Finals and Icicles

I'm done with finals!! I was afraid I'd never make it, but yay, I'm done. I had my last one this morning in English Renaissance Drama. I'm hoping for straight A's but I fear an A- in Conservation of Natural Resources. It's always the gen. eds. They always rip down my GPA, because I get so bogged down by my real classes. Grrrr.

Now I can focus whole-heartedly on grad school applications. I've sifted through my choices to 7 schools. I'm hoping to cut one more, but I'm not sure which one is gonna get the axe yet.

I noticed how beautiful the trees were as I was driving home today. Then I snapped a pic of the tree dripping with icicles in my back yard with one sad, brown, lonely leaf. Hold on little guy, it's only what?, 4 more months till spring thaw.

Goats in Trees and Everlasting Storms

When I went to Morocco I didn't see the goats in the trees. This upsets me. Look how cool it is.

"The goats climb them because they like to eat the fruit of the argan tree, which is similar to an olive. Farmers actually follow the herds of goats as they move from tree to tree. Not because it is so strange to see goats in trees and the farmers like to point and stare, but because the fruit of the tree has a nut inside, which the goats can't digest, so they spit it up or excrete it which the farmers collect. The nut contains 1-3 kernels, which can be ground to make argan oil used in cooking and cosmetics. This oil has been collected by the people of the region for hundreds of years, but like many wild and useful things these days, the argan tree is slowly disappearing due to over-harvesting for the tree's wood and overgrazing by goats. "

7 Incredible Natural Phenomena you've never seen

The "Relámpago del Catatumbo" is pretty interesting too.

"Located on the mouth of the Catatumbo river at Lake Maracaibo (Venezuela), the phenomenon is a cloud-to-cloud lightning that forms a voltage arc more than five kilometre high during 140 to 160 nights a year, 10 hours a night, and as many as 280 times an hour. This almost permanent storm occurs over the marshlands where the Catatumbo River feeds into Lake Maracaibo and it is considered the greatest single generator of ozone in the planet..."

Free Rice... and Words

Coolest website ever. I wish I had found this before I took the GRE's.

A word pops up. You click on the correct definition. For every vocab word you get right, the United Nations World Food Program distributes 20 grains of rice to impoverished peoples. The money comes from the advertisers on the site and everybody wins. You learn words, corporations get advertising, and hungry people get rice. I'm just guessing, but the last one is probably the best.

-I dare you to beat my score. Suckers. My highest is 40 as of right now, but I probably average at the 36-37 range.

I am a vocab beast, I dare you to surpass my mad skill. Do it. Click on the green.

Alexander the Great

I did a paper and presentation in Art History about Alexander the Great, especially the famous Alexander Mosaic that once graced the floor in the House of Faun in Pompeii. Today, the original rests in the Archaeological Museum in Naples, which we got visit this summer with Mirabile Inventu!

In doing research for this project, I found a website that records the process of creating a copy of this mosaic for display. The steps that this team went through and the intricacy and tediousness of their work is amazing. At this Reconstruction Website they show pictures of each step of the process.

If I had to deal with that many little stones I just know I'd poke my eyes out after just one day. I thought mossaicing my bathroom floor was a nightmare, this one took about 500,000 tessarae. Kill me now.

GRE update

Here's the outcome of my GRE.

Snow-yes. Ridiculously slow driving on 81 both ways. Limited visibility and numerous rubber necking slow downs.

The good news: I improved 60 points on the verbal section, exactly my goal.

The bad news: I dropped 60 points on the quantitative section. Not so much my goal.

I ended up getting the same freaking score, only reversed. I know exactly why too. They made me take the math section twice, one is for their 'improvement of the test for future test takers', and one you actually get a score for. The first one I took my time and probably did awesome. On the second one, my brain was fried. I lacked the motivation and mental clarity to answer how many sides that triangle had. ha. I'm 100% sure they took my score from the second one. Darn it.

GRE

Ok, so GRE go #2.

I'm freaking out.
I want to improve my score by about 60 points in each area.
Yes. In my little Utopian happy world. That will be the outcome.

I had wanted to take the test 2 weeks ago so they'd be in by deadlines for my grad school applications, but all of the seats in all of Pennsylvania and Maryland were filled. Hence, I shall take them tomorrow. Or really it's today at this point of my writing this.

Goodness, what if my score goes down?

Then, that'd be another $140 down the drain. And no grad school would want me at all then. I would assume students who get more stupider is generally frowned upon.

*Nervous Anxiety* And I hope it doesn't snow too much. I'd like to make it to Harrisburg and back again alive.

Naked Mole Rat

I have a dirty little secret. I like PBS. Shhhhh, don't tell anyone else. It is my guilty pleasure. The Antique Roadshow? The History Detectives? British movies? Sesame Street? Arthur? V-me? Nova? Documentaries? Special Performances? Educational Programming? It's great. Come on.

The other day I saw an episode of Nature: The Beauty of Ugly. Oh my gosh. It was so cool. They hunted down the ugliest creatures in the world, and made a show about it. There is a contest at some elementary schools to find the ugliest bug. Why didn't my school do that? huh? The best animal, by far though, was the naked mole rat. Ewwwww. They are so ugly they are almost cute!

PBS' website about it.

Relax'n on the East Coast

One last post on Atlantic City. There was a parade that took up one side of the street while cars continued driving on the other side. That was something I've never seen before. We walked up and down the boardwalk even though it was chilly. We also went shopping on black Friday, as tradition goes. Didn't really find any killer deals though.

Caesar's Palace was definitely the most impressive resort/ casino in Atlantic City. the Pier Shops are pretty cool, not like I could afford to buy anything there though. And we went to see a show that was actually a lot of fun. The Duprees. The senior Miss America party was there and a lot of drunk old ladies were throwing themselves at the singers. It was hilarious. I haven't laughed that hard in a long time.