Ahh - another Thursday behind me. It really feels like Friday, probably because neither R nor I had to be at the pool tonight, so all four of us were home for dinner. They're holding SEC Swimming and Diving Championships at the O'Connell Center for the next two weeks, so no one is allowed to swim there except the athletes in the competition. That means that R doesn't have to coach Masters and Club Alligator can't meet at the normal time. Which sort of sucks in a way, because now we have to swim at the Florida Pool, and that's a 'slow' pool (they keep it at 84 degrees, and that's really too warm to do any sort of timed workout), but it means I don't have to go anywhere in the evenings, woohoo!
Anyhow, not much has happened this week except for testing. I had two tests on Tuesday, math and English and its Relatives. The math test was all right; I got a B, which I'm pretty pleased with, considering the class average was a 68. I came away from English and its Relatives feeling like I'd done pretty horribly - it was a short-answer test, the worst kind, and I had to totally fabricate a couple of answers (go, IB training!), plus there was an unexpected section - Gothic translation. (Gothic is the first attested Germanic language... before Old English showed up.) We'd been told that we would need to be able to translate Gothic from a literal gloss - meaning the teachers would take a Gothic sentence and write each pronoun, case, person, inflection, etc. in the exact order Gothic used, and we would have to make some sort of coherent English sentence out of it. However, on the test there was a ten-point section in which we were told to read and translate actual Gothic - which is a really weird, cryptic, non-Roman alphabet which (among other things) uses no spaces and uses letters to represent numbers. But the teachers made some adjustments, and I got three points of extra credit, and one of my fabricated answers turned out to be right on the money (again: yay, IB training!), so I ended up doing well. The teacher handed me the paper - face down, folded in half - and I muttered, "Ugh, I don't think I want to see this..." then flipped it over, expecting to see something in the seventies or even the high sixties, and saw a big circled 90! "Oh - yes I do!" I exclaimed, getting a laugh from my seatmates.
Anyway, it was nice to see an A on something again. My Language and Dialect test last week was pretty awful - not only because it was given the day after my 21st birthday (read: not much studying got done!) but because it was short-answer and really, really nitpicky. That's the only teacher whose lectures I've ever considered taping, simply because ANYTHING she says is apparently fair game for a question. (And now that everyone has realized that, she gets asked to repeat everything, like, three times... LOL!) Language and Culture, given on the same day, was slightly better, a B, but still not as good as I'd expected - it was mostly stuff I'd learned in lower-level linguistics classes. So I was getting kind of discouraged. But I must not be doing too terribly, because I got an e-mail yesterday congratulating me on my 'outstanding academic achievement at the University of Florida' and saying that I was being invited to join the Golden Key International Honor Society. That'll look nice on a résumé. :)
Anyway, I'm heading home this weekend - I've got a hair appointment and an eye appointment tomorrow afternoon, and on Saturday I have to work from 5:45 (yes, in the morning!) till 12, and then on Sunday I'm 'kidnapping' my sister in honor of her 18th birthday and we're going to go basically have a play day - Starbucks, Old Navy, rock climbing, American Eagle, ice skating, the movies, Mellow Mushroom, whatever she wants. Should be fun!
Eight days until we leave for Tulane. I'm actually kinda glad I don't swim tomorrow - no class Friday mornings, and since I have those two appointments, I can't make the afternoon practice either. That means I have the whole weekend free, which is good. I'm feeling kind of burned out, and so is L, another swimmer on the team who's going to the meet. We both think that if we just have a few days' rest we'll be fine, and we're of course all going to taper before the meet - a normal 4000-yard workout on Monday, then 3000 on Tuesday, then 2000, and then just 1000 the day before we leave. So we should be decently rested.
The only thing I'm worried about is these darn SECs, because it means that my swimming classes can't meet, either. A, the teacher on Tuesdays and Thursdays, was kind enough to reschedule the midterm for one of the days, to cancel class on another, and to move us to the Florida Pool on a third, but L, who teaches Mondays and Wednesdays, has had the stroke of brilliance that we should do stadiums instead. (For those who don't know, that's running up and down all the sets of stairs in the football stadium - which is even bigger than Alltel, where the Super Bowl was just held.) Normally, I wouldn't mind - I'd even like it - but I know that my legs get really sore the day after I do stadiums, sometimes to the point of not being able to kick during swimming - which would obviously be a problem. I think we're doing more abdominal work, etc. than actual stadiums, but otherwise I'll have to tell her I'm trying to taper and really can't do all that. She's a swimmer, she'll understand.
And because it's me, she should be okay with it. She and R are friends, but neither of them gets along well with A (swimming drama...), and she knows I have a class with A too, so I think she's been trying to 'sound me out' and see 'where my loyalties lie'. But after class yesterday, she definitely knows whose side I'm on - and it ain't A's. :) (A's nice and all, but it's that 'pheromone' thing again - I'm just not really comfortable with her.) But anyway, I had sent L an e-mail with a couple of questions about distance training, and she forwarded them to a guy whom she said had done a lot of swim marathons and could probably give me some good advice. Then, in class yesterday, she asked if he had e-mailed me back yet. I said no, and she said she could press him about it if I wanted her to, "but he's not really my favorite person..." The way she said it tipped me off that this was the 'player' R had been telling me about for so long, so I grinned and said, "Then I think I already know who it is, and you don't have to deal with him again on my account!" When we were done stretching, I asked her, "So, is this the guy that A's currently dating?" She said yes, and I said, "Oh yeah, then I definitely know who he is." (He's a former UF swimmer, and is constantly hanging around the pool.)
Raising her eyebrows, she asked, "What-all did R tell you?"
"Uh - that she dated him for six weeks, that you dated him for a year and a half, and that now A is with him and thinks she owns the whole O'Connell Center."
There was a beat of silence, and then L dissolved in laughter and couldn't speak for about five minutes. "Perfect!" she choked out. "Couldn't have said it better!"
Anyway, so we're on pretty good terms now - I'm sure we can work something out with this stadiums business.
Other news... R just got a call from N, this guy she met at a bonfire a couple of weeks ago and has been telling us about ever since (sometimes in a bit more detail than necessary), and now she's all excited because they're going out to Market Street. So I'm going to go listen to her recount all the details of the phone call - because R does not often get giggly. :)
(Note to self: expect male presence in apartment tomorrow morning...)
Anyhow, not much has happened this week except for testing. I had two tests on Tuesday, math and English and its Relatives. The math test was all right; I got a B, which I'm pretty pleased with, considering the class average was a 68. I came away from English and its Relatives feeling like I'd done pretty horribly - it was a short-answer test, the worst kind, and I had to totally fabricate a couple of answers (go, IB training!), plus there was an unexpected section - Gothic translation. (Gothic is the first attested Germanic language... before Old English showed up.) We'd been told that we would need to be able to translate Gothic from a literal gloss - meaning the teachers would take a Gothic sentence and write each pronoun, case, person, inflection, etc. in the exact order Gothic used, and we would have to make some sort of coherent English sentence out of it. However, on the test there was a ten-point section in which we were told to read and translate actual Gothic - which is a really weird, cryptic, non-Roman alphabet which (among other things) uses no spaces and uses letters to represent numbers. But the teachers made some adjustments, and I got three points of extra credit, and one of my fabricated answers turned out to be right on the money (again: yay, IB training!), so I ended up doing well. The teacher handed me the paper - face down, folded in half - and I muttered, "Ugh, I don't think I want to see this..." then flipped it over, expecting to see something in the seventies or even the high sixties, and saw a big circled 90! "Oh - yes I do!" I exclaimed, getting a laugh from my seatmates.
Anyway, it was nice to see an A on something again. My Language and Dialect test last week was pretty awful - not only because it was given the day after my 21st birthday (read: not much studying got done!) but because it was short-answer and really, really nitpicky. That's the only teacher whose lectures I've ever considered taping, simply because ANYTHING she says is apparently fair game for a question. (And now that everyone has realized that, she gets asked to repeat everything, like, three times... LOL!) Language and Culture, given on the same day, was slightly better, a B, but still not as good as I'd expected - it was mostly stuff I'd learned in lower-level linguistics classes. So I was getting kind of discouraged. But I must not be doing too terribly, because I got an e-mail yesterday congratulating me on my 'outstanding academic achievement at the University of Florida' and saying that I was being invited to join the Golden Key International Honor Society. That'll look nice on a résumé. :)
Anyway, I'm heading home this weekend - I've got a hair appointment and an eye appointment tomorrow afternoon, and on Saturday I have to work from 5:45 (yes, in the morning!) till 12, and then on Sunday I'm 'kidnapping' my sister in honor of her 18th birthday and we're going to go basically have a play day - Starbucks, Old Navy, rock climbing, American Eagle, ice skating, the movies, Mellow Mushroom, whatever she wants. Should be fun!
Eight days until we leave for Tulane. I'm actually kinda glad I don't swim tomorrow - no class Friday mornings, and since I have those two appointments, I can't make the afternoon practice either. That means I have the whole weekend free, which is good. I'm feeling kind of burned out, and so is L, another swimmer on the team who's going to the meet. We both think that if we just have a few days' rest we'll be fine, and we're of course all going to taper before the meet - a normal 4000-yard workout on Monday, then 3000 on Tuesday, then 2000, and then just 1000 the day before we leave. So we should be decently rested.
The only thing I'm worried about is these darn SECs, because it means that my swimming classes can't meet, either. A, the teacher on Tuesdays and Thursdays, was kind enough to reschedule the midterm for one of the days, to cancel class on another, and to move us to the Florida Pool on a third, but L, who teaches Mondays and Wednesdays, has had the stroke of brilliance that we should do stadiums instead. (For those who don't know, that's running up and down all the sets of stairs in the football stadium - which is even bigger than Alltel, where the Super Bowl was just held.) Normally, I wouldn't mind - I'd even like it - but I know that my legs get really sore the day after I do stadiums, sometimes to the point of not being able to kick during swimming - which would obviously be a problem. I think we're doing more abdominal work, etc. than actual stadiums, but otherwise I'll have to tell her I'm trying to taper and really can't do all that. She's a swimmer, she'll understand.
And because it's me, she should be okay with it. She and R are friends, but neither of them gets along well with A (swimming drama...), and she knows I have a class with A too, so I think she's been trying to 'sound me out' and see 'where my loyalties lie'. But after class yesterday, she definitely knows whose side I'm on - and it ain't A's. :) (A's nice and all, but it's that 'pheromone' thing again - I'm just not really comfortable with her.) But anyway, I had sent L an e-mail with a couple of questions about distance training, and she forwarded them to a guy whom she said had done a lot of swim marathons and could probably give me some good advice. Then, in class yesterday, she asked if he had e-mailed me back yet. I said no, and she said she could press him about it if I wanted her to, "but he's not really my favorite person..." The way she said it tipped me off that this was the 'player' R had been telling me about for so long, so I grinned and said, "Then I think I already know who it is, and you don't have to deal with him again on my account!" When we were done stretching, I asked her, "So, is this the guy that A's currently dating?" She said yes, and I said, "Oh yeah, then I definitely know who he is." (He's a former UF swimmer, and is constantly hanging around the pool.)
Raising her eyebrows, she asked, "What-all did R tell you?"
"Uh - that she dated him for six weeks, that you dated him for a year and a half, and that now A is with him and thinks she owns the whole O'Connell Center."
There was a beat of silence, and then L dissolved in laughter and couldn't speak for about five minutes. "Perfect!" she choked out. "Couldn't have said it better!"
Anyway, so we're on pretty good terms now - I'm sure we can work something out with this stadiums business.
Other news... R just got a call from N, this guy she met at a bonfire a couple of weeks ago and has been telling us about ever since (sometimes in a bit more detail than necessary), and now she's all excited because they're going out to Market Street. So I'm going to go listen to her recount all the details of the phone call - because R does not often get giggly. :)
(Note to self: expect male presence in apartment tomorrow morning...)
stormed at 21:42
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