In Joules

Lila is not someone who likes to work. She told me so today in the car when we were talking about school. I'm slightly concerned by this, since she doesn't like to work on anything, even the smallest things or things that interest her. She doesn't like working on hebrew, schoolwork, or even cells.

So I decided to try something to get her to practice her torah portion. Slyly I suggested that we make a dance routine to the trope in the first sentence of her portion, to which I knew she would react favorably since Lila loves to dance. We learned the entire sentence in trope and memorized it to the dance moves, which was not only fun and a good workout, but it will help her remember those lines later on and the tropes that go with them.

I don't know if it'll make her more motivated to work on the rest of her torah portion, but at least she has the first bit down. Plus, we recorded it. Someone will have a laugh at a later date.

Being Home

Being home is a strange feeling. It's more relaxing than college, because I have no classes to attend here. On the other hand, I have my family and younger siblings around all the time. It's great to see them again but I get annoyed more easily because at college I can get everything I need with a ten minute walk or less. Here I'm stuck in the house unless my parents aren't doing anything.

Plans for this week include recording songs for glee club, practicing my instrument, and making dinner some nights of the week.

Spring break is fun.

Michael Phelps Diet

I read on an online newspaper that Michael Phelps eats 12,000 calories per day. How does someone eat 12,000 calories per day? I understand that he needs the energy in order to swim, but I can't see someone being hungry enough to eat 12,000 calories a day. The sheer mass of food Michael Phelps eats for breakfast is more than I have in one day.

Breakfast: Three fried-egg sandwiches loaded with cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, fried onions and mayonnaise. Two cups of coffee. One five-egg omelet. One bowl of grits. Three slices of French toast topped with powdered sugar. Three chocolate-chip pancakes.

Lunch: One pound of enriched pasta. Two large ham and cheese sandwiches with mayo on white bread. Energy drinks packing 1,000 calories.

Dinner: One pound of pasta. An entire pizza. More energy drinks.

The breakfast I could probably get through the grits and a couple pancakes. And I bet Olaf could get through only half of it, and he's as tall as they get and exercises a lot.

A pound of pasta is 4 cups dry, which is more than 1 macaroni and cheese box, so I wouldn't even begin to taste the majority of his lunch. And 1000 calories of energy drinks would send me through the roof.

As for dinner, I think it's pretty self-explanatory. I know people that can get through a whole pizza, but by the end they're struggling.

The sheer volume of food this guy consumes is astounding. I guess he must really be swimming hard.

Bubblewrap Oxymoron

The Residence Housing Association passed out bubble wrap as a de-stressor for midterm week.

But when you try to pop bubble wrap and you can't pop one of the bubbles, you're left even more stressed out than before.

Leaping Over Leap Year

I completely forgot that it's Leap Year, and lo and behold, now I'm confronted with an extra day of February. I wonder how weird it would be if some countries didn't celebrate Leap Year and didn't add on the extra day. After 28 years these countries would be a week ahead of the rest of the world and after 120 years they would be a month ahead. Imagine going to France for vacation and discovering that they're in the middle of December instead of July! I think it would actually be pretty cool, and it would certainly screw with everyone's concepts of time.

Subjective Grades

In high school, everything was determined by a set number of points defined by a rubrik or specific criteria. People knew exactly what they had to do in order to succeed and if they didn't do it they got the grade they deserved, regardless of extenuating factors.

In college, grades are so subjective that I'm not sure if I should be proud of my GPA or not. In several classes I got below a 90%, which in high school was a B. Here, I got As. In my writing class the teachers told us up front that they assigned grades on how much they liked the papers we wrote. Unicorn received a grade he didn't deserve because he disagreed with the teachers' viewpoint.

Don't get me wrong, I like getting As, but I feel bad because I didn't really earn them. I'm trying my best, and I'm proud of the effort I'm putting into my classes, but this grading system is just derailing my views about earning things through effort instead of being handed them. Once I get a job I hope I won't have come to expect positive attitudes toward my work simply because I'm the one doing it.

Board Member- Not

Being a dedicated member of groups has a price. A number of people have approached me about being on various boards next year. Swing club board members are graduating and there aren't a lot of older members who won't be graduate students (who cannot be on the board). Merrily is another good choice for board member but she doesn't want to do it because (like me) she anticipates being busy next year.

Glee club is down to six members. I like it better because it means I get to be on my own part a lot of the time, and I can sing as loudly as I want. However, this also means that next year I might be the only one who can play the piano, which means I have to be the director. Potentially.

I wanted to focus on doing research next year. Now it looks like I'll have to be the bad guy to do it.