Apparently I have a box # at my school.

I do not think I physically have a box, so, what, does the Chem E Desk Lady (JoAnne--yes I know her name!) just send me an email if someone ever sends me mail?

And how the hell did I not know this until 1 day before I graduate?

Weird.  Weird, I declare.

Hi.

So.

CJ has totally lost track of what has been going on on LJ.  Yeeps. >_<

So here's a short summary of my life as it stands.

Final week of classes EVAR (at least for a while) starts today.
Final paper of UO due Thursday (12th) morning.
Monday (16th): Final in Alternative Energy class.
Tuesday (17th): Plane flight to Denver
Wednesday (18th): Interview with the CSB (OMGWTFBBQ AAARGH)
Wednesday (18th): Plane flight to Seattle post-interview.
Hopefully Ursula picking me up from airport is also Wednesday.
Thursday (19th): hang out with people and demolish room decor.
Friday (20th): dad comes, we cram all my stuff into the Acadia and drive back to Richland
Weekend (21st-22nd):  Lots of celebratory graduating-ness.  Will be there alcohol?  I think so.
Monday (23rd) drive back up to Seattle to meet friend named Morgan from teh Internets
Tuesday (24th)  Seattle tourism, The Watchman concert (Tom Morello?  Very yes.) at the Crocodile Cafe.
Wednesday (25th): drive home from Seattle, hopefully without hangover.
Thereafter: TBD

The concert thing literally just happened tonight.  WOW I was not anticipating being back in the city quite so soon.

Am really hoping I get this job in Denver.  It looks like the kind of thing I would actually enjoy.  I mean, who doesn't want to go all CSI on industrial plant accidents?  Also, it's the only employer who's answered my application since January....  Don't get me wrong, though.  Still my 1st choice.

So...what's everyone else been up to?

As anyone who hasn't been living in a cave for the last several months knows, today Barack Obama became the acting President of the United States.  I dragged my sorry butt awake at 8 in the morning to watch the proceedings.  They were lovely and poignant and truly something that felt shared by every citizen of this country.

One thing I've noticed about Obama and anyone on his staff who makes public statements is that he avoids the topic of race.  He made a few little omages to racism in the inauguration speech, acknowledging the moment without being too dogmatic about it.  The implications of his election are pretty obvious.

...Or so I thought.  But now I'm not so sure it's so obvious.  Take what I overheard a classmate say:

"Everyone's talking about how this just means so much to black people.  But it's basically irrelevant.  George W. Bush was a white guy.  Did the fact that he was white have an effect on us [whites]?  Not really."

I'm between being horrified and embarrassed by this guy.  I'm so dumbfounded, in fact, that I'm finding it difficult to throw together a coherant rebuttal.  But I'm going to try here, for the sake of my own sanity.

Racism exists.  The only people who consistently say that racism doesn't exist are people who have lived such isolated, homogenous, or possibly ignorant lives that the best they cannot recognize their own hypocracy.  It is a deep primal instinct to be discriminating of those who are "different," "not of the tribe," "genetically defective."  It's a natural selection thing that must be consciously overcome.  Declaring "I'm not a racist" is almost always false.  "I do my best to live by the belief that all people deserve equal treatment under the law and by their fellows" is probably more accurate, if legalistic, statement, and even then most of us build in moralistic loopholes.

This is not to say that everyone, or even most of us, are vindictively or even intentionally racist.  And as we as a society become more refined in our definition of discrimination, institutionalized racism is waning.  It is by no means gone.  Statistically speaking, there should be about 15 black senators.  There is one--Roland Burris, who currently fills Obama's vacated seat.

The statistics inspire some to change, but more often they suppress the motivation to do so.  I've had many black classmates who consistently say that they're fighting an opposing current, that they can't get ahead of the curve, that the system is against them.  Obama's election sends a powerful signal that the "system," be it beurocracy, democracy, civil rights law, or something less definable, that the time for inspiration is here.  It tells them, you are a minority, but we are listening.  We hear you.  We are fighting for you.  Don't settle for less.

George W. Bush was the "settle for less" candidate, classmate.  He has never been an inspiring or inspired mind.  He was the public face of the right-wing hawks, and the rest of us didn't care enough to go vote for the other guy.  His white, Texan blandness was fine because we felt fine.  We weren't in a recession, we didn't have any outstanding internation crises to deal with, and frankly the Republican party had all the better strategists.

But over the last eight years we have seen our rights eroded, our financial system protections gutted, our industries become more irresponsible, and our international integrity disappear.  As a measure for any president, it is decidedly uninspiring.

Obama's race has always been a secondary factor next to his policies.  I don't know a single person who voted for him or against him because he was the black guy.  The very fact that race has become irrelevant to policy is the reason it's relevant to the demise of institutionalized racism.

That matters for all of us, black, white, asian, latino or other.  It says that we are better now than we were, and that all of us, especially oppressed people, have brighter hopes.  And if we have hope, all things are possible




Note: this still feels sloppy to me.  I will come back and edit it later.

Sophomore year of high school (so, six years ago now) I was rollerblading and fell hard on my flat palm.  I had a very sharp, intense pain followed by numbness.  The PE instructor inspected it, said it was fine, and sent me on my way.  Later, I fell on it again.  Ever since then, I have reoccurring pain and consistent weakness in a very specific place in my left hand, right near the wrist in the exact middle, dorsal ("out") side.  

The pain comes on gradually.  I notice it when putting on my backpack or opening doors.  I wear my carpal-tunnel brace to keep me from doing anything else that would bring a sudden jolt of pain, but keeping my hand straight doesn't seem to make the condition itself subside.  It just keeps me from cursing and crying in public as much.

This happens roughly every 2months or so, and ranges from mildly annoying to excruciatingly painful.  It's most noticeable when my hand is flexed backward, like for a push-up.  As I am pretty much ambidextrous, there are quite a few things I do with my left hand.  I almost always open doors with it, for example.  It makes this condition 10 times more annoying.

I've seen three different doctors; a family practitioner, a feet & hands specialist and a sports medicine doctor.  The sports medicine gal was the only one who ever really offered me an explanation.  Once she established that no bones were broken or dying (don't ask) she suggested they do a CMRI to see if there was a torn tendon in there that has scarred over.  Considering my symptoms, this fits.  However, since there's no good treatment, and surgery doesn't usually fix this type of injury very effectively, and because the CMRI procedure would involve them sticking big needles directly into my wrist, I have just kind of lived with the pain.

One of the things the docs always ask is, is there anything in particular that causes the pain to come back--sudden impact, lots of typing, etc.?  My answer is no, I've ruled out pretty much everything because nothing consistently brings on the pain.  A case in point has been the last few days.

Yesterday it was pretty bad.  I amounted it to having written a 50,000-word story in 25 days and spent a number of hours on video games the day before.  I stretched it out a little (which is painful as HELL.  Anyone here who's been through physical therapy probably has an idea about that) and went right back to playing video games for oh, 12 or 14 hours.

Today?  The pain is gone, just back to the perpetual stiffness.  This sudden disappearance is unusual.  Usually it just gradually subsides.  Even the ganglian cyst that developed in my hand two years ago has shrunk.  This leaves me with 3 theories:

1.  Doctors are wrong and I have some even more bizarre condition.  Say, Leprosy.
2.  Stretching once every 90 minutes or so is a cure for scarred tendon pain and/or causes rapid healing.
3. Video games are in fact an awesome treatment and I should play more of them.

I think I will experiment with option 3 over the break and see how it goes.

So here's what happened today.

I got up at 11, threw on a sweatshirt and ran down to the only open convenience store on University Way for milk for my non-traditional Thanksgiving dinner of chicken alfredo, only to discover that Rite Aid's fridge is broke and they, in fact, have no milk.

I came back home, and after grumbling for a while set out to finish up my novel today.  I had actually ended the novel the night before, but as it stood at 48,010 words, it did not qualify to win the contest.  So I went back and found a place I could shove in some extra scenes, which turned out decently and left me at exactly 50,010 words.

Well, not so much according to the idiot bot that counts the words on the website.  Some difference between it and Word '07 caused the website to only accent 49,009 of those words.  I think it has a prejudice against hyphens.

So I grumbled a little more, went back and shoved in an extra 125 words in the premise that nobody would probably notice, and resubmitted. The glorious winner's site loaded, and I stole from it this graphic:


I will officially be able to concentrate on neglected lab reports, papers and presentations for the remaining week of the quarter.  Oh, and maybe some Christmas shopping.

As for the novel (if any civilized person could call it that), I am not sure if I'm going to go back and clean it up, or at least anytime soon.  It started out as a neat idea, or at least neat imagery, but looking back I'm finding it full of gaping plot holes, ambiguities and unaddressed character angst that I'm not sure is redeemable.  50,000 words is *about* 140 pages of hardback novel, plus or minus 15 and depending on the font, and I'm not sure I have enough material in the story to flesh out out into a more reasonable and hole-less work of literary awesomeness.  Yes, as the NaNo people keep reminding me in their emails, the brainchild that comes out of NaNo is rarely pretty, as it is written at breakneck speed and zero back-editing or research.  But that doesn't make any of it less cringe-worthy on the readthrough.

Still, if you want to read the draft and egg me on about pushing it further, be my guest.  Just ask for a copy.

I can haz sleep naow?

Dear people in the Subway line (or any other line for that matter):

1.  It is not okay for you to make out while standing in front of me.  You're ugly enough without the visual onslaught that is your grotesque pink tongue.  No, I don't care HOW much sex you're having.

2.  If you brush up against my backpack one more time, it's war.  It's not a personal space thing; I just assume you're trying to steal my wallet.

3.  Are you that girl who talks 120 mph at Volume 20 about your overly-neurotic scheduling habits in a way that makes it sound like you are complaining that what little you have to do is driving you crazy?  Two words: Shut. Up.

Now that all of you have totally turned me off my lunch, I guess I'll just throw it at you.



No love,
CJ

I've grown quite attached to this album, even though I just bought it.  Love the piano and the UK accent. :-3

I only wish it wasn't DRM-enabled.  I thought the Zune marketplace didn't have DRM stuff, but now I am stuck only listening to this album on my laptop and Zune and not with the awesome sound card on my PC.

I was working on my NaNo project during TC class this morning (this prof I have can make volcano eruptions and wildfires boring), and then something terrible happened.

Some stray key was swiped that made the next few key strokes close out of Word without saving.  I lost 600 words in one go.

That does not help the fact that I'm 2,500 behind right now. ;_;

Stupid school.

I announced here in my LJ that i was going to be participating in National Novel Writing Month this year.  For those...2?...of you who don't know how NaNo works, the goal is to write a 50,000-page novel by the end of November.  While it's not impossible, it ain't easy, either.  This is a wonderful and frustrating month.  And here's how mine has gone so far.

Day 1:  It is the wee hours of the morning, after having worked at the start of my new novel since the midnight start.  3,000 words in one day?  I'm going to be finished before they even open the word counter for submissions!

Day 3:  I actually have not only characters but an emerging plot.  And I'm still ahead on the word count.  This is going to be cake.

Day 5:  Well, ok, even after I got that paper written I'm still caught up to where I should be.  All I'll have to do is keep up.

Day 6:  Crap, I have a midterm next week.  Should probably work more on the novel now and get ahead so I'll have time to study.

Day 9:  Behind in the word count all of a sudden.  Stupid lab write-ups.  

Day 10:  Still behind and in desperate need of plot bunnies.  The ship, she's goin' down Cap'n!  WAAAAAAAARGH!




So there you have it.  I'm going to go back to searching the dusy corners of my brain for ideas now.

Racism is such a touchy subject that even your friends accuse you of hypocrisy  when you try to move beyond it.

There is something seriously wrong with this country.

I had my first-ever "Forgot to Register/Drop classes" nightmare last night.  I all of a sudden realized I had been enrolled in a freshman-level math class all quarter and could no longer drop it, having not done any homework or taken any midterms all quarter.

I've never come close to doing something like this in college, so I have no idea where this dream came from.  I know it's a common one, but I'm <i>so</i> confused as to why.

End of dreamlog.

My third diary over at the Daily Kos.  It is about why I (and young voters) am inspired by the broad sweeping oratory of our favorite Democratic Presidential Nominee.

It had 27 comments and 16 recommenders in under an hour.   That's pretty awesome.

Oh, by the way, I AM participating in NaNoWriMo this year.  You can read my author and story info here.  Bug me to let you read it!

You know it's going to be a long line for smoothies when the two counter girls can't figure out the special order "but can I have strawberries instead of mangoes?"

Come read my first-ever diary over at the Daily Kos! (Intro cross-posted here):

6:04:  John McCain says Americans are angry.  Have you noticed that at your rallies at all John?  The angry seems to manifest as calling Obama a terrorist, not in calls for cuts in capitol gains tax.  And speaking of cap gains taxes, who exactly is paying them right now?  My impression was that stock prices are falling faster than those brass parachutes.


6:14:  I hardly believe my ears.  McCain just said we SHOULDN'T spread the wealth around.  Yes, let's let those CEO's become billionaires while people in south central LA starve and struggle with crack addiction.  They don't need our help, they can lift themselves up by their boostraps if they try.

6:18:  John McCain insists that big government is bad.  He says big government has never been bigger since the era of "The Great Society."  So, we're no longer aspiring to be great?  Bad choice of words, if only that.

Aside: Yes, I'm snarky tonight.

6:39:  I've been yelling for a while now.  I can't BELIEVE McCain wants to validate his campaign's idiotic claims about Obama associating with terrorists by bringing them into this debate.  Every outlet has cried foul about how exaggurated and alarmist these claims are.  I did like Obama's response--basically, "you guys are being dicks and you should shut up."

6:44:  The question was, why would Sarah Palin be a better president than Joe Biden, John.  Not whether or not she's your "partner."

6:46:  John McCain doesn't think that requiring accountability and oversight in government is going to cost any money.  Wow, that's mavricky.  He's reached across the reality isle now.

6:48:  In case anyone didn't know this already, and you can take my word on this as an engineer with three internships at Hanford, nuclear power plants don't spring up overnight.  They take ten years OR LONGER to build and cost lots and lots of money.  We don't have the capability to do it immediately.  The Alaska natural gas pipeline won't work immediately either, because we don't have a lot of power plants that burn gas.  No solution to high oil prices is implementable RIGHT NOW.  McCain needs to stop deceiving people, it's mean.

7:01:  McCain thinks that if you like Obama's healthcare plan, you must like Canada and England.  I think there are plenty of people out there that are fond of Canada and England, if for no other reason than that their accents are cute.  Although Canada's healthcare system has many problems, John, England's is ranked among the best in the world.  As is Germany's--and universal healthcare doesn't interfere with the profitability of drug makers.  Germany's pharmeceutical and medical technology industries are booming.

I can't believe he wanted to use the same tired line of criticism when Obama stomped on it so thoroughly in the last debate, and is doing again.

This Joe guy is really convenient.  Is his last name "Sixpack"?
 
7:05:  Senator Government.  Yeah, That One.  He's not Senator Maverick.  Boo.

7:09:  John McCain says that any judge supporting Roe v. Wade is not qualified to be in office.  I don't want to remind my audience about that whole partisan judge scandal thing that the white house is being investigated about right now, so I'll just say that Obama...should answer the question.

7:12:  McCain wants to change the nation's view on abortion.  Pro-life people understand that everyone needs to think that abortion should be banned.  Speaking as a "pro-abortion" (who calls themself that?) movement member, take a read-through of the first amendment, will you?  Also?  Only 10% of people in this country believe that abortion should be absolutely illegal.  Why does EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM seem to work for the government?

7:21:  Did I just hear McCain propose that we deregulate teaching certification?  Oh dear god.

7:26:  McCain keeps trying to fight Obama on issues they agree on.  What the hell is this supposed to accomplish other than the impression that McCain has no idea where his opponent is on these issues?

7:28:  McCain's closing statements are so general that Obama could have made the exact same speech and his his demographic nodding.  Oh, but there goes the "country first" and "great honor/POWPOWPOW" thing.  Does his campaign really run on about 5 catchphrases?

EDIT:  A commentator on MSNBC declared the winner of the debate tonight to be Joe the Plumber.  Heh.

6:10:  Sen. McCain says that the new Secretary of the Treasury should be someone ordinary Americans identify with.  Knowing how bad the math skills of most ordinary Americans are, I don't want any of them NEAR the treasury...

6:13:  I'm really getting tired of this "greed and excess" line.  Greed and excess have always existed.  It's up to regulators to make sure they don't get out of hand.  Obama mentioned AIG a few minutes ago.  If the Feds had been paying attention to the loan money, that executive spa trip would never have been allowed to happen in the first place.

6:20: Obama: "We are mortgaging our children's future."  Effective line.

6:23:  McCain is anti-planetarium.

6:29:  There's the overhead projector again.  Does McCain not think that making kids interested in science is a good thing?  Education standards have gone up; with it the cost of educational equipment.

6:36:  McCain mentioned that the last time taxes were raised was when Hoover was in charge.  Weren't we talking about the Great Depression earlier?

6:40:  I kind of wanted to hear a full answer to that question about entitlements, but I think it's good that Obama's spelling out the tax plans.  Surveys show a lot of people still believe mistruths about Obama's tax plan.

6:41:  McCain: "It's not that hard to fix social security."  Oh yeah?  How come nobody's done it yet?
6:44:  McCain [On Nuclear Power]:  "Senator Obama says it has to be safe...or...something like that.  But look..."  Whoa, whoa, whoa.  Not good John.  If you're going to tell the audience what the other guy thinks about the issue, you should probably know.  Also, dismissing nuclear safety?  A LOT of people in this country are still very uneasy with how safe nuclear power generation is.

6:53:  McCain counters Obama's accusation that his healthcare policy will combust employer-based healthcare is to....ignore it.  If you ignore it long enough, it goes away, right?

7:07:  Obama: we have a moral obligation to help others, if we can successfully convince others that that obligation exists.  McCain: Obama doesn't understand the complexity and delicacy of situations like that.  We could make things worse, or better.  These answers both reflect bad steriotypes of the candidates: Obama is young and niieve, and McCain is old and lacks conviction.

7:18:  ZOMGWTFBBQ McCain said Obama was right about stuff!!!!one!eleventy1

7:21:  Uh, Senator McCain?  I'm not sure that talking to Russia like the country's leadership is a bunch of criminals in need of reform is going to make them like us more.

Before I forget:

This week is National Banned Books week.  Take a few hours and read Harry Potter or Catcher in the Rye or (Really?) Huckleberry Finn.  Thank your librarian for fighting the power.

It's a low key commemorative week.



Edit: Check out this link from the American Library Association.

John McCain said during the debate that Pakistan had not had leadership since the time of Alexander the Great.  He said he'd seen the tribal areas and that they were chaos.

I think there are  a lot of tribal leaders in Pakistan who would strongly object to the notion that the lack of a big centralized Western (dare I say imperial) government is the only kind of substantive leadership that counts.

I think there are plenty of tribal leaders who would disagree with him.

I have never been to Pakistan, but I do know people who have, who are actually from tribal areas of the middle east.  They get offended at the idea that tribal peoples don't understand the concept of leadership, that the lives they lead are full of chaos.  They balk at westerners who promote that westernized democracy is the only kind of government and deeply believe that such concepts are shortsighted and even prejudiced.

One of the big reasons that tribes in the mountains near where Al Qaeda is hiding have not helped the US more in removing the terrorist organization is an ancient custom in Islam stating that whether or not you agree with him, a guest in your village is your responsibility to protect.  It's a "good neighbor" sentiment, a type of "small town" civility that conservatives often tout.

A psychology professor I once had said that you can boil global cultural viewpoints into two main categories: that there is only one governing philosophy behind human action, or that there are multiple philosophies that are all valid.  John McCain's camp seems to believe very firmly in the former.

While I may not agree with Pakistani tribal leaders' decision to shelter Al Qaeda, as it ultimately undermines their safety as well as the safety of all people on Earth, I think John McCain's comments about a lack of leadership in the country are glib and even insulting.  We may not agree with these people, but we can't treat them as lesser human beings simply because of that.

Obama: Things are complicated, and it will take a complex strategy and a complex and flexible government to address them.
McCain: Senator Obama doesn't understand.  I'm OBVIOUSLY the better candidate.

And who's the elitist here?