Tea Gelato!!!!!!!

I guess I'll start this week's post by informing you that if you think it's going to give Derek's post a run for its money you will be sadly mistaken.  I simply do not have the eloquence to pull off such a well written post.  Even writing these past couple sentences takes more work than I would like.  Why do I have to try and make my statements sound interesting when I could conform to the simple model of subject-verb-object that, although making for a boring post, is oh so easy to write.  And this isn't a "I don't have time to write a 'good' post" ultimatum because as of now I am one of the two last standing to not skip a blog post, and I intend to keep it that way.  Sorry, that sounded way more sassy than I intended it to be. Actually, I intended it to be that sassy.  Deal with it.  Also, glad to see that you're alive Rachael. Having already decided on a specific topic that I was going to write about this week, it would have been a shame if you didn't get to read it as I think you'll enjoy it the most.

Last Wednesday:  I went to class.  Nothing interesting happened.  I had a math quiz.  I got 100% on it.  Then I ate dinner.  Then I went to sleep... Hmm, that was really easy... Maybe I should stick to this format.  Except I won't, because that's really fucking boring and although I would like to get started on the copious amounts of homework I have due Friday I will sacrifice some of my time to write this post because I believe in the inherent worth of it as a tool that can be used to retain our great friendship that we had in high school.  And, yes, that was a little tirade of mine so yeah I guess me being sassy will be a defining characteristic of this post.

Moving on, I absolutely cannot wait for spring break in two weeks.  I'm jealous of you that have your spring breaks earlier because I am very much in need of a break, but I guess I can wait another two weeks.  I only have one more midterm before spring break and its math so that's not too bad.  I have so many plans of what I want to do over spring break.  Probably some of them will be accomplished.  More likely, many of them will fall through.  But nevertheless, I am excited because spring break means no school for one week right?!??! Wrong.  I'm going to have to study my ass off because I have my two final midterms the Monday and Wednesday I get back.  Regardless, I am excited because this means I will be studying outside in the (hopefully) sunny weather as opposed to studying in the library while it rains outside.

This week overall was a good week, not much work from classes, and no midterms, hurrah!  On Thursday I went to Challah for Hunger again (see previous posts).  It was a lot of fun; I'm still working on perfecting my pretzel making, but I'm getting there.  If you guys ever come up I'll probably drag you to it because it's a lot more fun than you think.  I know a bunch of extremely religious people gathering in one location can be intimidating, but I swear they don't try and convert you.

Friday I did some more community service, oh wait, actually we are flashing back to Wednesday because I did a "community service" or sorts then too and I might as well go in chronological order.  I was heading to the library that night (as I do every night, see later in post) with some friends and we were stopped by one of my other friends who is on CalPirg.  CalPirg is an organization on campus known for attacking any student exposing any sort of opening portraying the "I want to be talked to" vibe.  Basically, using the power of friendship (captain planet much?) and peer pressure I was pressured into pledging CalPirg which is a $10 a semester contribution to the organization which uses the money to (supposedly, I still have to more research on this to determine whether I want to continue pledging it) have lobbyists support whatever issues we as a study body think are important to the university.  This is considered community service because my friend with us, the Philanthropy chair of Phi Psi, said he would give me one hour of community service towards my ten required for the semester.  I will for sure be over ten by the end of the semester, but I'm all about getting as much value I can out of an offer.  I'm greedy.  I'll admit it.

So on Friday I had my first Wonderworks visit to the John Muir elementary school.  It was an observational visit where we observed the students to try and garner what techniques would be effective at controlling the class when we started teaching.  My conclusions from the observational visit is:  1) The students are extremely wild, it will take a lot of effort in maintaining control 2) The teacher is really boring so it will be easy to entertain them 3) The teacher, although boring, has a cool system set up where they do statistical work on all of their data using lab notebooks.  Overall, I think this class will be a challenge because they are so wild and apparently it's also a special-ed class, but I'm excited to entertain them with the wonders of science! Cheddar anyone?

Onto the weekend.  This weekend was probably the least productive weekend I've ever had. Now, generally I don't do anything on the weekend, but this weekend was exceptionally lacking in productivity.  On Friday we had an exchange with Alpha Phi which was fun, but the party got rolled by the cops and thus now we have a $750 fine to pay. Sadness.  I slept over on someone's couch at Phi Psi and I didn't end up waking up till 12:00pm.  Already a bad start to the weekend. Every weekend I tell myself that I am going to get up early, start my day off with a good breakfast, and then do some homework for a while and then maybe go out that night.  I did none of these things this weekend.

First, I think you need to understand my schedule up until this weekend.  I basically go to class from 8am-5pm every day of the week (sometimes I sleep in though to 9:30 when I feel like ditching, and then I always regret that), and when I am not in class I am on campus (generally at Qualcom, its a cafe there and it has the best vibe ever.  I'll take some pictures for you next week) doing homework.  Then, at 5pm when my classes end I do different things depending on the day.  Monday's and Tuesday's I have meetings at 7:00pm.  Wednesday's are nothing.  Thursday's are community service, and Friday's are nothing.  Then, after my meetings/community service/getting dinner, I generally hit up the library from 9pm-1:30am.  Rinse and repeat for every day except Friday.

Now, this is a lot of working time, thus too many times I've used the excuse that I've worked hard over the course of the week thus my weekend is my relaxation time.  This generally means that Friday I go out at night, Saturday is recovery from Friday night, Saturday night I go out, Sunday is recovery from that, and then all of a sudden my weekend is gone.  I get a small amount of homework done from Saturday and Sunday, but the amount of homework completed leaves much to be desired. This has happened the past few weekends, and is awful and whenever the next weekend comes around I always vow to change it.  Normally, my weekend schedule doesn't change at all and I end up doing the same thing, however this weekend was even less productive.

So back to Saturday, I wake up at 12:00pm and get back to my dorm around 1:00ish.  Kevin calls me to play settlers.  I say I'm down, but I want food first.  Matt calls me up asking me when we want to walk down together (we live in the same place if I haven't mentioned that before) and I ask him if he wants to get food first.  He says he's down so we meet at my place and as we exchange greetings Cole  stirs from beneath his sheet (note: singular, not a typo).  We invite him to come to breakfast (or whatever meal you want to call this, brunch is probably most accurate as will become clear later) and after some contemplation he decides he will indeed come with us.

After Cole finishes getting ready it s already 1:30pm and the DC (dining commons, I don't know what you call it wherever you are) has "brunch" (eh, see, brunch) only open from 10am-2pm.  We decide to go anyway despite noticing that online menu displays an awful selection.  Matt and I are accepting of eating there because according to the menu there is a bagel bar.  Mmm bagels.  Well, we get there and there are no fucking bagels to speak of.  Needless to say, there is no fucking good food to eat at all.  It was the worst breakfast I have ever had in my entire life.  It was that bad.  Ask both Cole or Matt and they can attest to it.  Worst. Meal. Ever.

So after we eat, Matt and I head down to Kevin's place (a roughly 20 minute walk).  We play Settlers there until around 4ish when all three of us have to go.  They have to go into the city to see one of their brothers in a comedy show and I had to go on a hike with Wonderworks, the club I joined (see previous posts).  I waited around till 4:10 at the designated meeting place but no one showed up.  Again, sadness.  I reluctantly walked back to my dorm, not enjoying the hike I thought I would... well, enjoy.

I get back to my dorm and dawdle for a couple of hours before I go to dinner with Talia, one of my brothers girlfriends who has become one of my best friends.  We get Cheeseboard, which I have referenced in a previous post, and needless to say it was amazing.  There's been better Cheeseboard before, but you simply cannot go wrong with their pizza.  It is amazing.  Wait, actually I've had it once with corn and potatoes, that was nasty so maybe you can go wrong with it.  It was also cold though so maybe that was why?  Idk, I think it was more of the combination of corn and potatoes, that just didn't blend well.

After we had gotten pizza, Talia commented that there was a really good gelato shop inside this place called "gourmet ghetto".  I guess there are a lot of ghetto food areas in Berkeley.  I, loving gelato, decided that we should go.  Needless to say, this was the highlight of my weekend.  Yes, I realize how lame that is to say that a gelato shop was the highlight of my weekend, but once you see the flavors you will understand. (Hint: You're going to have to click on the individual pictures to look the full-size images so you can tell what flavors they are)

I decided to go with a double scoop.  Earl Grey Tea and Yerba Mate (look it up if you don't know what it is).  It was by far the best gelato I have ever had and the Earl Grey Tea was sooooooo good.  I will also be taking you here if you ever come to visit me.  Thank you for showing me this amazing gelato place Talia.  So that was my Saturday; I returned to my dorm after pizza/gelato and went to sleep around 10pm.  No homework complete, I was determined to do a lot of work on Sunday.  I'm sure you can foreshadow how that turned out.

I ended up waking up at 1:00pm.  Browsed the internet till 5:00pm.  Took a nap till 8:30pm.  Browsed the internet some more. Went to bed at 11:00pm.  (Sidenote: Ended up sleeping till 9:30am, I couldn't even wake up for my 8am).   I don't know exactly how many hours of sleep that is, but damn was it a lot of sleep.  I got zero homework done and wasted my weekend away just like every other weekend, except wasting even more time.  Least productive weekend ever.

So something I am striving to change in my life is my schedule, specifically my weekend one.  I'm aiming to wake up at 7am every morning because I'm going to have to anyway for next semester (five days a week 8am that I won't be able to skip).  I'm hoping that this early wake-up will prevent me from wasting the day away.  We'll see if that works.  Also, another thing I want to change is to start working out more.  And by more, I mean at all.  I haven't worked out consistently since the beginning of the semester and I really should start doing so.  I keep on telling myself 5:00pm after my classes get out but I'm always too tired to initiate that.  Hopefully writing about how I'm a lazy bum will get my ass up and out the door to work out.  We'll see.

Another thing that I wanted to change, but I've decided not to as of yesterday is my caffeine addiction.  It's not really a addiction, but I really cannot stay as awake as I would like without my morning cup of coffee.  Caffeine in small amounts is good for you, so I'm not worried about that aspect, but I'm mainly worried about it staining my teeth.  I realize though that it is unreasonable for me to expect to get through all of college without coffee so I'm going to just try for moderation.  One cup a day, two cups at most.

On Monday I have the majority of my lectures and in my Chemistry lecture we are going over kinetics and yesterday we covered... yeah I don't even know what we covered.  But basically, the professor was talking about contour plotting (which I also use in MatLab) and he was comparing the plot to something similar to the topography on a map depicting a mountain and I was thinking to myself, "Oh why isn't Derek here to explain this to me..."  But yeah, here's what we learned.  I hate 3-dimensional plotting.  It sucks.

Also, that same day, in my E7 lecture which is two hours after Chem, we were talking about Linear Regression (taking stats, although I will still attest that Ms. P wasn't the greatest teacher, does actually help me in understanding this stuff) and he used an example of an Arrhenius kinetic equation that I just learned in my chem lecture two hours earlier.  Why... Why is school so difficult...

Well, that's about all I have for this week.  Hope all of your weeks are awesome, I guess some of you are on spring break already?  Hope it's fun!  Until next time,

Jason