Welcome to my psyche.

I am on campus, and somewhere in the building, someone is playing really cheery polka-y Christmas music. Loudly. Two songs, again and again and again. I think I might go insane. Or home.

Except that last night my upstairs neighbor's two dogs barked for MORE THAN AN HOUR while I was trying to do some reading for class. Yes, I timed them. And yelled, "Shut yer dogs up!" at the ceiling.

Yesterday while I was getting ready for school I had these two songs in my head:
1) "Zero population," from that monstrosity, "Saturday's Warrior"
2) "I'm an ordinary man," from "My Fair Lady"
So yes, I was stuck with combinations like, "She'll have a large bognarian [??] mother, with a voice that shatters glass" and "zero population is the answer my friend, without it, the rest of us are doomed!"
I have no explanation for that.

I also had one of those between-hitting-the-snooze-button-every-9-minutes dreams in which Ron told me that Chad was leaving the next day to move to Columbia to play soccer. I was not surprised that his mad soccer skillz would allow him to do that, merely sad that I wouldn't get to see him before he left.

AND - I have plane tickets - I'll be heading back to the land of my family on 17 Dec, and I will be there for a WHOLE MONTH!!

So please, Chad, or anyone else, don't move to Columbia before I get to see you.

I'm totally caving to materialism. But just for this post.

Ok, people, I need boots. And guess what?! Daring Young Mom is having a give-away on her blog from a SHOW COMPANY, and they make BOOTS! And if I link to the contest, like right here, for example, then I can get entered TWICE in the drawing!

So there you go. Check out her contest, and the boots I will get if I win. :) :)

P.S. Did I mention that it snowed last night? :) :)

I think I'm really funny and it's late at night. And if you think those two statements are not connected then you don't know me. Or my blog title.

So I just got this email from my older sister:

Subject line: facebook

you need to get on!! there is a [ward from my home stake] friends group and they want to get together and someone was looking for you to organize a get-together:) Plus, there is an awesome picture of [that one guy] taking off a garter from way up on [that one girl]'s leg--hee hee!

And I started to write back to her, and then the profound truths listed in the title of this post hit me, and so you all get to read my reply, you lucky internets, you.

OK, but I REALLY don't need something ELSE to keep me from getting my work done, and you KNOW I am OCD enough that I would have to connect with everyone I've ever met, including those people from my alma mater who I never actually met but saw them walking on campus all the time, and because I spent SO MANY YEARS on that campus I'm sure they must have been in my ward at some point, so I introduce myself, and then sure enough, we don't know each other and now I look like a weird stalker freak. (And yes, that happened to me about a month and a half ago.)

sigh.

I feel like I'm the only person in the free world NOT on facebook. And I take a wee bit of pride in that. Kind of like I took a wee bit of pride in high school about not wearing make up, and I've tried to start wearing make up now several times, and I own some nice Mary Kay eyeshadow that I have been taught to apply by a friend who always looks REALLY nice with her make up, and I just don't do it.

So let's just say that facebook is the Mary Kay eyeshadow of my web presence.

But secretly I'm really flattered that those fun people want me to plan a get-together. And I'll probably do it.

Good thing my gloves and scarf are red...

...'cause I'm going to the football game tomorrow!! (And our school color is red. Just in case you didn't get why that would matter.) I'm really excited!! I wanted to go to one of the games, but couldn't afford the time or the money to get season tickets, and turns out...when you go to a Big 10 school, you, um, can't just "pick up" a ticket to a home football game. It doesn't work that way in the big leagues. :) But my fun friend J got tickets from her work and invited me to go with her - WOOHOO!!

And also - why do I stay up this late when I'm not being productive?

But sometimes my "to do" list gets overwhelming, and apparently all I can do is eat my $1.96 Totinos pizza and two servings of ice cream for dinner (that's what they call a "balanced diet") and read blogs until all hours of the night.

Oh wait! I got up at 5:30am to do homework today--suddenly my inability to function makes sense! When I have to actually function that early I later get past the point of being coherent, and then become incapable of being proactive about progress, such as turning off my computer and going to bed. It's awesome.

But the reason I got up that early was to prep for my group meeting, which went well! AND I got my car back after hitching rides for the last three weeks, and the guy replaced the fuel pump and the timing belt for FREE and only asked me to pay for the parts, and I am SO GRATEFUL!!

And tomorrow is Super Saturday, and I'm making - oh! I almost said it! I'm making Christmas gifts for my nieces and nephews. :) Wouldn't want to spoil the surprise! (Since they are all under the age of 11 and none of them read this blog. Or know it exists. Or would care if they DID know. Or can read. Just kidding - several of them can read.)

Whoa nellie. Time for bed. Look at me all being proactive and getting my tush out of my chair and stuff!

Why You Should Use Your Brain When You Read Statistics: A Case Study

So I got my electric bill over the weekend, and it was $23.83, down from $27 last month. (Woohoo! That's 3 Frosties!!) (It would have been 4 Frosties, but they raised the price on the 99 cent Frosty - now it's $1.19.) (Which totally defeats the purpose of the 99 cent Frosty, if you ask me.) And there was a little blurb on the bill saying that I could sign up for the "budget payment plan," which equalizes your payments over the whole year, based on the average billing amount, so that you can avoid spikes in the bill and plan your monthly budget more effectively, blah blah blah, and my monthly payment would be...$15.

Uh, now, I know I'm not a math major, but unless there have been MAJOR changes in the way numbers work since I last calculated a mean, $15 is not the average of $27 and $23.83. Even though I am not a math major, I do know that $15 < $23.83, so on the theory of, "gosh! wouldn't it be nice if $15 WAS the average of $27 and $23.83?!" (just THINK how many Frosties I could afford!!) I called the electric company to check up on it. And sure enough, they got that amount by averaging electricity costs in the apartment for the last 6 months...during which the apartment was unoccupied for several months. So yeah, $27 and $23.83 and a couple of $0's? They do average out to $15. And when they went back to check the time period during which the apartment was occupied, the average was $40. And I know that $23.83 < $40, so I'll just stick with paying my actual bill, thank you very much.

Hmph.

It's nice to know I'm not the only one...

...who makes a fool of herself sometimes.

Thanks for sharing, Josh. :)

Grad school makes you dumb.

I am living proof.

And you thought the your-pants-are-loose-because-you-don't-fill-them-up-anymore and the I-believe-everything-I-read-on-the-internet moments were bad...

Epiphany

So it just occurred to me that perhaps the reason that I've had to hike up my favorite (only) blue jeans every two seconds during the last couple of weeks is that I've lost weight.

Yup. Just figured that out.

Well, they never said you had to be smart to be in grad school.

Oh, wait - they did?

Dang.