i prefer pi

I kept meaning to update about something, but as often as I remembered I forgot. So… here we are…

Umm…

Oh yeah! Had my first RA class today. It was a bit tedious, but I’m pumped because I learned every person’s name and there were about 25 people in the room. I generally have a good memory for random facts and trivia but a bad one when it comes to names. The trick will be to see if I still have them all for next week’s class.

It’s 3:00 in the morning, and at this point I’m so far off of my routine that I’m not even sure that it’s right to call it a routine anymore. I did all of my laundry though (including my sheets), so I can rest easy tonight knowing that the world is safe from peculiar odors once again
Listening to: The Cheat is not Dead
Current mood: sleepy

Well… maybe not so long a time. I lost my routine this week, ostensibly because I have a blister on my foot that just won’t go away, but really, I spend most of my time there biking and only a bit on running/walking, and when I wear two socks it doesn’t hurt so much and I also like run-on sentences and lots of commas; how about you? I want to play badminton, but none of my friends do. Time to go meet random people at the Rec, I think
I have been on top of my homework this week, which is a big :thumbsup: I mostly finished my STAT homework on Tuesday night, and it isn’t due until *gasp* Friday.

I made a new LJ friend ^_^

Current mood: g’morning

If you’ve ever wondered to yourself “Self, I wonder how much stuff I could get done if I didn’t use the internet in my room but for an hour or two a day and went to the labs for everything else,” I’ve got news my friends. The answer is “a lot.” You should try it.

First week of class went pretty well. I’ve modified my schedule so that I’m in bed definitely by midnight every evening, which gives me plenty of slumber before getting up around 7:10 to go to the Rec. Tuesday was hella crowded, but attendance has dropped to about a quarter of that level as the week has progressed. Getting up so early gives me time to get there and walk/jog/bike for a good while, then to come back and shower, have breakfast and spend focused time in conversation with God. The worst part about going to the Rec on summer mornings was getting there when it was already 80 degrees and watching the display on Kyle Field as it climbed another 15 while you were there; the worst part about going to the Rec on winter mornings is getting there when it’s 40 degrees outside and watching it climb one measly degree:P

The scale at the Rec might be lying, but at least it’s doing so in the right direction.

Some things are distracting me that needn’t do so. Time to get focused; time to throw off the extra baggage. This chapter is powerful stuff. It’s a new semester! *cues up my theme song*

Current mood: cheerful

Today was my last day at work for the break, and I’m pretty glad that it’s over. Every day this week topped the previous for “most disgusting workday”:P On Monday I spent about two hours moving half-melted ice cream from one cart (that was stuck to the floor) to another (that wasn’t) at the end of my shift, hoping that someone else would take care of the rest before I got back. On Tuesday, I learned that they hadn’t(:P) so I spent the second half of my shift in the freezer again, moving frozen food out onto the freezer aisles. I spent two hours today trying to clean that blasted freezer floor, largely to no avail. The freezer went out at some point during the last quarter, causing a lot of stuff (mostly ice cream) to melt and mix and halfway freeze to the floor. This stuff was literally an inch thick in some places, and trying to clean it up was like an onion: there was layer after layer and the deeper I got, the more I wanted to cry. But I kept Luke 16:10 and Colossians 3:23 in mind and I actually began to enjoy it:)

There are three main things I’ve learned while working at Albertsons– no, four:

1. People are very friendly, patient, and courteous when you go out of your way to treat them in the same manner. I only had one customer get audibly angry with me when I told her that we didn’t have any backstock of Lipton’s Instant Peach Tea, but it was late in the afternoon of Christmas Eve and everyone in the store was pretty frantic, so I found it in my heart to forgive her:) I felt like people were looking down on me for doing my job a few times, but it was usually when they’d walk up with a question while I was stocking the bottom shelf:P This lesson is really an applied version of the more general life-lesson of always putting other people before yourself. This is something that I’m continually learning. Thanks, Dad.
2. A lunch break is just long enough to eat and read about two chapters of Nicholas Nickleby, which my brother got for me for Christmas:) More on that in a bit.
3. Bread is the dirtiest product in the store. Not the actual loaf, mind you, but the bags in which they’re packaged. Everything else that you buy comes to the store in an external box or something and stays that way until it goes to the shelf, but bread bags are exposed to the air of the factory, truck and back room for (potentially) several days before they hit the shelf. Handle 50 or 60 of those bags and I guarantee that your hands will never have been dirtier. Really fine dirt. Dirt that gets into the cracks and crevasses of your hands and doesn’t come out. I’ve washed my hands 3 or 4 times now with abrasive cleaners and I still look dirty:P
4. The definition of “quiescently.” Actually, I didn’t learn this one at Albertson’s. But I saw that the popsicles that I was stocking thought it important to boast that they were frozen in such a manner, so I looked it up when I got home. To tell you the truth, I’m still not quite sure what it means.

Nicholas Nickleby trundled along somewhat slowly for the first 150 pages or so, but the adventures of the titular young donkey lead to Consequences of some importance today:) It’s rather nice to read a book by Dickens at a leisurely pace; I rushed through A Tale of Two Cities in the last two days before it was due back in high school (it was still awesome, though) and I never quite finished Our Mutual Friend The version I have denotes where each issue began and ended in serialized publication, and if I stay at that pace then I’ll still have a bit of book left in a month (it also keeps me in suspense from day to day:))

I’ve gotten swallowed up by Zelda for the GameCube. There was a time when I would have been overjoyed to be so immersed in a game, but these days I can’t shake the feeling that I’m wasting time that could be better spent with other people. “Other people” haven’t really been around much for the last week or so though, because I’ve been working 8+ hour shifts starting at 1:00 or 4:00 and by the time I get home, everyone else has gone to bed. I stay up to have supper, surf a bit or play a game, and by the time I wake up everyone has left for the day. I saw my brother for the first time in three days last night, and we live in the same house:\ I’m Free now, so I plan on spending some of that time with people rather than glued to my chair all day:)

I realize how droll this probably sounds. I guess a few people read this now and again because they comment once in a while, but no one ever tells me “Hey man, you’re boooring.” I guess I keep updating so that I record events for posterity’s sake. Anybody out there? Hello?

Current mood: accomplished

I vacillate between making “relevant” updates, “irrelevant” updates and no updates at all. Determining the nature of this update is an exercise left to the reader.

I’ve learned a few things during my tenure as a grocery stocker at Albertson’s, some of which are alternative interpretations of some common acronyms. For instance, in the dairy section (which includes juices for some reason), OMG signifies a tasty “Orange Mango Guava” blend, GLBT is not an alternative lifestyle organization but rather Pillsbury’s “Great Layers, Butter Tastin’” biscuits, and LOL stands for “Land o’ Lakes.”

This is the part of my update where I insert a rhetorical question in order to spark some discussion or vent about something that’s going on that I don’t want to write about. You’ll notice that I critique certain features of blogging in order to draw attention away from the fact that I use them. Like I’m doing right now:)

Is it really a Bad Thing to be concerned about the people in your life? I can’t imagine an existence where my actions didn’t affect the people around me, or where someone didn’t call me out when I was making harmful decisions. Feel free to criticize as you deem fit:)

The dorms open on Wednesday, but I won’t be back until Sunday afternoon, methinks. I always like to be back pretty early, but staying up here and going to my brother’s concert (and earning a few extra bucks) is preferable this time.

Current mood: contemplative