islanded in a stream of stars

I failed my first test ever, the one on the treatment manual I need to know for research, just as my new supervisor predicted. Actually, he's a pretty nice guy; I've probably spoken more to him in the two times we've met than in the two semesters I spent with my old one in the social psych lab. Ironically enough, I performed most poorly on the material that I had actually read (midterm season shouldn't be an excuse, but it is) and did well on the stuff I didn't have time to read. It really helps that I'm taking a family/systems theory class right now, even if it feels like my brain is being saturated with systems and therapeutic literature.

The apartment doesn't smell like burnt filet mignon anymore after leaving the doors open for a day and a half; we discovered firsthand that the smoke detector does work outside of fire drills, which is reassuring.

I've finally had the time to start looking for apartments for next year; it looks like I'll be having 5 roommates, although only 4 are confirmed so we're still looking for the 5th. Although there's a greater likelihood that I'm more likely to become a homicide victim because I have more roommates to piss off, it also means that the rent will be cheaper and that we might be finding a nicer place if we're lucky. I've also come to the conclusion that my mother was wrong to believe that I should consider law school because I think I'm too dumb to figure out the fine print in the renter's leases. If all else fails, we might have to start looking for oversized cardboard boxes, though the options aren't as bad as I had expected.

I did end up getting the passport photos taken at Office Depot 19 blocks away, but it took me a good hour before I could find some place to take them on a Sunday. Serves me right for procrastinating :S Hopefully I'll be finding out today or tomorrow whether or not I'm going to Verona for sure this summer.

I'm back in Norcal for the 4 day weekend (bwahaha, no classes on Friday!) for a belated lunar new year celebration. Mom and I are going to the San Francisco Symphony's Tchaikovsky concert on Saturday. I'm meeting up with a few friends while I'm back, but I'm afraid because I'm in SF for two days time's limited, so if you do want to hang out please call me if we haven't already figured something out.

Oh, before I forget, I'm posting the answers for the unguessed quotes on the movie meme here. I was pleasantly surprised by who guessed what.

( Unguessed answers on the movie meme )

Fellow Americans - if you haven't sent in your absentee ballots, remember to vote tomorrow! Not that you would forget, of course.

LA folks - if you haven't seen the Murakami exhibit over at MOCA yet, I'd highly recommend it. I found it more disturbing than I had expected - pop art on crack meets animé and has a vague acquaintance with Buddhism doesn't do it justice, but hopefully you have some idea. Cute has never been so charmingly disconcerting.

Irene, aka the roommate with the car, and I saw the Diving Bell and the Butterfly Friday night, about Jean-Dominique Bauby, the former French editor of Elle who suffered from a stroke and communicated by blinking his one working eyelid. The whole mood reminds me of a Philip Glass composition - beautifully, subtly melancholy with touches of absurdity at times mordant and sunny. I'm afraid I'm too tired right now to phrase things in ways that actually make sense. For those of you who are Bond fans, it has the new Quantum of Solace villain in it.

In totally unrelated news, according to the course plan that my otherwise uninvolved department advisor just sent to me, I have room for exactly 2 electives for the rest of my undergraduate career. Seriously. Needless to say, those two electives are going to Jon Burlingame's film music and TV music history classes. It's a little (maybe more than a little) embarrassing how much I'm looking forward to taking an actual course from him after catching a few of his composer lectures around campus. Sorry, laleia, but it doesn't look like I'll be able to take that IR espionage and intelligence class with you.

Also, I think I might be overdosing on reading about psychotherapy - I can't believe I'm actually craving looking at a ABAB behavioral intervention instead of wading through phenomenological case studies. I've somehow managed to read up until spring break, which theoretically frees up my time now to have extracurriculars take over my life. I must admit, I'm jealous of my friends who actually get paid to do research. Apparently market/gerontology/physics research receives greater funding than evaluating psychotherapy for urban, largely low income clients. Ah, the things one does for grad school. The first wave of admitted students come on campus at the end of the month, some of working in admissions indulge in the sadistic pleasure of showing overachieving high school seniors how the cycle of being over-committed doesn't stop once you get into college and realize that you want to go to law/med/grad school. We're not all that evil; it's just fun being (a little) scary when interviewing them for scholarships.

It looks like I'll be studying abroad in Verona for two months starting late May. I finally have the chance to meet all of my Swiss relatives, aka the entire Chinese population of Lausanne, which should be really awesome. Now if I could only figure out where I could get passport photos to send off my application...

I've officially planned what I'm doing on February 14, the first day of February break. I dare you to guess.

I think that Friday Kerstin and I will go Lion in Wintering: watching it in the box and drooling on the keyboard. I still remember Kerstin's great comment the other day, "King Phillip II was a hunk of smouldering French love!" Brilliant and very Kerstin-like.

But on that Saturday, I am watching the appropriately titled: Dr. Strangelove, or how I learned to stop worrying and love the bomb. I'd love to see it with Ann, my old camp roommate, now that she lives around here because she's such a Dr. Strangelove fan. And Peter Sellers was the first man on the cover of Playboy, I believe in 1967. Ah, the beauty of FOMF. It's coming up next weekend, too. Eep, I can't wait. Anyway, anyone want to join me?

Never mind. I just realized that I still have to take a bunch of new moosenapping photos and somehow create an Imovie of them. I think I'm using TLIW's "Media Vita in Morte Sumus" as the background music as I haven't been able to find anything better. Or maybe Deadfall's "Romance for Guitar and Orchestra." But I think most of it sounds too nice and pretty to be appropriate for gruesome ransom notes.

Ack! And the test! I have to ask Sterling about that, because it needs to be finished by 2/12. And then there's all of that FOMF stuff that weekend. Argh. No free periods, either. I be screwed.

On a totally random note: I had a weird dream about The Lion in Winter (what else, coming from me?) last night. It was sort of a continuation of the first one I had about new Castile producing TLIW. Now I finally knew, after doing my audition (I don't remember what it was on; I think it was just the Chapel scene from the play) that I did get the part of Alais. Kerstin got the part of Geoffrey, but I don't really remember who else was there; just random people I had never seen before. A bunch of guys from Paly and Gunn were there but they randomly faded from the dream after awhile and never said anything. Someone else I knew pretty well was there, but I don't remember whom it was. Somehow we were in a school that was a mix between the one in the first Avengers '65 episode and that all-girls school on the Britain trip in North Wales, except it was very sunny. So after we had a brief group meeting of all of the cast and got handed out the scripts we were told to start memorizing our lines and to come back tomorrow. Kerstin, the person who I knew, and I got bored so we started exploring the stage area which was like the one room in the all-girls school in North Wales where a few new Castillians and I were watching some 7th and 8th graders choreograph a dance to some pop song for their school's talent show and the surrounding area. Eventually we wandered into a room with a lot of PC's, like the tech office but without the posters and books around. Kerstin found some random tube that led down into a room that was exactly like the study in my house, though out the window you could see North Wales on a sunny day. I somehow encouraged everyone to start mucking around with the computers to see what they were being used for and we all started madly hacking into the system. Ehehehe, not like I would know anything about that in real life. We kept on having to hide in the closet and behind doors and filing cabinets in this strange school for fear of being caught by a school administrator. I've already forgotten all of the interesting details as I hardly remember my dreams that well, but I liked this one quite a bit because of the strange mishmash of the Britain trip, The Lion in Winter, and computer exploring.