Ready, steady, go!

Well classes officially started today. I woke up at 7, ate some blueberry muffin tops (thanks for introducing me to such a delicious cereal Jarid =D), packed the backpack, and started walking to campus. I've taken care of all the first day bullshit, all of that syllabus and rules discussion chit chat and such. Found where my classes, so far, are. I even spent 135 bucks on a parking permit for the year. Not bad if you ask me, considering I had to pay 300 something for a permit in the school lot last year.
Started off the day with Mammalogy, the study of mammals and not to be confused with mammology, the study of breasts. I like the professor for this class, had him for Ecology last year. I also share the class with my friend Rick, who although almost more nerdy then I can stand, I'm glad I got a class with him again. After Mammalogy I trecked the vast distance down a flight of stairs and down the hall to my next class, Organic Chemistry. This class I'm a touch worried about. Chem is rather complicated as I'm sure everyone knows, and last year I kind of had to fight to not get a rather low grade. Maybe I'll be fine, we'll see. After that I went off to Biometrics, which is an offshoot of statistics aimed at life. Aka Stats for the Biologist. This is a small class, I mean TINY. There were maybe 8 people in class today. Otherwise I'm not really looking forward to it, math is icky.
After those classes, each about an hour long, I got to walk home, empty the dishwasher and get the sink clear for the first time in probably about a month (only about 3 days that I've had to deal with) and made myself some mac n cheese. Now I'm blogging, watching Wayne's World (sort of) and listening to Passion Pit's "Little Secrets".
I'm in love with this song. I don't actually have it so I've been youtube-ing it and listening to it that way. And I've listened to it a lot. I listened to it probably 4 times before bed last night and I've been listening to it since about 3 or 4 renditions before I started writing this blog. I need to get it so I can throw it on my itunes "favorites" list and mix it in with some other good songs.

And that's my day so far. I still need to go to my night class at 5, which will last to a disgusting 7:45. Hopefully I'll show up there and it'll be cancelled or something. Then I can be a nerd and draft mtg with John at his place! High hopes. I guess I don't mind if I do have to go to class though, I don't really want to pay for a draft.. Well, that's all I got to speak of for now. Until later.

Snakes Stargaze?

So today I went on my first solo vet trip. I took Zaid in to stop him from dying! Yay! Heh, despite that comment, I don't think he was in any immediate danger, though I loathe to make him sit through any pain he was in (if any.. I didn't notice anything that looked like pain). I was checking up on him last night and I noticed he was foaming at the mouth a bit. My first thought, naturally, was rabies. Which kind of frightened me. So I did some research online and found out, much to my relief, that Pythons (or any reptile for that matter) can't contract rabies. I then checked online to see what the foaming might mean. Much to my dismay, it's a symptom of a respiratory infection. Some other symptoms include a popping sound coming from their nose, along with bubbles from said nostrils, general lethargy, and "Stargazing". Now despite the incredibly horror stricken response from the general internet public ("ZOMG STARGAZING! VET! NOW!") I find this term really intriguing. Basically it means that the snake lifts it's head off the ground a bit and points upward, as if it were staring at the ceiling. In other words "stargazing". I feel like this sounds too cool to be a symptom of a potentially fatal disease however.. silly me.

Back to the story. I woke up this morning and noticed that he was indeed stargazing, which made me have a mini panic attack of sorts. So I talked to my parents, we found a vet that works with pythons, and set an appointment.. for 4pm today. Turns out the Vet was in St Paul. So I mowed 3/4ths of the lawn, took a shower, packed Zaid up, and set off on a journey. Traffic was bad in places and I spent the entire trip on what looked like an empty tank of gas, but I made it there just in time and without my car dying! The vet checked him out, confirmed that it is a respiratory infection and prescribed a series of antibiotics. His technician came in and showed me how to administer the injections.. yes injections. Turns out snakes have a low success rate with oral antibiotics because they usually break it down in their stomach before they can absorb it. The whole ordeal took 215 bucks out of my pocket, and the vet, although a nice guy, was kind of annoying. I don't like medical specialists that talk like they're talking to a child, even if it's to an animal. Children being the only exception, you can talk to a child like it's a child. I dunno, it's like "why are you talking like that? He's not going to understand you any better then he already doesn't.." Don't get me wrong, I liked the guy, very professional and confident and whatnot, just not that specific detail. Anyways, now I get to pierce my snake with a needle every day until Wednesday and every other day after that until the medication runs out.

I'm just glad Zaid will be ok

Habitual

How do you fight habits?

I'm curious because I have a few habits that need breaking. Not that I'm specifically asking for advice, it's more that I'm just pondering out loud. I suppose it would be a pain if I mentioned habits worth breaking without naming them. Well.. I'm out of shape, so I need to break the habit of eating too much and eating too unhealthy as well as the habit of lazing around. We just got a trampoline, and I love those things. I find myself getting really worn out after five to ten minutes.. maybe a decent work out? This is one of my bigger concerns, cause I really would like to be a touch slimmer.

Also, I don't want to blow things out of proportion in my thoughts. I tend to dwell on things and make them worse then they are. Whether it's my snake not eating and my thinking I'll find him dead in the cage tomorrow when it's only been a week since he ate or me thinking that because I haven't successfully asked out anyone in a very very long time that I'm always going to be single, I'd prefer to not think that way. Basically I'd rather trade in some pessimism for some optimism.

I guess that's really it now that I think about it..

On another note, it's only two weeks away from move-in day in St. Cloud. Pretty soon now I'll be living in an apartment, more or less on my own! Saturday the 1st I'm going up to get my keys, Sunday the 2nd I'm filling my apartment up with my crap. From that point on it's open invitation for people to come on up and visit! Just let me know if you're interested! =D

Zaid is skittish, and wont eat frozen mice. I did some research tonight and found a couple tips that I'll try and employ over the course of the week to see if I can convince him to eat. Perhaps he isn't hungry, but I kind of doubt that. After all he last ate over a week ago and only had a rather small mouse. Supposedly Ball Pythons are very picky eaters and have been known to fast for as long as 6 months and still be fine. Almost every source I looked up tonight said not to panick when they don't eat, but I can't help it! After how easily Cairo died I feel like Zaid's going to croak tomorrow.. and I do not want that, no sir! He's got to last! Speaking of all these "he's," I really should take him to a vet sometime and find out if he really is a he and not a she. Would be nice to know, supposedly there's no real sure-fire way to find these things out on your own.

To end I thought I'd note that for some reason I've been listening to a lot of songs from the Across The Universe soundtrack and I can't stop. They're stuck in my head and I'm singing along and everything. I liked that movie.

Short Circuit

So there's this flash game I've been trying to find for probably a couple years now that Jarid posted on one of our older forum sites. The game was a very simple game where you had to dodge falling asterisks " * " that moved and reacted to the background music, which is done by Daft Punk. It's a great game and I finally sat down and found it the other day. It's called Short Circuit and it's made by armor games, which has designed a lot of my favorite tower defense games. Give it a try! http://armorgames.com/play/1369/short-circuit

Also, as a response to my last blog (seeing as if anyone is like me, they probably don't look at a specific blog entry after they comment, at least not very often.) the name Zaid is not pronounced "raid" or "Zah-eed". It rhymes with raid but with a Z at the beginning, if that makes sense. As for the comments, I'm seriously considering Akil, but I'm still leaning towards Zaid or Djet, even if they don't sound like snake names.. at least they aren't average people names (I really don't like when people name their pets common human names like Jack or Lucy etc.)

Any suggestions?

So I've been digging around for Egyptian names for my python and I came across a few I like.

The list is basically as follows:
Zaid (sounds like raid)
Djet (Jet)
Akil (Ah-keel)
Naeem (Nah-Eem)

I've decided I no longer want to rename it Cairo, That was a past snake and the significance of the name would be lost on practically everyone these days anyways. The list is ordered based on how much I like each name, but they're all close enough that I'm not sure what I want to name it. Any thoughts? Like any of these specifically? Anything you can think of that isn't up here, has an Egyptian flair, and sounds like a good name?

This Weekend

Ah this weekend, It's been interesting and fun.

I'm currently running off no sleep because I stayed up ALL of last night completely unable to fall asleep, so I passed the time by reading half of the Stephen King and Peter Straub collaboration novel known as "Black House" which started out excruciatingly slow but built up into a furious avalanche of awesome. Basically it's about a 35-year old retired Homicide detective who has to track down a killer who murders and proceeds to eat children in his local town. It's a pretty good book if you can get past the beginning. However if you ever do pick it up I would say you are required to read "The Talisman" first, also by Stephen King and Peter Straub which tells the story of the detective in his younger years and builds the foundation for "Black House". If you like SK and haven't given one of or both of these books a try, you should.

On to another note, I just recently turned 20 and I'm "almost dead," so to speak. I don't feel any great remorse or sense of loss for no longer being a teenager, then again I've always felt that the numerals attached to your length of life and the labels for numerical groupings really only represent how long you've been on the planet, now who you are or what you should act like. I'm 20! So what! It feels good to have survived for 20 rotations of the earth around the sun and I'm glad I'm proceeding into a more "adult" stage of my life, even though i have every intention of playing more video games, magic, and wasting my time procrastinating like all the years before. I just kinda wish maybe it was a bigger deal. I'm not at all excited to turn 21, that's just going to be a pile of annoying as everyone expects me to start drinking and bar hopping.. I have no real intention of that, I may partake of the drink here or there but I don't think I'll get plastered and pass out on my 21st, I'll probably just hit apple bees or something and order some frufy drink that's technically alcoholic but tastes just fine.

Recapping back to friday night, the night of my birth. I had a pretty average day, perhaps it was above average for the fact that I got some nice birthday wishes and such, but it wasn't spectacular really. It wasn't bad, just not amazing. Fireworks were pretty fun, but I've come to the realization that despite the fact that I have hardly a patriotic bone in my body, It kind of bothers me to hear 5 or 6 of my closer friends bitch about what is "american" on a day made to celebrate the founding of our nation. I mean I agree with you all, America is far from perfect and it has it's share of completely shitty problems, but can't you take one day to stop saying "fuck america" for no better reason then you can and just acknowledge that "hey, ya know, it's kind of shitty sometimes, but America really isn't that bad of a place.." I mean hell, at least it isn't like Ethiopia or Sudan, no one is riding down the street with machetes trying to cut your head off because you aren't the same race or religion.. just one day.. america not so bad.. is it that hard?

Sorry to bitch but it irks me a bit and i know I'm not the only one..

ANYWAYS on to happier, cooler things. I got a new Ball Python! I'm freaking ecstatic! This one is going to fucking live! I mean it! And if it doesn't I'm gonna be pissed! Yeah!! It's so sweet too, it's a touch bigger then my first one, a little bit older, hopefully more stable. I really want this one to last.. I kind of missed having a pet to call my own, even if I only picked up that garter snake once every other month or so, or that my last python died within a month.. I'ma feed him a live mousey-mouse tonight! It's going to rock! Only because I really want to see him/her (the shop owner didn't know, so I'll have to do some research and find out on my own) eat a healthy meal. Also, I kinda wanna name this one Cairo too, cause I mean the last one didn't even get to break the name in, but I dunno, I'm not sure if it fits right, even though I've already told my family I wanted to name it that. Perhaps I'll do some contemplating on the matter and make a final decision later. I still want to do something egyptian I think.. just seems to fit for some reason..

Anyways sorry for rambling, I think i do that when I get tired.. heh.. more then 24 hours without sleep, ~yawn~ Later friends!

Makes for Great Dreaming

I was in my basement and for those of you who don't know, my basement.. is huge. It's basically the inside of a cathedral.. except furnished like a normal basement.. just with really, really tall ceilings.. and arches. And so I'm sitting there, on my couch. Everyone just went upstairs. Who is everyone? Well my family I think, maybe there was a friend or two in the mix. I say that my friends were involved because there was a moderate group of people ascending the staircase and I don't think it's very often that all of my family are in the basement at the same time.
Regardless, I was sitting, people went upstairs. I'm not doing anything of any real consequence, not even watching tv. I was just kind of sitting there. Out from over one of the ceiling arches flies a bird, and it swiftly descends towards me. I watch it fly all the way down from the fifty foot tall archway until it becomes level with my head, flying right in front of my face about two feet out. It's a hummingbird.. a really big one. Like the size of a crow. This is amazing stuff, really it is! When was the last time you saw a crow sized hummingbird? I had to show people, right? So I grabbed it! Gently, not trying to hurt it you know? I just kind of wrapped my right hand around it's back and wings. I would have set my finger out for the bird to stand on, kinda like how most people let their pet birds just hang out on their index finger. However when I tried to do this, the bird used its five inch hummingbird, slim nectar beak to thug-whap my finger! Now I normally wouldn't use an expression like "thug-whap" but that's just the best way to put it. He just reared his head up a little, quickly nodded forward, and thwacked my finger. I kept trying but he started to bite my finger, which didn't hurt at all, just annoyed me.
So I decided, "screw it," and just took him upstairs to show everyone this awesome, giant hummingbird I found, that I somehow caught! As I was ascending the staircase, I passed by an open window, the bird slipped free, and flew away.. I was dissappointed and no one would believe me now.

* * *

Later that week, a few friends came over. I think Alison was one of them, cause she introduced me to a friend of hers from college, and I remember thinking that it wasn't the friend she had at her birthday party earlier this summer. Well Alison introduces this girl by saying that she has a huge crush on me just from pictures and what Alison had told her about me. Honestly it was a little offputting at first, but she was really cute. She kind of reminded me of the main actress from the M. Night movie "The Happening". You know, the girl who is the wife or girlfriend or something of the main character teacher dude. Except this girl was shorter, kept her hair in a short ponytail, and was a bit eccentric. Not eccentric to the point where she was really weird, but she just had little quirks about her that made her very interesting to hang out with and talk to. I think that's why it worked out, because after that day I called her, had a great conversation, and made plans to go out with her later in the week. Her name was Michelle.
I don't know why this is important, but my family moved into an apartment ajoined to a grocery store. I don't know why we did this, perhaps it was because my mom didn't want to travel very far to attend the little cooking classes that went on in this store every once in a while. So browsing the food aisle became an activity for when Michelle and I had nothing better to do. It was always an adventure too, because the owners of this store had no real sorting system, and they had new foods and brands almost every day. There were brands of pop that I had never heard of before, some of them must have been foreign. Their names just looked like a jumble of letters to me. We'd run around through the aisles and try to find the most obscure and abstract names or products, like a milk foamer, ya know, like those foamers they have for hand soap? Except this one was to foam the milk inside so you could drink it as foam.
One of the most noticable and interesting things I found about Michelle was that she had a huge collection of colored contacts. So she always had different colored eyes. It was weird at first, but it turned out to be one of those things about her that I loved. Especially when she wore a different color in each eye. I think I liked her combination of golden yellow and crimson red the best. It was really wild and I know it really freaked other people out, for instance cashiers would always get startled when they looked into her eyes, but I really loved it. I think it's because even though she always had something different from day to day, I could always recognize the pattern of her iris' through the changed color. But one day, she came over without any colored contacts in and her eyes were the most beautiful shade of blue..

Then I woke up.. and puked in Jarid's bathroom