things that are sweet

to the tune of: The Tower by Vienna Teng

Exhibit A: A most excellent strawberry chocolate mousse cake prepared by Kathy and Helen for my birthday. With homemade whipped cream and everything. Oh so good. And without any baking (but with much licking of spatulas and mixers).

Exhibit B: Dave's mom made us spaghetti on Mother's Day. We insisted that we should be the ones cooking for her, but she insisted even more, and well, there's no arguing with a determined Southern mother on Mother's Day.

Exhibit C: A whipped cream pie. It's pretty sweet. Just makes you want to stick your whole face in it. Or have it all come flying at your face, as it were. So I spent a week trying to cajole lecturers and TAs to take a pie in the face at the CS Spring Party. And one of them insisted that I do it too. So why not? Who could possibly want to pie their dear Course Advisor?

Well, a lot of people, apparently. I tied with one of the lecturers for cs106a in money raised. All together though, we raised $157 for Camp Amelia, so I'd say it was worth it. Fun fact: whipped cream left in your hair or on your clothes starts to smell.

Exhibit D: Big Dance! Kevin and I won the helium balloon cross-step waltz race, proving that you don't need a woman to waltz. I scored a free ticket to Friday Night Waltz and a "female" hair appointment (since I was following). So any ladies need a haircut or whatever else they do for you with $25 of your money?

And...we saw Vienna Teng perform! The crappy acoustics of Roble didn't do her justice, so people kept dancing back and forth in front of her piano to hear her sing.

People still give me weird looks when I tell them about dancing all night, but I wasn't alone: 211 others made it through all nine hours.


Where's Waldo?

And afterward, more sweet crepes at Laura's apartment...followed by the sweetest thing of all: a few hours' sleep.

nice try

to the tune of: Ordinary Day by Vanessa Carlton

There's something empowering about closing an account. Like dumping an abusive girlfriend or dropping an abusive class. I called Chase and got some lady speaking broken English in a very thick Chinese accent, who immediately transferred me to an "account supervisor". Apparently threatening to close your account means you merit people who actually speak English. This supervisor tried all these tactics to get me to stay:

• Offering to block all those damn Payment Protector sales calls and e-mails. Finally!
  
• Wishing me a happy belated birthday. My personal favorite, since my birthday was a month ago.
  
• Offering to lower my APR. Aw, that's sweet of them. Make it easier for me to carry a balance. NO!
  
• Lecturing me on how important it is to pay my bills. Um, what the hell? So I missed a couple payments and I'm ditching them for a card that, among other things, sends me reminders when I haven't paid the bill.
  

Nope. Not even tempted. It's over.

Would you throw a pie at a lecturer for charity? How about a course advisor? It's been suggested that I put my, er, whipped cream where my mouth is and put myself on the block just like the lecturers. And sure, I'd do it, but would anyone actually have reason to throw a pie at me? It's not like I gave them a rough midterm or something...

so it's come to this...

to the tune of: Cruel Spell by Big Bad Voodoo Daddy

We figured this would motivate us to, um, actually graduate. Or at least think about it. And it has succeeded in getting all of us to at least count how many units we need. Of course, working for the CS student services manager, I can't really hide the fact that I haven't turned in my program sheet from, um, last year?

notebookless...

to the tune of: Snow on the Sahara by Stanford Harmonics

You're sitting in a boring morning lecture. You're struggling to stay awake as the professor rambles on and on through some esoteric phenomenon that he--and only he--thinks is incredibly interesting. And all around you you hear the soft tappity tap tap of neighbors' fingers on their notebooks. Why is the temptation so irresistible to read over their shoulders? You know it's just going to be mundane e-mail, IM, or coding, but there might be an interesting article on someone's screen. But then you catch yourself spying on other people and feel guilty so you avert your eyes to stare feebly at the Daily you hold on your lap, hopefully out of the prof's line-of-sight.

Trouble is, you've already read everything on the front page that you care to (and even a couple articles you couldn't care less about). And now you can't find a way to open the paper discreetly enough without making painfully loud crinkling noises or giving yourself away to the prof.

It's sad, but I need my notebook to keep me sane in such classes. I think I actually pay better attention when I have something else to do to keep me awake.

I came to the sad realization that I may never fill up my Gmail account after all. When they first made their claim "never delete e-mail again!" I was getting around 200 MB of spam a month--so I thought I could test their claim by the time I graduated surely. Then they started deleting spam... No fair! Now it'll take me over a year to even get to 1 GB... and they're adding storage faster than I can fill it. Maybe I need to go rejoin all those mailing lists. Then again, maybe not.

Housing has been unnecessarily suspenseful. The Zone next year will have one Harmonic and one man whose name starts with D. But they'll be the same person. Ben's graduating and Dave waited until 2 hours before the draw deadline to decide to move out with him. Now we have to see if we can get Brendan in, even though SymSys refuses to tell him whether he's been accepted into grad school, and Housing refuses to let him apply. Whee...