One · scoop · of · creamed · potatoes...a · slice · of · butter...oh, · and · four · peas....

Wow...I haven't updated in a really long time....

I'm basically trying in vain to hang in there, I guess. I pretty much hate everything and everyone right now. Haha. No offense. The only things keeping me sane are Joe, Rick, Huggybear, Black Mocha Stouts from First Street Draught House, Harry Potter fan fiction, and my recently-acquired Alan Rickman obsession. Oh, yes. You heard correctly.

I, Ro, hater of all things Potter, was looking for any distraction from studying for my proposal defense. ABC Family had a Harry Potter marathon thing on that weekend, so I spent the days leading up to my oral defense watching all five HP movies and then running out and starting on the books...I'm frankly a little surprised I passed, to be honest....

Anyway, this HP thing became an obsession...which led to my little HP fan fiction obsession...which led to my fondness for Snape/Hermione romances...which (I think) led to my obsession with Alan Rickman.

Joe: You would suck Alan Rickman's cock if he were here right now.
Ro: As long as he was talking....
Joe: Oh, yeah? And what would he say to you?
Ro: He could read from a dictionary, for all I care....

Oh, and if you want to see an example of the sexiness that is Alan Rickman, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G7A_bJFZNXE
That video probably pushed my Alan Rickman appreciation into the realm of unhealthy obsession.

...so what else has been going on...um...oh, I could complain about the department...yeah, let's go with that.

Our new secretary (who signs her emails "Amanda S-- 'Mandy'" and accidentally sent my confidential advisor evaluation form to the entire department ) was running down the hallway today screaming something about free coffee in the coffee room. Um...I thought we always had free coffee in the coffee room????? Anyway, evidently some coffee guy was down there b/c the department is thinking about buying a coffee machine that quickly shoots out one cup of coffee at a time and costs $.50 per cup, blah, blah, blah, something about hooking it directly up to the water system so that you wouldn't have to fill up the machine...uh...have we gotten so lazy that we can't friggin' put on a pot of coffee???????? And are we seriously going to waste thousands of dollars on a FANCY COFFEE POT instead of getting, oh, idk, A CELL COUNTER THAT WILL KEEP RO FROM COUNTING CELLS MANUALLY FOR 6 HOURS STRAIGHT????????

*sigh*

Oh, I heard this convo outside the lab the other day...reminds me of that story Shiloh told about the damn dog...."Cardigan" and "Well, hello" refer to two students in our department....

Cardigan (pointing to a water bottle outside her lab): A--, is that your water bottle?
Well, hello: Which one? The Deerpark?
Cardigan: Um, yeah, that one.
Well, hello: Um, no, I don't think so. Mine is the one next to it.
Cardigan: Oh, ok, b/c I had a water bottle and I thought I left it in Immunology, but then I saw that one, so I thought that might be mine.

Hysterical laughter ensues.

Uh...WHAT? How is that funny? How is that an amusing conversation???????

Oh, and don't even get me started on the lengths I go to just to avoid people. Seriously...I will duck into the cold room and crouch under the window just to avoid what will undoubtedly be a most uncomfortable interaction.

OMG...I almost forgot...Trivia Night w/ some of my classmates
Trivia question: Who wrote the book that the movie Planet of the Apes was based on?
Rick and Ro throw out names of 20th century sci-fi authors, etc.
ALR: Charleton Heston was in the movie.
Rick and Ro ignore ALR and continue to discuss.
ALR (louder): Charleton Heston was in the movie.
Rick and Ro give her a brief glance before discussing options.
ALR: Charleton Heston was in it.
Rick and Ro: Yes, we know.
Rick and Ro discuss authors again.
ALR: But Charleton Heston was in it!
Ro: Mark Twain is a better fucking guess than Charleton Heston.

Wow, I am just filled with so much anger and...and...idk...I just feel like snarling and sneering at everyone lately...what's wrong with me?

Well, thanks for letting me vent...I'll try to post something a little more pleasant later on....

I miss you all!

“The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books that they’ve printed.”

Bold those you have read.
Italicize those you intend to read.
Underline the books you LOVE.
Strike out the books you have no intention of ever reading.
Reprint this list in your own LJ so we can try and track down these people who’ve read six and force books upon them …

1 Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter Series – JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials Trilogy – Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
11 Little Women – Louisa May Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 – Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With the Wind – Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House – Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited – Evelyne Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Graeme
31 Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis
34 Emma – Jane Austen
35 Persuasion – Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – C.S. Lewis
37 The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini
38 Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh – A.A. Milne
41 Animal Farm – George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving
45 The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables – L M Montgomery
47 Far From the Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies – William Golding
50 Atonement – Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi – Yann Martel
52 Dune – Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time of Cholera – Garbiel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck
62 Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History – Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas
66 On the Road – Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’ Diary – Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick – Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens
72 Dracula – Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes from a Small Island – Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses – James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal – Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - A S Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple – Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web – EB White
88 The Five People You Meet in Heaven – Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks
94 Watership Down – Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet – William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables – Victor Hugo

I am SICK AND TIRED of Grad School. Seriously!

Bah humbug.

I turned in my proposal (written qualifying exam). I am now studying for my oral defense on July 9.

More of an update later?

1. Go to the Wikipedia home page and click random article. That is your band's name.
2. Click random article again; that is your album name.
3. Click random article 15 more times; those are the tracks on your album.

Band Name: Madaba Map

Album Name: Cardo Maximus

Track List:

1) Colonia Aelia Capitolina
2) Bar Kokhbar's Revolt
3) Hadrian
4) Italica
5) Amphitheatrum Flavium
6) Five-Cent Coin
7) Obverse
8) E Pluribus Unum
9) Rahway, New Jersey
10) East Jersey State Prison
11) Crazy Joe
12) Peter Boyle
13) Nervous Breakdown
14) Panic Attack
15) Hyperventilation

Go to IMDB.com and look up 10 of your favorite TV shows.
Post three official IMDB "Plot Keywords" for these 10 picks.
Have your friends guess the show names.

1. New Jersey/Colleague/Diagnosis HOUSE, M.D. guessed by BOXCARBRANDI
2. Beautiful Daughter/Insult/Argument
3. Nuclear Attack/Nuclear Fallout/Kansas
4. Appearance/Style/Fashion
5. Medical/Detective/Hospital
6. U Boat/Dolphin/Sea SEAQUEST DSV guessed by BOXCARBRANDI
7. Bicycle/Bicycle Parts/Friendship
8. Coming Of Age/Product Placement/High School
9. Neighbor/England/Vicar
10. Cult Favorite/Teleportation/Futuristic

If you would like to play, comment. I will assign you a letter, and you will post in your LJ ten songs you like beginning with that letter.
boxcarbrandi gave me a B!

1. "Breaking Me Down" -SOiL
2. "Black 7" -SOiL
3. "Blue" -LeAnn Rimes
4. "Blue Moon of Kentucky" -Elvis
5. "Back At One" (aka "The Orf Song") -Brian McKnight
6. "Bop Bop Baby" -Westlife
7. "Burning Love" -Elvis
8. "Bossa Nova Baby" -Elvis
9. "Blue Suede Shoes" -Elvis
10. "Burning Bright" -Shinedown

*sigh*

Study Study Study

Tuesday's the Virology Exam.

Then I can breathe a bit. Except for preparing my Bact presentation. Just really want May to get here. Bloody hell.