posted on February 25, 2003 @ 3:07 am
unwritten law, unwritten law
oh man, today was interesting.
first of all, in my physical anthro lab we went to the animal research center. i didn't even know we had this! it's at 27th and speedway. they've got four blue-eyed black lemurs, the most endangered species of lemurs; in 20-30 years they will have absolutely nowhere to live. in the wild, they live in groups of several males and several females, but lamour, the female here, is too aggressive around other females, so it's just her, a male, and two of her male children. of the 30 reproducing females in the country, she's the most successful. yay. :) they were so adorable, about the size of house cats, with the most beautiful blue eyes (the only primate other than us to have blue eyes). when my group went into the room to watch them, lamour was suddenly aware of people. she perched on a branch in front of the window and stared for about three minutes. buddy, her youngest boy just born in september, started licking a wall. it was really funny. willy kept running around and messing with newman, who was in a cage for fighting earlier.
after that, i went to the post office to mail owen's gift. it was really nothing, actually, but i almost fell asleep in line. ;) there were :gasp: four workers!
then, i had my test in grammar. maybe it was because i hadn't slept, but something made me go absolutely blank. i saw the sentence which the test was over (yes, one sentence)
The President hosted a delegation from Spain at Crawford.
and thought, shit, what does that mean. Underwood clarified that at Crawford was where the President actually was, which made the constituents of the verb phrase hosted a delegation from Spain and at Crawford. ok, no problem gary neil, i'll get to it. so i start doing my c2-diagram, and i just stare at the words. i know what they are, what they're doing, i'm even thinking ahead to my f-diagram, but this easy fucking thing i learned last year in my intro linguistics class has escaped me. naturally i started panicking, which only made things worse. i finally got it out after a few minutes (something that usually takes about 10 seconds), and if memory serves me i did it correctly; he gave us an answer key as we left.
i mucked up my f-diagram, and again i accuse lack of sleep. f-diagrams analyze the constituents' functions in the sentence, which is something i learned in five minutes in class while he was talking about other things (note: he had been teaching it for several days beforehand; that was when i used my allotted absences). anyway, i put that hosted governed only a delegation, when in fact it governs a delegation from Spain. i put that from Spain modified hosted a delegation, which is fucking stupid because that's not what the sentence means. bah. i did know the subcategory of the verb, however, so hopefully i'll get two extra points for that. i hope i don't get so much counted off for that mistake, which in turn affected my reasoning behind that being a complementary relationship. i described what a complementary relationship is in general, however, so i shouldn't get counted off for that; the way i did it, the definition is still the same.
god, i know everyone could not possibly care less. i love this stuff, though. i was thinking earlier of doing research. i knew that linguistics would become more important and interesting after all my technical english classes. i thought about dropping my english major so i wouldn't have to take those piece-o'-shit literature classes, but i want it to fall back on in case i do want to edit. editing just seems so mundane: wow, you're an idiot. :edit, correct, correct:. in research you learn something new everyday, and no two days are the same! exciting.
:blush: i'm not a geek...
i left for work at 3:45 p.m., but there was a massive, nasty wreck on riverside involving three cars that i had to go around. it took me 20 minutes to get to the light at riverside and i-35, a trip that usually takes two minutes. i got to work at 4:20, but stephanie was there, saying dale had told her last week to come in. there was a ticket jam at exit three as always, but i couldn't get the top of the machine off. i guess because i was so cold, my fingers were numb, etc., so i just closed the lane. oi, i reeked havoc doing that. the five o'clock rush came, and apparently traffic was backed up levels. a man waiting in front of the office in his car honked and yelled asking why the gate was closed. i gave him a look as if to convey, you dumb fuck and rudely screamed from inside the office, "it's broken [understood dumb ass]!" another lady asked stephanie as she was outside smoking. another called me and complained about having to go around the block. another came to the window and said it'd be hell to get around the block. fuckin-a, people, i didn't break the goddamned thing. of course there was a ticket jam at the other exit, so i went to fix that one. i stayed there to accommodate those who had to wait so long that their tickets had expired, which thoroughly numbed me. when i got back inside, linda had called to tell me to go home. i tried the other exit one more time and managed to fix it (after the rush...hehe). it took forty minutes to get home, but it started sleeting, and i swear it snowed for like one minute! layla called earlier tonight when i was sleeping and told me it was snowing and that everything was white, and just now looking out my window i can confirm that. it's great.
i have a test in ancient greece, but the TA emailed to tell us to watch the ut website for closure. :crosses her fingers: pleeeease... i'm going to have to go up to the co-op before class to get a blue book. bah.
"life's a holiday." whatever, shut up unwritten law.
<3, chels.
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