My poor money tree

I'm visiting home for the weekend. I decided to take the train to San Jose yesterday afternoon and skip my class for today. It's just psychology and it's a stupid class anyway. The professor is an idiot. But anyway… the train ride was fine. 3 hrs 10 mins…. about an hour longer than it would take to drive. BUT the difference is that while I'm on the train I can sleep, do homework, read, or study. While driving I can do none of these things. Since I had so much studying to do for bio and an essay due on Monday, I figured the train might be a better solution. Besides, I wouldn't have to deal with traffic and a car that vibrates so much that by the time I'm home I feel like I drank a gallon of coffee. All jittery and whatnot.

Apparently there was a party at my apartment last night. I thought just a few of the Kristina's friends were coming over (1 from her hometown and a couple from the rugby team). But apparently it turned into something quite a bit larger and amidst it all, my money tree was ripped out of it's pot. Why would someone do that? I mean, although there were a lot of people there, they were still all friends with Kristina and/or somebody else that lives in our apartment. So why would they disrespect my property like that? It's so messed up. I've been caring for that little plant since about the 3 week of last semester, or somewhere around that time. It was growing and budding and doing just fine. Then some jerk had to go an rip it out of it's pot. Kristina called me this morning to inform me of the tragedy. I can't say that I'm angry because I don't know who did it and why. It's like people don't think that plants are a big deal, but I bought that thing and I was raising it and taking care of it like a pet. What if someone chucked Kristina's snake or lizard out the window? or Rayme's rat? or my parakeet or frog? If I told someone "Yeah, someone threw my frog away during the party…" It'd be a huge deal. But people are like "Oh, it's just a plant, who cares.." I care!! Since my botany class last semester I really had a newfound respect for plants. They're great to have around and that's why I bought the money tree. But people excuse it as "just a plant" like it doesn't matter. Do hamster's matter? because they require about the same amount of attention. This plant was special to me and I wanted to keep it for a long time. It was only about 1 1/2 feet tall and they're supposed to get up to 6 feet. I wanted to see it all through it's lifetime. It was going to grow old with me.

Ok you guys are going to think I'm crazy for obessing so much over a plant, but that's just because you're normal non-bio majors and so you probably don't have very much respect for plants. But it's a life. You shouldn't just rip it out like that when it didn't do anything to you. It was just chilling in the corner of the living room, minding its own business and then WHAM someone felt the need to rip it out. WHY? ugh.. It's disrespectful and makes me not want to ever have large numbers of people over at my apartment. And if we get a house next year I don't want any parties because people are disrespectful and take advantage of your hospitality.

Well anyway, I'm home now and I have studying and writing I gotta do. And I want to buy flip flops.. but I suppose that can wait seeing as how it's still raining all the time. Freaking weather.

Oh yeah, in case you didn't know, this is what a money tree looks like:

goodbye, my little money tree. I'll miss you.

**edit**

Mike went over to my apartment to survey the damage of my little plant and here's a picture he took with his phone and sent to me:

 

as you can see, the part budding off of the stem has been sheared almost completely from the trunk. It probably will not recover, but we'll see. Sometimes when leaves get bent I'll use tape as a support mechanism and eventually it mends itself and is good as new. Unfortunately I think this may be beyond repair. But Mike taped it anyhow and we'll see if it works.

Spring break has come and passed…

…the innocent can never last.

Spring break overall was ehhh. My best bud was in Ireland so that kinda put a damper on things. I went home and one night was pretty cool because we all went out and played pool (except my dad.. he was too tired…) and hung out. That was good times. Pool is pretty fun because it’s something I can actually do ok in. Bowling annoys me. Plus I think billiards are probably slightly cheaper for a large group since it is charged by the table and we don’t need to rent shoes or anything. Anyway, that was pretty fun.

My time at home went by really fast… Actually, all of spring break went really fast. But at home it was like… I dunno… I expected it to last longer than it did, I guess. The thing is, I had to split my time between my own family and Mike’s family. And I wanted to spend some time getting to know my sister’s fiancé, Matt. He seems like a pretty cool guy. I can see why Lani has fallen so head-over-heels for him. Plus, it was kind of frustrating being home because I wanted to go do things but people were always busy. Lani was wanting to spend all her time with Matt, Trevor wanted to spend his time with Libby, and my mom wanted to watch movies. Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with spending time with your significant others, but I was just hoping we could all go out and do stuff more. Unfortunately Monday night seemed to be the only night that was possible. Except we were missing Libby and my dad.

It was ridiculous. When I suggested going to the billiards my dad was like, “Why does it have to be tonight?” I’m like… well, look around. We’ve got a pretty good portion of our family together here and time is running out for us to be together. The longer you wait the harder it become because pretty soon we’ll all have our own families and our own lives. You should take advantage of our time together while you still have it. That’s one thing we definitely didn’t do while Spencer was around. I feel like everyone keeps trying to have family activities but when things don’t go right we all get discouraged and pretty soon no one wants to plan anything anymore. Our vacation this last summer went really well, but it was still extremely discouraging for me because I had planned out all these things and it seemed like things got shot down given the circumstances. My dad is just interested in things to a degree that no one else is. Like… hunting for fossils? Sure, that could be cool if you had any idea what you were looking for. The directions to that place were so obscure and found off some guy’s personal website. It was a little shady. Anyway, I think I’m dwelling too much on past things… but the point is, these family activities only get harder to organize as our family expands and becomes more complex so we should take advantage of the opportunities whenever they are possible. Being “tired” shouldn’t be an excuse. You can sleep later. Take some time off your anti-Mormon quest and spend some time with your family.

Well that was a fun little vent. Sorry if this turns out to be a novel-length entry, but I’m going to use the excuse that I haven’t updated in a while.

I didn’t do any homework over break. Which I guess is ok.. nothing is due immediately… But it’ll probably make things much more difficult for me as deadlines and test dates come up in these next couple weeks. Oh well… what’s a few more all-nighters? Har har.

Kristina came back from Ireland yesterday. From the sounds of it, they had a great time but were so exhausted after the first couple days it got really old really fast. They were basically staying up all night and playing rugby all day… that can really take a toll on you. So essentially everyone got sick… Kristina is like the least sick and she didn’t seem so hot this morning… she was making me kind of nervous during our bio class this morning because she seemed so miserable. She got like 12 hours of sleep and yet she was tired and having a hard time paying attention. I was afraid she was gonna like pass out right there on our table. She’s got a long day today, too… I hope she survives. I also hope she doesn’t get me sick… :-\

OH! V for Vendetta is the best movie I’ve seen in a really long time. Rated R for violence and language (it’s not nearly as bad as some movies, but definitely deserves the R rating). Anyway, the plot and storyline was SO GOOD. I only went to the movie because Mike has been wanting to see it ever since he found out Natalie Portman was in it (with a shaved head, by the way). I was really skeptical and didn’t think it was going to be good at all. But it was definitely awesome. It ended and I was just like, wow. Powerful stuff. It kind of reminded me of the novel 1984. Government corruption and whatnot. Man. It was good. I definitely want to see it again, too. There were some parts that were so intense you’d have to see it again to get the most out of it. Very poetic.

The med center was pretty cool this last Thursday. What’s weird is I seem to be the only volunteer who consistantly shows up on Thursdays. I’ve met a new volunteer every week… What’s up with that? I don’t know if people are just being lazy and not showing or what. Last week it was a freshman from UC Davis named Amit. Before that it was a sophomore from UC Davis name Kaylee. Then this past week it was just a random guy named Gabriel who works as a contracter and his wife is going to med school so he just decided to volunteer on his free time? I don’t really know why he would do that rather than getting a second job… if you’re married I would think you could use all the money you could get. Anyway, this Gabriel guys was ok but he was somewhat of an idiot at times… he couldn’t remember the difference between a blanket, a pillowcase, a flat sheet, and a pad. I’m pretty sure these are everyday things. But he was also always like “let’s work, let’s work,” whereas I wanted to watch cases more than clean rooms. I guess he was really just wanting to help, he didn’t need the experience of watching surgeries, seeing as how he is a contractor. I, however, want to see these things, not just clean up their blood afterwards. I saw someone who had gotten into a pretty bad car accident, apparently. They had a fractured ulna and radius and their metacarpels were all…like… misaligned, I guess. I was looking at the x-rays and I couldn’t figure out what was wrong with the wrist and why they were cutting into it… although I knew it didn’t look right. Then the bone specialist guy that was in there told me they were shifted over. Then I could see that. Oh man, it was pretty painful for me to watch this person get their bones shifted around by the surgeons. They’ve got to be really forceful in setting the bones back into place and I just was like… wow. These doctors were seriously putting all their weight into putting a little bone less than an inch thick back in line. It’s amazing they don’t break them even more. That was pretty cool to see though. Plus it’s nice that while they were cutting into the arm I actually knew which was the ulna and which was the radius (the radius is smaller — on the thumb-side of your arm, in case you were wondering). So that was cool. I think that was the only case I watched… I could’ve stayed later to watch a tendon repair, but I kind of just wanted to go home, so I left at like 830 or so. It was still cool.

Alright well I have to do a reading response thing for English that’s due tonight… I didn’t get around to doing it during spring break (go figure) so of course I left it to today. D’oh. Adios muchachos.

I DON’T WANT TO GET SICK

I pulled another near-all-nighter again. Couple hours of disturbed sleep. I was studying for our first Comparative Vertebrate Morphology midterm. It really covered a ton of information. I did pretty well on the prelimary quiz we had a few weeks into the semester, but that only covered a couple topics. This exam covered those topics PLUS musculature and ontogeny. Personally I find ontongeny (embryo development and differentiation of tissues and whatnot) to be a rather difficult subject… Interesting, but difficult. That alone would’ve been enough to test us on.

Another Day Down

Yet another day has been scratched off my life. Today I was at school most of the day, the other few hours I spent doing some cleaning around the apartment, put dishes away… fun stuff like that. And of course I wasted probably a good deal of time either thinking about doing homework, or just avoiding it all together.

More Ugh..

I am feeling so frustrated with my roommates, it’s not even funny. I feel hurt, angry, frustrated, sad, depressed, confused, upset… I can’t even really describe. They called me just as I started eating dinner with Mike to see if I would want to go to out to eat with them. Thanks for the heads-up, guys… I mean, at least they called to invite me, but it was probably just out of obligation.
In other news, tonight two firetrucks came and took a girl away that lives in the same building as a few of my friends.

Ugh..

I’m feeling really hurt by some roommate issues right now.. Just excluded and whatnot. I don’t know… Maybe I’m just being too sensitive. Today Mike and I were gonna go check out this boat and RV show and I asked Kristina if she would wanna come and she basically laughed in my face and was like “no.”