I dropped the course. My supervisors said that it wouldn't kill me to drop it. Sami told me to drop the course so that I would whine less. Even Shivani told me to drop it-

me: i feel soft
her: This isn't a soft move, it's a smart one
me: this other dude who graduated with a lower GPA than me is taking the same combination of courses and not dropping it
her: Meh, he's already inferior
me: harsh, bro
her: I know, I'm a bad, bad person

I feel better now about not having to pick up a scripting language and write a 12-page report in two weeks. It's too late to audit the course but since the lectures are already half over I might as well keep showing up.

But seriously I don't know why I'm getting soft. Today I shuffled through my mail for my NSLSC loan number and nearly panicked. Nothing was wrong. But every setback fills me with dread and I don't know why my ability to handle things has evaporated. Maybe it's a relationship thing. My competence levels probably drop 30% whenever I'm in a relationship. I can't think of anything else that's changed between this time last year and right now. Last year my google calendar was a Piet Mondrian painting. Admittedly I had a lot more breakdowns then but those were breakup-related. This February I had at least six small nervous breakdowns, all work-related, and no amount of country music can fix that.

Anyways on Saturday I went to MEC and now I am the proud temporary owner of one nylon sling, one really big carabiner, and two smaller carabiners. I "found" an urban earthcache, rather than a regular one, because my GPS is 80km away as the crow flies, to get the leap year badge.

Justin is currently in China visiting his dad's factory. Every dude I've ever dated has a somewhat absentee dad.

Today I washed my hair, tried to do the problem set for Development, and emailed 3 questions to the TA. Someone must have shat in the TA's coffee because I haven't seen such harsh marking since Hydrology. He didn't like my # signs or @ symbols.

Then I played the MQE... can't believe I've never played the MQE before, he's great as long as the map has enough grenades, and you're not playing with some other grenadier class.

I suppose I should go to sleep now. I left my notes for Freight in my office and I need to get them before the 9AM lecture.

Yeah, life is complicated. But it's also very fucking short.

If you find someone who can forgive all your bullshit... the least you can do is try to forgive them.

-- Saga

Well, this morning I dreamed that I was told to get dressed to go to a restaurant decorated in the baroque style. He told me not to worry about the bill and ordered some succulent lobster dumplings with salmon roe, mysterious cooked beast, orgy, etc. The bill was $800, no drinks. The dude escaped through the bathroom window because he was jealous of our dining companions and didn't expect the bill to be so high. A silver fox and an older woman I'd seen before at the sauna with silver hair and flawless skin picked up the bill. I found him outside and broke up with him on the spot. Then I walked home in the snow - in open-toed heels - wondering if I should take him back, because maybe it would be worth it.

So I went back the next day and talked to Mystery Man about PAYING ONE'S BILLS, and he promised not to climb out bathroom windows anymore. But somehow at that point... the urge to get back together had totally evaporated. And I woke up.

--

Six years later, I've just figured out that you can give security settings to uploaded photos. And albums. Sometimes separately. Herp.


Andrea did tell me that all cats are insane in their own way.

While whining in the lab, which, by the way, has no natural sunlight...

Me: I'm so lonely
Me: And hungry
Justin: I miss you too

I don't know how tongue in cheek that was but it was funny.

Also ever since my skin cleared up, hormone pimples are the #1 predictor of my period, which is light, but irregular, and still sucky. But better than ten years ago.

J: You smell good, are you wearing perfume?
Me: It's bug spray.

A guest lecturer from a little while ago came in to talk about pavement design.

Some context - some Middle Eastern accents have this thing where the 'p' sound becomes a 'b'. So pumpkin becomes bumpkin. Pie becomes bye. Pothole becomes butthole.

"If you have insufficient drainage under your road you will get buttholes, which are uncomfortable to ride on. Buttholes form because the water weakens the support from the subgrade. Freeze-thaw action can also cause buttholes to form in the winter..."

Also I was wrong about the grade breakdown in this course. It's 12% to ASSIGNMENTS AND LABS COMBINED. THERE ARE SIX LABS AND AT LEAST 4 ASSIGNMENTS. WTF. These things take TIME.
( bellybuttons )

Hey I did end up fulfilling all my 2012 resolutions!

This year's resolutions are to find and do things that make me happy because I want to, go to New Zealand, and not screw up the engineering paper. 

Why did I only just find out about this song???



Dierks Bentley - Drunk on a Plane

This has everything I like in a song right now. It's upbeat and and happy and smart and melancholic, and I'm enjoying it with my Arizona Lemonade.

And it's a country song. Have I mentioned how much country love music I've been listening to lately? Damn, there's something about listening to a American person from a rural part of the country tell you parts of somebody's life story in plain English within a structure strictly bound by genre conventions and acoustic guitar.

--

( moar things )

Co-op student purgatory is the copy room.

Supervisor scheduled us to spend two hours a week scanning old controller logs. So today I perfected the pinch 'n' pancake method of simultaneously removing a piece of paper from and placing a new page onto the scanner bed. The logs, though about ~15 years old, are covered with dirt and dust. I feel like I'm going to get silicosis. At least at MTO we had dust masks and PPE everywhere: all day, every day. Mostly for warmth, because the labs were unheated.

Shopper's purgatory is the clothing section at a Sears outlet.
Everything is either
> inappropriate size
> weird colour
> weird cut
> strange fabric
Forget the outlet. Goodwill next time. I've had good luck with thrift stores.

*

Three years after its release, I finally find Codes and Keys listenable. Woo. A lot of the songs blend together though: I intended to go back each song and rate them in Windows Media Player, but I keep missing the track changes. It's nice that DCFC's sound is consistent but I never pegged that as a weak point. Rather, I find that Ben Gibbard is not good at expressing his feelings beyond Keanu Reeves Surprise, muted sarcastic disapproval, and self-loathing.

Current favourite track: "You are a tourist"

And if you feel just like a tourist in the city you were born
Then it's time to go

“How do you pick up the threads of an old life? How do you go on, when in your heart, you begin to understand, there is no going back? There are some things that time cannot mend. Some hurts that go too deep...that have taken hold.”

> I am going to try and cover the last three months.

> Despite my massive lack of fucks to give, I did fine last term. Comparable to every other term ever.



> My report on asphalt rehab with precast slabs is 90% done. The remaining 10% is slapping together references, a literature review summary (?) and making everything else look nice.

> I like my co-op placement at the City of Toronto. I am super busy but not really stressed out. I am learning more than I ever wanted to know about traffic signal control systems. For such an advanced system the documentation is really primitive.
>> I might have an option to switch to the road emergency communications department at the end of the week, but I'm not sure whether I like traffic signal ops or the mysterious emergency management system better.
>> Ha ha no more work term reports to write.

> I need a job after graduating and it's pretty discouraging: jobs that are in the GTA, in transportation engineering, not in consulting...
>> My prof might end up giving me a difficult-to-refuse offer to do a master's with her, but I really haven't looked into grad schools at this point, just because I hated the process of doing a literature review and finding the same frickin papers about the subject over and over again, except in different databases. Academia might not be my thing.
>> On the plus side, I have 10 million NP on Neopets.

Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.

> Fricking tumblr. And reddit. I'm seeing racists in the wallpaper. I know more than I ever wanted to know about campus rape and intersectionality. Too much. Too much.