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The Longest Day(s) of the Year Are Incidentally the Shortest Ones.

Hello all! As I sit here in the Green Bean, sipping on a latte out of a snowman mug, listening to holiday music in complete blissful denial of all my work, I thought I'd take a moment to share the joys of finals season with all of you! Classes officially ended Wednesday, after I pulled my first and only all-nighter of the semester.  It was mostly my fault for not planning my time better, but at the same time I knew it was probably inevitable at some point. Surprisingly, I was pretty alert for most of the day.  I'd never felt better, in fact.  Gotta love adrenaline. I somehow managed to stay awake until 12:30 am (technically Thursday). I may or may not have dozed off a bit while watching the World Karate Championships with Karate Class, but it was probably only for 5 minutes.  But no worries, Ong-Bak woke me up.   Oh man, was it intense!  Pants on fire (not mine, his).  That's all that needs to be said. (Ong-Bak is a Thai film, btw). Immediately after that, I went to a Theta Socialhood Event where we decorated cookies and watched The Holiday.  The part where they talk about the Santa Anas and how crazy they can be made me chuckle.  If only they knew what we'd been through last week because of the Santa Anas... In other news, yesterday I got to eat lunch with the "Ambassadude", aka Professor Derek Shearer as a WorldTalk Event.  WorldTalk is a new club on campus for current events discussion. We discussed various things about the state of the world, the economy, and what he did as an ambassador (he's the former American Ambassador to Finland, hence the Ambassadude).  Here is a link to an article he wrote recently for the Huffington Post. Last night was also Theta Social.  A lot of people don't really understand what social is, so I will explain it:  Basically, we all dress up and go out to dinner, and you can bring a date.  The end. It's a lot of fun, especially since the location is kept a secret until we arrive there or just before.  Last semester, we went to Geisha House for social, which was awesome.  Yesterday, we went to a place called Rockwell, which had a sort of private vibe to it.  It was behind a restaurant called Vermont in Los Feliz. It was a lot of fun, and the food was delicious! Plus I love getting dressed up.  Social a very nice tradition that I always look forward to. Speaking of traditions, I recently started a new tradition/habit that I didn't even realized was a habit until this past wednesday, and that habit is afternoon soup. Soup is one of the best foods around for an afternoon snack.  It's healthy and satisfying without being too heavy. Anyway, I started going and getting soup after my last class on Mondays and Wednesdays (and occasionally Fridays) because it staves off hunger for a while without being a full-on meal. I didn't realize that I'd made this a habit until two days ago because up until that point, I'd never been confronted with soup I didn't want to eat.  But on this particular wednesday the 7th,  the options were watercress potato and Manhattan Chowder.  Now, I'd like to think I'm a somewhat adventurous eater.  I'll try (almost) anything at least once, and I'd never had either of those kinds of soups before.  However, neither of them looked particularly...appetizing. It was at this point that I realized the importance of my afternoon soup ritual.  I really wanted soup, and nothing else, and was going to be very sad if I couldn't have any (#laurelproblems). So I decided to go for the less suspicious of the two and ate the watercress potato.  At least I could identify the contents and it didn't have any particular scent. Anyway, it was probably a mistake, eating that soup.  I can't tell you why I did it, nor can I explain why I kept eating it after I decided I didn't much care for it. Tradition makes us(me) do crazy things, I guess.   I will say though that usually the soups are awesome.  I wouldn't have started eating it if it weren't. But enough about my weird eating habits.  It's probably just the stress of finals making me think weird things, but I'll never know for sure.  The strangest part about finals week for me is Reading Days.  Basically, on the Thursday and Friday before finals week, there are no classes so everyone can study.  Starting Wednesday night, the campus enters this weird interval of time when no one knows what day it is and our bodies are confused due to the unusual hours we keep, primarily hiding out in the library. Finals time is usually when everyone who has been avoiding the Library all semester decides to suck it up and go.  The only problem is that there really aren't enough spaces in the library for everyone, so it becomes like a sad scavenger hunt for a place to sit (with an outlet).  I feel like it could be the beginnings of a reality TV show. Another odd facet of finals week is the actual schedule itself.  Each class gets a 3 hour time slot to take their final, but because of that sometimes you end up taking a final at 9 o'clock at night.  My schedule works out so that I would have had 3 tests on Monday, but fortunately two of those classes only have papers due instead of tests. I feel like I've rambled on long enough.  I've done well not procrastinating this semester, but these last few days are killer, especially since I found Procatinator.  And no, that's not a typo. Here's a video that I enjoyed recently. Enjoy!  TTFN.