And I can't even seem to remember a 10-item grocery list...

Hey y'all. Taking a break from 4.5 hours of research lab work and almost 2 hours of class to share the following link:

http://laurafreberg.com/blog/?p=417

Go to it, read it, watch the clip -- and the whole thing and actually pay attention to what they're saying (I seem to have trouble with this quite a bit myself)... and voila! You'll actually learn something new! I love it when that happens despite my grumbling and digging-in of heels.

It's about a savant named Stephen Wiltshire. Don't know what a "savant" is? Go look at the site!!! It's good!

Thank you Laura Freberg for enriching our minds and managing to have a sense of humor at the same time!

Should I even bother?

Hey there, campers. I'm baaaaaaaack!!! I don't think I'll be mentioning how much time elapses in between my posts anymore for there's just no point. I took a quarter off (I think most people who know about a pinkie toe's worth about me can attest to the fact that I was losing it...) to take care of health issues that I'd been putting on the back burner for over two years. And it was causing a blooming of other health problems for me (sort of a mushrooming effect, I'd say). So, a bone scan, a serious vacation, and some quality time learning to take care of myself later, I'm not all perfect and shiny, but I AM a lot better.

That research internship I was doing in the Summer of '08 taught me this: I DON'T, and I repeat (picture me screaming, and pitching a fit on the floor and banging my fists) DON'T LIKE TO ANALYZE DATA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Hopefully I got my point across, but I think that internship was the straw that broke this camel's back.

BTW, I got an "A-" in the Memory and Cognition class I was taking. Apparently, I'm smarter than I like to give myself credit for...

So, now I'm doing the second half of that research internship as a requirement for my degree, but I've got a far better "job" this time: Community Service Coordinator for the mentoring program I had previously analyzed data for. I rock it, I think. As long as I report what I'm doing to the professor and Lead Mentor, I've pretty much got free reign to set my own agenda as long as I complete a set of tasks the professor gave me in the beginning. Cool beans.

The other two classes (after I serve my obligatory 12 hours a week in the lab) are my Behavioral Effects of Psychoactive Drugs and Multicultural Psychology classes. I've heard that professor who used to teach the Psychoactive Drugs class used to bring in a "box of drugs" to show as examples to the class (I'm assuming they weren't someone's blood pressure medication, if you know what I mean.) The current professor's pretty dry but she does come up with some off-the-wall stuff to talk about sometimes.

Anyways, gotta go, I got work to do. But I bet if you've read any previous posts on this blog, you already knew that.

Synonym for CRAZY, please?

I can now unequivocally state that I have been, or currently AM, the following :

absurd, amok, bananas, bats in the belfry, batty, bizarre, bonkers, cockamamie, crack-brained, cracked, crackpot, crazed, cuckoo, daffy, daft, decrepit, delirious, dementate, demented, deranged, desirous, dilapidated, distracted, dotty, eager, erratic, fanatical, flaky, foolish, frantic, gaga, goofy, harebrained, haywire, inane, infatuated, insane, loco, loony, lunatic, mad, maniac, meshuga, meshugga, nuts, preposterous, psycho, rickety, senseless, shaky, silly, strange, tottering, touched, unbalanced, wacky, weird (courtesy thesaurus.com -- another website I love)

(although, I don't know what "meshuga/meshugga" mean, I am sure that if it is anything like "bats in the belfry" then it's spot on!)

Should I explain why I haven't written a post in so long? Guess that's the point of this whole dealy-yo here called a blog, eh? Ok, here goes:

Started a research internship (in a lab, with a lot of numbers and letters -- for hours at a time -- staring at the stuff, typing it, writing it down, erasing it, analyzing the ca-ca out of it. Picture it. Then you'll know what I mean.)

THEN, three weeks later, started a 5-week class, on Memory and Cognition, no less. 'Kay, before you say "wah" to my dismay, let me explain.

A 5-week class is only offered in the summer (that must be when the people in charge take their vacations cuz I'm sure if they found out the amount of convoluted crazyness they try to shove in our brains in a short period of time, they'd be in disapproval).

A 5-week class takes all the information from a regularly timed 10-week, quarter long class, and smooshes (yes, that's a technical term -- my brain's mush, gimme a break) it into half the time, with nearly all the same assignments, but definitely covering all the material (if you take one with this instructor). He's a great instructor -- it's just that he's at a level of intelligence that should be illegal -- and I'm not diggin' it, at least not with an Ebbinghaus-style enthusiasm. I don't dive into it as readily as, say, abnormal psychology. That stuff is ooey-good (another technical term, thanks for asking).

Meanwhile, 2 weeks remain in this class, and I still have a 2-page paper, a 10-page paper (conducting an experiment) and editing for a 5-8 page paper for my internship. Oh yeah, that last paper is due tomorrow. Help me. Please.

This is all said with a touch of humor but a bucket of insanity. I don't think I should even be typing right now. I should be lying down... um ...like THAT'S gonna happen! I laugh in the face of adversity and challenge. I claim rights to an extraordinary Helper I choose to call God and pray for some relief to claim some time of my own in order to practice relaxing (that's where I try to pretend I know how and sit there in quiet reflection trying to read all the while my head's saying "Is this what I'm supposed to be doing right now?")

Assuming anyone's still reading this post, if you pray (and I highly recommend you learn how if you don't) pray, hard. My elder child is on a flight to Texas as I type. My younger is awaiting the train called "Mom's Limo Service" and I'm gonna hit the library for some non-school mental edibles before I begin my route.