The good news is that this tutoring job will help me review for the Biochem GRE.

The bad news is that I'm the only tutor for Molecular Genetics, Molecular Genetics Lab, Microbiology, and Survey of Organic and Biological Chemistry, which means that I will NEVER have a day where I just stroll into the tutorial center and sit around and do nothing because I will ALWAYS be in demand.

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(From xkcd.com.)

Not amazing:

The website I need to access in order to do a virology assignment is down. BOO.

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I have a headache that's part dehydration, part stress, and part disgust with all of the stupidity of the human race.

Make it stop.

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I slept through my virology class today. I feel a little bad about it--I really like that class and I've been doing really well on the whole attendance-thing so far. One thing I'm not completely crushed about is the fact that I didn't have to spend an hour listening to that kid in the front row interrupting the professor from teaching the rest of the class by interjecting his own little "Oh, look at me! I'm so smart and this comment proves it!" comments. Makes me fucking nauseated.

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I'm sitting here in my favorite cafe on a fine Sunday afternoon, sipping an almond cappucino and enjoying the atmosphere of this place... which fortunately includes some form of eye candy. (When I usually come here, which is early on weekday mornings, it's usually the typical Silicon Valley crowd that hangs out here--early-to-mid 30s, stopping in for an Americano on their way to their jobs in tech. Not the most attractive of crowds, mind you, but the coffee is still good despite the less-than-libido-arousing surroundings.) It seems like a very normal Sunday: homework to do, preparations to make for the following week... but it wouldn't have been if I had gone to Tahoe with my friends. Unfortunately, piano class precluded that from happening.

So they went without me, and from the phonecalls I received, it sounded like they had a very good time. The drunk-dial started out normally enough... well, as normally as drunk-dials can possibly be. There was the name-calling (e.g. "Hey you FUCKING fuckface asshole!"), the admonishing ("Your voicemail greeting is WAY too professional. You need to CHANGE it."), the multiple voices trying to all speak into the phone at once ("You need to come up to San Francisco next week for sailor's week." "It's FLEET week." "Oh, I'm sorry--for FLEET week."), the unwittingly witty comments ("You know Seaman Hall at Claremont McKenna? Well, it'll be something like that... except it will be Seaman City!"), and the off-color demands ("You should FUCK that PI." "FUCK HIM HARD!"), all from familiar voices that are slurring and pausing a little more than usual. Everything was fine until there was a voice I couldn't identify.

His name was Andy.

And he had been waiting for me his entire life.

I don't know how drunk he was, and I don't know how much they paid him to say that, but it was the most surreal thing to be listening to on voicemail at 3:30 in the morning. That someone you had never met had been waiting for me his entire life.

Alright, guys. Point taken. I should have been there.

NOW SET ANDY FREE OF HIS INDENTURED SERVITUDE!

That wasn't the end of it, though. Some other kid called me from my friend's cell phone at 4:00 in the morning, also claiming that he and I were meant to be together. That early in the morning, I'd believe anything, so I fell asleep and dreamed of how my life would be radically different if I had chosen to forgo my piano class and instead jet off to Tahoe.

I wouldn't be here if I had.

I'd be in the arms of Andy, or that other kid (whatever his name was), and we'd be happy. Or, at the very least, I'd be in the company of friends, which is probably more important anyway.

Then again, I wouldn't have gotten any work done and I'd be completely screwed right now.

For the sake of my sanity, I have to believe that the choice I made was the right one.

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And couldn't be happier.

My boss is out of town until Tuesday, which means that for today and Monday, I get to run the lab by myself without supervision. Which I guess isn't too much of a change, since he's been busy working on grant proposals and publications recently so he hasn't really been in the lab all that much. But still, this means he won't be coming around giving me extra stuff to do when it looks like I'm not busy... which is quite frequently because I am just that efficient (well, most of the time).

I work so much better when I'm by myself. I think I get nervous just having someone in the room with me because I feel like everything has to be done absolutely perfectly so as to not be criticized for doing something in a certain way (especially when the way I'm doing something is still correct, but different from what the other person is used to). And the pressure inevitably leads me to fuck up in some small way. It's something I need to work on, but the truth will always be that I am much more comfortable working alone than with someone else there.

Of course, his absence means that I can get in later and leave earlier than usual. It also means I will feel alright taking a longer-than-usual lunch. In essence, today I will be able to enjoy all the free time that I would have by being so efficient in lab.

Thrilled? Yes. Fucking ecstatic.

EDIT:

Completely unrelated to the entry, but this craigslist ad is preeeetty creeeepy.

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I slept really early last night--a little after 9:00--but I never sleep the entire night through. I woke up at around 1:00 am, and there was a bit of a commotion. My cousin and her husband went to the hospital at that time, but I didn't know it. I just headed back to sleep.

When I woke up this morning, I kinda pieced it together from what I heard my parents discussing in Ilocano and from what I'd seen last night.

My mom confirmed it when she got home today: my cousin had a miscarriage.

Despite the feelings that I laid out in the previous entry and others like it, I feel bad for her. It doesn't change what I felt previously and what I continue to feel, but it sucks to lose a child, even if it is just a developing fetus.

But in all honesty, she wasn't ready for the child. And I don't know if she was going to be when she had it six months down the road; my confidence in that possibility is next to none. Perhaps now, though, she can concentrate on getting her shit together so that the next time she's pregnant--which I hope isn't until after she and her husband move out of that one room they're staying in, and after she has a better grasp on her personal finances--she will be ready for the responsibility of having a child.

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So on my drive home from class today, I was stopped at a red light at the intersection of two one-way streets, waiting to make a left turn. There was a car in the far lane coming into the intersection, but since I was waiting to turn into the close lane I decided to go for it. Next thing I know, this bitch is honking her horn and swerving around me, flipping me off.

The gall of this woman--to try to pin this near-accident on me! SHE was the one in the far lane; SHE was the one who didn't signal her intent; SHE was the one who almost hit MY car, and not the other way around! I thought about following her to scare the shit out of her, maybe jumping her when she got out of her car and socking her in the face. Sometimes, I absolutely HATE how we have to remain civil when we have clearly been wronged. Sometimes I think that we're actually making ourselves psychologically unhealthy when we hold these murderous impulses in and allowing them to fester until you want to amputate your own limbs just to have a weapon with which to engage the other person in combat.

Thank goodness for blogs, I guess, without which I would be stewing in my anger all day.

(But yeah, I hope this woman gets her tubes tied just so she doesn't risk bringing into this world another generation of shitty drivers; the world is already oversaturated with them as we speak.)

Anyway, when I got home, my cousin's car was still here. Still frustrated, I couldn't help but think about the last few weeks and how my mom is getting completely fed up with my cousin. First of all, she tried to hide her pregnancy from us. Like we wouldn't notice the 7 pound miniature human being popping out of her vagina and keeping us awake at all hours of the early morning. Then, my mom found out that my cousin is resigning from her new job as an LVN at a local hospital, after FINALLY passing her boards after however many fucking years its been. So not only does my cousin have a BABY growing inside of her, but also, apparently, no income. And she still has credit cards to pay off, and she needs to come up with some form of monetary contribution to my family who has been letting her stay here rent free for like 8 or 9 years now, and I'm just sick and tired of her shit. How's she going to buy baby stuff--charge it on her maxed out credit cards? And how will she pay those off? She will soon have no more job, and her husband is in the middle of studying for a physical therapist licensing exam, so it will be a while before he has one. Is she going to mooch off my parents? Our aunties? She already has had too many handouts. And there's nothing we can really do about it. We can't kick her out--even if she is a bitch, she's still family, and she's still pregnant, and we can't tell a pregnant woman to fuck off because that baby didn't choose to be conceived in the womb of a stupid bitch like her. The best we can do is tolerate this bullshit until she DOES get her life back on track and starts repaying us for all the crap we've done for her and I can't type anymore because I'm afraid I'll break the keyboard...

Ugh. These things completely overshadow the joy that I felt when I learned I had the second highest grade on my virology exam in a class with about 40 undergrads and 10 graduate students in it. This does wonders for my confidence, but right now, all I want to do is strangle someone.

I'm done.

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