Shadowfiend23 @ Wrocław

So, as you can tell from the title of this post, we now have a door in my bedroom in the apartment! It won’t be “finished” (painted) until Friday, so I haven’t taken any pictures yet, but I must say that it’s a stark improvement. To keep myself awake in the morning, I have been opening the door and letting light in, so I think that shows how much better it is now. The door was supposed to be installed on Monday, but it was actually installed yesterday because nobody was here on Monday to let the construction workers into the apartment. Still waiting on the hooks for the closet, but I’m more than content with the door for now. Apart from that, I am excited to get my calculus test back tomorrow (I think I did well).  I am really enjoying calculus thus far. It is really easy. Since I correctly my french test completely, I got five points back on it, making my final score on the test 94.75% (maybe 99.75% if you count another assignment…I’m not sure whether that one is extra credit or not…), so I am very happy about that. Also, due to some miscommunication, I did the homework for Friday for today, clearing me in French for a few days at least. Physics is moderately confusing, but I really do enjoy the special theory of relativity. The warping of space-time and the consequences of the constancy of the speed of light are hard for me to imagine, however easy they are to accept. Java is still a cinch. I am basically tutoring someone in that class, and I find it very rewarding. It helps me to grasp the concepts better. As a final note, I am upset that so many dishes need to be done. How do they pile up so quickly? Anyway, I think that’s enough for now. Bonne nuit!

So, at 10:10:10 p.m. tonight, it was 2010 10-10 10:10:10. To commemorate the event, I photographed the exact time this occurred. Sadly, I had to take the picture so quickly that it didn’t focus well. Regardless, here it is:

Apart from that, I had a pretty good weekend. We are actually getting a door tomorrow morning! Very exciting in my opinion. I also just finished my Calculus homework, and I recently corrected my french test (I got an 89.75%). I have a lot more to say, but I think that I will go to bed now. I have a big day ahead of me tomorrow (Mondays are my busiest days). More later!

Last night Tanya took Aaron, Deanna, and me to the Saint Paul Art Crawl. It was a lot of fun! My favorite part was the refurbished cigarette vending machine that was selling $5 works of cigarette-package-sized art, including a little box with a bunny on the front called “Bon Art Petit.” One of the artists had some paintings that reminded me of Aaron’s favorite book when he was younger. When he was about two years old, he used to walk around carrying volume 1 of The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick. The subtitle and cover illustration are from “The Short Happy Life of the Brown Oxford.”

This was way before he could read, so I assumed that he just liked the picture. Since it came up in the conversation last night, I decided to read the short story again. It is about a man who discovers the Principle of Sufficient Irritation and invents a machine called the Animator that throws out a heat beam as an irritant. The idea is that annoying irritation is the origin of life. Inanimate objects became alive to escape the source of the irritation. Doc Labyrinth brings the Animator over to show a friend and sells it to the guy for $5 because he thinks it doesn’t work. The new owner puts his wet shoes in the machine to dry them out, and one of them comes alive. The story was originally titled “Left Shoe, My Foot.” The original title would not be nearly as much fun to illustrate.

So whenever you hear someone talking about being annoyed, they’re really telling you how alive they feel. Philip K. Dick would have been proud.

Well, I am now in the fourth week of all of my classes, and the pace is steadily quickening. French is still very stressful because I have so much that I constantly need to study, but I am becoming more comfortable with the class. I still am not comfortable speaking in from of my teacher. No, I point and/or mime my answer to her whenever I can. That isn’t a good sign in a language class. I am enjoying myself in Java – it all is making sense to me. I like to experiment and make my own Java programs, but I don’t usually have time to burn on that. However, when I do have some free time, I like to spend it programming. Physics just became much more confusing because we are starting relativity, but I am going to try to follow along the best I can. That’s really all I am hoping for in the relativity section anyway. Too bad for me that we spend a month on only relativity. C’est la vie. Anyway, Calculus is still easy, but the test on Friday has me worried. I am sure I will do well on it, but any points lost on a test are upsetting to me, and I find it incredibly easy to screw up a math test (with incorrect mental math, a misplaced negative sign, etc.), so we will see how it goes. Perfection in math is rare for me, even though my understanding is deep. So our electricity meter broke and somehow it was displaying zero when it was read – does this mean we just had a month with free electricity? I hope so. We’ll see, I suppose. Downtime hasn’t had bands playing there lately. I wonder what the explanation is for that. At any rate, I likes my quiet. Dishes are always piling up around here. How does that happen? It’s almost like the dirty-dishes fairy comes in at night and performs some “miracles.” Shoo fairy, shoo. Ha but anyway, I am still pretty upset that we don’t have a door on our bedroom. Four weeks after the quota-ed time? That’s pretty unacceptable in my opinion. I don’t care whether the doors have to be special-ordered, they should have arrived by now. Missing being home a bit now. Strange, huh? Well, I’ll leave on that note. Goodnight!