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Jen's Journal 
15th April, 2002. 1:52 pm. yesterday Since Bruce was busy working on his proposal, I spent all day yesterday playing SimCity 3000 Unlimited scenarios. It was great. Of course, now I have to catch up on a couple of things I didn't do yesterday, but it was worth it. Now, it's off to the grocery store. Current mood:  happy.
10th April, 2002. 3:56 pm. For the record... I would just like to say that if you're going to put drops in one eye that will (as a side effect) dilate your pupil, it is better to put them in both eyes lest you look like a drug-crazed maniac. Current mood:  giggly.
14th February, 2002. 2:45 pm. I have been absurdly tired for the past week. It's getting just a wee bit annoying. Since Bruce and I are finally going to see Lord of the Rings tonight at 8PM, I think I'm going to go take a nap now. Happy Valentine's Day to everyone. Current mood:  exhausted.
13th February, 2002. 11:44 am. Not very good at updates... but I'm going to try to be a little better about it. I just never think that what I'm doing is interesting enough to write in a journal, but I guess nobody has to read it, right? Anyway, I've got two minor frustrations in my life at the moment. The first is that the dentist prescribed a bite guard for me since I (apparently) either clench my jaws or grind my teeth at night. Since I had to have two fillings replaced because I had removed the tooth material from around the filling, this seemed reasonable. On the other hand, I think I'm in for 3 or 4 trips to the dentist's for adjustments even though the mold was supposed to be "perfect." Anyway, it's doing something odd to my bite (it's an orthodontic splint as well, so it forces my jaw muscles to relax while I'm wearing it), so only my very back teeth seem to be coming into full contact. I'll have to talk to the dentist about it today. My second frustration is that I need to memorize four songs for the NATS competition on March 2, and the accompaniist I have can't be bothered to respond to me or set up a time when we can meet. I can't play the accompaniment myself, so I would like a tape of her playing it so that I can get the final memorizing done, but since she does this sort of thing all the time AND she's accompanying her daughter in a lot of flute competitions, setting up an appointment with me is just not that important. Erg... On a good note, I flying through Pittsburgh on my way to Toronto on Saturday (coming back Wednesday the same route), but the layover isn't long enough to leave the airport and visit people. I'm hoping to convince Bruce to spend part of his spring break in Pittsburgh visiting people. Of course, if any of you want to visit Williamsburg (and aren't allergic to cats), we have a spare room. If you are allergic to cats...well, this is a tourist trap. There are a lot of hotels and bed-and-breakfasts around. Just come during the off-season. Current mood: tired.
31st December, 2001. 5:34 pm. vacation Bruce and I are going down to Florida for a vacation tomorrow. We're using upgrade passes to USAirways to go first class. (It's amazing how many miles you can build up while interviewing or commuting back and forth between Williamsburg and Pittsburgh when there's really only one carrier in Pittsburgh.) We haven't quite decided what we're going to do once we get down there, but it should be fun. On a different note, we planted our first Christmas tree today. I hope it survives. Man, was it heavy. Happy New Year, everyone. Talk to you in a week or so. Current mood: happy.
16th November, 2001. 10:58 am. Ouch... or maybe not ouch. After my dentist appointment yesterday at 9AM, my jaw ached until early evening, and I still can't open my mouth all the way without pain. Hopefully, this is worse than usual because the shot was in the side of my jaw that pops and aches when I keep it wide open for too long (so I was in for it anyway). It's obnoxious, though. I hate going to dentists. Current mood:  sore.
14th November, 2001. 11:11 am. last weekend, etc So, last weekend Bruce and I went to VA Tech because he was the head judge for the regional ACM programming contest. We went up Friday, and I got to wander around campus while he was in meetings and trying to set up the judging software. It is always amazing how much Blacksburg/Christiansburg/VA Tech have changed in the 7+ years since I graduated. Friends of ours from Tech, Rob and Misty, who live in Charlottesville joined us for dinner Friday. Rob was one of the judges for the contest as well, but Misty and I wandered around campus and went to the Crafts Fair on Saturday while the contest was running. Because of a snafu at one of the schools, the contest, which was supposed to end at 5:00PM, didn't end until 8:00PM. The coach/coordinator from Tech fed us well, though, so Rob, Misty, Bruce and I went out for dessert afterward. Those desserts were HUGE (and very good). I'm glad that Bruce and I split one. I wonder, though, about the size of the dessert labeled for 2 people. Overall, it was a very good weekend. We should really do it again sometime. On a completely unrelated note, I bought a new digital thermometer yesterday that brags on the packaging that it "measures body temperature to within one-tenth of a degree of accuracy." They must mean 0.1 Celsius, although almost everyone in the US uses Fahrenheit, because on the internal documentation, it claims that the best accuracy it can get is +-0.2F from 98.0 - 102.0. The accuracy is worse outside of this range. Maybe they meant "one-tenth of a degree of precision," but the fact that they sell a thermometer that they claim is accurate to 0.1 degree when their own documentation says that at best, it is accurate to 0.2F only is annoying, and I don't know how they get away with garbage like this. Bruce's idea was to send it to Consumer's Report so they could poke fun at them. Maybe I will. Maybe (depending on how energetic I'm feeling), I'll report them to whoever is in charge of making sure that all advertised claims are true. On a strange note, I got an email from someone I sang with at CMU between 1995 and 1997. I haven't seen or talked with her in 3-4 years. She found me in LiveJournal through a friend's list of friends. (She didn't give the exact path she took.) I'm going to try to send her email today (as well as catch up on a few other emails I need to send). Current mood: content.
8th November, 2001. 3:28 pm. news from the dentist Yuck. I need to get both fillings replaced. One I'm getting done in January (something to look forward to). The other actually has decay around it/under it, so they're replacing it next week. The hygienist volunteered that they'll use nitrous free of charge when doing fillings if you ask for it, so maybe it won't be too bad. I should also get a bite plate so I don't grind my teeth (which is why I have to get the fillings replaced). My eyes are more normal now, but I have a splitting headache from the dilation. I really don't feel like tutoring chemistry right now. Oh well. Current mood:  grumpy.
8th November, 2001. 1:33 pm. I still can't see... So, I had an eye exam this morning around 10, and the doctor dilated my eyes so that he could examine my retinas. I told him that any time anybody dilates my eyes, it takes forever for them to go back to normal. But he said that he was using the weakest formula (for 4 year olds) and that the stuff that was used in years past was much stronger and so I shouldn't have a problem with it. My eyes would go back to normal in an hour or two. You did notice my title, right. While the doctor was examining me he kept saying things like, "Wow, you must be especially sensitive to this stuff. I can see a lot really easily because your pupils are so big." Sometimes I wish they would listen. Anyway, I have a headache even with the goofy sunglasses, so I don't want to take them off, and I have a dentist appointment in about 30 minutes, so I either go looking like an dweeb or I go looking completely drugged out and keep my eyes closed most of the time (which might not be so bad an idea, considering). Any suggestions? On a better note, I ate dinner with my parents and grandmother last night for the first time in several weeks at a really great barbecue place near here. (For those that care, it's Carolina style pulled pork barbecue--very good.) I should probably try to see them more often, but Dad's work schedule makes it a pain (third shift with Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday nights off right now). Well, I gotta finish lunch and brush my teeth before going to the dentist. Hopefully it won't be so bad. Current mood: annoyed.
7th November, 2001. 3:18 pm. Since you asked so nicely...
Since everyone seems so interested (and I don't want to eat that much microwave popcorn or ANY "found" pizza), I'll ramble a bit about what I've been up to recently. For better or worse at the moment, I am not working a full time job. I have taken up tutoring high school students in physics, chemistry, and mathematics, which is a lot of fun, but I'm not charging enough. I'll fix that next semester. I have a minor problem with the schools around here anyway. They recently decided that "block scheduling" is the way to go. Now, for those of you who don't know what block scheduling is, it basically amounts to going to 4 2-hour classes a day, and the classes only last one semester. Now, I remember as a college student how attentive I was in the last 30 minutes or so of an 80 minute class, so I know I would fall asleep in a two hour class. Whoever decided that 2 hr classes are useful has forgotten college, and the teachers seem to lecture about 30-40 minutes and then let the kids work on homework in many cases, so it just seems like a waste. I've been singing with the VA Symphony Chorus since September. It's a lot of fun, although the music isn't quite as difficult as what I was singing in Pittsburgh. I want to sing with a group called the VA Chorale, which is smaller and harder to get into, but I apparently need to work on my "professionalism" and on learning some background, historical information that I've never bothered to learn. My vocal coach wants me to enter a NATS (National Association of Teaches of Singing) competition with some of her other students in Winchester in March. She actually wants to enter me in the section that is primarily female graduate voice students. She thinks I'll be competitive. Of course, that means memorizing 5-6 songs that are in a minimum of 3 foreign languages. I've only rarely had to memorize music in a foreign language and definitely not 15 minutes of it, so that will be interesting. On the plus side, I'll get lengthy written evaluations of my voice and my vocal technique from some well-established singers/vocal teachers/professors, so it's probably worth the memorizing. What else... Oh, yeah. Recently, I've been doing some C++ programming. My husband is the head judge for the regional ACM Programming Contest this year, so he was responsible for coming up with/OKing the questions for the competition. The questions are only supposed to contain algorithms up to about sophomore year, so both this year and last year, I was given the 8 problems to do and to figure out how difficult they are. I finished the 8 this year (unlike last year), and in part because I thought they were all fairly easy to middle difficulty, Bruce wrote a harder problem, which I am currently working on. The contest is Saturday, and I hope to have finished my first solution to the problem by then. It'll be fun to go up to VA Tech for the weekend and see some friends. I'll write about it when I get back (although you'll have no idea who I'm talking about). I discovered in doing this that I really need to keep up with my programming, because it goes away if I don't think about it, and since I like writing code, I'd rather that that particular part of my brain not atrophy. My "wonderful" husband scheduled both eye appointments and dental appointments for us both tomorrow. I hate going to the dentist. My last dentist seemed to think that I need to get two fillings replaced and that I may need crowns/inlays on four of my teeth because I grind my teeth to much (at night, I guess). Since then, I've been avoiding dentists like the plague. Oh well. Bruce wants to find out how much any necessary work will cost so that he can have it pulled from his paycheck next year pre-tax. OK. I gotta go to the grocery store and get some milk, so I'll ramble some more later. Hope this earns me a reprieve. :) Current mood: amused.
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