bwa na na blah

kie: mccoy 308
kiel: full of goldfish and root beer. yay sndgg.
kio: nothing, sarah is asleep

caveat lector: this is a long entry. as such we provide a brief synopsis.
part i: mental notes hell week/sndgg
part ii: the rest of the semester
part iii: next semester
part iv: introspection and pondering re: next year
part v: broadway vs. oregon ridge, complete with tirade against the latter's management.



(i)
we're smack dab in the midst of mental notes hell week, and it's going to be an excellent concert. by the way, it's saturday november 22, at 8 pm in bloomberg. so go.

i've gotten some delicious and entertaining presents from my sndgg, including the goldfish and root beer of which i am full at the moment. and also lots of video games. my intersession is totally all planned out.

(ii)
what else? the semester is gradually winding down except for the following things that are the harbingers of impending doom:

• 11/21 distillation lab second meeting


• 11/24 cell eng presentation, genetics hw, modeling hw


• 11/25 distillation lab session


• 12/3  modeling project/presentation


• 12/3  distillation lab calculations due


• 12/8  genetics hw, cell eng hw, cell eng 30pp term paper due (!)
  
• 12/12 cellular engineering final


• 12/15 genetics final 9-12, modeling final 2-5(!!!!)

two finals in one day?! well, that's a fine christmas present. then again i wouldn't expect anything less from mr. johns hopkins.

note: this list is mainly for my own benefit as i really hadn't considered all this before i wrote this entry. but fear not! i will not strike-thru the items as they are accomplished. that is cool lame.

hmm. what's everyone doing for new years? going home? staying in baltimore? coming to baltimore? lemme know. personally i'd like to invite friends from home (i.e. MERB et al) to come to baltimore and party down. we'll see how plausible that is.

the senator theatre is playing the first two lord of the rings movies the first two weeks of december, then return of the king on dec. 18. does anyone want to go to see one, two, or all three of these movies with me? the senator rules.

(iii)
oh! senior lab might be given a (W) so i won't have to take a writing-intensive class next semester! huzzah! that means i'll totally have like 13 credits. rock. then again i will be taking graduate-level kinetics, a subject in which, incidentally, i got a c- at the undergrad level. hmm... we'll see how that goes.
again because i know you really care about this: here is my schedule for next semester:

540.314	chemical engineering process design (4)	katz	TTh 1-330
540.433	engineering aspects of drug delivery (3)	hanes	TTh 4-515
540.426	introduction to biomacromolecules (3)	wirtz	MW 330-5
540.642	advanced chemical kinetics and reactor design	two visiting professors	M 5-8 (?)

this is of course if lab has that (W) that i need for the spanish major. stupid school of arts and sciences with its bogus writing requirements....
yes i said bogus. also, do note that there are NO CLASSES BEFORE ONE O'CLOCK! that should pretty much guarantee that i go to class. because if you sleep through class at 10, well that's just bad. but if you sleep through class at 1, well then you just have to kill yourself.

(iv)
i was reading through some old weblog entries and i can't help thinking how amused i am with myself. damn. like this little gem from february re: resnet:
"the real challenge of the job is dealing with people who treat a computer more like a magical machine and less like a simple device. by that i mean, if something goes wrong, they throw their hands up in the air and immediately call for help. well, actually, they call six-help. that's a pun, friends." comic gold!

i wonder if this fifth year thing is such a good idea. i mean, it's not like i can change my mind now, but a large chunk of my friends are seniors now. but then again who knows if they'll be sticking around baltimore or not. currently talks are underway for jesse, ben, i, and two other lucky guests to live at 334 next year. jim says he'll probably even leave the rent the same. sounds good to me. then i don't have to move. i am so lazy.

then there's the question of staying in the mental notes post-bac. it's been done before (ben kram got in his senior year and stayed in for two years of masters work), and technically it would be my 4th year in the group, as i got in sophomore year. so it would seem (on paper) to be perfectly acceptable. however, the group next year (after the SIX seniors graduate) will be a whole different mélange of people. then again, as i've said before, tenors don't exactly grow on trees here at hopkins. and if the audition pool is not so great, the group will be stuck with just jesse. nobody wants that. especially not jesse. in the end i suppose it's really comes down to what is good for the group vs. what is good for tom. who knows how busy i'll be with research and classes and GRO happy hours? the time will come to decide, but not for a while.

the definition of the word "get" on dictionary.com is really extensive. "get" is one of those all-purpose words that means like 50,000 things and is used in just as many idiomatic expressions. and now you know. and knowing is half the battle.

(v)
oh right! last weekend sarah and my parents and i went on a bus trip to new york to see a broadway show. we stood in line at tkts (an exceedingly clever name, since tickets there are usually half-price and "tkts" is about half of the word "tickets") in times square and ended up getting 4 tkts to "little shop of horrors". fantastic show. great music, great actors, great puppetry (jim henson's creature shop as "audrey ii"), all around really spectacular. my first broadway show ever was certainly not a disappointment. i wish that just once i could act with a company that was 1) well-funded and 2) well-organized. so far it's just been #2 (barnstormers) or neither (BAT).

that reminds me. i never really got any closure on my leaving the company. i mean as far as they know i am out of south pacific for the duration (til christmas! come on!). but they will probably call me when they inevitably absolutely need someone to do a part. and i am not available to them. not in the least. i'm just sick of it. it's community theatre with a professional façade. funny, since our last show (and the only really good show i did with the company) was jekyll & hyde, which as we all know dwells on the not-just-victorian-anymore theme of putting up a pleasant exterior to the public and hiding a dark interior. miss helen needs to look behind the façade that covers a poorly-run program whose actors are capable of so much more than the management will provide. that's one of the things that annoyed me most about miss helen and mr. gene. they were so concerned with appearances. (indeed, all of theatre is really about appearances, so this is to be expected at least in some way) but while things might appear spic and span and hunky dorey and fine and dandy, the actors are ridiculed, insulted, poked, prodded, and generally annoyed by the management. and they don't even get PAID for it! they VOLUNTEER to take this abuse! and for what? the praise and adulation of maybe 50 of the rich and/or elderly residents of northern baltimore county. please. it is not worth it. at $35 a ticket with sold out houses (at least in the case of south pacific) AND NON-PROFIT STATUS you'd think that the company could spare a few bucks a show for the actors. opening a show after one week of rehearsal without a dress rehearsal. that's not professional. that's undue stress on the actors. honestly, the company is lucky to have the actors it has because ones of less talent and confidence would certainly bomb with the kind of non-rehearsal that goes on. and still they are utterly unappreciated. no, getting on stage at oregon ridge is not the first step to stardom. it's not even a step down the right path. it's a walk down a long road strewn with bullshit that eventually will take you right back where you started, only with wasted time and smelly shoes.

NB: in reality, the whole theatre world may be like this. it certainly does appear to smell of the whole façade discussion. however, i believe that the company in question is a special case that looks for every loophole and cuts every corner just to make a buck.

wow. i didn't quite mean for all that to happen. but oh well. but this is my weblog and i can rant about what i want when i want and i can't get sued about it. so there.

this is a long entry and might be a bit hard to digest. sorry about that.

finally, on a lighter note:


ed: this is a long entry, but it finally gave me some personal closure on the whole dinner theatre catastrophe, the rise and fall of which you can read about from may 2002 up until this entry. -9/5/06