Passion

I... um. *bangs head on wall*

What the hell do I think I'm doing?

This is why I never went outside last quarter.



At least I rediscovered Weezer. Life is always better with Weezer in it.
And George is still not returning my calls. It's been six weeks. :-(

Hey guys, sorry this update has been so long in the works.

My break in Texas was kinda nice in that I got to sleep in, and I got to go to about ten thousand restaurants, which was fun, and I got to hang out with my grandparents, who are cool people. Then there was the snow I mentioned. Unfortunately, the whole reason I went to Texas in the first place sort of loomed over my head the whole three and a half weeks.

The weekend before Christmas my grandma went into the hospital. She'd been coughing for weeks--she had a nasty case of bronchitis she'd contracted during her last chemo session--and couldn't get the cough under control, plus she couldn't get enough air to walk to the bathroom. So she finally went into the ER. The doctors were able to figure out why she hadn't stopped coughing--the tumor on her right lung was bleeding into her bronchi. They did a whole bunch of scans, and the verdict came out pretty bad. The tumor grew and is now also in her left lung and in her brain. She got to come home Christmas Eve but she's now on oxygen and she started whole brain radiation the 30th of Dec. They upgraded her to Stage 4 cancer.

Nanny gave me lots of life advice the last few days I was down there. She told me some really interesting things, and she had awesome advice for the present and the future.... She made me promise, above all else, that I would get my degree. When she was in college she was majoring in nuclear chemistry, and she got a job designing rocket guidance systems, but she never got her degree because it was really really hard for women to do that back then--not only was there the radiation thing inherent in the job, but you also couldn't take maternity leave for more than a few months because the field was moving forward so fast and you couldn't keep up. So she had four kids and worked in other fields, but she's always had this scientific background and it was really neat to talk to her about stuff, because she actually understood all my insane ramblings about protein structures. She also gave me a book of poetry by Dorothy Parker and I'm really enjoying reading it--it's funny. She got it for Christmas when she was 16 and there are notes in the margins she wrote when she was a teenager. It's kinda cool.

Other than that George came down to visit me Sunday afternoon and it turns out he and his girlfriend are on this "probation" thing. He doesn't seem too broken up, either. He says he's sick of her. The stupid boy described his perfect relationship and everything he said described his relationship with me. I don't know if I'm missing his hints or if he doesn't realize what he's saying. One of us is being stupid and dense. I'm going to pretend it's him.

I guess the only other things I have to report are my grades... B- in physics, A- in Latin, A in physics lab, and A IN BIOCHEMISTRY!!! (Biochem was the really hard class, where the average on the second midterm was a 43 and I got a 64, and the prof was a Nobel prize candidate because he discovered the structure of the ribosome...) I went to talk to the prof, Noller, today to get my grade and to ask him which grad schools rock for biochem. We had a really good chat (I don't understand why so many kids hate him, maybe it's because we actually had to work in his class). He gave me a list of awesome grad schools (Top 3 are UCSF, Yale, and Caltech) and said he'd be more than happy to write me a recommendation when I apply. I was walking on air.... Harry Noller, Nobel Prize candidate, writing me a recommendation? And I got an A... this totally makes up for the shit I endured in physics and the stupid grade I ended up with.

Anyway, sorry that update took so long to get posted. And I don't really feel like typing out a post about flying home New Year's Day, so just know that it took forever and too many planes and that my red bag had a bit of a hiatus in SoCal but made it home okay, just a little late.

I have homework. Ick.

The one thing about a three-week long vacation is that after one week you've vacationed all you can vacation, and you've run out of things to do.
So... I do these.

2004
1. What did you do in 2004 that you'd never done before?
I asked a guy out.... I took an upper-division class... I took physics and Latin. Hmm. I should do more new things.

2. Did you keep your new years' resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
I didn't make any last year, because I always forget what they are, and that makes it difficult to keep them.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
Yes! My aunt Sara had Kyle in late May, and my seester Megan had Galen Hunter in mid-November.

4. Did anyone close to you die?
Nope.

5. What countries did you visit?
Sadly, none. I haven't had much opportunity to travel. Money's tight. Or... Money belongs to Bank of America.

6. What would you like to have in 2005 that you lacked in 2004?
Real love. And enough money to be able to afford turning the heat on in the house.

7. What date from 2004 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
Umm... There are a few dates I'm trying to forget.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
Taking Organic Chemistry and Genetics over the summer, while working, and gettings As. Oh, and reconstructing my identity at the same time, since it had been destroyed shortly before the summer started.

9. What was your biggest failure?
Spring quarter.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
Spring quarter.

11. What was the best thing you bought?
Ummm.... My biochem textbook? My tuition?

12. Whose behaviour merited celebration?
No one in particular comes to mind.

13. Whose behaviour made you appalled and depressed?
The red states.

14. Where did most of your money go?
UC Regents.

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
The ocean.

16. What song will always remind you of 2004?
Mmm, Dashboard Confessional's Vindicated will always remind me of summer 2004.

17. Compared to this time last year, are you:
i. happier or sadder? Happier.
ii. thinner or fatter? Slightly thinner.
iii. richer or poorer? Much poorer.

18. What do you wish you'd done more of?
Homework.

19. What do you wish you'd done less of?
Panicking.

20. How will you be spending Christmas?
I'm in Corpus Christi, Texas, spending Christmas with my grandparents and my cousin Dominic. This trip was the best idea I've had all year.

Hey, where's question 21?

22. Did you fall in love in 2004?
Nope. Managed to fall out of it, though. Which was a pretty big accomplishment.

23. How many one-night stands?
None.

24. What was your favourite TV program?
The Gilmore Girls!

25. Do you hate anyone now that you didn't hate this time last year?
Well, not really hate, but have a sort of strong jealous-of-and-therefore-hatred thing going on, yeah.

26. What was the best book you read?
Molecular Biology of the Gene? I dunno. Life of Pi was pretty good, but the ending weirded me out. Oh, I know, I know. The best book was definitely The Lovely Bones.

27. What was your greatest musical (re)discovery?
Radiohead.

28. What did you want and get?
My identity back.

29. What did you want and not get?
A good grade in Physics.

30. What was your favourite film of this year?
Probly Spiderman 2, since it was the last film I saw in theaters. (WHAT? I'm a college student. I don't have time to go to the movies.)

31. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
Jamie and Nick took me out to lunch. I think I had a nervous breakdown that weekend. Spring quarter sucked. I turned 19, but I've never in my life felt less my age than I have this year.

32. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
Money. So I could pay my tuition without bleeding.

33. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2004?
*cough* Cheap.

34. What kept you sane?
The internet, Sex God, and Ann.

35. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
Um, Orlando Bloom?

36. What political issue stirred you the most?
Abortion and gay marriage. But the red states won, so I guess those issues are right out the window.... Hello, fascism.

37. Who did you miss?
George. Everyone in Reno. My dad. My extended family.

38. Who was the best new person you met?
Emily!

39. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2004:
Erm, be yourself. I could write a really long entry on what I mean by that, but I really don't have time right now.

40. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year:
"It's been a hard day's night, and I've been working like a dog. It's been a hard day's night, I should be sleeping like a log..."

Okay, that was yet another pointless waste of time. Ah, the internet. How much it benefits our lives.