Er, so it looks like I've pretty much abandoned this journal and moved to GJ, which seems to be dying right now anyway :/ Whoops.

IN OTHER NEWS -- it seems like I finally got my first final mark for this term now, although it's still technically unofficial at this point. Sorry, spusan, but your guess that my final mark for CLST 330 (Classical Greek Culture and Society) would but 99.9% was off -- I got 98% on the midterm exam, 99% on the final if I calculate it backwards, BUT a mere 90% on the essay, which brought my final mark down to 96% D: D: D:

Oh well, I can't complain -- I'm still hoping I'll scrap by with an A (ie. 80%) in PSYC 355 (Comparative Cognition), which I also HAD NO STUDENT CARD FOR AND HAD TO PAY A $25 FINE FOR AUGH. I can think of many things I'd rather spend that much money on.

So, on a whim, I was browsing the website for the National Ballet of Canada's annual production of the Nutcracker. The backstory to this is that when I was nine, I was in Junior Division (now 'Junior Associates', I believe) program at the National Ballet School, which is affiliated with the National Ballet. It's an afterschool program, though you still have to audition to get it.

Anyway, when I was nine, that was the first year they were doing a NEW production of the Nutcracker, and this time, they were going to allow Junior Division students to audition -- basically, the choreographer/main guy, Junior Division Director, etc. would go around to the classes, have the students skip gaily across the room (really), and somehow pick students that way. Er, I REALLY wanted to do it, so I probably tried too hard during my audition, but regardless, I got the better of the two role options for younger students (a lamb rather than a baby mouse) AND I got assigned the most number of shows out of all of the Junior Division girls, including the opening night (they mix the cast up, but I was technically in the primary of the two) and the Christmas Eve matinee. Blah blah blah, it was a lot of fun and I got to skip the crappy Christmas recital at school to be in the show, blah blah blah.

Going back to the website, I was checking it out and THERE IS A PHOTOGRAPH OF MY NINE-YEAR-OLD SELF IN-COSTUME ON IT. It is NOT the most flattering of photographs and I will have to post better ones when I have access to them, but, yeah, seriously, WTF? That photograph must be TWELVE years old now. I am the squinting girl on the far left. I recall the lights being very bright.

( ZOMG IT IS ME DRESSED UP AS A HUMANOID LAMB WTF. )

That is all.

Only in a classics course would one spend a considerable amount of class time looking at a slides of a famous historical battle depicted on a vase as a naked man holding his genitals in one hand and about to sodomize someone who's already bent over and yet still oddly fully clothed.

I love ancient Greece. Even when their taste in kitchenware is all kinds of fucked up, to be quite honest.

Well, I got two more of my midterm exam marks today, and they make a nice addition to the 98% I got back in CLST 330 (Classical Greek Culture and Society) last week -- 100% in CLST 101 (Introduction to Greek and Roman Civilization), but since it's an 100-level multiple choice, I wouldn't have expected anything less (but I didn't get that one question wrong after all, hurrah!).

The other one is for PSYC 342 (Psychology of Social Influence) -- I JUST got an e-mail from Dr Fabrigar congratulating me on getting 96%. But then I had to get sad and neurotic over the fact that it's only one of the top SIX marks and not the top one :(

That only leaves PSYC 355 (Comparative Cognition), and you all know my thoughts on that course is that I want to drop it -- I like the lectures, but I haven't felt that bad about writing an exam since chemistry, and that's bad. Not to mention I have no idea what to do for this huge paper assignment.

For the first three though, this is SO BAD from an operant conditioning point of view -- I study for exams at the last minute and night before ALL THE TIME, and I keep getting rewarded for it with good marks, so I'm never going to learn how to change my behaviour :(

Okay, I want a pita now.

GOOD NEWS -- I got 98% on my CLST 330 (Classical Greek Culture and Society) mid-term exam. Hurrah! All downhill from there though. And I am sorry to disappoint you about the lack of a 99.9% there, spusan.

BAD NEWS -- I have never done as badly on an exam as I just did coming out of PSYC 355 (Comparative Cognition). Never have I WTFed at so many questions, save for the chemistry exam back in first-year where I nearly failed and subsequently would have failed the entire course if I had.

GOOD NEWS -- When I came home from my last exam, the Threadless hoodie I had ordered for my birthday last week when the $25 Hoodie Sale was coincidentally on at the same time came in the mail!

BAD NEWS -- We watched a good (minus the cheesy bits around it, like the 1970's/1980's music) video on the Zimbardo Prison Experiment in PSYC 342 (Psychology of Social Influence) today. That's good. The bad comes in that I couldn't pay much attention to it because I was trying to study for the PSYC 355 (Comparative Cognition) exam at the same time D: D: D:

Longer mid-term run-down to come later, probably in a Friends-locked post because I am paranoid like that. Will probably repeat some of the stuff already mentioned here.

So all day (and Friday, come to think of it), I've been hearing drunken shouting outside of my apartment -- it's Homecoming Weekend, which means that practically every student in town is going to be smashed all weekend, especially tonight. About ten minutes ago though, I heard these booming noises that sounded suspiciously like fireworks -- not the cheap and dangerous 'you'll probably lose a hand or testicle that way' sort that make the whistling noise and then the cheap POP! sounds, but like REAL fireworks.

So I looked outside my bedroom window, and lo and behold, there were REAL fireworks! I couldn't get a good view from where I was, as my room faces west, so I went out to the main area of the apartment so I could watch from the balcony, which faces south towards the lake where the fireworks were taking place. Wasn't in the mood to walk all the way over, as it's probably a good twenty minute walk from here, not to mention that it's cold and drunken students are prowling all over the place right now.

Anyway, it was a GREAT view and there were plenty of fireworks all around. There were actually a lot of new sorts that I've never seen before in other firework displays -- one exploded kind of like a cone-shaped flower, another would initially explode as a faint sparkle of gold before there was a bunch of simultaneous small explosions, another was normal except for a bright red heart-shaped ring the middle, another exploded as layers of rings in a sphere shape, another would be a small explosion and then the red sparks would STAY IN FORMATION relative to each other as they fell (it was kind of creepy, actually), and there's another one I barely remember now, but the only descriptor that comes to mind right now is 'fireflies'. Yeah, that doesn't really help.

Anyway, I should go and do my midterm readings for CLST 330 (Classical Greek Culture and Society) and PSYC 342 (Psychology of Social Influence) now. Gah, stupid midterms. Why am I so lazy this year? Especially after I actually had a work ethic over at the Castle and stayed on top of my readings (oh gasp!).

The Department of Classics here at Queen's is hosting a visiting speaker (Dr. Ingrid Holmberg from UVic) who'll be doing a talk (poster here) titled 'Troy the Film, Homer's Iliad and Empire'. Anyone who knows my major interests in classics knows that I MUST GO TO THIS SPECIAL LECTURE.

Unfortunately, it's this Wednesday at 11:00AM -- which used to be free, but I now have thesis lab hours during that time D: And the chances of making up that last hour somewhere else are unlikely because someone has to be there running participants at that time, and it's all scheduled out.

NOOOOO. (But I'll still try and ask.)

Well, my Friday's been excellent so far -- I actually got enough sleep and woke up at a decent enough time that I was early for my PSYC 342 (Psychology of Social Influence) class at 10:00AM. Instead of having a lecture throughout the entire one and a half hours, we spent about forty-five minutes (after discussing the upcoming midterm) watching a very old black and white video on the Milgram experiment, mostly watching recordings of the original participants actually taking part in it. Some disturbing stuff, but overall, it was really interesting to watch. Wish the sound had been comprehensible though. And definitely LOLs throughout when participants would just light up a cigarette while sitting in the room and talking to the experimenter.

After that, we got out about half an hour early, and I JUST remembered that there was a Hurt Penguins sale at the Campus Bookstore (ie. lots of books for only $3 each) yesterday, so I went over there to check it out. And yep, you know it's Homecoming Weekend when there are loads of engineers in their GPA (Golden Party Armour) leather jackets boozing it up outside (the bookstore is located underneath Clark Hall Pub, the one run by the Engineering Society). I ended up getting FOUR books this time -- Penguin's 'Dictionary of Psychology', Tom Holland's 'Persian Fire' (we're finally getting into the Persians in CLST 101, by the way), Catullus' 'Poems', and Roger Knight's 'The Pursuit of Victory: The Life and Achievement of Horatio Nelson'. So yep, all three MAJOR areas of interest covered there! I was also tempted to get a new copy of John Wyndham's 'The Chrysalids', but decided against it for now. But hey, since it's only $3, I may just go back and get it anyway.

This afternoon, I've got another Faculty Board meeting, plus I should, er, actually pick up the documents for my student loan like I was supposed to about a month ago. Whoops.

Okay, silly fandom thing -- I have been COMPLETELY out-of-the-loop with 'Class of the Titans' right now, owing to a lack of television access and the fact that I'm so behind with academics and extracurricular stuff at school already that I can't afford to keep up with things like news-blogging right now, but could someone (if you're not too busy, obviously) fill me in on what the hell is going on with Season Two now? I know there was the episode with the Graeae, and that's all I know so far :(

And, er, I obviously don't want to depend on the TV.com forum for episode recaps -- reading most of the stuff there makes my head hurt.

Thanks!

Did anyone manage to catch the 'Class of the Titans' Season Two preview yesterday on Teletoon? Not only have I been really out of the loop with fandom things lately because of my spring and summer, but I got the date mixed-up and thought it was going to be shown today. All I know about it so far is that the channel apparently showed the entirety of the 'Graes Anatomy' episode. Hopefully, someone at my house back in Toronto taped it like with the other episodes, but I doubt it (though I suppose since it was a full episode and not something extremely exclusive, I can just wait for the season to premiere).

So the main movie theatre on Princess St. here had finally got around to screening 'Becoming Jane' a week after the North American release date -- has anyone reading this seen it?

I've been wanting to watch it for several months now -- it was actually playing in England when I was there, but I had class during the one showtime -- since it looked like a decent period film (not a big Regency fan though) and I love James McAvoy, but the consensus among film critics seems to be that it's pretty awful, except for maybe the aforementioned actor; I tend to agree with critics, and yes, I am aware that this makes me Satan incarnate.

So -- is it a good enough film that worth paying $8 to watch it in theatres? What about if I just want to ogle James McAvoy, in an entirely platonic way? Or, for some reason, if I want to be horrified by the idea of Julie Walters giving James Cromwell a blowjob (sorry if that's a spoiler)?

EDIT: Alternatively, should I just go and see 'Stardust' instead? I've admittedly never read the novel before though.

I love getting mail, except for perhaps when it's junk, and today has been an excellent mail day indeed -- not only did my 'Brideshead Revisited' DVD order come in earlier than I'd expected (thank you for the surprise, Chapters-Indigo), but the postgraduate prospectus for the University of Edinburgh also arrived!

That said, now I feel rather stupid for going out to Blockbuster over the last two days to rent movies, which I still haven't watched yet -- I rented the 'Elizabeth I' HBO mini-series with Helen Mirren a few days ago, and yesterday, I was in the mood to re-watch 'The Last King of Scotland' and look at the DVD bonus features, and the latter has to be returned by noon tomorrow (technically).

I also ordered a postgraduate prospectus from Cambridge today, as they finally have printed 2008-2008 ones; this is the most important one for me, since their MPhil in Criminology is the graduate program I'm most interested in, though whether I can get in when most people they accept either got Firsts at Oxbridge if they're going in straight from undergrad or already have law degrees and/or have been working as lawyers already for several years is another matter.

Oxford still doesn't have a 2008-2009 postgraduate prospectus even though it was supposed to be printed in July (and it doesn't seem like you can order one either), and the London School of Economics won't print theirs until last August.

I need chewing gum, and alas, that wasn't in the mail today.

Holy crap!

Apparently, A&P -- which is right across the street from where I live -- is having a sale on a whole bunch of Popsicle-brand products! And by sale, I mean one that's actually worth it, and none of that save fifty cents on something worth ten dollars crap -- boxes of normal popsicles, fudgesicles, and those things where the ice cream is covered by a thin layer of chocolate, all of which are usually $4.89 a box plus tax, are being sold for a mere $2.00! Hooray!

Unfortunately, by the time I discovered this, all of the boxes of normal fudgesicles were already sold-out, so I got stuck with a box of mini ones that are nowhere as good a deal. I think I've eaten at least half of them already, as they're so small. Still, gives my mouth and my Freudian oral fixation something phallic to occupy itself with.

Makes me wonder why the hell I paid something like $1.13 for a single fudgesicle from the convenience store though.

I also got two small jars of sweetened apple sauce of $1 apiece. Watch it turn-out that they've already been molding and are rotting inside, given my luck with groceries.

I haven't really been on the internet for the last while, as I'm either at work, sleeping, or enjoying tasty sandwiches at the Subway that recently opened at the street corner. Thus, I have a ridiculous amount of catching-up to do, but here's the numbered breakdown of what I've been up to since the last entry (mostly very boring stuff):

1. Yes, I did go and get 'Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows' at midnight on July 21, although it was more like wandering around while trying to dodge potential spoiler assholes (I had an MP3 player for good measure, though it didn't occur to me there may be visual spoilers, which I thankfully didn't see any of) and then having to wait outside in a line for the independent bookshop. Oddly enough or not, I was much more excited when I noticed that the shop had Colin White's 'Nelson Encyclopedia' on-sale for a mere $19.99, plus tax.

Anyway, it's been too long for me to get my initial thoughts out, especially as I've read so many other people's by now -- overall, my opinion is that I really enjoyed reading it, but it was very flawed, especially with the introduction of so many eleventh-hour rules and deus ex machinae.

I've only read it all the way through once so far, though I may try doing it again, as nothing ruins a big emotional scene like having a customer at the convenience store interrupt you to ask about cheese curds.

2. I'm pretty sure that one of an old prisoner's items the John Howard (the English prison reformer one) Society of Kingston executive director found in one of the office is a vibrator, albeit one of those incognito vibrators that are advertised as massagers -- the bumps don't lie! And God bless PSYC 333 (Human Sexuality) and Dr. Pukall for the history of masturbation lecture.

3. I heard there's going to be a 'Class of the Titans' Season Two preview on Teletoon next week? Really wish the Studio B lawyer would get back to me about the fansite like he said he would though, dammit.

4. Speaking of television, I finally got around to watching 'Blackadder Goes Forth', and I'm working my way through 'Jeeves and Wooster' episodes as well. May I say that I really love Hugh Laurie when he's playing well-meaning yet dim-witted aristocrats in 20th century pre-WWII settings.

5. While still on the topic of television, I've also ordered 'Brideshead Revisited'. I'm hoping to finish reading the novel beforehand though, unlike the other time where I watched 'Bright Young Things' before reading 'Vile Bodies'.

6. The customers at the convenience store have generally been excellent, although I had a rather frustrating time with one usually-all-right regular on Saturday (or was it Sunday?). She came in to complain about a box of crackers she bought that turned-out to be stale, which is fair enough, except that while she was doing this, she was still eating the stuff and making a mess of the counter.

Writing down her complaint took ages, because she would never give me a correct phone number -- there were never enough numbers to make sense, and whenever I tried to get her to repeat it or I repeated it in hopes that she would correct me, she kept snapping back with nonsense answers like 'You're charging me $7.36 for this?!' when I was repeating the nonsensical number she gave back to me (there was a 736 somewhere), or, in reply to a repeat of 'Can you please tell me your phone number again?', simply said, 'Birmingham'. What the hell? And then after everything was done, she continued standing across the counter, eating more of the stale crackers she was complaining about and staring at me. What?

Then she returns the next day and tries to get a free newspaper or something (she bought the wrong one, came back to return it and I have her the money back, then she picked-up a new newspaper and got mad when I charged her for it; thank God the customer behind her backed me up!), and yesterday, she tried to get a free coffee (there's a card system where you get a free coffee every sixth cup or something, but hers had already been redeemed). Augh.

On the plus side, she didn't smell like piss-soaked cigarettes like another recent troublesome customer, but I won't go there.

7. Countdown to Queen's Toronto next Tuesday! It's at the fancy downtown Holiday Inn again like it was two years ago (I went to the Kingston one last year, and it just wasn't fun because I was the only non-Kingstonian there). I wonder why it's no longer held at Upper Canada College though.

Yeah, that's about it, really.

I don't really remember how this came about, but I somehow ended-up at the website for Threadless T-Shirts and, against my better judgment, ended-up buying three shirts. To be fair, I spent several hours trying to pick which shirts I REALLY wanted so I wasn't making a huge order -- lots of the ones I wanted were already sold-out though -- and ended-up with the following three:

Loch Ness Imposter -- Male S in Pacific Blue.
Defend the Kingdom -- Kids 10 in Creme (it was the only size left and the shirt I wanted the most!).
Biblical Disaster -- Female M in Baby Blue.

The other two I wanted were War and Peas and ESPECIALLY In Case of Fire, but I really didn't want a hoodie on account of them being more expensive and having less seasonal range. This hopefully isn't the start of some kind of shopping addiction along the lines of Indigo-Chapters online book orders.

EDIT: The Downside of Genetic Engineering is hilarious and well-designed as well. And it's available (well, not at the moment) in red!

So I just came back from the midnight screening of 'Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix' -- am very glad to get away from hardcore insane fans that were driving me mad (I've NEVER heard someone actually scream 'SQUEE!' in real-life before) -- and here are some of my personal thoughts, non-spoilers outside of the cut and spoilers behind it.

First off, know that in terms of what kind of HP fan I am, I am NEITHER (a) the sort who thinks that anything Harry Potter is the best ever and this film is, therefore, THE triumph of cinema (to the girl behind me who called 'Lord of the Rings' and 'Harry Potter' the greatest movies of time or something, you need to watch more films), or (b) the other extreme sort who hates on everything in the film adaptations because it's 'not exactly like the books' (of course not, nitwit, one's a book and one's a film and they're NOT THE SAME THING). My comments are going to be focused mostly on the film as a film.

In short -- I didn't like it.

On the non-spoiler front, I thought the worst problem was the same one that 'Goblet of Fire' had -- namely that instead of feeling like a film with one cohesive overarching plot that builds-up to a climax, it felt like a series of (very) little vignettes connected only by the fact that one follows the other, very much like a moving series of pictures to accompany the text rather than as a stand-alone film. I really didn't feel there was any build-up to a climax (which I didn't find so climatic, actually) so much as the action being on a plateau and just going one after the other because they HAD to have that next scene, not because it really worked in terms of a narrative structure.

So that's my main non-spoiler issue with the film, amid some others -- on the POSITIVE side, Imelda Staunton and Evanna Lynch, even though the latter didn't get much screen-time, were amazing and probably the best things about the film.

( HERE BE SPOILERS. A list of random brief comments about more specific elements of the film. )

In terms of the audience -- because the great midnight screening audience at GoF was a major reason why I wanted to do it again -- it was BAD. When I was in-line, and I ended-up first because none of the stores were open, there was a loud and obnoxious group of high-school students (of the nasty sort that give the rest a bad name) behind me. Aside from screaming, they also enjoyed reading OotP aloud with very bad RP English or Texan (?!) accents. One of the girls in that group butt ahead of me later using her mother, though she got hers in the end because she didn't have her ticket ready to present. I don't care about being the first one in really, but that was just fucking rude of them and especially her.

Worse though, were the stupid idiots sitting behind me -- they would NOT SHUT THE FUCK UP DURING THE FILM. That, and they were not shutting the fuck up in a very loud manner. One of their party members had apparently never read the books, so the guy beside her kept LOUDLY talking about everything that was onscreen (and she would loudly respond in turn), and how this and that was in the books. I said shh several times and even turned around at some point to ask him to please talk a little more quietly' (note the word -- 'please talk a little more quietly' NOT even 'please be quiet') and he and his lot still kept loudly chattering throughout the whole thing. Dear God, that kind of behaviour was understandable with the six year olds when I watched the first film in theatres, but NOT university students who should have known better.

So yeah, not a great film (but I don't regret watching it), and an even worse audience that probably felt even worse because the GoF audience last time was so amazing and fun. I'd still recommend watching the film, but for me, I think, I will NOT be watching it again in theatres unless I'm really really bored.

EDIT: Also, for some reason, instead of using the big nice screening room like they usually do for big movie release, the cinema used two little screens with an aisle running right down the middle. I guess it was to accommodate more people, but the bigger screening and real middle seats would have been nice, along with people who don't talk during movies.

EDIT2: You know what this movie really made me homesick for? The ISC at Herstmonceux Castle. And London, but the Castle moreso. Damn the lucky Summer Term bastards who are still there right now.

So after coming back from England, I've been obsessed with the idea of doing (post)graduate studies in the UK, although that's probably not very realistic as the international student fees are very very high and British universities tend to be really stingy on scholarships and funding, especially for overseas students.

That said, I'm mostly looking at schools like Oxford, Cambridge, LSE, etc. (like I will ever actually get into any of them, but I figure that if I'm going to spend a lot of money on a graduate degree in the UK, it should be for a good school), but I'm definitely fucked -- none require GREs (excellent), but I definitely need two to three academic references for each, plus one or two writing samples. I don't know anyone I could ask for a good reference from (for various reasons, namely that I was never very aggressive about bullying professors into relationships to get favours out of later).

And while I generally do really well on written work, I always leave it until the last minute so that everything has embarrassing spelling and grammar errors -- for example, the only writing sample that would really be valid for, say, the criminology MSc program at Oxford is my second project for PSYC 300 (Advanced Experimental Psychology), BUT I have a really bad grammar/spelling error IN THE FIRST SENTENCE (not to mention that I spelt 'generalizable' as 'generalize able' in the conclusion) , and anyone who knows basic psychology knows that the rest of the piece will be read in a very negative and irredeemable light.

On a different, but still academic note, I'm still waiting for my Castle course grades -- I know I got 89% in CLST 206 (Roman Britain), which is actually not a very mark for that class (I bombed my archaeology field notebook; apparently, it was 'too detailed'), and for IDIS 304 (British Studies I), I don't know what my overall grade is because I have no idea how I did on the final exam (probably poorly, as it was definitely a lot harder than my history professor said it would be based on the course's reputation for being easy), but I got an e-mail back from the course co-ordinator today saying that I got 85% for participation and that it was one of the very few participation As where all three professors agreed on the grade, so yay.

What? The 'British Empire in Colour' DVD is only available in a Region 2 format? Madness!

At this point in time, I still don't know if I got the four upper-year PSYC courses that I selected for advanced course selection, BUT assuming that I did and Dr. Atkinson didn't have to slot me in to my alternative choices, I think my perfect schedule works out amazingly well:

( Fall Term 2007 )

( Winter Term 2008 )

If I DON'T get the four PSYC courses, then I'm screwed. This fits so perfectly that I'm actually surprised it worked-out so well, so it'll probably get screwed-up in the end anyway, alas.

I knew this was going to happen eventually, but it's still pretty funny -- 'Class of the Titans' = tool of the Devil!

In other news, I got back from England on Sunday and I still really miss the Castle and various professors (especially Scott) a lot. We had our closing ceremonies on Friday night, which included the class photo in front of the Castle, dinner, a slideshow (I wasn't too happy about how the vast majority of the pictures was of the same one or two cliques getting drunk and/or naked), and a high school-esque dance in the ballroom. I wasn't in the mood for dancing, but I did want to speak to various professors, so I stuck around and had fun dancing with other students.

I didn't get a chance to speak with Scott (I did end-up spending most of Saturday with him at the excavation in Wartling though), and I was initially disappointed that Anthony hadn't and didn't seem to be showing-up and Christian was too sick to stick around after the dinner, but later on, I DID see Anthony and Joy hiding in an alcove in the corner by the bar (I think it's rather sad that I recognized him by his hair, even if it was less fabulous than usual because of how hot it was in the ballroom). Didn't get a chance to talk to them for awhile, and when I did, I waited around in view until Anthony noticed I was there and called me over. It was really difficult to have a conversation when it was so loud, and I was surprised at how completely different his voice was after he'd been drinking (he usually this amazing, if somewhat sleep-inducing, deep voice with a typically RP English accent, at least to my non-British ears, but he was strangely high-pitched and nasally). There was also kind of an awkward moment when the DJ played one last extra song and Joy said that I should join her and Anthony on the dancefloor. Very awkward, but hey, I can say that I've sort of danced with some of my professors before.

Saturday was mostly packing and taking a lot of photographs of the Castle in the afternoon -- Laura and I ran around everywhere taking pictures of everything, and we also got a chance to sit in Christian Lloyd's office (we were taking photos in the faculty offices corridor) and have a conversation with him, which was awesome. Part of the night was spent with a bunch of us running around in various fields in the middle of the night, and then some of us left for a coach at 3:30AM to Heathrow, where we had to wait a good six hours or so for our flight. The flight itself was rather uneventful, and I regret getting a window seat as there was nothing to see and it made going to the bathroom difficult. I liked how the new planes had individual TV screens for each seat though.

Anyway, I still need to e-mail Anthony to get my IDIS 304 (British Studies I) participation grade -- er, I think I said I'd do that several days ago -- and I'm still confused about what time is is and whatnot. According to my alarm clock, it's almost noon in England, whereas it's only 6:34AM here.