Well here I am on the train ride home from my little family getaway in charming Denver, Colorado. For those of you that don’t know…I just spent a week in Colorado meeting relatives I’ve never met and seeing my 94-year-old grandfather in his new little nursing home place. Now unlike normal families, my fam decided it would be a grand idea to take an Amtrak train to Denver instead of flying there like normal people. A plane ride takes 2.3 hours. A train ride takes 36.

Our train left at 7am last Wednesday and didn’t get in to Denver til around 9pm on Thursday. Guys…let’s talk about trains.

Reasons why trains are the most torturous form of transportation:

-Their speed. You know things are bad when a huge motor home in the slow lane is passing you up.

-Their food. Cold and stale tortellini with a sauce composed mostly of sugar and death for $13? Classic.

-Their random stops for minutes and even hours without any announcements as to why we are delayed. For example, we were supposed to get into Sparks, NV a half hour ago but we have been at a dead stop for about two hours. Do we know why? Nope. My parents say we’re on “train time”. Let me tell you that train time fucking sucks.

-Sleeping. Okay I’ll admit the seats are much more comfortable than airplane seats but seriously folks…who can sleep sitting up? Last night I managed to snag a double seat all to myself and had a nice four hour nap laying in an awkward crumpled fetal position. This is the life, my mom says.

-Electrical outlets…or lack thereof. An iPod lasts about eight hours, a laptop about three, and a portable DVD player about four. Fifteen hours does not equal two days. After all my electrical friends die I’m left with nothing but boredom and crossword puzzles.

-Bathrooms. Try changing your clothes, brushing your teeth, washing your face, and doing your business in a chamber that I seriously think may be smaller than an airplane bathroom. It doesn’t work.
 

Also what’s with all the conductors and drivers of the train being white men and the dining car staff and car attendants being black men and women? Like there was seriously not one single exception to that rule. My mom said it must be because not much has changed or something. I’m glad we are still practicing some slavery traditions guys!

So I’d also like to say that Utah, Wyoming, and Nevada are pretty much worthless states. Sure Nevada has Airforce Amy, Wyoming has Cheyenne, and Utah has…Mormons…but the states themselves are pretty much worthless.

I’ll let Colorado stick around because Denver is not such a horrible place, and I have relatives that live there and stuff. The actual vacation itself (you know, aside from the four days of train hell) was not too bad. My grandpa was cantankerous but I would be too if I lived in that nursing home in Brighton, Colorado. We stayed with my cousin (who is actually the same age as my mom even though it’s her niece) and her husband who were extremely nice. They refer to soda as “pop” and are slightly afraid of gay people, but they’re pretty harmless and very friendly. I met a plethora of other relatives. I have third cousins out there coz my grandpa is also a great-great-grandpa. That’s confusing!

In Denver we saw the Real World house, the Molly Brown house, the capitol building, the city hall building, etc… My aunt lives in Littleton so we visited her and drove by Columbine High School which is right around the corner from her. Other shit that we saw is in the pictures.

My grandpa is a funny old man. He tells long and drawn out stories and then sings dirty songs and tells distasteful jokes. Here are some I can remember:

“I saw a pretty lady, a mighty fine woman was she, she asked us group to come over, but the only one who was comin’ was me!”

“I had some toy soldiers that I played with all day. One day my generals and colonels got lost. Now I sit in my room and play with my privates all day!”

“I went to the grocery store and the checkout lady asked me if I wanted a bag. I told her she’d have to give me one coz I’d left my bag at home coz she wines too much!”

He’s a role model, that one.

I’ll be home in about eight hours and I cannot wait. (Omg the train is moving again!!!) Only about two and a half weeks and then it’s back to New York. This summer went by so incredibly fast…it blows my mind.

• Home on Wednesday, May 16th
• Orientation for my internship at LYRIC on Thurs, May 17th
• Weird Program Coordinator job where I find host families for Japanese students for a week and plan their itinerary. Details below.
• Andrea visits: May 30th-June 14th
• Brittney visits: June 16th-July 2nd
• Jannika visits: June 22nd-July 1st
• Tegan and Sara concert(s) on July 22nd and 23rd...who's coming with?
• Ani DiFranco concert on July 14th...who's coming with?
• 10-15 hours of interning a week in San Francisco for LYRIC
• Possible employment at Cost Plus again from early July to end of August
• Back to New York on August 26th

[	Current Location	|	depths of hell	]
[	mood	|	it's too early	]
[	music	|	the devil's voice	]

I better be part of that 20% or I am as dumb as a doornail.

So they're building a 70-story skyscraper across the street from Pace, and they've decided that they're going to insert the foundation pole things during the school day. So throughout the day the entire building shakes. It's kind of fun, but gets a little bit old when you're trying to calmly takes notes and drink your coffee. 

Guys last week there was a blizzard in New York and we got a snow day. Instead of having class, my friends and I trekked to Hagen Daas and got ice cream while avoiding pelting ice shards and scary winds. At first I was a big fan of the snow, but now it's turned into gray/brown sludge and the salt put on the ground to melt the snow stains my shoes and pants and that's not cool.

Are you ready for a movie recommendation? Everyone spend $10 and see Music and Lyrics. It may look lame, but it is SO GOOD OMG. Hugh Grant is his usual hilarious self and Drew Barrymore is adorable. Plus the music is catchiest thing you will ever hear. I'm so serious when I say it's amazing...I was laughing throughout half of it. Also here's a fun thing. Just as the previews were starting, a homeless man off the street walked in to enjoy the movie with us. He was a bit off and was shouting random things during the previews. I guess someone told the people that work at the theater coz a group of them came in to escort him out as he was yelling, "WAIT! I need to see Drew Barrymore! Wait!!! It's Drew!" It was pretty amusing...only in New York...well, Brooklyn. Gotta love it.

So Goat and Zoe booked their tickets to New York and I am SO excited to frolic about with them. Probably everyone else should go and book tickets right now. kthnxbye.



Check out what I did on my first day of HTML:
http://webpage.pace.edu/ag85014n/demopage.html

And check out what Katieboyce did:
http://webpage.pace.edu/kb18765n/myfile.html

Yay!

Guess where I am everybody???

That's right, back in CIS 101 like I am every Tuesday morning. In other words I am sitting in the depths of hell for the next two hours. At least Katieboyce is seated to my right and makes my life complete. So we have to participate in a Blackboard discussion each week and it's worth 20 points. We are supposed to make a minimum of two posts by responding to others' posts and stuff. I made like five posts and somehow only got 15 our of 20. I FUCKING HATE THIS CLASS.

Also according to my professor, the three most important words in the English language are as follows:
-Trust
-Tolerance
-Try

So now you know the three T's guys. I'm really glad I could share this with you. Feel honored.

Also the first rule of business:
Don't surprise your boss; don't surprise him by being late, don't put him in an embarrassing position, etc...

I like that he assumes the boss is a "he". Ass hat.

He also just wrote on the board: Things Take Time
Thanks Professor Fuckmook for those words of wisdom.

Last weekend was Sam's birthday and we celebrated by a) seeing The Last King of Scotland and b) going to Ginger's (duh). The Last King of Scotland is a good movie but there are two rather gruesome scenes that pretty much scarred me for life. One involved amputating a woman's limps and placing the arms where the feet should be and vice versa to make an example of her. Another involved hanging someone by his skin so that eventually he would fall out of it. I'll leave it at that.

Now for some pictures of Ginger's and Mel's birthday party (just a weekend chock full of birthdays!):

I am in CIS 101 right now...a graduation requirement. It's supposed to be basic computer science where we learn Javascript, HTML, Excel, etc... Well according to our teacher, all of these applications are "learned" and not "taught". Thus he spends the two hours imposing his ideas on us, telling us we are stupid and naive, comparing us to his 6-year-old grandchildren, and condescending to us like he is almighty. We then go home at night, participate on the discussion boards on Blackboard, and read the books and teach ourselves the applications in order to do the homework. In class he talks about social responsibility, the USA, and other random shit that have nothing to do with teaching us computer science.

Recently he wrote the following words on the board:
"your"
"you're"

He then proceeds to explain to us for about ten minutes the difference between the two words and how we should always proofread our discussion board entries. I'm embarrassed for humankind. Katieboyce and I are IMing each other in boredom and disbelief...did he really just explain the difference between those two words? And he did it in such a manner that implied that this was brand new information to us! I'm a little perturbed.

Well, what else is new folks? My classes are just lovely. Except for this one. And astronomy. A word of advice: if you have to get a science requirement done and you think astronomy would be a fun and easy way to do it...THINK AGAIN. The labs are ridiculously easy but I wanted to learn about like...Orion and Neptune...not celestial spheres and astronomical units. I just hope the tests will be as simple as the tests.

Also this semester I might as well be majoring in Isabel Allende. I'm taking a Latin American Studies course on Latina Women in History and Literature and we're reading The House of Spirits and having a large unit on Isabel. My Spanish course is Latina Women Writers and we are reading Hija de la Fortuna. I'm so excited because Isabel is one of my favorite writers of all time and now I get to read her books for school! Also Wikipedia Sor Juana Ines de las Cruz. She is my new hero.

I have some pictures that Andrea took a couple weeks ago at our first Ginger's extravaganza of 2007. Please disregard the bright green shirt with the dark green skirt. I had a better outfit on earlier, but I got hot so I had to change.

Now our professor is telling us how to take the average of a group of numbers. Kill me or I'll kill him.

Oh and one last thing...