public transit – Imaginary Sunshine

Back to the daily grind

Michelle — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 03:25:17 +0000

Today was my first day back after a lovely week off. I had been incredibly productive (according to me, hah). During the week I had off, I had done:

6 chapters worth of notes for statistics
3 chapters worth of study questions for oceanography
1 statistics assignment
1 oceanography assignment
1 oceanography quiz
1 ecology lab report
1 phytogeography term paper (25% of my grade, meep)
readings for oceanography, ecology
baked 2 3 batches of cookies & muffins (no photos to show for it because it all went into the tummies of people in this house)

This morning, I woke up at 5:30am and had left my house at 6:10am. My bus was on time. Halfway between the stop and the terminal stop, the engine refused to work and slowed to a crawl. The driver decided to make the bus crawl to the nearest major road where there would be other buses. So we got there eventually and everyone on the bus piled out. We waited for the next bus. It was the same bus that goes on the same route as the bus that had died, but goes by my stop 30 minutes later. I was not impressed because that meant I could have easily slept in for another half hour, or dashed back into the house to get mittens.

I did get to school in one piece though, with all fingers frostbitten-less. I got to class 5 minutes late, but my professor was showing a video about a school of fish being eaten by tuna. I love suspense music that the BBC adds to their nature videos. Blue Planet & Planet Earth are to complete loves to me. So for the class that I was 5 minutes late for, the professor decides to end class 20 minutes early (which means that I was only there for a grand total of 25 minutes!) and then had an hour and a half to putt around doing not a whole heck of a lot (I ended up studying before class). Then there was class, then I had time to kill (again) before my doctor’s appointment. I had this great conversation with him about how sexual active I am, how I should get tested for X, Y and Z and consider getting vaccinations done. Swell. I also apparently have high blood pressure. It’s not my fault that I understand what the numbers that show up on the machine are and therefore get nervous when I see them creeping up (he took my blood pressure 5 different times on the machine, it was on a timer).

Tomorrow I’m going shopping before school! Because my first class is (blissfully, thank you Professor H!) canceled so we can have “more time to work on our term papers”. Pfft. I got mine done over my break, I’m fine! Which means that I don’t need to be on campus until the afternoon (12:30pm) and that means that I can go downtown to one of my favourite little hole-in-the-wall stores. My shopping goal is some inspirational yarn (it’s sad when my stash bores me, or maybe I should open up a few more bins, hah) along with some more buttons, ribbons and embroidery thread (embroidery thread, the non-shiny stuff, is usually dirt cheap at other places, but it’s even cheaper there!). Photos of shopping stash will follow tomorrow!

Mishaps, cheerful antics and everything else

Michelle — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 05:31:21 +0000

I’ve been sending time away from the computer lately (I was online for ~10 minutes yesterday!). I counted it all up, and I spent nearly four and a half hours in public transit yesterday! 3 hours for to and from school, then more time on various buses and trains. I completely abused my transit pass, thank goodness I have it though – it would have cost $15 out of pocket if I didn’t have my transit pass!

Going out to dinner last night was horrible. My mom heard about this restaurant on the radio and on a tv commercial. They serve “fusion” food (Chinese food and western foods) but the service was absolutely horrible. We got seated very quickly, and we ordered within like maybe 10 minutes of arrival. After we ordered our food for dinner, it took over 50 minutes before the first dish arrived. We’d called a server over (at around 30 min) to see what was taking so long. She apologized for the wait and promised to go see what was going on. At another time (maybe at around 50 min), we called the (same!) server over again, in hopes of just getting rice or something while we were waiting (it was a 4 person combo meal, so we were supposed to get rice and dessert with 4 different dishes) and she sees us waving, walks over, stops, looks at our table and then just turns around and walks away – without even asking us what we were asking for! Every single thing that was brought to our table that night (including the bill) was brought by the manager, with an apology for the wait every single time. One of the dishes was too salty, the rice was cold (!) when it arrived at our table, the person refilling our tea cups spilled into two of dishes and… well… needless to say, they didn’t get a very sizable tip from us. But seriously, 50 minutes? One of the dishes we ordered was a type of fish with vegetables – which should have been the easiest (and quickest!) thing to cook up. The table next to us was seated after we were, ordered after we had ordered and they got their food quickly, ate, paid and left before we even got anything that we had ordered.

My dad just got home from his trip (I’m hesitant to call it a vacation, as he spent some time at tourist spots, but the reason for his trip was a death in the family). During the time, he apparently never got a hair cut and we were all like “Oh. My. Gosh.” when we saw him. There was definitely a lot of photos being taken before his hair cut last night (my mom did it) as it was the only time we’ve ever seen it that long. He did bring back gifts for us! My sister got a really nice watch (however, she’s not sure when she’d get to wear it as it’s not waterproof and she works with tanks full of water at work…), my other sister got a new cell phone (granted, she needs to use a power adapter, but it’s essentially an iPhone lookalike and she’s been wanting a new phone for ages, and her SIM card fits ‘quite nicely’ into it) and I got… Well, heh, I got another Blythe doll. I’m still bouncing around names for her, but she’s quite cute. She’s got black hair, bangs and a bowl/mushroom hair cut. So she pretty much reminds me of me when I was under the age of ten. Not quite sure what to call her, most of my childhood nicknames are related to my name and none of them seem to ‘fit’ her, especially since some of those nicknames are still in use and I haven’t had bangs and a bowl/mushroom cut since I was under the age of 10.

We’d gone out for most of today – out for tea/lunch, grocery shopping, the library (I borrowed Intensely Alice by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor, The Simpsons: An Uncensored, Unauthorized History by John Ortved with the foreword by Douglas Coupland and Rubber Soul by The Beatles because my sister said that she never knew there was a song called Michelle). Got home maybe mid-afternoon? I spent a few hours looking at trip photos/videos from when my dad was on his trip – there’s the most adorable photo of the behind of a red panda! And giant pandas! And other awesome animals! And then there were photos of relatives that I recognize (ahem, I’ve apparently met all of my uncles and aunts, at least the ones that were living when I was born, but I only recognize a handful of them because I’ve never been back to visit them after that first time… When I was under 2 years old…).

Oh, also while I was out today, I found someone’s hiding spot outside of the restaurant that my family went to for lunch (the bottle was full and unopened – but I left it there):

Cute, but odd

Michelle — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 03:29:03 +0000

Just a few things to mention that occurred today:

Handed in my application for the nursing program at one of the schools that I’m applying to for August/September 2010
I’ve been on 8 buses today.
I got 8/10 on my cell biology term paper (the one on primary cilium and their importance) – whoot?
Today is World AIDS Day, not that it really ‘occurred’ or rather that it actually ‘was’. Did you wear a red ribbon today?

It was reported in the newspaper today that the majority of people in Canada with HIV or AIDS are in British Columbia, Ontario and Quebec. I’m not surprised. Why? Because of the majority of the country’s population are in those three provinces. That’s like saying the majority of fish live in oceans in comparison to seas and rivers and lakes.

Today’s been pretty relaxing. I managed to stay up during my biology lecture today, studied, made cookies.

And I had this awesome (MSN) conversation with my friend J:

J: You just reminded me how much i miss you
J: We don’t have anyone weird here…
J: It’s so sad
J: =(
M: … Are you calling me weird?
J: Well, we are
M: … LOL
J: But yes
J: I think people that roleplay dolls are counted as odd
J: Cute, but odd

At least my friend thought that it’s a cute habit?

I am currently on the lookout for a decently advertised (Canadian) price on a 2gb micro SD card. That’s not $20, because I feel like being cheap. If anyone notices one that’s at a decent price, feel free to drop me the link!

Of mice, public transit and term papers

Michelle — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 01:36:51 +0000

Today’s been pretty good. I slept in a bit this morning, and did get to class on time this morning (well, I was about 5 minutes late – but my prof had only gone through two lecture slides by the time I got there) and I went to my biology lab. Friend and lab partner, R, was late (it was an optional lab, but it was an open lab to work on our projects). So she was about an hour later, so everyone else was working on their projects, I did my notes, and I played with the mice that were in my room. One of the lab instructor had gotten 3 white lab mice from a colleague, the mice all have tumors, it’s so tragic. But she saw that they had caught my interest, so she told me to go ahead and feed them if I wanted to (so I fed them sunflower seeds, they were so adorable chewing on the seeds!). And then she let me open the cage and pull one out to hold. They’re really adorable mice – white with red eyes and long skinny tails. They were so adorable and squeaked! Ahh, they were so cute. But while I was waiting in that hour, I got the majority of another hat done while doing my notes and waiting for R to arrive while being completely amused by the mice and reviewing my project notes (the 1 page, single spaced, size 12 font, biology project is done, as of ~2:30pm).

Also spent my time on public transit today listen to Hans Langer (again… x many times) and read half of Story of O by Pauline Réage while ignoring crazy, stupid, annoying people that travel on public transit. Which was nice. That being said, some young child asked me what book I was reading while on the bus. Normally when people ask that, I just hold the book up to flash them the cover. But instead, I said I was reading the first Harry Potter. Know what that kid said to me? “Wow, you’re a SLOW reader! That book’s been around since forever.” Nice to know that 1997, for the UK version, and 1998, for the US version, counts as forever these days!

But the next few days will be so much fun. Mostly my psychology paper, which still needs a little bit more work and a lot of editing before I hand it in on Monday, and more crafting for fun things like… gifts? Yeah, my sister went and bought a shitload of yarn (pardon my French) because she’s making a fireplace cozy… (I’m quite serious about this.) Mostly because she can. Oh the people that I’m related to…

And… I have two upcoming fanlistings (yay): General Hospital (favourite soap opera!) and Seamus Dever (actor, who played Ian Devlin on General Hospital, and play a character on a new favourite show, Castle). I’ll probably be getting them between my third (biology) and fourth (and last, psychology) finals since there’s a week between them.

Fight or flight… or freeze?

Michelle — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 06:54:56 +0000

Leashes exist for a reason…
It was after my biology tutorial and I was walking to one of the buildings where I can go and get something to eat and meet up with one of my friends, I was walking with another one of my friends and this guy had this dog. He was holding onto the leash, which was not attached to the dog’s collar. And this was like… I’m going to say it was a large sized dog, even though I’m a horrible judge of canine sizes (it looked like a Rottweiler). So there’s this dog, and it comes up to me and starts barking at me and growling and showing its teeth and just blocking me from continuing walking forward. And you know that fight or flight response that we’re all supposed to have and it’s instinctual and all that? Yeah, I just froze and could not move. The guy didn’t even try to pull his dog away from me! My friend, J, was a few feet from me started to yell at the guy because he wasn’t doing anything and the guy just rolled his eyes and went “He won’t hurt anyone!” and she yelled at him some more to do something and he finally grabbed the dog by the collar and pulled the dog away.

I’ve actually gotten a lot better about my fear of dogs over the last few years, I’m pretty okay with dogs as long as they’re not… barking at me, trying to jump on me and (heh) as long as I can’t see all their teeth. And I thought I’d been doing pretty well with my fear of dogs. And then there was this dog and all the barking and the teeth and growling… -shudders-

Parenting, you’re really doing it wrong…
To the idiotic woman on the bus this morning who was scolding her toddler-aged daughter. If you want to scold your child for hair pulling, that’s fine. If you want to take away her toys or sweets, that’s perfectly fine. But picking up your toddler-aged daughter by the hair and then lifting her up so that her feet are able to dangle and then not setting her back down, even though she’s crying and trying to get away from you, until everyone on the bus is yelling at you… Is so not the way to get your point across. Yes, hair pulling hurts. But lifting up a child by their hair in order to prove a point to them is just cruel. And… illegal. Yay for bus drivers who call for transit security, and telling you to get your butt off of their bus.

“OMFG, I can’t believe I failed the midterm!!!” (Not me, by the way.)
What I overheard my friend telling my other friend. Due keep in mind that a) she did not start studying until the day of the midterm (biology, I’ve blogged about it more than once already, haha), b) she did not even do a brief read-through of the lecture slides until the day of the midterm and c) she rarely shows up to class and when she does, she leaves early. And she was all like teary-eyed and saying how she completely ‘bombed’ the midterm (and after she showed me her grade, I have to concur – she did, in fact, completely bomb the midterm). It probably didn’t help that she got 0 for two of the questions (worth 8 and 10 marks, respectively). And then she was saying how she was hoping that the average was “really low” so that they’d scale it up (the midterm for 2008 had an average of ~50%, they scaled it up to ~60%). But the average for the 2009 midterm was ~65%, so no scaling will be done.

And… How was your Wednesday? I hope it went swimmingly!

Back to school (sort of)

Michelle — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 22:59:05 +0000

Today was the first day of school, but… not really. The second Tuesday of September generally marks the first day back to school for most (if not all) students in BC. Luckily (???) for me, I attend a university that likes to party (joy?) and so the first day of classes isn’t actually until tomorrow. So I woke up at 5:15am this morning (to get used to waking up at absurdly early times…), made myself a cup of tea and sipped that while listening to instrumentals, reading the news on my laptop and ate (previously frozen) blueberry waffles.

I was not very productive this morning and didn’t leave the house until 8:30am, when my sister J was leaving for work (we go in the same direction). So I got to school and bought books for 2 of my classes (organic chemistry – cost me an arm and a leg; infant psychology did not cost me as much as I thought it really would). Then I hopped onto an unfamiliar bus, encountered a very nice bus driver and a very rude (and smelly! gah) fellow public transit patron. I was not impressed (but, however, was grateful for the knowledgeable bus driver)… All in the name of shopping for yarn.

Since I didn’t have classes to go to, tutorials to attend or labs to prepare for, I went shopping for yarn and bought 11 balls of the most deliciously coloured (leaf green) yarn to finish my current (non-pop tab) project. It’s going incredibly well. I’m going to probably post a progress shot of it soon, it’s getting so big (more than half my height already!). But yes, I braved an unfamiliar bus in order to go to a very particular store in order to buy 11 balls of scrumptious yarn and 1 package of mini metal snaps (for dolly clothes).

Because, really, beyond school (from September to April) and work (from May to August) and the Boyfriend and my friends and family woes… What else do I do besides crafting? Not much, actually. Although lately I’ve perfected my budgeting spreadsheet, backed up all my website files and all my photos (a mere 4gb since June 2007… but 3.5gb are from 2009 alone, specifically since I got my own digital camera), watched many episodes of Castle, Being Erica, Mantracker and True Blood (catching up on everything on the DVR so I could actually record General Hospital today!)

And just one more thing to add.. While I was on that unfamiliar bus, it stopped at a red light at an intersection. I glanced out the window and there was a small little market that seemed to sell mostly meats and some produce. There were computer printed signs in large block letters and the one that caught my eye was the one that said “Urinated Meat”… I’m pretty sure they were going for “Marinated Meat”.

Questions:

How was your Tuesday?
If you went back to school today (or just had school or work), how did it go? Which part was your favourite and/or least favourite?
What is the oddest typo that you have ever seen in print, anywhere at anytime?

An atypical Friday morning

Michelle — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 01:26:03 +0000

@ Dane – The girl who was rude was K, who was hanging out with A. But I know more than one A. As well as more than one K. I tend to reuse letters due to the fact that everyone honestly just seems to have names that start with the same first letter in the area that I’m from. Off the top of my head, I can think of 3 A’s that I’ve referenced before, probably 4-5 K’s, 6+ J’s, a few D’s, 2-3 C’s (not including Clay), probably 2-3 M’s, no N’s, Q’s or B’s as I can recall and a few others. If I gave everyone their own letter, I’d be restricted to only talking about 26 people. and I’d have to start referring to myself as ‘Michelle’ or ‘Me’ in conversation snippets rather than the super-simple ‘M’. And I do know more than 26 people (I’m not that socially stunted, I don’t think?). Granted, I’m not buddy-buddy with the majority of the people that I get to interact with, but the silly, the stupid and the stupendously awesome do get mentioned from time to time. So I’m sorry for the confusion. My clarification: A (who is dating F) is not the same A who is friends with K (who is a judgmental moron).

I fell asleep sometime around 1:37am (which was when I sent out my last text message). I woke up a few times. Once at 4:30am-ish, once at 7am and then another time at 8:30am. When it was 8:30am, I got out of bed and did all the usual morning things. Ate my bagel while brushing my hair, brushed my teeth while tugging up my socks – I like multi-tasking in the morning. I got outside and was at the bus stop by 8:50am. This is good, the bus is not scheduled to arrive until 9am and there is no way that the bus is ever more than 10 minutes early because it leaves the bus loop like… 15 minutes before it gets to my stop. So this is good.

9am passes. I’m getting fidgety, it starts raining. Ughh… Pull out the (slightly broken) red umbrella, look at time on cell phone. Oh, hey, the next bus gets there at around 9:20am. Might as well stick out the wait since going back home would entail me waking up my dad (and that’s never a good thing). 9:20 passes, no bus. I try calling home to see if my dad’s up so I can get a ride – no can do, “The number you have dialed is not in service. Please check the area code that you are dialing and try your call again.” I hate the digital phone company that we’re with. (Read my post here to see how much I hate them and the company is called iTalkBB – good choice to avoid!). See, if I get on my bus on time (… and if it arrives on time), I get to school about 20-30 minutes before my first class and I can factor in the time that it takes me to walk from the bus loop to the other side of the campus to get to my class. Which is awesome and I always get there early. Provided the bus actually arrives.

So it’s about 9:35am. Still no bus. But I have company at the bus stop now! This really great, friendly old man who has a “#1 Grandfather” baseball hat on and this guy who’s probably around my age who, as I found out, lives right next door to me (one of my neighbour’s tenants, they either have like 3 different families living there or there’s been a change in tenants) and attends one of the artsy schools (which costs an arm and a leg in tuition). It’s still raining. And raining. And raining. Oh, have I mentioned yet that I was wearing runners today? With ankle socks? (My stash of knee socks are currently in the laundry basket – obviously I need to buy more so I don’t end up wearing ankle socks when it’s pouring rain and I have the poor sense not to wear something else besides runners.) And I was wearing jeans. Which got soaked, all before I even got on a bus. Awesome.

9:45am – the bus arrives! It’s crowded because the last two buses never showed up at any of the stops. I managed to snag a seat right by the front door. The bus chugs along and then stops at the midway point. Apparently it’s ‘running ahead of schedule’ (for that bus’ schedule). And stays there. For 5 minutes. The bus that I’m in pulls into the train station at probably around 10:05am? I could see the train leaving right when I get there. So, there was another 7 minute wait. Then I shuffle onto the train. I finish half of a crossword by the time I get to my stop. Get off, get into the line for yet another bus. That takes about 5 minutes (not bad, not bad…).

I get to school at 11:20am. My class is nearly halfway over. So I walked (and managed to avoid stepping into giant puddles masquerading as lakes!) to the bookstore and sat myself down and flipped through more magazines before my other class began at noon.

Needless to say… Today started off fairly decently (no one ate my remaining blueberry bagel, yes!) but it went straight downhill from there.

It’s March, that means… snow?

Michelle — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 02:02:52 +0000

It’s March. March. And guess what it’s been doing today? Guess what’s been falling down from the little giant clouds up in the sky? Not rain, I wouldn’t complain (too much) about rain in March. Snow. Snow! Ugh. So I went outside early to catch the bus to go to school, at the same time that my sister goes to catch the bus (around 8:30am). No bus (of course). 9:09am, I’m about to call it quits (I only have two classes and it’s not crucial that I show up for classes and I was freezing) when the bus comes around the corner. I curse (out loud) because I was about to head back home. Oh, I got to the building where my first class was about 2 minutes before classes started, yeah, good job there, public transit system.

I’ve been reading over a (translated) German folktale for my English literature class, because they’re related (and so I can argue the parallels and differences for my term paper, maybe – I still haven’t decided on my topic). It’s okay… Not the most exciting thing ever, I expected the Germans to be a little bit more angsty, but they’re not. It’s kind of a disappointment, actually. After all, the Grimm fairytales are German in origin (I mean, seriously, have you ever read the original translation for Cinderella? So depressing, and disturbing.). And those were based on German folktales as well.

Anyways… I’ve discovered that I didn’t type up my tables for my biology lab (whoot, digestive enzymes?) so I’m going to go and do that in a little while (I heart completion marks). In other wonderful news, the doctor confirmed that yes, I do have the flu and that yes, I totally could have avoided this by getting a flu shot (which is technically free to me, as I’m volunteering in a setting where I interact with people with poor immune systems). Thanks, Doc, what I always wanted to hear. It’s called they were giving out forms (that they fill out, to verify where I volunteer) last Friday, which happened to be when I was already sick with the flu. Kinda missed that boat, eh?

Questions:

What’s the weather like where you are right now? What’s the weather usually like during this time of year where you are right now?
What’s the most memorable Grimm fairy tale (to you)? Why?
When’s the last time that you got a flu shot?

My answers:

Snowing… And it’s usually not snowing in March. Mixture of rain (mostly rain), sunshine, clouds.
Cinderella. The whole ‘blood in the shoe’ thing, hands down most memorable part ever.
As I recall, never. Although I might have gotten one when I was toddler or younger (apparently it’s suggested for infants and toddlers, I learn something new every day).