Sittin' Pretty

Originally posted 6/7/07.

This week we started....oh no...don't say it.....OMG....class! Run and hide all small forest creatures, this is scary!

Well, it hasn't been that scary really. Pretty boring so far actually. But anyway, we spend our mornings in lectures listening to our squat professor talk about how much he loves ethology. Most of the theories he talks about are news to me, and I am not sure how I will be able to study this material for the exam because we can't access his computer files that we all apparently need. Sam and I aren't technically registered as students here, so that has caused some interesting problems for us when it comes to actually taking a class. We have no emails from the school, phone numbers our T.A. can use, access names for the class files, or a way to get onto the lab computers. I really feel sorry for the girl whose group we are in.

After lectures, we ride across town, up a hill, through the snow to get to the computer labs in ten minutes. Once we beg someone to let us use their login name and sit down, we are stuck there for over 6 hours. I have never just sat and worked at one computer on one project for that long at once. It is awful. After awhile, we can't focus, and we just stare st the screen.

Our animal is the Barbary macaque, and we will be observing this animal in the zoo a town over starting tomorrow. After slaving away with research and papers, we have decided to observe the social interactions of the younger animals to test maturation rates in captive environments. However, we didn't know until today that there is a newborn in the group, and that could change everything. Fortunately, we have two more days of staring at computer screens next week to clear things up. Beware, by then I may be a flesh eating zombie.

On a different note, I have had my second rendezvous with our washing machine. It is a trickster, that's for sure. So I put my clothes in the machine, praying that what I have convinced myself is the correct setting will not rip every seam from my shirts because all instructions are in Dutch, and I close the door. The thing sounds like a 747 lifting off, and I grit my teeth as I leave the room knowing full well that I will spend the next few weeks naked if I fail. Then I sit in my room with the door open so I can hear when it stops spinning, and I anxiously check the clock every few minutes. 30, 45, 60 minutes go by before I have had enough and strut down the hall to go check on my precious garments. The machine sounds like it is finished.....no churning or bubbling for some time now. I get to the door, and I am convinced it just waits for me to turn on the light before, "haha, I will resume spinning for at least another twenty minutes you silly girl."

So, I grit my teeth a little harder this time and huff back to my room to listen once again. Once the 747 has come in for a landing, I rush into the room and turn on the light, but the dial is only at rinse and the machine has stopped. I inspect for a bit, look around the back, turn the thing on and off, and then I figure that it must be finished because it hasn't moved in five minutes.

Here is the trick though; the lever on the door is broken and you have to pry the thing open using the end of a metal spoon to flip the latch inside. I have done it before, so I know where to push and where to tug, but for some reason, this time the door won't budge. This darn machine has decided it just isn't finished with salivating all over my shirts. So, I turn the dial to spin and as soon as I turn it on, it magically revs up its engine and starts spinning again.

Again, I wait in my room to hear the tower commander okay the landing, and when I hear it I dash toward the machine. My clothes are still inside. They don't seem fried or shrunken. So I try once more to open the faulty door with the stupid spoon, and like it was freshly oiled, it just swings right open! "You can have these back now," it says to me. So after and hour and a half of washing, I take my damp clothes out to be dried on the line and I smile like I have beaten the thing at a game or something only to realize that I had one more load. Ugh.....