I find it hard to actually write daily entries over spring break on account that I actually have a social life here in Chicago. So I think these block entries over break should be sufficient. I suppose I should start from the beginning.

Saturday: Arrival
Currently listening to: Last Train Home by Lost Prophets

After Friday's late night adventure to Uncle Bill's I didn't end up sleeping till way too late. When I woke up it was 2:00. My train left at 3. I leaped out of bed and yelled a few obscenities. Then got dressed and called Vi to see if she could give me a ride to the Amtrak station. After a short scare I made it to the train on time and was homeward bound. I slept halfway through the trip and spent the other half writing my never ending day post. When I got off the train I called my parents and they picked me up in the car that I was supposed to be taking with me to St. Louis over the summer. I also saw a Lambda Chi on the streets of Chicago from the car. I didn't call him out or anything though, not that I'd know what to yell out the window anyways.
  It's even this color.

 About five minutes after I walked in the door I walked right back out into Greg's car and headed to Hooters with him, and Alex and his girlfriend where I finally cleansed my palate of those terrible Dierbergs wings. I happened to run into Lisa Vinh while I was there and I found out she wants to go into pharmacy now. Good for her, I hope she knows what she's getting into. Anyways when I got home and wasn't that tired from the train ride because I slept on the way here so I just went on the computer and enjoyed some fast internet. At least until my Dad told me I had church in the morning so I figured it would have been best for me to head in.

Sunday: Contact

Leave it to me to waste time in bed playing 3 Card solitare on my brother's iPod. It's pretty much what I use to burn time, it does take a bit of time though. A lot more than freecell anyways. So my Dad wakes me up and I get outa bed and get dressed for church. I drove the Accord for the first time and it's no Camry. It's 4 years younger than the Camry but without a lot of the features. I can do without the sunroof, or power seat (okay maybe I miss the power seat a bit), but not having the car lock when I shift gears is a major thing for me. Talk about annoying. The gas and brake pedals are a lot different than the Camry too, but I ended up getting used to that. Anyways church was packed. I wondered why that was the case because there didn't seem to be anything special on the church calendar. Anyways I walk in and the pews are packed, not something I normally see when I go to St. Henry. From where I sat I couldn't see anybody that I knew, that's when I began to feel pretty old.

After church I walked out and as I was walking out and my brother told me he saw Julia. So I told him that I'd go back and say hi. So as I watched people flow out of church thinking about all the dark winter nights I'd wait outside for Christine, Duc spotted me and didn't recognize me at first with my hair. We started talking and I caught up with what he was doing. Then out of nowhere Julia comes up and hugs me then tells me she'll call me later. Then Ai Nhu finally recognizes me with my hair and hugs me. Just about the first contact I've had with the opposite sex since early January. Ah what a sorry state my life at STLCOP is.

On my way back home Mike decided he wanted to try and drive the Accord. So I let him, and he came to the conclusion that he didn't like it. So I offered to take it instead of the Camry. I'm gonna have to remember to lock the door when I'm down there, who knows what crazies will try and open my door at an intersection. When we got back my Dad had me go out and do yard work. It was annoying and hard. And then like every other time I come home from school my Dad has to go on and tell me how proud my Mom is and it makes me want to actually finish pharmacy school no matter how miserable the place makes me.

I finished the yard work and came back in to check up on my internet life before we went grocery shopping for the week. It's nice not having to pay for groceries, then we went to go deposit my paycheck from work but I wasn't able to deposit my tax return because I wasn't sure if I was supposed to sign the back of the check. When I got home I unpacked the groceries and tried playing Brawl for a bit but I got a bit frustrated at my controller malfunctioning and just gave up. So I just napped.

When I woke up around 8, Alex called me and wanted to know if I would come over and play Street Fighter IV. So I got into the car and headed over to his place to get my butt kicked by Alex in Street Fighter until midnight.


Monday: Reading is Fundamental
Currently Reading: Promises to Keep by Joe Biden

Today I woke up around 11 and thought that the car would be gone so instead I closed my eyes and went back to sleep. I woke up again at around 2 and saw that the car was in fact outside. But it was too late for me to go visit Whitney Young so I just turned on the TV and started flipping channels. Around the time school let out I called Ashley to see what she was up to but she apparently had too much homework to do anything so we decided we'd hang out before the week ended. As for me I loafed around the house until my sister got home. She needed to go to Borders to get the *shudder* Twilight book. Or one of those pieces of literary garbage. So I decided to tag along with her and ended up buying Joe Biden's memoir Promises to Keep. Funny that I buy this when I'm not even done reading the book that Carmen got me for Christmas. Afterwards we went to the mall so Thu could get some new contact lenses or something while I looked at stores for khakis which are surprisingly expensive. Funny how I'm willing to pay 50 bucks for dry denim but not khakis. When I got back home I kind of went on a download fest and ended up downloading the DVD extras for the first two seasons of Scrubs. But apparently the other seasons aren't on the internet, at least not anywhere I can find them. Bummer. So then I moved onto catching up on episodes of Smallville that I missed while at STLCOP. That kind of kept me busy for the rest of the night.

Tuesday: Suburban Adventures

I woke up today to a text from George. Apparently him and some other 4th years visiting Chicago and today they were at Woodfield mall. I told them I'd meet up with them later and then went back to sleep. When I woke up again I got up and showered, then I looked up the directions to Woodfield. I've never driven there by myself before and the entire time I kept wondering if I was on the right road. One thing I don't like about going to the north suburbs is that there are no tall buildings along the highway for me to use as reference. I ended up missing the exit, apparently Google got it wrong and I ended up going a totally wrong way and had to stop at a gas station to ask for directions.

I eventually made it to the guys who were already at Gameworks playing who knows what. I chipped in nine bucks for the game card and went nuts with the games. One game that stuck out in my mind was this House of the Dead game where I had to sit down and just got to shoot at a screen and then there was surround sound and all this crazy crap shooting at me. Anyways after we burned all our credits we went to David's house and I got a free dinner out of it, then went to his basement where I taught the guys a few card games. I know I'm probably going to offend the world but Texas Hold-Em is mega boring to me. I had to leave at like 9:30 though because it woulda got a bit hard to explain I was at the mall from 3 to 9 PM. Anyways lucky for me I made it home without having to ask for directions.

So I saw a commercial for Breaking Bad and figured I liked what I saw in orgo so I decided to download all the episodes. This was the start of a long road to ruin when it came to my sleeping schedule because I practically stayed up all night watching that show. I woulda polished off the first season if people weren't starting to wake up. I guess I'll have to finish tomorrow.

Wednesday: Friend Coffee

Today I woke up and decided to go visit Whitney Young. So after I pulled myself out of bed I hopped in the car and was off towards downtown. I arrived some time during sixth period and made my way to see Scotese first. Apparently he doesn't teach the journalism aspect of his class anymore, it's kind of sad I actually enjoyed the whole aspect of journalistic integrity and what not. Although I think I appreciate it a lot more now that I'm a total news junkie. I tried visiting Ms. Rice afterwards but she was too caught up talking to a student so I just left. I ran into Natalie and Brian so I hung out with them a bit during 7th lunch. Mr. Mac apparently had a break during 7th so I went to talk to him and it turns out college physics labs across the country are shitty. I never understood why all we did was excel spreadsheets until now. I then popped into Mrs. Smith's class and talked to her about election night and how come Ms. Lent was always sick or pregnant whenever I tried visiting.

Next thing I know it's 8th period and I head over to blue house to check out what Ashley's doing for lunch. I ended up taking her out to Potbelly where we caught up with each other. I found out how she got asked to prom and then we talked college and stuff of that sort. I got a bit of perspective on my whole Lana situation and how life sucks at school. I've come to the realization that all I do is wake up, go to class, nap, and then do homework with the occasional workout. Hopefully I don't end up scaring Lana off, at least after talking to Ashley I might be able to avoid that. Anyways it was a nice heart to heart. It feels so weird talking to her all grown up. I remember when I met her on the Blue line. It's gonna be hard seeing her go off to college. Anyways I dropped her off at Whitney Young and then talked with Sami a bit before heading downtown to meet up with Carmen and Melody.

I caught up with CarMel in Nordstrom having lunch and studying for who knows what. We caught up on things but with Carmen and Melody there never really is much for us to catch up on. Somehow we ended up talking about how Tracey told me she would vote for me if I ran for elected office and then they said they'd vote for me too. Then the topic went to coffee and how I haven't went to Starbucks since like before January. Well sure I've had coffee before but it was always to stay awake. I call that work coffee. I haven't had coffee where I'd just sit down and talk with friends, I call that friend coffee. So the three of us walked down the street to Starbucks and I got some friend coffee.

After we got the coffee we walked down Michigan avenue where we saw Cricket Wireless' world's largest phone display. Apparently they were letting people make a free call or participate in a text message challenge. Either way we'd win a t-shirt or a hoodie. So I decided to go for broke with the challenge and ended up winning a hoodie. They gave me a long ass phrase to type out though, Carmen and Melody got pretty short ones. I guess they give girls the short phrases. I had to take all thirty seconds to type out "Cricket Wireless no contracts no credit checks"


Carmen got some good pictures of me doing it though, while I played cameraman for both of them. When we finished with our cell phone shenanigans we continued down the Magnificent Mile and took a picture with a giant statue of American Gothic.



 But after that they both had to go to work and school so I headed back to Starbucks and waited till 6ish while text messaging everyone I could. It's funny how whenever I come back to Chicago my text message total skyrockets. If this day wasn't enough to show that I actually had a social life before I went to STLCOP.

I got tired of sitting in Starbucks waiting for Greg and Alex so I got out and walked up and down Michigan Ave walking into whatever stores caught my eye. I tried out the new macbook and no matter how much I think Apple users are tools I have to admit it was a pretty sweet machine. Greg finally made it to NBC Tower while I was in the Nokia store so I headed over to NBC Tower to meet up with him for the Steve Wilkos show. Which is apparently like Springer...just a bit more civil. Today I learned what a "gorilla pimp" was which apparently is some pimp who is insecure. It was pretty funny watching a pimp go on about how he thought his ho wife was cheating on him when really she was faithful and he wasn't. I even got a picture with Steve Wilkos after the show but the cameraguy was bad and it ended up a bit blurry.



We took the train back to Whitney Young where I left my car and I drove us back up to the north side where we got a late night dinner. After dropping everyone off I came back home tired and wanting to sleep. But instead I ended up watching more episodes of Breaking Bad.

Thursday: Downtime

Today I didn't have any plans so I stayed in and finished off watching Breaking Bad. Great show, makes me wish it was further along in the series because of how quickly I ran out of episodes. Later on in the night I started talking to Christine and we caught up with each other. Then I got to tell her how terrible my life is at school. How all I do is get up, go to class, nap, and do homework. My social life non-existant, Christine went on to talk about how I wasn't really having a college experience. Every now and then I'll hear from Tracey or Christine or Jordan about these house parties they're at and I wonder why doesn't this happen at STLCOP? Then she tells me how I'm going to become a statistic because I'll be miserable at work because my heart isn't in it. I figure I can always go into politics after 2013. Or after I pay off my student loans. We'll see how it goes.

Friday:  An Adventure

I woke up at 2 today and I had to look up how to get to this sushi restaurant Thu wanted me to try out. I spent the day avoiding the kitchen because I wanted to eat as much sushi as I could. I had to kill time until 7:00 so I watched a bit of TV before falling asleep on the couch. I had an alarm wake me up and then I called Melody to see if we were still on for tonight. I then jotted down some directions and was off. I somehow managed to parallel park in the tiniest of tiny spots when I got there. I got a text from Matt saying Sushi Para II was jam packed with people and there was no way we'd be able to get a table and suggested we all go to another restaurant down the street. So Matt and I went there and made a reservation then waited till the rest of em got there. Melody came first, then Cesar, and finally Carmen made five. After a bit of waiting we were seated and I ordered a Chicago Spicy Crazy roll which had to be the best sushi I ever had. I don't know how it couldn't have tasted good when it was served like this


There must have been three or four different types of fish in there. When we got out we had a hankering for some ice cream but the place next door closed just as we were going to go so I suggested we hit up a Baskin Robins that I passed by on the way there. So we piled into my car and headed over there. Now normally these places are open 24 hours a day but when we arrived we were faced with a locked door. So after ten minutes of knocking on the door we walked to the drive through window and found out only that was open. What good is ice cream if you can't even see the flavors. So I suggested Oberweis instead and Melody found out they were open till 11. It was 10:40. We hurried back into the car and sped off to Oberweis where I got me a hot fudge sundae. When we were finished with our ice cream I dropped the south siders off at Whitney Young and then drove Matt back to his car by the sushi restaurant. As for me, I spent the rest of my night getting ready to give up my social life to go back to St. Louis.

Saturday: Tourist-tastic
I was shaken awake by my Dad so I rolled out of my nice big bed for the last time and got ready to go. I arrived at Union Station thinking I couldn't wait to get on that train so I could just go back to sleep. But when I got on the train it took so long for the conductor to come around and take tickets that I took out Promises to Keep and started to read. By the time the conductor took my ticket I was too engrossed in the book to stop. So I ended up reading like seven chapters. Joe Biden didn't have as an exotic childhood but I think I liked it better than Obama's. It was a much...different time. I have a feeling my Dad would like this book. Anyways about an hour and a half away from St. Louis I finally was able to go to sleep. I shot a text to Jordan saying I was back in St. Louis and was wondering if he had some free time and meet up. I dropped my stuff off at the dorms and got a text back from him saying he had about two hours free and to meet him by the Gateway Arch. I came to the Metrolink stop and took out my wallet to see that I didn't have two singles for a ticket. I ended up having to go to the hospital cafeteria in order to make change. But because they couldn't open the register until someone bought something I had to buy one of those Crystal Light packets for like 38 cents.

I met Jordan by his hotel and we walked around downtown St. Louis talking about spring break and what we've been up to. He was in town for some kind of conference for his architecture fraternity. I saw his hotel room and then watched his chapter take a picture. The camera lady seemed to be having trouble and then out of nowhere Jordan volunteers me to take the picture. The lady didn't seem to wanna hear about it so I sat there and watched as more and more people showed up late forcing more and more retakes. We then sat in the lobby and talked a bit until he had to go to some reception. I then went to Hooters for dinner because the cafeteria wasn't going to be open till Monday morning.

When I got back to the dorms I checked my email and found out Ismar was going to Dave and Busters for his birthday today so I called Adam and checked if he was going too. Turns out he was in Evan's room so I went up there and watched as he cleaned his room and talked about his girlfriend and how she took good notes. Then he told me to get a haircut which I suppose I should do but I figure if I let it grow out this long I might as well let it grow out some more and then donate it to a charity. We later left for Dave and Busters and Adam's GPS is apparently tweaking out so I had to call the place and find the address out so we could manually put it in. We got there and wandered around a bit before we found all the Lambda Chis. I then bought myself a card and spent the rest of the night shooting zombies on House of the Dead or shooting soldiers and technobugs on Time Crisis 4. I can't believe I blew thirty bucks on those games. I watched Tim and Chris make some kind of a baby in a photobooth and kicked some ass at a trivia game before we decided to call it a night and get a late night dinner at Taco Bell and watch Family Matters on Nick at Night.

Sunday: Back to the Rat Race
Today I woke up around 2, but I didn't really see any point in getting out of bed. Nobody else was in the suite. So I just laid there and went on the computer. Cheng came back around 3 or so and I kinda just went back to my room to sleep. I woke up an hour or so before the Lambda Chi meeting and then sat in the living room until I had to go. When I got back Vi, Cheng, and I went to Walmart to go get some stuff for the week. I can tell this is going to be a hell of a week getting used to going to class and such again. Ugh I want spring break again.

Shortly after I finished that last entry I got a text message from Adam seeing if I was still awake. Then he told me to go to the window and start turning off and on my lights so that he and Jason could see which room I was in. He asked if I wanted to go to Children’s Hospital cafeteria. I checked the clock and saw that it was approaching 2:30…and then I said yes. I grabbed my book on Jethro Tull the agriculturist and headed out the door not sure when I would return.

                I met up with them in a bridge that I had no idea I could get into. Apparently all the buildings in the area are connected and one of the entrances is at the bus stop, go figure. My ID even worked when I tried swiping it because I had it activated for the Becker Medical Library at the beginning of the semester.  It was here where I found out where most of STLCOP goes to study. Apparently WashU has this corridor of conference rooms that we can just walk into, and even connect our laptops to project on screen.  As for the cafeteria at Children’s Hospital we found out it closes at 2:30 in the morning. So Adam got his caffeine fix from some vending machine in the building. As for me I spent the rest of the night reading about how Jethro Tull invented the seed drill while Adam and Jason tried to study for their therapeutics test.

                Around 6 or 7 AM I got about halfway through my book and decided to call it quits and go back to my room. I tried to catch a few hours of sleep before I had to go to OTC. When I woke up I realized I had my 2^nd interview today so I had to get dressed up all fancy like and professional looking which wouldn’t be so bad if it didn’t make me so damn cold when I walk outside.

                When I went to the place of my interview after class I came face to face with a closed door. I knocked and knocked until some secretary came out and said the lady was sick. Terrific. So I ended up having to reschedule for after spring break. So I grabbed some lunch and then went back up to my room to try and catch some sleep….didn’t work out so well. So when the time came I headed over to physio lab where I got to check out my own ECG. Pretty cool I must say.

                I finished relatively early and was able to go hit the gym for an hour or so afterwards. When I got back I picked up my book on Jethro Tull again and began to read until around 9 which was when George said he’d be picking me up so we could go see Watchmen.  So there was I, minding my own business, when all of the sudden I heard Cheng yelling over the phone in Chinese. It was pretty awkward, even with my door closed. So I just got dressed and brought my book down to the lobby to wait. I laid down on the couch in the lobby to read and just as I was about to fall asleep I got a call from George saying he was by the meters.

                I sat down in my chair and as I started eating my $2 hot dog this really big guy got down and sat next to me. Apparently this was the infamous Chase who just got up and left LXA for reasons unknown. Watchmen had to be the single longest movie I watched since The Dark Knight. Except with The Dark Knight I didn’t notice how long it was. I still thought it was a good movie though, only problem was that I still hadn’t started on my cultural heritage paper and that would be a problem for me when I got back to school. I worked on that paper until about 5 AM, and after that I took out my physio book and started to read. I almost decided to just stay up all night, but decided an hour and a half of sleep was better than nothing.

I woke up at 7:30 to go over Acid/GERD and after two and a half hours of studying I thought I knew it relatively well. But when got the test my first thought was that I probably should have studied dosing a lot more than I did....which was next to none. I walked out of that room feeling like I feel after an organic test. I made my way to the cafeteria and there wasn't really anything good so I just hung around the table and talked about the test. When it became apparent that I wasn't getting anything done I went up to my room and watched Scrubs until I fell asleep.

My alarm woke me up in time for work so I made my way over to the writing center where I spent the next two and a half hours doing nothing productive. I probably should have worked on my cultural heritage paper but I didn't think to bring my book on Jethro Tull. I couldn't wait to get out of there, and when I did I went to the cafeteria and saw some things I actually didn't mind eating, so I stocked up on food and went back to my room to finish it off. I turned on Scrubs again and watched that till I fell asleep. I planned on only napping for an hour or so and then going to the gym...but the next thing I knew Cheng woke me up and said OTC grades for the multiple choice part came out. It was 8 or so and I found out I just barely passed, I dunno how my grade will change after they grade the cases but I'm not holding my breath. I looked out the window and saw that it was raining pretty hard so I didn't feel like getting out of bed to work out sooo I just went back to sleep.

I woke up and it was almost 10 so I got myself out of bed and grabbed my physio stuff and read that for the rest of the night in the cafeteria as first years studied chemistry all around me.

I can't think of a single day in recent history where I wasted as much time as I did now. Today I woke up at 3, but my body thought it was 2. So then I waited around for an hour and a half for dinner to come by, and after I got food I started catching up on all my Xanga entries which took like over two hours to do. When I finished with that, instead of doing something productive like study for my OTC test on Tuesday I watched the Simpsons for the first time in years. One change was that it was in HD which made all the proportions seem out of whack. I don't remember Bart being that tall, it must be something with the aspect ratio. Then when 7:45 rolled around I made my way to the LXA meeting which wouldn't have lasted so long if I didn't have to stick around afterwards.

When I got back I cracked open my physio book and started to read and not five minutes later Vi knocks on my door and asks if I want to go to Dierbergs with her and Cheng. I was already falling asleep at the moment so I thought some fresh air and some coffee I buy there would help. Apparently they wanted to get sushi, but in my experience grocery store sushi is never that good, especially when it's the leftovers from the day. We got there and wandered around a bit and just as I thought they ended up getting something other than sushi. I got some hot wings for later and an Arizona Iced Tea and some Starbucks Doubleshots.

By the time I got back to my room I took care of some LXA stuff for the website and then checked the syllabus for physiology and realized I was reading the wrong chapter to begin with. Good thing I didn't get too far. Now for the rest of the night I gotta read this mammoth of a chapter on the circulatory system and maybe just maybe start studying for OTC.