Maddie on Things is a collection of photos of Maddie the coonhound posing on top of things all over the country. I saw it floating around a few weeks ago, but I just saw it on NOTCOT so I had to share it here as well.

I LOVE IT

On my way back from lunch with Phyllis today, I stopped at Goodwill to drop off a few bags of clothes. I found a metered parking spot that still had 40 minutes left on it, so I decided to go to Petco across the street, because Petco is always entertaining with cats and dogs and fish and rodents. I was looking at the fish and this yellow one caught my eye, so I decided… to buy it! At first I wanted to just get one or two to put in a jar, but the guy convinced me that if I didn’t get an air pump for them, even if I changed the water every week it was still possible that they would die. So… I figured I might as well invest in a tiny tank with an air pump.

Left: Silvertip tetra named SOCKS because even though he’s a silvertip, his dorsal/pelvic/anal fins don’t have silver tips and only the tips of his caudal fin are black. I got him because he is totally transparent! and you can see right through most of his body (except his tummy). I think that’s cool. So far I think he’s the smarter one. He just hangs out not moving much but looks thoughtful all the time.

Right: Balloon molly named MANGO, who I got because she (clearly female since it’s a molly???) uses her caudal fin in a weird vertical oscillatory way to remain in her hovering gait which is totally weird looking because she has a truncate caudal fin (not forked/emarginate) and it’s like waving a flag. Also she looks really stupid because she has an upturned face/chin and it’s funny looking. Also she has yellow/orange stripes I think she’s dumb because she keeps swimming up and down up and down and up and down

Total investment in my fishes today: $38.23 for the tank, fishes, food and water conditioner. I HOPE THEY DON’T DIE OR GET FAT…

115.4 with a sweater, jeans and boots according to the digital scale on the third floor of 200 Medical Plaza

Kevin asked me how many hours I spend on research. I said I try to do at least ten hours a week, which he said seemed like a lot, which made me curious:

Per week (five days):
8 hours lecture, two classes
12 hours research
5 hours of TA, lab, OH, meeting

Leaving myself 10×5 = 50 hours to get ready for bed and sleep (good average estimate maybe probably kind of) this gives 45 hours of everything else. This 45 hours probably includes:

5 hours transportation
1.5 hour misc medical errands
7 hours food acquisition/consumption
3 hours grooming (showers, face making, poop taking, clothes deciding)
3 hours yoga

This leaves about 25 hours of free time per week. Per day, that’s about 5 hours. Which can probably be broken down to (per day now) 2.5 hours doing nothing productive (Hulu, Facebook, tumblr) and 2.5 hours being productive (email, homework, studying, job hunting).

I spend the bulk of my weekends doing the bigger fun things (painting, more sleeping) and actually doing my homework and studying for real. I also volunteer once every couple weeks with CHAMPs as well.

(On the other hand, I’m definitely falling behind this quarter and so I need to STOP Huluing and START studying more :/)

I’m so excited for leap day because, like I’ve mentioned before (more than two years ago!) I’m going to receive an email that I wrote to myself four years ago. I will post it, and probably write another post for another four years from now. I checked the website for the first time since four years ago, a few weeks ago, and it is confirmed that it still exists and will be sent to me on leap day!

I tried to blog at school today while I was waiting for my MATLAB code to run (~20 minutes) but Sophos Antivirus (on all school computers) blocked Thyme because of some sort of malicious file warning. :/ I hope my site isn’t giving anybody viruses. Or if it is, I hope you guys all have adequate antivirus software installed so I don’t ruin your computers/lives. My dad and I have been having issues with our WP things getting hacked so I downloaded a bunch of security plug-ins recently, and hopefully that makes me less vulnerable to evil things.

I ordered a pair of glasses from Coastal.com because they always have that free-pair promotion and I was getting bored of my current glasses. At first I told myself that I would only order them if I could find a way to get free shipping as well as free prescription glasses, but I couldn’t find a way, even after trying all the different codes on Retailmenot. So I paid $10 for shipping and got myself a new pair of glasses. I like them because now I look like a Korean or a hipster, or maybe even a Korean hipster. I like that there is a gradient in the frames, because gradients are cool! So anyway, I hope you enjoy the giant picture of my face

Today was one of those days where the temperature outside felt like room temperature. That entire concept in itself is a silly one, since “room temperature” is just an arbitrary temperature that we have set as a standard indoors. Although maybe the reason why it felt like room temperature is because it seemed to be still air, no wind. That’s probably more of the reason, now that I think about it. Except I think it was slightly colder than the room temperature that I prefer, because the entire day I felt cold and on the verge of shivering. It was like, room temperature at my parents’ house. Very much didn’t like it, especially since I thought it would warm up as the day went on and I didn’t bring a jacket.

I have been putting off reading my textbooks for a month now, so TODAY I am going to finally catch up and try to figure out what’s going on in my convection class. Our midterm next week is half open book, so I better get to know the book before then. Is my plan.

Lastly, I have a bunch of posts on my Google Reader that I haven’t been sharing, because now that Reader shares into G+, I feel awkward with the things I’ve been sharing. Instead, I think I’ll try to transfer those things I want to share onto my blog here, so I can share it with you.

I can’t believe it’s already week 5! I’m only taking two classes, but I’m also a TA and doing research so things are a lot busier than I expected them to be.

The two classes I’m taking are 231C (Convective Heat & Mass Transfer) and 250A (Foundations of Fluid Mechanics). So far they’re really related in terms of concepts, but very different in approach. I’ve learned a lot of useful math tools in 250A, like indicial notation and other vector things that I’m surprised never came up in undergrad. It’s cool! My convection class is really complicated so far though. It seems like we’re going through the material really slowly, and it seems to be mostly review, but at the end of the day, I look back at my notes and I have no idea what’s going on :/ Hopefully I get the hang of it soon though, since I have a midterm next week…

I’ve been busy enough that I haven’t been to yoga in two weeks. Sad me… losing my mojo.

On the bright side, I’ve been successfully keeping up with my 366! I’ll post about it in a few weeks when i hit a nice number

things that make me happy:
fruit
school
friends
requited love
sleep

things that make me unhappy:
conflict
the unknown
health problems
dishonesty
unresolved issues

After day one of yoga this quarter, my lumbar spine and shoulders are sore. Last quarter my muscles were sore after every single class; this quarter I expect the same. I guess my favorite thing about yoga is that it’s a constant thing and you can always get better at it. No matter what you can push yourself harder, and get more into the stretch.

I guess I’m a few days late but here’s my photo recap of 2011. Last year I said that I took the least digital photos ever, but I don’t think I really did that much better this year. I’m going to be doing a 365 project for all of 2012 though, so I’ll for sure be moe photographical this year. Another post on that when there’s a bit more to talk about.

1. I don’t have any pictures from January. The Lost Month.
2. February: Played with 50 and 80 mm lenses borrowed from research and decided to buy a 35 mm!
3. March: Dyed my hair orange/red/awesome. Pretty much the defining thing of the year.
4. April: Flew up to Berkeley, hung out with Heather and Sophie, and decided not to go there for my MS. I was diagnosed with rheumatod arthritis.
5. May: Took off a few days from school and Went to Greece with the family! This was also the month that 162E got crazy with our broken robot.
6. June: Graduated and Amara was born!
7. July: Drove up to Norcal with Stanley and Layla.
8. August: Moved into my very own studio apartment. Stacey also visited and we hung out with Phyllis. Started Enbrel.
9. September: Went down to SD to visit Amara with Je & Mike.
10. October: Made my own lo mai gai. Ate out a lot for dineLA. Flew up to Norcal for an surprise weekend o’ fun.
11. November: Allen & Han’s wedding!
12. December: Family portrait at my parents’ place in Seattle. Went to Vancouver in early December as well.

In 2012, I’m going to graduate (again) and job hunt and job find and job acquire. I thought I was going to grow up last year but turns out I was able to delay it with more school. Cheers to the new year, may it bring more exciting adventures and good times