Okay, so I'll start up where I left off from this morning. I was dead tired when I went to class. I didn't even bother getting dressed. I just threw on a sweatshirt and put on a pair of shoes. Not to worry; the class was just Senior seminar, pretty much a pointless class. It's pass/fail, and based only on attendance. It's actually called Professional Practice, and we're supposed to be discussing things that will help us after graduation. So far we've looked at a chemical process modeling software package that we use in Design class, and chemical literature abstracts. Both *potentially* useful, but I think we could be discussing more useful things, like how to invest all the money we're supposedly going to be making 🙂 Anyway, I could barely keep my eyes open, much less focused on the overhead. So, I browsed through the catalog that came with the jeans I got on Monday. Not very exciting, I know, but the class went a little faster that way.
I did get some good news in class, though: apparently, one of my Design group members got bored last night, and decided to do our homework that is due for tomorrow, so we didn't have to meet this afternoon. That meant that I got to take a nap instead. Needless to say, I was quite grateful. I slept pretty much the rest of the afternoon. Not a big deal; since tennis practice was canceled (once again, sunny and in the 60's...perfect weather), I had nothing to do until phonathon. I chatted with Amanda and Heather off and on, too. Apparently, Heather has been having some problems with a conflict involving her, one of my brothers, and his girlfriend. She was telling me about it, which is great, especially if it helps her feel better about it. I just hope that she does not get any wrong ideas about her and I. I've never seen her as anything more than a friend, and especially with everything else I've got going on female-related, I don't need any more issues to deal with.
Speaking of female-related issues, I had a minor epiphany while trying to fall asleep this afternoon after class. I was thinking back to the entry I wrote for yesterday ( actually written this morning), and specifically about the "circumstances" under which I would be able to ask Amanda out. I started to think, in my half-asleep-random-thought-tangent state, that I was only rationalizing why I wasn't going after something that I possibly really wanted to go after, rationalizing in order to avoid getting hurt again. It is sort of a defense mechanism I induce sometimes. I mean, they are all legitimate concerns, but they also represent the risk involved. And risk is usually directly proportional to reward. What we've got now is really good, in my opinion; but am I rationalizing away the opportunity to have something even better? An intriguing train of thought, but for now at least, I'm going to leave it filed under "I was half-asleep when I came up with this thought."
Amanda was happy because she got to visit her horse today. She is still restricted from riding (due to previous shoulder surgery), but at least she got to spend time with him. I'm really excited; I get to go with her tomorrow to go meet her horse. I really love horses; I get that trait from my mother, who also loves horses. The best part about going to the Indiana State Fair was always going through the horse barns and seeing all the horses there. It's been way too long since I've been around a horse. Apparently, Amanda tells me, her horse is a bit feisty, especially around strangers. But she also told me that the way to his heart is through his stomach...via Oreos. (Yeah, she and her horse were made for each other. She refers to her horse as the number one man in her life.) So I'm going to go pick up my suit after class, then head over to the Woods (this routine sounds strikingly similar to Tuesday's) to go with Amanda to meet her horse.
So the rest of my evening was dinner, phonathon, and then back home to do homework. I only got 45 minutes to an hour of calling in, since this was my first night and I had to go through orientation. But I made 24 calls, which had I been there the whole night, would have been the most, or second most. Of those 24 calls, I got ahold of 5 people. Of those 5, I got 2 five-year pledges, and one "considering." Because it was timed right (read: I got lucky), my second 5-year pledge won me a cd. I got to choose between Lauryn Hill and Pearl Jam, so I picked Lauryn Hill. I got back home and called the girl I was going to work on my homework with, but when I went to meet her to do it, she already had it done, so I just borrowed her book and did it back here at home. It was a fairly easy assignment; I already had half of it done, I just had to set up some formulae in Excel to crunch some numbers. You may be interested to know that, if a tank explodes, and 500 people are working within 10 and 500 feet from the tank, evenly distributed, that 4 of them will die of lung hemorrhage, and another 10 will experience a ruptured eardrum (well, so will the 4 people with lung hemorrhages, but a ruptured eardrum seems to pale in comparison to being dead). Believe it or not, I have to learn this stuff, because, as one of my professors told us, we are going to be chemical engineers, and we can kill people. Fun thought, eh? No responsibility there...no, sirree. Don't I want to become a design engineer now 🙂
Well, on that happy note, I think I'm going to finish this off and go to bed.
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