So I’m at the coffee shop once again. And sometimes I sit by the line, which gives people in line the opportunity to comment on my study materials.  They say, “Oooooo, Chemistry. Fun!!” That’s the comment 90% of the time  And that’s how this next conversation started out. The man was a perhaps 35 years old, dressed in jeans and a sloppy t-shirt. He was there with a friend who was wearing a kippah. He was overly friendly, and I couldn’t get a bead on his mental status. He could have been medically mentally challenged, or he could have just been giving off that vibe. My Information Systems teacher in college would tell the story about how he was sitting in a park one day writing code when a cop came up to him and asked him if he had a place to stay that night. My teacher was unquestionably brilliant, but from the outside, you could have easily deduced he was homeless from the unruly hair, distracted gaze, choppy speech patterns, odd eye contact,  untucked, spotted shirts, and the fact that he was just chillaxin in the park.  I couldn’t put the coffee line guy in an appropriate box, but it didn’t really matter; I was open to chatting him up for a bit. 

The line was moving slowly. He wanted to tell me how difficult he felt that Chemistry was. But that Biology was pretty easy. Then suddenly the conversation derailed with him asking…

“What’s your birthday?”

Me, “Oh, are you into numerology or something?”

“No, just curious.”

“July 13th”

“No Way! I’m July 15th.”

I’m running with this, “Wow, that’s crazy.”

“You know "The thing about us Cancers is that we are interested in the Truth!"

I was stunned with irony.  “Oh, and is that why we like astrology so much?”

He looked taken aback and confused. But then plowed right on.

“Well, you know, some people like to know the truth through the facts, but some people can know the truth cause it just feels right. And that’s what Cancers can do. We can feel truth.”

This went on for a bit, my eyes glazing over. When people start discussing woo I stop storing information in my head, and I go into a bit of a dissociative fugue. My bestie gal friend at the front of the line glances at me and gives me the, “Are you all right?” look.  She had caught on to the off-kilter vibe as well.  I give her back the, “We cool”  look, and she goes back to getting coffee, while I go back to looking mildly interested in the way I deduce truth.  Wondering why I study so damn hard when all this time I’ve had the power to feel my way through midterms.

When he’s done talking I say, “Oh.” And I smiled.

By then he realized that he wasn’t getting enthusiastic nodding. And I wasn’t sure about how to proceed debating with a guy with questionable mental status.  There was a beat before he said it was nice to meet me and then left the coffee shop without buying any coffee.

I’m sitting in here in a Starbucks.  In Studio City. This place is always packed. And since I’m in Studio City, I’m here with lots of industry people who like to write screenplays and do whatever else people like to do at 11:00 AM on a Tuesday. I’m always in conversations with people who write for Nickelodeon or late night shows. And the guy sitting next to me right now illustrates graphic novels for a living; he’s discussing with a writer how to collaborate on storyboards.  This is the vibe of Every Studio City coffee shop. 

So I’m studying Chemistry, and this lady walks around the counter and asks to speak to a manager. One of the baristas walks over and says, “How can I help you ma’am.” She goes, “I can’t find a table.  I’ m coming here with my friends, and I can’t find a table. There are too many people here using this place as an office. I’ve been standing here, and noone is moving. People shouldn’t be doing this. They shouldn’t be coming here and using this place as an office.”  The barista was nice and said, “Yeah, we don’t have time limits on tables, but you can go to the website and make a comment.”  The barista placated her nicely and she stomped outside to go join her friends for their mid day tea.

5 minutes later she stomps back inside, skips the line and asks the barista for a refill on the water for her tea, cause it is “TOO STRONG.” She then reiterates the table situation saying “It’s just Wrong, It’s just Wrong.” She then dramatically asks a hardworking screenwriter if she could borrow one of the wooden chairs from the screenwriter’s table and after getting a friendly affirmative, she dragged the chair outside with her in a huff.

“It’s wrong” she said. Not “I don’t LIKE IT”!!!!  Her sense of self was so high that her personal opinions of “What I don’t like,” somehow translated into, “What’s wrong, regardless of my opinion on the matter.”  I’ll tell you what’s wrong lady. What’s wrong is female circumcision, killing gay people, and blanket training.  What is Something You Don’t Like is, people sitting and working in a coffee shop while you and your botched facelift have to sit outside  on a beautiful day and complain about strong tea.

I’ll update this post later with a pic.

If it was its own country, USC would be ranked 12th in the world in terms of Olympic medals. Since 1912, USC is the only university in the world to have a gold medal-winning athlete in every summer Olympiad

-- From Wikipedia

In Bio Lab, we have tests that in part require us to use a microscope to identify organisms on prepared slide. We have two of these tests this semester.

Mondays before the test we are allowed to go into a lab and review all the slides that could be on the test.   Most people come in with a pad of paper and sketch the 20 different slides, and then study from the drawings. This doesn't work for me because I am THAT bad of an artist. Also, it is hard getting sketches on to electronic flash cards.

Instead of drawing the organisms, I write down ordinary things that they look like. So my study notes look like this.

See, you could memorize this list without EVER seeing the slides and get the 4 questions related to slides on the 50 question lab test right! Go you! Because when you focus on the following prepared slide, you’ll be able to figure out what it is!

So far in lab we’ve dissected a Tulip, Worm, Starfish, Squid, Frog, and Rat.  But the thing in bio lab that has made me the most nauseated was watching a hydra sting  and paralyze a Daphnia water flea 20 times its size and then swallow it whole. I need to start bringing a camcorder to class, because all the YouTube video’s of hydra vs. Daphnia are NOT up to par with what we saw.  All the jerking and spasming. And the sheer size difference! Our hydra was itsy bitsy compared to the Daphnia it had no fear violently stabbing it and nomming down.

Hydra have no separate food-in end and food-out end.  The mouth and the anus are the same in the phylum Cnidaria. So the hydra will suck all the nutrients out of the paralyzed Daphnia and then spit it out in whole the same way it came in.  But it didn’t get the chance to do that, cause we put him in the bio waste bucket. Bwahahahahaha.  And I’m sure that little fucker dried out.

Our rat today was preggers, but apparently that wasn’t too unusual in a rat dissection. Our lab TA bragged about collecting rat fetuses all week from her 8 different labs. And she proudly walked around showing every one her collection of different sized fetuses, one was the size of a small super ball. 

Here is our rat, Sophia, from today's lab. And since one of the major things on my mind this past week was my stolen car, I couldn't help but notice the similarities in the stolen/recovered Camry to the dissected rat.

Also, interesting from today’s lab. We learned about lampreys. A fish that lacks a jaw. So it just attaches to other animals or to rocks and sucks.  And it is one of the ugliest creatures alive. I’ve never heard the term lamprey come up before, I swear to you. But later that afternoon I was reading "The Pillars of The Earth” by Ken Follett, and a hundred pages into the book, and I only read like 5 pages today, it says…

“King Henry has always treated the Church as if it were a subordinate part of his kingdom,” he began.  “He has issued orders to bishops, imposed taxes, and prevented the direct exercise of papal authority.”

“I know,” Philip said. “So what?”

“King Henry is dead.”

Philip stopped dead in his tracks. He had not expected that.

Francis went on: “He died in his hunting lodge at Lyons-la-Foret, in Normandy, after a meal of Lampreys, which he loved, although they always disagreed with him.”

I looked it up, turns out that’s a true story. King Henry 1 died of food poisoning in 1135 by eating this ghastly thing.  Lamprey’s are a European delicacy, so King Henry musta just had a bad batch.

Dead Lamprey (Since I don’t have a pic of a dead King Henry from lab)