Improbable Flasks 6/15/2018
Today was an awesome day, I got to hang out with my friend Rose from high school. We both recent just graduated, and it was nice to be able to see her again. She insists that we have a reunion of all the kids that were in our middle school gifted education class. It was a small, tight-knit group that met on Tuesdays of each week we participated in group activities and projects together. We decided on a date, and started scheduling and texting around our friend group to see who could go.
After she got her hair appointment done, we went up to this grill place- I got a hamburger with fries and she got a Mediterranean salad. We talked for a long time, mostly about our plans for college. She's going to school to study chemical engineering- and may be picking up a tripe major in French and computer science. She also keeps mentioning cupcake club- I personally think she's more excited for it than she lets on. After all, it's nice to have an activity where you can truly let go and relax. In high school, everything's sort of fuzzy and you can't really truly devote yourself to one thing easily. Somehow, if you're a good kid and in honors, you wind up in a whirlpool of responsibility. We were both buzzing with excitement about our future plans. I told her about how I don't think I want to major in biochemistry anymore because it lacks the flexibility of the biology program and the overall field depth of chemistry. In a perfect world I could do a triple major in chemistry, biology, and English, but that would be sort of overkill and requires to many credits. Another reason I didn't want to do biochemistry is because I feel like everyone in it is planning on using it as a pre-med substitute. As of now, I have no intention of medical school, so I don't really want to be surrounded by the kind of culture- I've had enough of that in high school. I think the tools and skillset I obtains from my degrees will ultimately matter more than what highly specific career I have in mind down the line. Even in a perfect world it usually takes a while to build your resume up enough be able to get to the end goal, so I think that defeats the purpose of my education. I want to be able to thrive in any environment I'm put in, whether that be academia, business, industry, or creatively.
After that, we went up to our town's half-priced book store and tried to exchange these two massive stacks of books I had in the back of my car to get store credit. Unfortunately, the woman at the front counter said that the store isn't accepting any textbooks for exchanges right now, and when I tried some of the fiction novels I had she told me that none of them could be used for store credit because they already had copies of them. On the bright side, I found a copy of Crime and Punishment for only $2.50, so it wasn't a total waste of a trip. Rose and I also made fun of the sensationalized romance covers, usually with some girl leaning into a guy's rippling six pack. Plus, I got to nerd out on some of the classical literature they had there.
From there, we visited Barnes and Noble to find some French novels for her. She insisted at the half-price book store that there were none at Barnes and Noble, and I argues otherwise. After we arrived, I learned quickly that she was right- all the novels they had were in Spanish. I also made a joke that they had Hillary Clinton's biography translated into Spanish, but not Trump's. Anyway, so we got back to the poetry section and I showed her Ariel, a book of Plath poems that I thoroughly enjoy. After that, we geeked out in the science and technology section, and she was dissapointed by their lack of organic chemistry books. I also made a snide comment about Niel Degrass Tyson because I think he's massively overrated, to which Rose replied that I was crazy. She also showed me this series of comics that she likes featuring a space police officer. I was a bit distracted today, so I told her that I would read it sometime.
From there, we met up with another high school friend named Ellie in passing. She graduated a year ahead of me, so I haven't gotten to see her in well over a year when we had calculus together. She is an absolute literary guru, and was a class valedictorian as well as an active theater kid. She's studying history at the same university that Rose is heading off to. Apparently Ellie is going to be an RA but her roommate doesn't know that yet. I like to imagine that they would be sitting there and Ellie would say to her roommate "give me all the alcohol you have" and then she pulls out a comically large number of bottles, flasks, and vials. Then she would say "All of them" as she pulls a couple more flask out of increasingly improbable places. When she's done, Ellie just gives her a fierce glare and the girl pulls a tiny vial out of her locket.
Anyway, Ellie is studying history and is thoroughly enjoying it. She really likes the people in her cluster- they're all as philosophical and politically involved as she is. She also gave Rose and I some critical advice like don't take more than two honors courses your first semester in college, you will regret it. Then she continued on saying that she's been trying to keep up with her readings they mention in passing with her degree, but most of the time she only gets though a large portion of the text. One of the most important lessons was that by doing even the bare minimum college professors will be impressed. You know, sitting up at the front, smiling, doing the reading, and participating. She told me how over break they were told to read the first 100 pages of the Iliad. Certainly not to bad, after all that's less than 15 pages a day, it's just a dense read. When she came back, the professor asked who'd done the entirety of the reading, and only she and one other person did it. After looking at books together for a while, we decided to leave Ellie to shop her father's birthday present in peace.We purchased Rose's books, and headed back to pick up her car.
After I came home Mom told me about how our dog's doing. She's been having severe stomach pain so we took he to the vet. After all, she's been throwing up every hour and hasn't had much of an appetite. She's not her usual energetic little ball of energy, so we took her to the vet. Apparently there's some sort of blockage preventing food from entering the small intestines. While it won't require emergent surgery, it will still have to be operated on soon. Therefore, Maggie's not allowed to eat or drink before her surgery tomorrow. The poor thing doesn't understand why she can't eat, and has been patrolling the house trying to find scraps. Luckily while she scanned my room it was well-vacuumed so she didn't find anything. Mom also threw away any of Magie's toys that were broken because she found a bit of fabric in her vomit that morning. She figured that she may have been accidentally consuming parts of her toys, which may be contributing to the problem.
After she got her hair appointment done, we went up to this grill place- I got a hamburger with fries and she got a Mediterranean salad. We talked for a long time, mostly about our plans for college. She's going to school to study chemical engineering- and may be picking up a tripe major in French and computer science. She also keeps mentioning cupcake club- I personally think she's more excited for it than she lets on. After all, it's nice to have an activity where you can truly let go and relax. In high school, everything's sort of fuzzy and you can't really truly devote yourself to one thing easily. Somehow, if you're a good kid and in honors, you wind up in a whirlpool of responsibility. We were both buzzing with excitement about our future plans. I told her about how I don't think I want to major in biochemistry anymore because it lacks the flexibility of the biology program and the overall field depth of chemistry. In a perfect world I could do a triple major in chemistry, biology, and English, but that would be sort of overkill and requires to many credits. Another reason I didn't want to do biochemistry is because I feel like everyone in it is planning on using it as a pre-med substitute. As of now, I have no intention of medical school, so I don't really want to be surrounded by the kind of culture- I've had enough of that in high school. I think the tools and skillset I obtains from my degrees will ultimately matter more than what highly specific career I have in mind down the line. Even in a perfect world it usually takes a while to build your resume up enough be able to get to the end goal, so I think that defeats the purpose of my education. I want to be able to thrive in any environment I'm put in, whether that be academia, business, industry, or creatively.
From there, we visited Barnes and Noble to find some French novels for her. She insisted at the half-price book store that there were none at Barnes and Noble, and I argues otherwise. After we arrived, I learned quickly that she was right- all the novels they had were in Spanish. I also made a joke that they had Hillary Clinton's biography translated into Spanish, but not Trump's. Anyway, so we got back to the poetry section and I showed her Ariel, a book of Plath poems that I thoroughly enjoy. After that, we geeked out in the science and technology section, and she was dissapointed by their lack of organic chemistry books. I also made a snide comment about Niel Degrass Tyson because I think he's massively overrated, to which Rose replied that I was crazy. She also showed me this series of comics that she likes featuring a space police officer. I was a bit distracted today, so I told her that I would read it sometime.
From there, we met up with another high school friend named Ellie in passing. She graduated a year ahead of me, so I haven't gotten to see her in well over a year when we had calculus together. She is an absolute literary guru, and was a class valedictorian as well as an active theater kid. She's studying history at the same university that Rose is heading off to. Apparently Ellie is going to be an RA but her roommate doesn't know that yet. I like to imagine that they would be sitting there and Ellie would say to her roommate "give me all the alcohol you have" and then she pulls out a comically large number of bottles, flasks, and vials. Then she would say "All of them" as she pulls a couple more flask out of increasingly improbable places. When she's done, Ellie just gives her a fierce glare and the girl pulls a tiny vial out of her locket.
Anyway, Ellie is studying history and is thoroughly enjoying it. She really likes the people in her cluster- they're all as philosophical and politically involved as she is. She also gave Rose and I some critical advice like don't take more than two honors courses your first semester in college, you will regret it. Then she continued on saying that she's been trying to keep up with her readings they mention in passing with her degree, but most of the time she only gets though a large portion of the text. One of the most important lessons was that by doing even the bare minimum college professors will be impressed. You know, sitting up at the front, smiling, doing the reading, and participating. She told me how over break they were told to read the first 100 pages of the Iliad. Certainly not to bad, after all that's less than 15 pages a day, it's just a dense read. When she came back, the professor asked who'd done the entirety of the reading, and only she and one other person did it. After looking at books together for a while, we decided to leave Ellie to shop her father's birthday present in peace.We purchased Rose's books, and headed back to pick up her car.
After I came home Mom told me about how our dog's doing. She's been having severe stomach pain so we took he to the vet. After all, she's been throwing up every hour and hasn't had much of an appetite. She's not her usual energetic little ball of energy, so we took her to the vet. Apparently there's some sort of blockage preventing food from entering the small intestines. While it won't require emergent surgery, it will still have to be operated on soon. Therefore, Maggie's not allowed to eat or drink before her surgery tomorrow. The poor thing doesn't understand why she can't eat, and has been patrolling the house trying to find scraps. Luckily while she scanned my room it was well-vacuumed so she didn't find anything. Mom also threw away any of Magie's toys that were broken because she found a bit of fabric in her vomit that morning. She figured that she may have been accidentally consuming parts of her toys, which may be contributing to the problem.
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