Trick or Treat...leave my feet alone!

For Halloween, I decided carve a pumpkin. Since Arnold and I had been playing "old school" video games, Yoshi came to mind. The design was a little to complex to cut through, so I peeled the skin and scraped the inside so light could get through. Vi invited me to a party last night. It was fun. I went as a pixie. It was a simple costume that I already had, but I liked it. You can almost see the purple streaks in my hair. Vi went as a tart/dominatrix.

Whine

If it weren't for one class, my semester wouldn't be that bad. As it is, I hate it and just want it over with.

Huzzah!

This past weekend was "Fall Break". Arnold came up and we just hung out and had fun for the most part. Sunday we went to the Carolina Renfest with Craig and his family. It was a blast. They had a slightly better jousting group. We saw some new shows. We ate breadbowl soup. We even managed to see a Tortuga Twins Show that was not their "R" rated one (which we had seen like three times already). However, with the particular audience members who participated, it should have been. One of them carried a Tortuga Twin up to the stage and then really hammed it up.After the fest, we went to Bob Evans for dinner. The only bad part of the entire day was the traffic we hit on 85. We sat through 3 miles of traffic for 500 ft of road construction. We got home around 10:00. We picked a bad spot to take pictures. Not only were we blinded, but our lower halves were in shadow, so our costumes aren't even shown off. Oh well. My favorite pic is the last one. I tried to get one of Arnold reapplying his makeup after eating his breadbowl, but I was too slow. So he posed for me, but it looks like he is eating the lipstick. During the break, we also watched Edward Scissorhands (since Arnold had never seen it), went swimming ( it was a bit cold), and watch the movie Arnold got me for my birthday. It was a Johnny Depp movie called Dead Man. NEVER watch this movie. It will bore you to tears, even if it has one or two amusing one-liners.

sugary goodness

Dr. Drapcho assured me that anyone in my situation who is taking the required substitutions will graduate without issues. In other news, I finally downloaded my b-day pics, so I thought I'd post pics of the cakes I made. The first is Arnold's and the next is mine.

Anti-alumni Association

So last year, the university forced all departments to cut down the grad. Requirements to under 128 hours. This was no big deal for the liberal arts college. All engineering colleges had trouble with it however, because the lowest number req. for an engr. degree is something like 132 hours and the EE/CompE is something like 145. Mine was 134. I have already passed this number, but still have engr classes to take. Since all of the departments had to cut hours, old classes had to be cut or merged together and new classes had to be created. As a result all juniors and seniors lost the req. classes they needed and had to find appropriate substitutions from other colleges or from the new classes. We (the seniors) did this. We did everything we were told. The NRE's (like me) had already taken half of one of the classes that was merged. They told us not to take the new class since it was half old material and just take enough engineering hours to make up the 3 hours lost. This was not a problem since the Biosystem Structures class was no longer offered and we were given a list of classes in other colleges to take. The old structures was 2 hours. All of the new ones are 3 or 4 hours. This was supposed to help us complete the 3 hours needed. I found out today that the head of department claims that we won't know if the university will accept this substitution til May so we won't know til like 2 days before graduation whether we can graduate or not. I heard this second hand, so I am going to get it confirmed tomorrow. Damn I hate this place. I will not give one plug nickel back when I am gone. I might give money to USC just to piss them off. I hope Barker chokes on that big tacky presidential chain he wears at graduation.

To my mother's older sister...

HAPPY BIRTHDAY SONYA!

Adventures in Cake decorating

Mom and Arnold came to Clemson last weekend to celebrate my birthday. We had a spendiferous time. Mom took us to the Melting Pot friday night. Arnold and Mom had me laughing so hard that I almost choked on my cheese covered apple. Saturday Vi joined us for lunch at Explorers and Serenity. The only reason to go to Explorers was the spinach dip, which sucked this time, so I doubt I'll ever go back unless I get a strong desire to draw on paper table cloths. Besides some really sad plot points, Serenity was a really good movie. It did justice to the TV series. Even Mom liked it and she had never seen the series. After the movie, mom, arnold, and I went Bowling, at my request. I lost horribly, but both mom and arnold broke 100 the second game, which is good for people with little bowling experience. I still can't decide if I was doing more damage to me or the lane, but I had fun anyway. I also decided to make my own birthday cake. Since I had done a great job on Arnold's monkey pirate cake, I decided that I had to trump it with a better one. I both succeded and failed in this attempt. I decided to take a 3-D cake pan of a bear and turn it into the disney character Stitch. The first cake came out of the pan in a million pieces. The second one came out in one large piece and a bunch of little pieces that should have made up the face. I had to reconstruct the face and after I iced the cake, these pieces slid, creating a cerebral palsy stich. In addition both sets of ears I made were too heavy to be held up by the cake so he looked like a Daddy Warbucks Stitch. But I got it to look pretty good, tasting pretty good was another story. But with a cake like that, taste really isn't the point.