The dog and the cat keep playing a game which may or may not actually be sexual harassment. I think it's an "arrgh, I'm going to stand over you and nibble on your neck because I want you to play with me!" from the dog, and an "OMFG! No! GTFO you perv!" from the cat.

I've been having to wipe gobs of dog slobber off of Étoile's back. He usually likes that, I think it's because he thinks I'm cleaning him affectionately or something - he likes licking us, so evidently he thinks it's a nice gesture, and not just to claim us, or because we taste good.

It would be nice if they got along. There are some moments where it looks like they could, but those moments tend to end with me yelling, "Do not crush/bite/harass my cat!" or mother yelling, "Do not scratch my dog! Claws stay in!"

Bre-an, as it turns out, is persistent in the same way that Edward was brilliant. This means that where Edward would find new and interesting ways to get around any obstacles, Bre-an just keeps pushing through those obstacles until he overcomes them. This has caused problems because even when he gets hurt, he keeps on trying. He's watched the cat, and thereby determined how to get over the baby-gates, but there are some parts of the gates that he can get stuck on, painfully. I have had to extract him when he gets stuck, because he doesn't try to get unstuck, just to get all the way over.

It has also caused problems in house training. He seems to believe that he'll keep defecating wherever he wants, and eventually mother will stop scolding him for it. Edward appeared to feel shame when he had an accident. Bre-an has no accidents; he pees with intent.

Current Mood: morose

I am wearing my hair in odango right now, and it's still long enough to reach halfway down my back.

Well, my minor came through, so that's great.

Tags: school
Current Mood: relieved

On Sunday I spoke with F. I guess the key is communication, but I don't really feel better having expressed myself. Perhaps this is because I often get the impression of speaking to a brick wall. She says that she never asks questions because she's learned that I'll say something if I want to, and she knows how private I am, and doesn't want to pry. I think that's bullshit. I had to make her promise that she would show interest in my life, which I think is probably not something that someone should feel they need to request of their best friend. Whatever, it's not like I can pick and choose. She says I've always been there for her, but she knows that she's not always there for me. She said so many times that she knows that I don't trust her anymore, and she understands why, and she knows I'll never fully trust her again. Apparently she is happy with the status-quo, because she's never done anything to change that. The girl she used to be would have tried.

Mother and I took the dog to the vet today. He sat on my lap in the car, and squealed and squirmed for the whole ride – there and back. When we got there, mother registered his name: Bre-an. I was shocked. I had not been informed of this change. I generally do not approve of hyphens in first names. I should not have been surprised though, this is, after all, the woman who named her daughter Alandrea, but still. Still. At least she was happy that no-one mispronounced it.

Bre-an is 10.8 pounds, and perfectly healthy. We are going to get him a harness for the car, so that he can learn to ride around in it without freaking out. He and Étoile are still not exactly getting along, but not exactly... not getting along either. It's weird.

Current Music: Sara Bareilles - Fairytale

We brought home the dog today. We’re naming him Breon. He’s very sweet to everyone, but he’s obviously taken to mother and is going to be her dog. I keep comparing him to Edward. I keep crying.

Étoile was sleeping when we brought Breon home. Everything seemed to be better than we thought possible; when Étoile woke up, he came downstairs to eat, and walked right by the dog with no reaction other than a slight glance.

He ate, said hello to me, then walked by the dog again. Then, I saw the best silent big no since Italian Spiderman. I guess he was still half asleep the first time by, so he didn’t really notice the puppy. He’s spent the rest of the day getting slowly closer to Breon before scampering away. Luckily, Breon does not yet seem inclined to chase him. He doesn’t seem to like Breon yet, or rather, he doesn’t seem to know what to think of him. He seems to understand that he is not being usurped though, so that’s very good.

The dog’s kennel is right outside my door, and he won’t stop whining because he wants to be in my parents’ room. He stopped for a while when Étoile poked at him through the bars, but then mother yelled at Étoile because teasing the puppy really is not fair, and his claws are only clipped.

I hope they learn to get along. And I really hope he stops whining soon.

Current Mood: covered in tears and dog spit
Current Music: VAST - Channel Zero

Well, we're getting a dog. A man at the market who sells organic vegetables (mostly potatoes) bred some Border Collies, and on Saturday he brought one to show while selling his wares, so my mother saw it and started talking to him about dogs. On Tuesday, mother and I went to the man's farm, and saw the litter. There had only been two boys, and one was already spoken for. Mother was charmed by the puppy, so decided to take him.

He's very sweet, but I am as of yet unconvinced by his charms. I think he's ugly and he smells bad. This is probably an indication of an absence of soul on my part, and will hopefully be remedied once I get to know him. Mother, father, and I will be going to pick him up this Friday.

Hopefully he'll get along with the cat; we think there's a good chance that he will, because there were a lot of barn cats about, and he seemed to have a healthy respect for them. Still, Border Collies are herding dogs, which means that he's very likely going to be a chaser, and Étoile enjoys playing tag.

He is six weeks old, and I very much doubt that he's potty trained at all. That'll be fun. The man said that he wants the pups to go to their homes as early as possible so that they'll better bond to their people. I am not sure I buy that, but it's probably a good idea to get him out of the barn and in to the house as soon as we can.

It was a bit awkward when I was at the farm to see the puppies. I am the epitome of city girl, so, "What pretty eyes that cow has," I said, staring directly at the bull's horns. Also, it took me about 5 seconds to say "Ooh, look over there... it's a... rooster!" I think the man was rather bemused, but he didn't laugh at me outright, so I guess that's okay.

Current Mood: bemused

One week ago, at this time, (since I was plagued with the same insomnia that I am now) I decided that if I was going to be awake and alert all night, I was going to do something productive with my time. So, I organised the next three years of my life, or at least, the scholastic portion of them. I’m really not a ‘plan ahead’ person, but this is one of those things that you have to plan, seeing as pre-requisites exist and all. I’ve picked out every single course that I’m going to take, and I’ve determined that instead of sociology, I’m going to minor in criminology.

Due to the courses I took last year – if I want to complete my undergraduate degree in four years – I have no option except minoring in some branch of sociology. I had planned on this, but then found that I really can’t stand it, and the future courses offered do not look like they fit my interests.

Luckily, criminology is a subsection of our sociology department, so I can go into that. The courses still don’t seem fascinating, but to tell the truth, not much that’s not in my major looks both interesting and useful. If I hadn’t eliminated linguistics from my options last year, I may have gone with that, and the drama and film courses look wonderful, but I’d likely never have a practical use for them.

Criminology is especially good for me though, because not only are there very few (I think it has the least of any minor) requirements, (which leaves me open to have more fascinating courses in psychology) but it may be useful for me if I go into criminal psychology and profiling (which I likely won’t, but it’s good to keep your options open, and it does sound somewhat interesting, though I imagine it’d have an extremely high burnout rate).

My psych mark was high enough to continue into honours, though only just barely, but I’m beginning to get the impression that that’s actually a pretty rare achievement. I’ve heard people say that the first year course gives the lowest marks, and that most people improve drastically as the years progress, so I hope that applies to me. I’m worried about how I’ll do in the statistics course, but I did take MDM 4U, so maybe I’ll survive.

I’m actually really glad that I planned my courses out this early in the summer, because (and I don’t think they actually say this anywhere, you have to sort of figure it out for yourself) you can’t apply for courses in your minor if you haven’t applied for that minor first, and that’s not something you can do before first year. So people who want to get into a course for their minor have to – at some point either during the school year or the summer – apply in person for a minor. There’s a roundabout way of doing it too: you have to go in to the registrar’s office and get a form to declare your major again, (you can print the form off if you want, but I’m pretty sure you can’t just mail it in, you have to submit it in person) and there’s a little, easy to miss, spot where you write in by hand what you want for your minor. I don’t know if that’s how they do it everywhere, but I know that you have to have a minor to graduate here, and if I hadn’t noticed that the courses I wanted required a minor to sign up for, then I wouldn’t have gone to search for how to apply for a minor, and I would have simply assumed that you take whatever courses you want to make up your minor and then somehow everything magically gets sorted out.

So I applied for my minor on Monday, and apparently it’ll be put through whenever. The woman I spoke to wouldn’t give me an estimate; she said that they’d get to it when they’d get to it, and that when it went through depended on how many people there were waiting before me.

I’m pretty sure that that’s fine for me, because there’s more than a month before registration begins and I expect it won’t take that long to get through the paperwork, but I feel really bad for the people who aren’t going to notice and are going to find out that they can’t register for the courses they want after registration has opened and people are already sniping each other to get in, or the ones who aren’t going to notice until the last minute, and are going to have to wait for their application to be put through, at which point the courses they want are going to be full.

So, I mean, unless there’s some huge, obvious sign that I missed, that probably causes some problems.

In other news, I went to see Star Trek with my parents that Friday night. I consider myself somewhat knowledgeable in the ways of Star Trek, seeing as it was one of my favourite shows when I was a kid, and even F mocked me a little for talking about how awesome TNG was in first or second grade. (See my street geek cred, that’s totally my geek cred, it may not be much, but you’ve gotta admit it’s there.)

Overall, I liked it. Actually, I thought it was pretty awesome, and I loved how they came right out and pretty much said, “This is an alternate universe, and what happened in the original version is still legit, but we’re playing in this realm now,” right in the movie. I hope that assuaged a lot of purist!fan hate.

I thought that there was a lot of great acting going on, and everybody had “aww, you’re so adorable!” moments which I didn’t think went into overkill. I also thought that there were enough little details similar to TOS to keep people happy and make it clear that this really was a Star Trek movie in spirit.

This thing happened though, because I went with my family and we took my dad. There’s this scene that I guess everybody has heard about by now, where Uhura and Spock kiss, and I think that as far as such scenes go, it’s one of the better ones I’ve seen in a while. The thing is, during that scene, my dad, really loudly, he said “Oh no!”

Now, I’m thinking that this is just because he’s really old, and kind of bashful, and he gets uncomfortable when any affection is shown onscreen. But, wow, it was awkward. And loud, very loud. I wonder what people thought.

Tags: school
Current Mood: awake

So I was going to go out tonight, but one friend suddenly found out that she could only go out during the day because of family circumstances, and the other apparently was not planning on telling me that the entire day was cancelled because she was devoting herself to her brother’s birthday party. Devoting yourself to your brother’s birthday is great, but I would appreciate it if you could actually tell people that the event planned around your schedule two weeks ago was cancelled. Other people do actually plan time to go out with their friends, not to avoid them, and may have done different things with their day if they had known that they wouldn’t be going out.

I need less self-centered friends. Things should be all about me all the time, obviously.

Exams are done though, and that’s good. I think I did really well on psychology. The Biology teacher actually sent out what amounted to a public apology for the exam, and they’re going to be doing some weird stuff to get a mark from it. They’ll be using either our labs or our midterm to make up 30% of the final exam grade. I am betting that a lot of shit went down.

In other news, a professor has been arrested for the possession, distribution and making of child pornography. As one may imagine, this has not gone over well. It looks like the evidence is pretty damn conclusive, so I’m glad he’s been tracked down.

He was going to retire next year; now his existence is being erased. The parts of the school that were associated with him are being renamed, and everything regarding him is being kept under wraps. As far as I’ve been able to find, the only papers reporting it have been from the nearby region, and I’ve only been able to find two different articles about it, though one of them was printed in two newspapers.

Most people I’ve spoken to know that a professor was arrested, but not what for. It’s probably not good for the reputation of a university to be known for employing a child molester for more than twenty-five years, but I think it’s probably the sort of crime that should be acknowledged, as long as the children involved can’t be identified. Maybe, if creeps hear that others are being caught, it’ll have some slight affect that dissuades them from committing similar crimes. The chance is probably small, but anything that goes toward preventing child-molestation has to help.

Current Mood: angry
Current Music: Damien Rice - Delicate

On Thursday, I did my Linguistics and Writing exams.

I’m glad Writing is over, and I hope I did well. It has persuaded me to avoid online courses at all costs if given the chance.

Linguistics I’ll miss a little. The exam was pretty good; I think I did well. One question however was completely out of the blue, and I did not prepare for it at all. That question? Give three Latin phrases used in the Harry Potter books, and explain what they mean in English.

I am pretty glad that I am such a geek, because it was one of those “Only fandom can save you now!” moments. I called upon the fangirl within, and she was more than willing to supply the answers that I know are correct. Yeah, all that time spent searching for the deeper meanings of the spells that Rowling wrote so that I could better understand the world and feel more competent writing fanfiction paid off.

In short, spending countless hours obsessing over a fantasy world has helped me succeed in University. Fuck yes!

Then, yesterday, I did biology. I am not best pleased.

The exam was 100 multiple choice questions. That is reasonable; it’s a course for people who are not into biology, and there were over 900 of us in it (Though there had been something like 1800 at the midterm exam).

Now, this biology course, well, I think I’ve expressed my feelings about it before. Suffice it to say that it wouldn't convince anyone who took it that they actually like biology and should take further science courses. I don’t think the professor really wanted to teach us, and I don’t think the students really wanted to be there (I’ll be frank, I came almost every day, and sometimes there were only about 30 of us at lecture). I don’t think the effort was really there on anyone’s side.

Still, I expect a University poofessor (that spelling mistake is staying in because it made me giggle like a small child) to put forth a bit more effort than:

78. What does HPV stand for?
a) one
b) human papillomavirus
c) three
d) four
e) five

For a final exam, that seems a bit off. Now, I wouldn’t complain, because damn, that’s an easy mark, and ya need all the marks ya can get, but that was… only one of many problems with the exam.

We were, for example, given 500 review questions, 100 of which we were led to believe would be on the exam. About 20 of them were.

Now, maybe I’m spoiled, but I think that if you’re going to be nice enough to give people a few hours worth of questions, and tell them that the exam will consist of those questions, you should make sure that the questions do appear on the exam. You also should not tell your students that the material will only be from this semester if you’re going to ask questions about the material from last semester. That’s kind of a dick move.

I have reason to believe that the exam was, in fact, the exam from last semester with some (only some!) questions changed. The easy questions had one answer that was in any way reasonable, and four other answers that were vaguely familiar and would have made sense for questions that I can almost remember from the last exam. Some of the questions were, I am almost certain, verbatim, and in the same place that they were in the last exam. A very few were from the review, and a very, very few were extremely what the fuck you never mentioned this let alone taught it and it has nothing to do with the subjects we covered in this course and is this even a real question or did you just throw a bunch of scientific words that someone without a biology degree could have no hope of understanding together and call it a day?

So yeah, my personal theory is that he got smashed, and wrote the exam in a matter of minutes, taking last semester’s exam and copy-pasting a few new questions and answers onto it.

I think I passed? I mean, I remembered the questions from the last exam, and I’m sure I got the ones that were on the review right, but I don’t know if I answered last semester’s questions correctly, or if I guessed the right answers for the others.

I actually handed my test to the professor as I was walking out. He said to have a nice summer, and instead of the verbal violence I wanted to commit, I smiled, tucked a strand of hair behind my ear, and said “you too.”

Logically, I’m proud of myself, I’m the student here, and student entitlement is such a problem, and I must be in the wrong, but there’s this primal creature raging inside and screaming that leaping at someone while calling them a douchewaffle is sometimes for the best. I don’t know, I just don’t know.

I mean, it cost a hell of a lot of money to take this course, some effort from the teacher is to be expected.

I think it was a shitty course, with a shitty professor, and an extremely shitty exam, and I like biology.

Hopefully, as the years progress, the courses I take will get more specialised, and teachers will care about the content more, and I will never again have to deal with a professor who just doesn't give a damn.

Hopefully, hope is eternal.

Tags: school
Current Music: Republica - Drop Dead Gorgeous

Oh my goodness, oh my. Étoile just brought me a mouse. My door was closed, so he tried to shove it under, and I kinda freaked out, even though I didn't scream, because I didn't see that it was from Étoile and it looked a bit alive and I wondered what the hell it was doing trying to get under my door because those things do not belong in this part of the house. Anyway, I opened the door more, and Étoile ran away with it, and I think he's eating it on the couch now which is pretty gross but I'm very proud of him and flattered that he brought it to show me. Oh my, oh my goodness.