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Here in the apartment, we all love Omar. We really do. But sometimes he does things we just can’t understand, like turning up the air conditioning when it’s 48 degrees outside. I literally had to go put on a jacket as my fingers were getting too cold to continue typing. What’s great is that Omar isn’t even home right now to feel the effects! So there is a good chance he’ll return later, notice the temperature at 72, and turn it down again. Oh, Omar. Below is shown Kyle and I shivering because our apartment is so cold. Above, note how the “cool” section is lit even though it is already very cold outside.

Plates were in the washer clean

An easy solution it would seem

Yet the sink was overflowing with

Every single type of dish

The night before I had consumed

Popcorn from my bowl of blue

Delicious treat, a healthy snack

But then I put the blue bowl back

Atop the pile in the sink

Oh blue bowl what did I think

Knowing Kyle (as do I)

View kitchen mess with narrowed eye

Whose fault it was I do not know

But Kyle dealt the fatal blow

Rent asunder by brutal force

My bowl’s life had run its course

Another bowl of red he found

Will we find it lying ‘round?

If we have learned then I think not

Let’s not leave dishes in the sink, to rot.

Rachel took some high-powered cough medicine the other night. This is how our conversation went:

Rachel: “I took this medicine… I think it’s going to knock me out.”

[conversation ensues for a few minutes]

Rachel: “I’m starting to feel a little funny.”
Me: “You are?”
Rachel: “…”
Me: “Are you there?”
Rachel: “…”

I think I’m going to need some of that stuff in the next few days.

Many people will tell you that there is an issue with parking at UMBC; namely, that there are not enough parking spaces. I would disagree with that claim, submitting instead that there are not enough parking spaces close to where students actually go.

It has gotten a bit colder over the past few days and I have yet to import my warmer, fall/winter wardrobe from my house. So this morning, I thought that I could save myself some discomfort while preparing myself for the driving errands I would have to run later in the day by driving to class rather than walking.

What I failed to take into account was my class time – 11:30 AM. This means that all of the commuting students have already arrived, devouring the convenient parking spaces as crows do roadside carrion. The result of my poor timing was that I had to park over in Lot 17, which was actually further away from my destination (Lecture Hall 2) than I would have been had I just walked from my apartment.

Needless to say I was a few minutes late for class, and later, because I had to walk all that way back to my car, I was late for my appointment as well. Bummer. At least I got a nice spot in the Commons Garage when I came back.

All of today has been a dance between me and my Treo 700w’s rapidly dwindling battery power. Last night, during all of the hubub, I left my Bluetooth headset paired to the phone, only to realize when I sauntered off to class that I was getting the “First Warning” – battery is less than 10%.

After Spanish class the poor Treo passed out, leaving me helpless and forced to write things down with paper and pen. I can only imagine how it must feel going through life in such misery. I managed to charge back up to 11% before my next errand, which kept me afloat for the rest of the day until a few minutes ago, when it passed out again. Now I’m SOL until I drive back to UMBC from Rachel’s house in the morning and can use the car charger, which unfortunately doesn’t do its job nearly as fast as the wall variety.

Note to self: turn your darn headset off when you arrive at your destination.

Have you ever had one of those times when you think your day is going to go a certain way, then about 75% of the way through something happens and it completely changes?

I’ve just had one of those times.

On Friday I had an interesting run-in with my apartment-mate, Omar. But for this to be appropriately appreciated, some background needs to be established.

Omar has been having a little problem getting up and going to class. After about the first two weeks, his daily attendance began petering out until he was regularly missing Plant, Organic Chemistry, and Physics – all very important classes. At first we thought he was simply staying up too late, but that was not the case. Our Omar was getting about 12 hours of sleep per night, and then had the nerve to complain about being tired! After about a straight month of him missing class, the rest of us in the apartment confronted him about it and I decided I would take responsibility for waking him up three times a week to go to Plant, as I’m in that class as well.

Monday and Wednesday things seemed to be going pretty well, with me alternately calling him and banging on his door before leaving for class in frustration, only to have him appear a few minutes after I had sat down. However, on Friday there was quite the interesting turn of events.

Something else about Omar – he takes about six hours to actually wake up, during which he walks around thinking he is awake when in reality, he is peering around at the world through squinted eyes and operating solely on his brain stem, the same organ that theoretically powers the rudimentary functioning of zombies.

At any rate, on my way out I stopped by Omar’s room and rapped soundly on his door. I heard a muffled grunt from the other side, before the door opened and a squinting zombie in the semblance of my roommate appeared. I told him firmly to go to class, to which he responded with another prehistoric grunt and closed the door. My job being done, I went to class assuming correctly that he was a lost cause for the day and would not be attending.

However, at 2:53 that afternoon I received an interesting text message from Omar:

[Michael] did you come to my door today? Because I opened the door and saw Superman and he told me to go to class.

Apparently, not only am I Superman, but even the appearance of said hero is not enough to compel this friend of mine to attend his classes. Oh Omar, I have no words for you…

Well, by getting this in before midnight I’ve set a new personal record for blog posts in a month, whatever that means. Whether or not anybody actually reads it, I find the practice a helpful way for me to get a lot of the things that bounce around my head all day out – plus at times it saves me from having to tell the same story over and over.

I went down to Annapolis today for the first time to help lobby a joint committee of the Maryland State Legislature to create a dedicated source of funding for higher education. Click the link if you want more of the details, which I posted over on the SGA Blog.

As is often the case with these kinds of things, times got pushed and some things took longer than others, so we didn’t end up getting back until much later than was originally anticipated. There were way too many lobbyists crammed into too small of a time space, that’s for sure. At any rate, things worked out because earlier in the week my piano teacher had rescheduled all her Wednesday lessons for Friday, so I didn’t even have to worry about missing or not being prepared for my lesson today!

However, to counter that pleasant turn of events, I lost my nice light jacket somewhere between leaving the apartment this morning and going to work at AV. I had stupidly brought it with me into the day without wearing it because while it is comfortable, it causes so much static electricity that I have to find a way to ground myself before putting it on or taking it off. This method clearly made it very easy to misplace. I know I had it in class at 9:00 this morning, but I have no idea if I had it with me when I left or when I got on the bus. I know I didn’t have it with me when I got off the bus, and I couldn’t look for it later because I rode back with Josh since I stayed for the hearings.

I’ve done some looking around but usually in these kinds of situations the object has immediately been lost for good. It frustrates me a whole lot when this happens – I remember so much other complicated stuff and yet I lose things at the drop of a hat! If you happen see a fuzzy navy blue zip jacket with no hood that causes a lot of static electricity and repels water, track me down.

For many people, a title like this would begin a sordid tale of a crazy Halloween party involving alcohol, beautiful women, and memorable behavior. However, in case you didn’t already realize I was a geek, my crazy weekend story involves the Pennsylvania Renaissance Faire (see the title link), carving pumpkins, Olney Field of Screams, and the Halloween party for the kids at Villa Maria. And, of course, a beautiful woman, but I think we all know who that is…

Saturday morning began early, which isn’t all that big of a deal for Rachel and I since we’re used to getting up for church. We were supposed to be heading over to Villa Maria to help with their Halloween party for the kids there. Pre-Med Society, Golden Key, and Honors College were all going to help out, and since I’m in all three I figured it would be a good idea to contribute. Like many other days last week, it was pouring down rain, so we found shelter in the Commons and waited around until we started seeing cars gathering. After which we charged out into the rain, prompted dampening our socks – me because I was wearing my old shoes that have leaks in the sides, and Rachel because she was wearing those ridiculous Crocs shoes to go with her nurse’s scrubs. She says they’re comfortable but I just can’t get past how ridiculous they look…

At any rate, we decorated the gym with posters, fun halloween objects, and by stringing all six basketball hoops together with orange and black crepe paper. There were a whole bunch of tables stocked with different activities that the kids would come through, getting candy and a prize as a reward for completing it. Rachel’s and my table had to be one of the easiest – we just took their pictures behind a Frankenstein’s monster cutout (you know, the kind you put your face through?). The hardest part for me was making sure the little ruffians didn’t take more than their fair share of the candy. I’m really bad at disciplining kids. Rachel, of course, had no problems keeping them in line.

After we got back we took a nap, ate delicious cheese enchiladas from El Azteca, my favorite local Mexican restaurant, and went back to my mom’s house to carve pumpkins. It’s become my favorite Halloween tradition and I think we’ve always managed to do a pretty good job. Check out the picture above! Rachel did the “Happy Halloween” tree all by herself, which very much impressed me since she picked the hardest design in the whole flippin’ book as her first ever carving attempt. Du and I worked on the skull while Mom roasted all the seeds to make a delicious snack.

The Olney Field of Screams followed, an event that Du loves even though the admission price seems to increase every year. I missed it last year thanks to an Organic Chemistry test so I thought the whole thing had improved a lot. I’ll admit it, I jumped on quite a few occasions. The four people in front of us were hilarious though. They got scared at almost every single thing and would literally turn around and run back toward us, trying to use our bodies as shields. That right there made the whole experience worth it.

Naturally we didn’t get back to Rachel’s house until late, and then had to get another semi-early start to go to the RenFest with Rachel’s good friend Kim and her boyfriend Paul. It was a shame I forgot my camera because there were some excellent costumes. The stores in PA are definitely superior to those at the MD one, although I think the shows are better in MD. After all, we have jousting, and that’s pretty darn cool.

We took another nap when we finally returned from PA but didn’t remember to wake up until 2 or 3 AM, upon which we realized Rachel still had to drive me back to UMBC. Life’s always such an adventure…

Anyway, this entry got me exploring Picasa as it has a nice way to insert pictures into your blog. Maybe if I can get all this working I can have picture galleries here to go with some of the posts. We’ll see.

Something I recently realized wasn’t inherently obvious in the posts – the title is actually a link to something I found interesting or in some way relevant (sometimes remotely) to the content of the post.

Today got off to a horrible start when I opened my eyes and realized I had slept through both my alarm and my class, and had just twenty minutes to get ready and be at a very important meeting concerning one of my Senate campaign issues, Food Services. To make matters worse I was supposed to take Amir’s CPS clicker to class with me so he could skip it to check our myoblast colonies for Cell Lab, so I let both of us down a participation point. I was feeling like the day was already on a crash course to be terrible but I got to talk to Rachel on my way to the meeting and she convinced me it was going to be a good day after all.

As it turns out, she was right, or maybe because of talking to her my attitude changed (more likely). The Food Services meeting went very well, and I left feeling confident that many (if not all) of the proposed changes would end up taking effect. There was a very positive environment toward change and improvements in that conference room which is exactly what somebody in my position wants to see. I’m really excited to see where this all goes in the upcoming months.

After that meeting I starting working on a more immediate project, advertising for SGA’s upcoming Prove It! initiative. We were able to get together with Cliff, one of the Marketing Interns, who offered us some excellent advice on making our campaign as appealing as possible to as many students as possible.

From there I ran (literally) to my Spanish exam, which I’d say went pretty well over all minus the fact that I had no idea what the final article was saying. I was supposed to summarize it and pretty much BS’d my way through it using phrases I was able to decipher from the text. We’ll see how much of that my teacher bought. I sure wish there had been some fill-in-the-blank questions.

All the rest of my day was spent doing SGA stuff related to either Senate or Prove It. Since I don’t have the time to come up with a good logo for it, we’re soliciting designs from some other student organizations that are replete with such “artsy folk”. They’re going to put out some pretty sweet stuff, I think, especially since we’re giving $75 to the winning entry. Nothing like cash as an incentive, right?

Finally, my best friend has finally found himself what sounds to be an excellent girl, and for that I am extraordinarily pleased. Oh, and I’ve been rocking out to the new Coheed and Cambria album, which explains the title link. And they posted the pictures from the Governor’s visit on his website. If you feel like seeing my eyes characteristically “smiling shut” simply click here.