I dislike needles. When I was a kid, I had absolutely no problem with getting shots, but now I do. I get all twitchy and tense when I know a thin piece of metal is about to be shoved in my arm. So, I got Jordyn to sit with me when she was done giving blood, and talk to me to keep my mind off it. Since it was my first time, they had me lay all the way down. I had my ipod in one ear, listening to absurdly happy, dancey music, and it wasn’t too bad when the needle went in. The first time. I squeezed the little stress ball and talked to Jordyn while my left arm went numb, so they released the blood pressure thingy a little bit. Toward the end of the donating part, my arm went cold. Creepy. The fun part came when, for some odd reason, the blood clotted up when they were about 30 grams away from finishing. The solution? Move the needle around in my arm! Ack! That was gross. So, they got their baggie of vamp food, and then they needed to take some test tubes full of yet more blood to make sure they could use it. They asked me if it was ok to try my right arm instead and see if that worked better, and I said sure. Otherwise 470 grams of my blood would just go to waste.

My right arm worked better, and they took about five tubes full from that one. I watched about two of them fill up, then had to look away, because eww. I know blood pumps out, but I don’t need to see it.

They took out THAT needle and were putting a band-aid on it when the real fun started. I was talking to Jordyn again, and my vision dimmed a little and I got dizzy. I told the lady who’d been overseeing, and as I did that, my hearing went away, like when you’re holding your hands over your ears. They laid me back down and put a couple of cold cloths over my head and neck, and the lady made Jordyn hold a Coke for me to sip. I didn’t actually black out, and I was aware the whole time, so yay! That’s another thing I’ve never done before–pass out. I can’t cross it off the list, but I came close.

After that, I was fine. Jordyn and I went to dinner with Hidenori-san, and I got permission to call him Hide-kun, then I went back to my dorm, finished off a paper for personal money management, and went to bed. Now my arm is bruised.

Well, once again, I can’t think of a good way to wrap this up, so here’s another belly dance video. Swara Armunn Tribal Belly Dance to a 14th century French song, played on bagpipes by a German band.

Astronomy will be very mathy, but I like stars and planets, and I don’t mind math when I know what I’m doing. I was waaaay early for the class though, so I wandered around Bruner hall’s second floor and ended up next to this big giant sphere which I assume will be a planetarium (!) when they finish with it. My French class seemed just like my high school French class, but without Madame’s quirks, and I liked Madame’s accent better. It should be fun, when the class actually lasts as long as it’s supposed to! Madame Goldberg let us out early because she was ahead of schedule and ran out of things to do. Healthful living was interesting. We had a test. Already. It was just a pretest, and I knew a lot of the stuff on it, but I did have to guess on a few that started talking about LCLs and LDLs and DHLs and whatnot. I dunno.

I have to print out my Astronomy homework by Wednesday, and I don’t want to pay for it per page, so I need to go and buy myself a cheap printer. Yes cheap. I’m a broke college student, remember? I have a nice worksheet for French about food, which is done (I’m hungry), and I have already finished my little assignment for HL. I had to introduce myself on the Academic Blackboard site. No big deal.

New classes tomorrow! Western Civilisations at 8AM (NOOO!), and personal money management, which will tell me how to manage being a broke college student

<3<3<3 Shannon

So far, I like it here, even without the air conditioning. Fans make it better. My bed is comfy, although difficult to get up. I got a loft bed, and I’ve only hit my head a few times I’m finding the best layout of my stuff so I remember where it is, and figure out how to put things where I can reach them from my bed. I have too many essential electronics that can’t all fit on my shelf! iHome, light, fan, cell phone, iPod, iPod touch… Those and my contacts make it very crowded up here.

I’ve been here three days now, and had my first college party last night. Just a dance outside the student union. It was fun, though. For as few people as were there, there were enough for three separate conga lines Because no party is complete without a conga line. I met a few students doing their study abroad from China, and my friends and I taught them the standard American heartland dances: the Cha Cha Slide, a bit of Thriller, and, of course, country line.

As far as school stuff goes, I got my books today, which only came to around $500, which is MUCH better than I was expecting but still the most money I’ve ever spent at one time. Classes start on Monday, and my first class, Astronomy, is at 10:10AM. Yay! I don’t know when my roommate’s first class is. Hopefully not 8:00. Her alarm is one of those beepy ones that scare people awake, rather than gently awakening them. Personally, I’d rather wake up to a harp or a bell tower from my iPod than a fire alarm-like buzzer.

I shall update more later!

<3

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Erm… One week til dance recital day. My costume just needs one last touch before it’s perfect. I should post a picture of the skirt Cyndi made for me. It’s awesome.

School will be out soon, and I’ll either be painfully bored or my days will be filled with lots and lots of JoAnn’s-y goodness. Good for the paycheck, but I wish my boss would have let me have Thursdays off. I can’t work Mondays because I assume I’ll be at Nanny and Papa’s as usual, but I would like to have a proper day off as well. And Thursday would be the day to do it, because I’ll have dance that night. I get the feeling the the boss-lady would like very much to schedule me every day of the week. I need at least one day where I can count on sleeping in til noon. It’s my summer thing. It’s how I celebrate.

So, to end, here’s a video of a pair of really great American Tribal style belly dancers. ATS is my style, not the scary kind you get at birthday parties.

I have no topic, have you noticed?

Ahm… ack.  See what happens when you tell me to blog?

I had to re-pierce my ears the other day.  They still hurt, but I’m pretty sure that’s because I wore heavy earrings yesterday.  I had to, it was St. Patrick’s Day!  I bet you forgot, didn’t you?  Everyone else did.  It was the forgotten holiday this year.  I reminded, like, seven people yesterday at work.  I wore a green ribbon in my hair and borrowed mum’s green earrings that Paris gave her.  And now my ears hurt.  So, yeah…

You know, I was going to practice my clarinet during vacation, but someone at Ron’s decided that they were going to take FOREVER fixing it.  Grrr.

I should probably get ready for work.  Sorry this blog isn’t particularly interesting.

Love Minimelia.

Now, the whole report, bibliography and cover page are on my jump drive, but I don’t trust it.   I also can’t find a website to upload it to that I can access through the school’s paranoid firewall system.  So, if the school computers mess up my report tomorrow, I’m going to die.  Death by McMahon and Saturday school.

The school is actually preventing students from getting things done by blocking every single useful website.  I can’t even post it in here, because all blogs are blocked.  All forums.

Did I mention ARGH!!!!! ?

On a completely different note, I had the New World Symphony: Adagio – Allegro Molto stuck in my head yesterday at work, only I’d get about halfway through and forget how the next bit went. It drove me nuts for hours, until I remembered how it went an hour before I got off.

For your reference, it’s the bit at 3:10, and the conductor seems a bit spaz-tastic to me.

Saw Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street Christmas Day.  Loved it, even though it was really gory.  I loved the music so much that I downloaded the soundtrack off iTunes the day after.  Since then, I haven’t been able to get the songs out of my head!  It’s driving me nuts, especially at work where I can’t pop my iPod on.  I can’t stop humming “A Little Priest” . 

But it’s really good music.

Or it could just be the fact that I think it smells really good.