picked up, and soon it was Research Colloquium, where we had to present for Abnormal Psychology. The first picture on the top row was taken during the Keynote Speech we attended. Some time in March (it was after the outdoorsy wedding), I had brought Viv's nail polish back, and Hannah and Lavan decided to paint their nails during class.

The rest of the pictures were taken during our lunch in Chili's with Winnee, our former Research Methods lecturer who is leaving HELP. It was the last day of lectures, right before our finals, so it was good to blow off some steam.

So I guess that's pretty much it. I know I still haven't finished parts two and three of the Thailand trip, I'll get to it soon (Vee - I'm trying to entertain you!).


Song for today - Yesterday and today, I've been listening to Beg by Evans Blue and Shattered by Level. Random stuff from a friend, but good stuff.

tristan and dinglehoppers

Today I watched Legends of the Fall, which I haven't watched in years. It was my favorite movie for the longest time, and watching it again made me remember why. It's a beautiful, beautiful movie...and I'm not just talking about Brad Pitt and his gorgeous hair. The way the story was told is beautiful...all that tragedy...the score is beautiful, the scenery...everything.

Later on, I watched The Little Mermaid. It was released in 1989, the year I turned 3. I have a vague memory of watching with my dad with all the lights off, and Ursula scared me. Then my mum came home, and she had with her a chocolate ball. I love how it still makes me laugh. Like when Scuttle the seagull tried to explain the function of a fork (which he called a 'dinglehopper') to Ariel, he said "Just a little twirl here, and a yank there, and voilà! You've got an aesthetically-pleasing configuration of hair that humans go nuts over!" :)

Good times.

girls don't like boys, girls like cars and money.

Today was the Good Charlotte show. We took a train to Bukit Jalil and when we got there at about 5ish, there were all these people just sitting down and hanging out in front of the gates (it was held in a car park area), and from where we were, we could see the stage. There weren't any lines, so we managed to get right up to the entrance, where we had to wait for maybe an hour before they let us in. What sucked was the took our really nice tickets and ripped them, and that was it. They were proper tickets and all, nice and shiny, and all we got in return was a wrist band. Pfft.

So then, we made our way to the very front of the section we were in. We had a pretty decent view. At the entrance, we were given these inflatable thingies that make a really loud clanging sorta noise when you whack them together. My brother and my cousins decided to inflate theirs and that kept them occupied for a while...that is, when they weren't bitching about the RM5 they had to pay for a paper cup-full of Pepsi (yuk) or Sprite.

What seemed like aaaages later, Colby and...I think it was Fazura or something, from MTV came out (later on it was Utt and Denise. Or maybe it was Colby and Denise...yeah, that makes more sense...) and it was time for the opening acts. Which were really, really good - One Buck Short, Estranged and Lo. I'd definitely say these are the better bands in the country. I can't even remember the names of the bands who opened for INXS or Simple Plan, and Too Phat got boo-ed when they opened for Linkin Park. One Buck Short had oodles of energy, and even though I had absolutely no idea what they were saying, they were fun. One of the guys in the band is the brother of one of the lecturers at HELP, so that was fun too. Estranged is new, I think, and they're famous for this one song, Itu Kamu. The funny thing is, none of their other songs sound anything like this one, they're so much more heavier! But they were good too. Then was Lo, who did that really strange 'Old Newspaper' song, and the nice Operator one. During his last song though, we decided to leave the area we were in cuz we noticed that suddenly, a lot of people were entering the so-called VIP area. It took a while, but we managed to make it out, and we breezed into the VIP area, getting quite close to the stage.

At about 10ish, finally, Good Charlotte came on stage. They opened with some random song (there were a few of these), and they played The Anthem, Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, Girls and Boys, I Just Wanna Live, Predictable, We Believe, Keep Your Hands Off My Girl, The River and a bunch of other songs I didn't know. Like Dance Floor Anthem, which is really cute it goes "put up your hands, say I don't wanna be in love". They're quite good live, and they're very, very nice people. Joel kept talking about how he wants to move here. The other two, the bassist and Billy, they don't talk at all. It was just Benji and Joel, but somehow they made it work.

After the show, we were supposed to take the train back to Masjid Jamek, and we had made plans to go to the McDonald's there and all, but when we got to the train station, there was a huge crowd of people standing outside, and we found out that they had closed. It was 12, and the tickets said the trains were running till 12.30. The stuffy security people said something like the organizers hadn't informed them, so we had to wait to be picked up. Now, my back is killing me, so I think this is it.


*The title is a line from Girls and Boys ;)

clear skies ahead

So it's over. Two weeks of hell, and it's all over. For now, anyway. The lovely people at HELP decided that after all they put us through, all we need is two weeks to recover. Thoughtful people :) But yeah. In two weeks, I start Year Three. But we're not going to go there, cuz thinking about academic stuff is incredibly exhausting.

Yesterday I had my last two papers, Human Personality and Human Factors. That's seven essay questions. It was pretty intense, and the HF questions were so non-specific, there was SO much that had to be written down.

Some of the stuff that's happened lately...oh there was Easter a while back. We had the family over for lunch, that turned into tea. It was nice, though :) We found out things about one of my cousins that somehow I don't think we should have =O

Exams. What sucked was we were having lectures right up till the finals. Our last lecture was Friday, Monday was our first paper. No study break. It was excruciating. I can't remember the last time I took an exam without having studied all the material, but that's exactly what happened for the HF exam. There were ten MCQ's from three chapters, which I didn't have the time to read. There was one day when I was studying Antisocial Personality Disorder and Sociopathy, and I was all sick, so I ended up skipping the rest of that chapter too. So I'm just really, really glad it's all over.

We had a really nice lunch with one of our lecturers, Winnee, who is, as unbelievable as this may be, leaving HELP. We went to Chili's in BSC on the last day of class. It was then we found out another lecturer (with whom I took French and Anthropology) is leaving as well. It doesn't make any sense. Both these people are so much a part of the HELP experience.

So far, all I've been doing is watching oodles of tv. I had a whole bunch of stuff recorded from the past week, and I also ended up watching The Island with Ewan McGregor today.

Tomorrow is the Good Charlotte concert. Hannah sent me an e-mail cuz I don't have comments enabled on here (don't ask me why, I don't know either...) saying that she had to Google them, which I thought was hilarious :) How much fun would it be for her to go hahahahah! Hannah at a rock concert.

Now, I'm talking to Ling and Vee, and Ling just said that she leaves her place at the time her lecture starts. I love how some things never change :)

Tonight's Provoked.

mail

Today, I had my first final paper - Abnormal Psychology (joy!). It was the longest, longest paper. Two and a half hours of solid, non-stop work, and it still wasn't enough! She had us do three diagnoses. If you're not familiar with the DSM, let me put it this way - it's a lot of writing. I ran out of pages in my answer booklet, and was still writing when they went, "Stop writing".

Anyway. When I got home, I crashed on the couch to watch last week's episode of Heroes, and when my mum got home, she brought in the mail and much to my surprise, there were four tickets for the Good Charlotte show this weekend. I vaguely remember entering some random contest on mtvasia.com, but I definitely wasn't expecting this.

And icing on the proverbial cake was a postcard all the way from Venice. I knew it was coming, cuz Kev kept asking me if it had arrived and kept swearing at the Venetian mailmen when I kept telling him it hadn't, but it was very, very nice all the same.

I love getting mail. Even e-mails (the kind that people actually take the trouble to write, not just click on the 'Forward' button) are fun :)

One final down, three to go.

the calm before the storm

I just printed out my last assignment of the semester - a five page reflection on all the things I learnt throughout the semester in my Human Factors class. I would be ecstatic, except that it means now I have to start studying for finals which are next week. There are a million chapters, and we don't get a study break. Oh, and there's the fact that our semester break has been reduced to two weeks, to make way for the two-month so-called break we get in the middle of the year, which isn't really a break because that's when I may do a two-month internship, which could actually be quite fun, but there goes my holiday.

Joy.

music. really, really good music.

On the way back from class today, Signal Fire by Snow Patrol was on the radio. It's on the soundtrack of Spiderman 3, and it's really, really good. Another really, really good song is The Fear You Won't Fall, by Joshua Radin. This was on last night's episode of Grey's Anatomy. Priya and I had a moment yesterday, when we swore that it was written for us.

Don't you just love really, really good music? :)

Signal Fire

The perfect words never crossed my mind

Cuz there was nothing in there, but you.

The Fear You Won't Fall

And I miss you more than I should

Than I thought I could

Part of the beauty of falling in love with you is the fear you won't fall

i hate the world.

Yesterday kinda sucked.

Okay no, that would be an understatement. I spent hours on a case study for Biopsychology. It was the most annoying assignment ever. Fred is the new F-word. Don't say it.

Then there was this video I got from Priya about how dolphins are killed in Japan. It made me cry, and it made me hate the world. You can sign the petition here. I really, really hope this isn't one of those gag petitions that everyone just signs but nothing happens.

Then, there was Charlie. We found out last week that he probably has arthritis, which is apparently normal for 4 to 5 year old bunnies. Charlie is 6. We took him to the vet cuz his arms were all floppy. So we've been giving him medicine since then, and he seemed like he was actually getting better. Until yesterday, when he went back to how he was when we first took him to the vet. He could barely scratch his ear. He wanted to, but it was so difficult for him. It's killing me.

Happy Easter.


Song for last night -- Answer by Sarah McLachlan

Cast me gently into morning,
For the night has been unkind

surprises

I was talking to Priya the other day, and I was telling her how I was waiting and waiting and waiting for my brother to get me Catalyst by Anna Nalick, which was on Grey's Anatomy the other day. It's not that I'm not completely capable of getting it myself, it's just that for some reason, the connection on the desktop is faster than on my laptop.

Anyway.

Today when I got home, I found the song in my inbox. Priya got it and sent it to me. It's little things like this that make you realize just how much you love your friends.

crayons

Today in Human Factors class, we were handed a box of crayons (other groups got markers, not sure why...) and a piece of mahjong paper, and asked to apply the principles of automation (don't worry about what it is). While we were thinking, we started to get creative. Even if it did feel like we were in kindergarten, and even though Hannah (her group finished way before we did) came up to us and went, "this isn't art class!", it felt good to be able to get colorful. The end result - a presentation that won the most number of votes and was saved for the last by our lecturer :)


I liked Harveen's example of calling McDonald's and being asked to press one if you're ordering less than 18 items ("Who came up with 18?!!"). And during the presentation, she went "Bloody hell! All I want is a burger!" The hilarity :)

I actually got sick of jeans (which I otherwise live in) today, and I wore this long, white skirt that has gold leafy type stencil things on it.


I miss painting. And my charcoal pencil.


Song for Today - Someday You'll Know by the New Radicals.

I bought a ticket to the end of the rainbow

I watched the stars crash in the sea

cake

Today was my dad's birthday. Feeling particularly indecisive, we decided on getting slices of cake as opposed to a whole cake. There were six different types of cake from Secret Recipe - Chocolate Indulgence (yum), Chocolate Banana, Tiramisu (I think. I tasted coffee bleh), Black Forest, White Chocolate Macadamia and Lemon Cheesecake (I think). Plus, there's a whole Marble Cheesecake in the fridge. I am so. full.

Back to literature review now.

uni on a sunday (!!)

Today was Research Colloquium. We attended three sessions back-to-back (one was a keynote speech), then we had a break for lunch and to rehearse our presentation. It went okay, our lecturer quite liked it, but apparently not enough to award us a prize HMPH. We attended another presentation after that, and then it was time for the prize giving. For our Human Personality poster, we won RM150 MPH book vouchers, which when you divide by six people, doesn't really amount to a whole lot. But we won =D

When I got home, I got as far as the couch. Then, my brother and mum had leave for his tabla class, and I had to get off the couch (easier said than done) and move the other car cuz it was in the way. I couldn't be bothered to turn, so I drove around the block, and when I got back, I realized that my brother had locked me and my dad (who was fixing something in the garden) out of the house. So then, I had to walk to my grandmother's house (which is down the road) to call my mother, who then had to drive all the way back from the Temple of Fine Arts to give us the key. After all that, I decided a soak was in order. So I drew a bath, poured in some Velvet Crush liquid foam-generating stuff, and finally got out of my new long-sleeved shirt that I had to get for today's presentation (it's white with vertical blue stripes and from WH) and black pants which I've been in since 9 today morning.

I know I have a literature review to write, but I don't think I can manage anything more than sitting in front of the tv watching Grey's Anatomy tonight.

**I didn't get to watch tv last night. Brother was watching some football game. Bleh.