I hate being late for anything, although that seemed to be all that I'm doing lately.

Since this is the first week of Fall 2008, I am determined to not be late.

I. Will. Be. On. Time.

I woke up earlier than I normally do, got myself ready for the day, and even remembered to pull up my classroom schedules off my e-mail. I managed to leave my apartment with 10 minutes to spare. That was plenty of time, since most of my classes this year are practically across the street. :p

I found directions to my classroom, and slid into my seat in the nick of time. But no sweat, I was still on time. I was really surprised to see the classroom/auditorium full of students. The last class I've attended that was close to being that full was Introduction to Biostatistics. But then, there's really no escaping Biostats, not if you want to do research. I guess there was no escaping Medical Informatics as well.

"Good morning, everyone, and thank you for being here on time. My name is Professor ________, and this is Advanced Biochemistry."

Whaattt??? Exactly. I was in the wrong freaking classroom. I checked the room numbers written on my planner, speed-dialed the one person who could straighten out the classroom assignments for me, and tried to get out of the room unnoticed.

"You're in the wrong classroom!"

(Well, duh.)

"You must be looking at Thursday's schedule. Today is Wednesday."

(Well, double-duh.)

I ended up getting to the (right) class and classroom 15 minutes late.

In my defense, this is the first time it happened to me. And if this says something about how the rest of my semester is going to be, I'm off to FABULOUS start.

This is a long time coming.

Because I did not have time to call Time Warner Cable to get digital cable installed, I've missed out on my favorite show for the summer: The Next Food Network Star.

In the past weeks when I was stuck in cable-less oblivion, finalists have been eliminated, and Aaron McCargo emerged the winner. :D

Yay for Aaron. I had a feeling he was going to win.

The recap for the finale can be viewed here.

Visit the Food Network website for episodes.

I can't believe it's almost the start of the fall semester. Where had the summer gone? Where was the sunshine and the nice warm weather that summer was supposed to bring? All we had was rain and more rain.

In the last 9 days of the summer, I'm hoping to accomplish several things:
1. Catch up on my summer reading. Thanks to my heavy course work this summer, I had totally neglected reading for leisure. Now I'm on a fast-track to go through all the books I checked out from our library.

2. Watch the videos of the women's gymnastics and men's swimming in the Beijing Olympics. Like summer, the Olympics came and went with me hardly being aware of it. I kept mostly up to date with Yahoo! Sports. Without it, I would not even be aware of it ("Oh, are the Olympics going on in China this year? Is this even an Olympic year?").

3. Watch "Gossip Girl" from season 1, and find out what the hype about Blake Lively is about.

4. Go to New York City, eat all the pastries I can eat at Red Ribbon Bake Shop, and shop to my heart's content (more accurately, shop to my wallet's contents). :D

When I was in high school, I remember a classmate bringing up an interesting point:

You can have everything. You can't just have everything all at once.

What is wrong with having everything? I'm all for having everything. Me, me, me. Now, now, now.

Some twelve years later, and a lousy experience with cable TV services, and I've completely reversed my thinking.

Monopoly sucks, especially if you're on the consuming end of products and services.

Time Warner Cable is the sole cable TV provider in my city, so if I want cable, I gotta pay up, and pay up fast. And if I want, I can bundle that service with a digital phone package, and a high-speed internet service, for a low, low price that they don't advertise in their websites.

The thing is, my roommate and I already have an Internet service provider, from the competition, no less.

Yup, we were sucked into Frontier's DSL service, which for the life of me, does not consistently work for my laptop. I've taken my laptop everywhere, and only at our apartment did I ever encounter problems connecting to the Internet. And at the most inopportune times, too. I'm not self-centered enough to think that the universe is conspiring against me, but the times when I do have problems connecting to the Internet are the times when there are papers to write, assignments have to download and upload into the course website, and most importantly, contact numbers for Frontier have to be Googled.

I called AT&T's 4-1-1 on my cell phone, and got hold of a very bored-sounding LaToya who gave me the listing for Frontier Airlines, after telling her TWICE, "No, I want the listing for Frontier, the Internet provider. Please." Needless to say, AT&T charged me for that 4-1-1 call. And for the minutes I used up calling the wrong number, thanks to the very competent LaToya.

So, this is why my roommate wants to keep a landline in the apartment, for emergencies like this. I ran to the phone, called Frontier's 4-1-1, which I was pretty sure will give me the correct number for the correct Frontier, given that it's the same company as our internet provider.

The representative picked up the 4-1-1 call:

Me: Can I get the listing for Frontier, the internet provider, please?
CSR: (looks up the number) Do you need help???
Me: No, I just need the number for Frontier, the internet provider.
CSR: Do you need help?
Me: (Help with what??? Yes, I need help. Can you write my paper? It's due in two hours.) No, just the number, please. I've been having problems with our Internet and I just want to ask talk to them.
CSR: (very rudely) That's just what I asked you. Because there's two numbers. One is for technical support, and the other one is for blah-blah-blah.
Me: (mentally reviews the conversation, because I was certain that technical support was mentioned anywhere in our conversation) I want the number for technical support. Thank you, goodbye (and good riddance, LaToya 2).

I dial Frontier's number on our Frontier phone, which my roommate told me costs us X amount of dollars per minute. After what felt like centuries (and $$$), I was told they couldn't help me, because:

1. They couldn't hear me very well. There was static on the phone (did I mention it was a Frontier phone, and the static was worse on my end???)
2. They couldn't help me, period.

How's that for fabulous customer service? And people wonder why people outsource their customer support to countries like Philippines.

On the one hand, Time Warner's cable TV monopoly sucks. On the other hand, their competition (Frontier) sucks on many aspects, anyway. In the end, it really just sucks for consumers like myself.

I don't know what it is about my new apartment, but everytime I come in here, all I want to do is crawl into bed and sleep.

Is it my new bed? It's a regular bed. And I still haven't gotten around to buying the bed foam (?) that goes on top of the mattress.

Is it because it's super comfy? I still have to get my A/C installed.

Maybe I'm just bored, and because I don't have cable TV yet (and I can't put up a satellite dish, unfortunately), I've gone from TV-addict to sleep-addict.

Or maybe I'm just really exhausted. It has been THAT kind of week...

Now I'm about to doze off again...

I hope I don't miss our dinner/get-together for my friend Foni.

For the July 4th weekend, I took all the guts I have in me, packed up my car, and drove up to Canada. By myself. Jasleen and I originally planned to drive up together, but Jasleen had tons of work and decided to stay. On the other hand, I do have tons of work as well, but I needed a b-r-e-a-k.
Harmeet, her husband and their two kids were going up as well, and offered to give me lift, but because I needed to take my car anyway, we decided to drive up together. For the first 5 minutes, that is. We got separated on 490, and decided to meet up at the Duty Free instead. Harmeet's husband can't drive any slower, and I was determined to be law-abiding and stay on the speed limit. Despite it, I beat them to the border by a good twenty minutes. :p I think it was because they had to stop for bathroom breaks (with two kids in the car, that is pretty much a given) more than my driving skills, although Harmeet says otherwise. ;)

I also made the decision to move to a different apartment. Moving almost killed Rey and me. We moved most of my furniture earlier when Rey was here, so he could help me move things. Despite that, it still took me three trips and three carloads of stuff before I was finally able to get all my things moved out over the weekend. The last load is still in my car. I haven't unpacked everything yet. Moving itself is an exercise in emotional, mental, and physical exhaustion, but it's worth it. It might be premature to say this, but I love my new apartment. :) If only I can find one box of stuff (that I might have misplaced), life would be perfect.

We have a rabbit! Or as Elmer Fudd would say, "We have a wabbit!" Well, she's not really mine, but who cares? She's sooo cute. She hops around all over the apartment, and then lies on a corner to rest, and then hops around some more when she's let out of her cage. I love her already. I also learned something new today...rabbit poop looks like small, hard pellets. Lol.


Coming up this week:

• dinner with Foni on Thursday before she goes back to Greece (I can't wait to have more chicken wings. Yum!).

• dinner with some classmates to catch up since our Spring class ended (Can't wait to see everyone, and hear about Megan and Daniela's wedding plans!).
  

I'm going to let you in on a secret.

Today, while telling the story of how I drove up to Toronto and back (by myself -- gasp!), I accidentally banged my hand on one of the chairs in the residents' room. It hurt like crazy (it made my eyes sting), and the result is a lovely bruise by the side of my pinkie (close to the knuckle). And I'm guessing, tomorrow, it will look even lovelier in various shades of purple with some yellow thrown in.

I always tell people I'll beat them up (even if they're twice my size) if they make me upset. The truth is, I probably won't end up doing any beating -- just because my hand is still sore from hours before. And this was just from hitting my hand while gesturing.

I'll let you in on an even bigger secret.

I'm willing to make exemptions for you-know-who's (and you-know-who-you-are's) who mess with me and those whom I hold dearly. :p