Eeek. Biochem midterm!!!

This is what I've been up to for the past several days. Pretty much all day long I lock myself in the students' lounge and study biochemistry. Everyone in my biochem class has had a biochem class before. Not me. Never mind biochem. I've hardly even taken plain bio. I've take exactly 1 biology course ever, and that was back in 2000, two degrees and a full-time job ago. I consider myself more of a chemist/physisist. (Not to be confused with a physical chemist...way different thing.) This class takes every ounce of brain power I can muster, and even then I feel lost alot of the time. Some of the other students even got their undergrad majors in biochem. Sigh.

Anyway, the midterm is this morning. In an hour and a half to be exact. I'm not excited. I've seen previous years' midterms for this class. Ouch. When a professor grades a 66% as a solid B, some student get excited because of the scale. Me, I get nervous. Such a crazy scale in a class tells me one thing: the professor is more concerned with quickly spewing forth a ton of information at a breakneck speed and is satisfied if the students comprehend about half of it. I call that lousy teaching. It would be better if the professor picked out the absolute essentials, and focused on actually fostering knowledge and understanding of those essentials. Ok, nuff grumbling. Back to the board for more studying. (I think this is officially "cramming" at this point.)

The Red Sox sweep the World Series...(and I proudly eat my taco!)

For the second time in four years, the Red Sox win the World Series, and they do so in dramatic fashion...sweeping the Rockies in the series, 4 games to none.

Today, the triumphant Sox celebrate in Boston with their fans in a parade-like party. I, on the other hand, am celebrating clear across the country by eating a taco. Taco Bell offered a free taco to everyone in America from 2-5 pm on October 30th if someone stole a base in the World Series. As I eat my taco, I have a big smile on my face. My Sox are victorious! And Jocoby Ellsbury (who incidentally is an Oregon boy) stole a base. Thanks for the taco Jacoby. And thanks for a great season Sox. What a great time to be a Boston fan!

Oh so ghetto

How to know you're staying at a classy joint, Part 1

You're tired. It's been a long night of sitting on a park bench drinking your malt beverage out of a paper bag. You stumble back to your motel. You're starting to realize that the 2-lb, 7 layer burritto you got from the corner vendor's pull cart for $1.75 was more of a rental than a purchase. You make your way to the bathroom. While "doing your business" you think, "Ahhhh...the only thing that could make this better would be cracking open a cold one right here and now." Well if you're lucky enough to be staying at a super classy joint, you can. You know you're staying at a classy joint when there's a wall-mounted bottle opener in your bathroom within reach of the toilette. Eeek!!

Flight of the Valkyrie

Last weekend I played a one-day non-sanctioned disc golf tournament at Milo McIver near Portland. It was one of the best run tournaments I've played and all the gals in my division were great fun to play with.

I didn't play too well, but I did walk away with a bit of prize money in the form of a gift certificate to Next Adventure, an awesome sporting goods store in downtown Portland. With it, I went to Next Adventure the very next day. What did I buy? More discs of course! ProLine Valkyries. 6 of them!

I could have spent the loot on anything in the store, but a little birdy told me that a new shipment of ProLine Valkyries had recently arrived. The Valkyrie is my favorite disc. ProLine is my favorite plastic. Unfortunately, Innova is no longer making the ProLine plastic, so I've been scouring the area for Pro Valks to hoard for myself. I hit pay dirt at Next Adventure. The shipment had 7 Valks in the weight range that I throw. I bought 6 of them. (I didn't want to be greedy.)