Hooray school?

So I've a few things to cover, I suppose?

Christmas! It came and it went. The tree was nice (all decorated by me). There was much baking done - I baked Trav's family a buttfuckmetric ton of cookies (raspberry pinwheels (the first quarter of the batch totally screwed up, but the rest were tasty), checkerboard shortbreads (which came out pretty good, if a little dry; I'll use my own shortbread recipe next time and just put cocoa in half of them), minty candycanes (takes fucking forever to shape the dough into candycanes, let me tell you, and my hands were pink for a few days after), and black forest cookies (which are totally awesome and I need to make them again but I need more chocolate pudding first)), and they were delicious.

TOO MANY PARENTHESI.

Anyways, where was I?

Christmas.

Presents-wise, I got some nice things. Mom got me a shiny new leather jacket which looks good on me, as well as a bunny-fur scarf to go with, which I am ambivalent towards - on one hand, it's very soft and fuzzy, but on the other, IT WAS A BUNNY. But I suppose if I can wear dead cow hide I can wear dead bunny fur.
BUT STILL BUNNY.
Got FFV from her, too, and a book, and some chocolates and other random things. Sean and I got her an iPod Shuffle - ye gods, they're tiny these days. Showed her how to use it yesterday; we'll see if the teaching sticks.
Sean got me Yoshi's Island DS, which is very fun so far, and quite puzzly. The only complaint I have so far is the music, which is nowhere near as good as the original, but I guess it's hard to measure up to that. Got him two more months of WoW time - he asked for it? Iunno.
Dad just finally paid me back the money he owed me, and gave me another couple hundred on top of it. Hooray. He's still being an arserag, by the by.
Stace's package was actually on time for once, hehe, and my presents to her would've been on time except mother and brother were being very laggy in getting their shit together that they wanted in the package. She got me a nice top (which I don't know how stays up, the neckline and backline are huge), a pair of jeans, a nice little desk calender with dragon illustrations, a bracelet, and some random things that I can't remember right now. I got them a bunch of matching thingers for their bathroom, and a plush giraffe for Aidan Aiden fuck how do you spell it my nephew.
Trav's parents got me a nice set of baking pans, since all of mine (or Mom's, rather) have gone to shit and are all black-encrusted and yucky. And the new Joy of Cooking! All the crazy kitchen shit you ever need~
His sister got me a nice bath set, honey-and-almond smelling.
And he got me a pretty jewellery chest (so my dresser is all organized now) and a lovely little pair of diamond stud earrings. Twinkletwinkle~

I got him a good (and sharp, we found out) knife, spring-loaded. He's been testing it out on everything. Paper, plastic, bags of all shapes and sizes, flesh...
Yeah, flesh. Last week he closed it on his right index finger by accident while trying to put it away. XD It 'only' needed two stitches to close the wound.

And that was Christmas! New Years was next, of course. The two of us went to Aimee's party, whereupon we saw people we haven't seen for a long long time (the price of being all across the river and not on campus), ate, drank, and were merry. There was lots of sugar. And caffeinated mints. And strong fruit-flavoured rum drinks.
I was very, very good at DDR until an insane stitch/cough hit me and crippled me for the rest of the night. XD Overdid it a little.
I was also very right to bring along my DS, for there was a ton and a half of multiplayer Mario Kart action. We actually had eight or nine carts there, haha~

My fish are still alive! The plant is not looking so well. I think it need more sun, but I can't exactly move the tank, so it will just have to die and I'll put a plastic one in again or something.

An amusing conversation occured in Midgard-chat because of my mousse lamentations. I'd left a bowl of strawberry mousse in the fridge, and it managed to pick up every goddamn flavour in the place. Upon tasting it, I peevishly exclaimed to the chat that my mousse tasted like ass. This led to many a tangent (including artificial strawberry flavouring recollections), and one thing led to another, and I had to exercise my artistic talent.



I'm not too far away from making my NP-goal and finally getting my lovely paintbrushes. Still can't decide between making the Draik Faerie or Maraquan, though I think the Krawk is definitely getting Royal-ized.
Maybe after I hit that I'll move onto petpets.

School started today! Back after eight months of not. And no working! No working. I don't care what I have to do to pay off the semester (probably borrow from Mom, ehe), but I'm not working this time around. There are a few new faces that I don't recognize in the common room, but I'm sure I'll figure out who they are soon enough.
Oh, and they shall know me!

My schedule right now is kind of variable. I'm taking:
HUM 102 Classical Mythology - Distance ed, so I set my own schedule, yay~ It's just a lot of reading and some writing (500-word essays? Easy-peasy), so I should have no problem. I'll actually have to read The Iliad, though, hehe.
LING 221 - Intro to Phonology. Haven't had it yet. Tomorrow!
LING 222 - Intro to Syntax. Also haven't had it yet, also tomorrow. I figure after these two courses I should know whether or not switching to Ling is a definite thing.

Then my schedule gets weird. I'm signed up for CHIN 100 (intro to Mandarin Chinese). Had that this morning. It seems fun so far! We got a little lesson on Mandarin phonetics and learned seven words and their characters~ Tones are going to trip me up, I can tell, but we'll see about that.
I'm also trying to get into JAPN 101. Since I took Japanese in high school, I have more of a proficiency level than an absolute beginner, but it's also been four years since my last course, so I've gone and forgotten most of my vocab and what-not. I got permission for the instructor to bypass 100, but for some reason, GoSFU does not think I have that permission and won't let me register. I suspect it's on the sensei's end, but he told me to come to the first class and we'd see what we can do. I'll have to wait for Wednesday for that.

So! It comes down to either: taking the four courses I've got now, taking five courses if I can get into 101 as well, or dropping Chinese and just taking Japanese. So I don't really know my right schedule yet!

With five courses, I would have...

M: 11:30 - 1:20
T: 1:30 - 7:20
W: 11:30 - 7:20 (First class Burnaby, second class Surrey)
Th: 2:30 - 3:20
F: 5:30 - 7:20 (Surrey only)

If I only take Mandarin, I get Fridays off and can leave after 1:20 on Wednesday.
If I only take Japanese, I get Mondays off and only have to be at Surrey for 5:30 - 7:20.

So I dunno what I'll do! I'm almost leaning more towards Mandarin at the moment... We'll see what happens Wednesday.

And that is all!