things i do not appreciate

1. neighbors who hog the washer/dryer when I need them
2. rainboots that leak
3. poorly organized events that cause 200 people to continuously wait in a line
4. that ill wind that blows when you leave the hairdresser
5. spiders
6. experimental sources of error
7. unwieldy group projects
8. plucking my eyebrows
9. grammar and punctuation errors online
10. techno

comprehension

My conditioner is supposedly scented like vanilla plum, but every time I pop open the bottle in the shower, the smell takes me back to some childhood toy that I can't quite put my finger on, like a Strawberry Shortcake or My Little Pony, or some other scented pink rubber-ish toy. Do they still make toys that smell like that?

I've spent a dramatic portion of the last three days working on a takehome midterm. I'm wholly convinced that the exam-writers did not actually go through the problems themselves, because they're quite ambiguous. I'm starting to feel like I've been beating my head against a brick wall, just endlessly searching for mundane data on the internet that just cannot be found. I also feel like my butt is taking on the shape of the chair. [Frowny face].

It didn't help that every time I got stuck on the exam, I would obsessively turn to this article on the Newsweek website about the behind-the-scenes story of the 2008 election. They actually had embedded reporters who agreed not to write these things until after the election, so now that they're published, we get to read the really interesting details. It's truly fascinating how these campaigns are orchestrated. In a way it makes me feel bad for McCain, as if he was a much better person than his party allowed him to be, than his campaign managers showed everyone. At the same time it made me admire Obama much more, for his principled and even-tempered approach to every issue that came up. Really amazing.