LOVELOVELOVE THIS

and this about Haley Smith.

All this for $25 in electronics

"No, I'm sorry but I can't roll my window up."

Sexy giant squid

I'm going to start sewing this weekend.

Halloween costume ideas?

"Halloween is the one night a year when girls can dress like a total slut and no other girls can say anything about it."

I'm a mouse, duh!

I kind of want to go as a mouse... or a sexy engineer. 

Arguments

This is not the way they should go:

"I'm very upset at what you said last week, and I can't just drop it, so I needed to tell you now."

"I was very rude, I know, and I'll try harder to keep my mouth shut. However, I'm very upset about something that happened 4 months ago and two things that happened 3 months ago."

"Okay, but why are you just telling me now?"

"Because you're the most unstable person I know."

INFINITE MACBOOKS

Credit to Mark for providing the second laptop. Credit to me for fixing his laptop. Credit to James for telling me how to fix his laptop.

Morning routine

Mail goggles

Google understands that sometimes even I don't know what's best for myself.

If only they could implement that on my phone. Even inebriated, I'm good at spelling, just not content

omggg i lovveeeeeeeeeeee you!!!!!!!!! BADGERSEX

Ashley

Sent from my mobile

Get your horns up

I can't find a better quality video. The ones available online through this site don't support YouTube. This is my favorite in a series of advertisements narrated by Walter Cronkite. 

This video gives me chills every time I see it. And it's guaranteed the crowd goes absolutely wild. I'm going to miss this school. 

Get your bachelor's degree, get your master's, or get your Ph.D. But most of all, get your horns up! What starts here changes the world. 

Stream of conscious

The economy sucks. I need a job. But I don't want to apply for backup jobs. My car got broken into. We beat Mizzou. Some people are totally lame and it's even lamer when they don't realize it. Dad should push back the turkey dinner until Friday. We all got crabs today. I need more than emissivity tables. I can be spontaneous! 

RED RIVER SHOOTOUT WAS INCREDIBLE!!!

Worst insult ever

After my recent terribly unrehearsed senior design presentation, although we totally pwned all the other teams, my TA still said "Well, it wasn't great, but your presentation and prose were better than Sarah Palin."

EDIT: Although these presentations are open to the public, I'm not going to risk violating my NDA by posting it.

This is not halfway

Landmarks

I love The University of Texas at Austin Landmarks program. It's our university's attempt at being all artsy. I guess enough fine arts people complained about the Godzillatron and now our tuition is paying for something more high brow.

This art is on loan from New York City. It's called "The West" by Donald Lipski. While it may look kind of cool up close (see my previous post), from the right angle it's just a giant phallus. I mean, honestly, you have to know someone planned that.

This piece is in front of the CPE is called "Clock Knot" by Mark di Suvero. I'm not sure how I feel about it. It's over 40 feet tall. It's so weird. And red. I liked it better all rustic and antiqued. It's a nice change from the drab scenery of the engineering buildings, but it's just so huge and red.

[okay so the photo of Clock Knot isn't uploading. Just take my word for it. Or look here.]

And from now on I'm going to take my photography more seriously. I'm almost done with that DSLR class and I need to actually show I know how to used the darn thing.

These are not rhetorical

Why haven't they contacted me yet?

Why can't I get the nerve to just apply already?

Why haven't I just sat down and written it yet?

Why do I have to be the puppet master?

Why haven't I just given it up yet and quit?

Why can't I speak up for myself and take credit?

Why did that check bounce?

Why do dumb girls have to break his heart?

But most importantly, what's going to happen in 9 months?

Music is my hot, hot sex

ACL 2008 was incredible. And Camelbaks are brilliant. 

Best shows were Conor Oberst and the Mystic Valley Band and Okkervil River. I particularly loved Conor's cover of Paul Simon's "Kodachrome." Jenny Lewis' solo act was more alt-country/folk than I expected, but at least it was less pop/funk than most of Under the Blacklight. M. Ward was really good, but I just wasn't feeling it. 

Favorite quote of the weekend: "WaMu stage? More like FDIC stage!"

And I'm glad James isn't as hairy as Kyle.

That guy

Why does he have to be so lame?! 

WHY?!?

Hello

I think I love Kevin Devine. He just soothes my soul and makes me do a double take at most redheads. Props to Andrea Yee for introducing me, even though I don't think she remembers that. 

I know I love James Durand. And oatmeal raisin cookies.

I'm super stressed. And my body's slapping me around right now. Thanks to everyone that's helped me out. That cheesecake was incredible, and it feels so great to have family right next door. I'll still probably retake the GRE.

Within the last 2 minutes, I received my first spam in my Gmail inbox. Weird.

My family still doesn't have power. And whenever I think of Ike, I just can't stop singing the Scorpions song. 

I can't wait until ACL. I can definitely wait until EXPO on Tuesday and Wednesday. I'm not sure how I feel about waiting to find out if I get to interview with Apple.

My brothers are OLD

They just turned 20 and that totally freaks me out. They're my little brothers and now they're voting and drinking and growing up. They were raised too well. They act way too mature to be 20. Or maybe I'm just too immature to be 23. 

Graduate school

I really wanted to go to graduate school in California. Now I'm realizing that the programs I want to do aren't all bundled up in one little west-coast package. 

I'm in the process of writing my statement of purpose, and it's a lot harder than I thought. I want to be honest and get my heart onto the paper, but it's not as easy as it seems.

I have the best research adviser ever.

James broke my heart

So I thought I had a flu, maybe strep throat worse-case scenario. So I go to the UT Health Clinic and they diagnose me with the flu and the doctor does the routine stethoscope on your back and says "take deep breaths". And then she pretty much says "WTF YOUR HEART IS WEIRD! WE NEED AN EKG IN HERE STAT!" And she had a point, I checked it out and she was right, my heart was skipping every third beat and it was a little scary. 

So I get an EKG.  And it looks really weird. The doctor consults a cardiologist and she says I have an irregular irritated heartbeat. And she's totally freaking out because she doesn't know what to do. I need tests to figure out what's wrong. There is some kind of electrical imbalance in my heart and my natural pacemaker is off. But UT's health test system is a little lacking in resources, so I need to go the ER. Now. 

All those big bumps and jumps in the EKG shouldn't be there. Everything on the right 1/3 is normal, and all the stuff on the left side is "WTF YOUR HEART IS WEIRD!" And my blood pressure was over 120 after resting in the UT clinic for an hour.

So James picks me up after he gets out of processing lab and he drives me to the ER. By this point I had already cried a lot because the doctor totally freaked me out and made me feel like I was going to die. Even though I felt just fine. I got James to feel my heartbeat and he admitted it was pretty weird. 

So after a while they take me back and run a bunch of tests: X-rays of my heart, another EKG, pee tests, blood tests, throat test, and other stuff. And they hook me up to the heart/lung/oxygen monitor with the screen. So I have those probes all over my chest and I'm just confused and being pumped with fluids through an IV. And James left after an hour to go to work, so I'm all alone. And I may or may not have breathed in and out really heavily to make a square wave on the lung chart. 

So after waiting over two hours to get all my tests back, the doctor pretty much tells me I'm fine. An irregular heartbeat isn't that big of a deal. If I want to follow up, he referred me to a cardiologist. But I'm fine? My heart's okay? Everyone just scared me for no reason? I mean, I guess it's kind of a big deal, but I don't think I'm dying anytime soon. So then I walk home from the hospital and go to sleep for 4 hours.