I have two exams next week.

In case you were wondering.

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Topic #73: Grab the nearest book (or website) to you right now. Jump to paragraph three, second sentence. Write it in a post.

The closest book to me is The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales by Oliver Sacks. This book is essentially a compilation of stories of people with unique and intriguing disabilities and health problems. I originally bought it because I needed to read a few chapters out of it for my psychology course, but the stories are so interestingr that I’m most likely going to keep it and finish reading the rest.

The random page that I opened up to was the beginning of Chapter 8 titled “Eyes Right!” I tried putting the second sentence in the third paragraph in a post, but I couldn’t really think of anything, so I decided to just explain what the story was about because I’m pretty sure many people would find it intriguing.

The story features someone named Mrs. S. who has hemi-inattention, or the ability to pay attention to an entire half of the world. In Mrs. S.’s case, she was hemi-inattentive in her right brain hemisphere, which made her oblivious to anything on the left side of her body. That means, when she puts makeup on her face, she forgets to put makeup on the left side of her face; when she’s eating food, she only eats off the right side of her plate.

The second sentence on the third paragraph is: “She cannot look left, directly, she cannot turn left, so what she does is to turn right – and right through a circle” (Sacks, 77). Because Mrs. S. learned of her impairment, she devised a solution to adapt to it – instead of trying to look to her left and being unsuccessful, she would keep going right until she came full circle.

So Far in 2011…

Number of Taco Bell tacos eaten: 21 (+3 from a few days ago that I forgot to add in)

Number of times I did my own laundry: 2

Today was a miraculous day.

Yellowcard finally released their next album, When You’re Through Thinking, Say Yes, the first album since Paper Walls in 2007 and a hiatus.

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Topic #72: What was your favorite class when you were in high school or college? Was it your favorite class at the time you took it? Why or Why not?

When I was in high school, I had two different favorite classes, based on two different criteria. One of my favorites was AP Computer Science because it was extremely easy and I was able to finish the work quickly without much effort and get perfect scores. Because I finished early in class all the time, and I had a group of friends who also excelled in the class and finished early all the time, we were able to play multiplayer games for a majority of the course, either through the school’s network or with multiple people on a single computer.

My other favorite class in high school was Law in America. I was never actually intending to take that course, but I took it along with four other social science courses during my senior year of high school because I ran out of other classes to take, and I still had to fulfill my social science graduation requirements. I’m glad I took it though, and I realized that the non-history social science courses were actually pretty interesting. I feel like I learned a lot of interesting and useful information from my law course, and my teacher was an extremely likeable person who had a personality that I like in an instructor.

After coming to college, my favorite class so far is Educational Psychology 321: Development in Adolescence. I’ve always been intrigued by the changes humans experience during adolescence, and my favoritstic views towards adolescents got stronger after I had a positive experience being a P.E. leader during my senior year leading freshmen. In addition to the content being interesting, the instructor was a highly knowledgeable individual with a great persoality. Whenever I went to see him outside of class, he was very open to my opinions and made sure that I would excel in his course.

So Far in 2011…

Number of Taco Bell tacos eaten: 18

Number of times I did my own laundry: 2

Picture of the Day

I’m So Good at Missing the Bus

Nowhere to be seen…

(Taken on an Apple iPod Touch)

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Topic #71: Write a haiku about something that drives you nuts. Remember, 5, 7, 5.

Peanuts and walnuts.

So good; they make me want to

Drive and buy some nuts.

So Far in 2011…

Number of Taco Bell tacos eaten: 18

Number of times I did my own laundry: 2

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TESSA VIOLET / MEEKAKITTY

Everyone should go tweet @meekakitty and wish her a happy birthday.

Picture of the Day

Stop Burning Your Food

Within a few hours of arriving back in Madison, the fire alarm went off and we all had to go outside.

Also, lol @ the people who come out about five minutes after the alarm first starts ringing, holding a freshly brewed mug of coffee in their hand.

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Topic #70: Chocolate or vanilla? Why? Give an example.

Generally I prefer vanilla for pretty much everything, but I’m overall fine with having chocolate if vanilla isn’t available and the chocolate flavor contained in something that I really want.

I’ve never found the slightly bitter taste of chocolate very appealing ever since I was little. I’ve become pretty resistant to it as I got older, but I still have a strong preference for vanilla over chocolate.

For example, if I have ice cream, if there is an option of vanilla, mixed, and chocolate, I would go for the vanilla first. If the vanilla was out, I would go for the mixed; if the mixed was gone too, I would go to the chocolate as a last resort because I would still want the ice cream.

Even for actual chocolate, I prefer white chocolate (which I have no idea if it really does have vanilla in it or not – it most likely doesn’t, but I’m considering it as an equivalent to vanilla in the vanilla vs. chocolate comparison) over regular chocolate (and of course, I prefer regular chocolate over dark chocolate).

So Far in 2011…

Number of Taco Bell tacos eaten: 18

Number of times I did my own laundry: 2

Today is my last full day back at home for spring break. My dad and I were originally anticipating on going back tonight, but we ended up deciding that going tomorrow morning would be better.

A handful of people asked me if I went vacationing for spring break, and no, I did not. I don’t really like vacationing in the first place, but I would definitely not vacation during spring break when there will be millions of people concentrated in spring break hotspots.

I realize that I can go somewhere random where it is not considered a hotspot, or to somewhere I would actually enjoy going (like California), but I had work to do and couldn’t afford to spend a week wasting my time. If you’ve been keeping up with my blog for the past several days, you’ll notice that I actually got a lot of miscellaneous stuff done that I had to do for a long time (such as getting my first ever blood test).

Also, during previous breaks, I usually end up making huge plans to finish tons of work and end up barely getting any of it done. During this break, even though I didn’t finish as much as I wanted to, I was still significantly more productive than I usually am during breaks.

Picture of the Day

Pile of Garbage

The house in front of mine has this massive pile of garbage in front of it.

That house has been vacant for several months now…

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Topic #69: If you could work from anywhere, where would you want to live? Why?

Regardless of if I can work from anywhere or not, I want to live in California. USA. If I was able to work from anywhere, it would be a lot easier to find a job, but if I wasn’t able to work from anywhere, I would most likely try to find a job in California so I could live in California.

California seems like an appealing place for me to work because of the weather and the technology-related events that go on in California. I’ve lived in either Illinois or Wisconsin for all of my life so I’ve been overexposed to cold weather, and I’m starting to get tired of cold weather. I used to be hardy against changing weather and didn’t mind below-zero temperatures or snow, but I’ve recently become more sensitized to the weather and now feel more discomfort than I used to.

As for the events, almost every single event that I would be interested in attending seems to be situated somewhere in California, and it would be convenient to live in California so I’m able to attend intriguing events.

So Far in 2011…

Number of Taco Bell tacos eaten: 18

Number of times I did my own laundry: 2

I complained back on the first of January because the alarm clock on the Apple iPod Touch randomly stopped working. Now it’s at it again, but instead of not working at all this time, it’s going off an hour early.

Of course, it’s better to be woken up early rather than not being woken up at all, but really? Is it actually that difficult to program an alarm application that works properly and correctly? People have been making alarm clocks that work 100% of the time since forever ago, so I don’t know why Apple can’t do it in an application.

I did some research and apparently it has to do something with Daylight Saving’s Time. … Which brings me to my next point about how Daylight Saving’s Time is completely useless and a waste of effort.

A long time ago when I was on a very regular sleeping schedule, the time change would throw me off. It’s not like that anymore because my sleeping habits have become significantly more volatile since then, but it’s still annoying. Also, if you happen to be like me and know people from all across the world, it’s annoying keeping track of the hour difference between your time zones, then suddenly having to re­memorize the hour differences because some regions observe Daylight Saving’s Time and some don’t.

… Have a nice day.

Picture of the Day

Bookmarks from Google eBooks

Because I definitely need to use these with those eBooks that I purchased from Google.

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Topic #68: Name a book that changed your life. What influence did it have on your thoughts, attitudes, and actions?

I can’t really think of any specific books that changed my life in themselves, but a book that got me interested in reading again while I was in middle school is Stormbreaker by Anthony Horowitz.

I used to read a lot during my young childhood years – I would be known as someone who always had a book in his hands. Then, for a reason that I can’t remember, I suddenly stopped being so immersed into books. This change was so abrupt that even my parents noticed the drastic change and were curious what was going on.

A random day during middle school when I was bored in study hall, I decided to go to the library because I had nothing else to do. The librarian there suggested to me that I should find a book to read. At first I denied the offer, but she pointed out a book and said that based on my personality, I would be interested in it. That book happened to be Stormbreaker.

I checked it out and put it straight into my backpack.

After going back home that night, I dug through my backpack to make sure that I had finished all my homework, and came across the book. I decided that I would take the word of my librarian and try reading it.

A few hours later, I finished the book and had a sudden inspiration to go to the library the following day and borrow the next book in the series.

Since then, this same occurrance has happened a few times, just with different circumstances and different books. Whenever I happen to get extremely busy, I tend to forget about reading and my interest diminishes. Then, on a random day, someone would recommend an interesting book to me or would convince me to read a particular book, and if that book happens to be really good, my binge reading would come back.

This happened with a handful of different books at various points in my life – the books included Harry Potter books, books by Dan Brown (who happens to be one of my favorite authors), and surprisingly, some fantasy books such as the Mortal Instruments series.

I haven’t gotten a chance to read any books lately except for textbooks and other informational books for class, but I plan on reading regularly again when I’m on summer vacation.

So Far in 2011…

Number of Taco Bell tacos eaten: 18

Number of times I did my own laundry: 2