Thursday, July..uh, um - I don't even know what day it is anymore

The days are slowly beginning to merge together. I don't know what is day or what is night. It is so weird. I pulled an all-nighter last night to finish the Cog requirement. 30 hours awake so far (-2 hours of sleeping/inactivity). I stayed in the Baker cluster last night until I absolutely HAD to go back, but I made little progress. I was only on 7-5 by the time I left. It wasn't until late when the gold bars began to move and the lesson numbers when up. Talk about tedious and ridiculous, check out this screen that I got when I pressed "Hint" on the first of a new kind of problem (click to see a larger image):
I don't know how many times I've wanted to slam my head on the desk, or throw something at the screen, in addition to the many expletives muttered over the past 24 hours. I went to one of the clusters every free set of 20 minutes (it takes so long to get over there that it's not worth going if I can't stay at least 20 minutes) that I had. I went to "sleep" at 5am when I finally reached Unit 12, and figured that I could get to Unit 12 by 10:30am if I got there early and worked diligently through the class. I barely made it. 12-2 is a bitch, especially with 12-3 as the last one before the deadline. It was easy, but nitpicky in unnecessary areas. I finished at 10:05 with 10 minutes to spare!

Next Deadline: Unit 18 - Tuesday, 9:00am

I just came back from Si Senor for lunch. Cheese fries! Just like the ones from West Deli or New York Deli West, or whatever it was called...that little place in the fashion mall food court that had the good bagels and delicious cheesy fries or whatever you wanted. I hadn't had fries like that, with a perfect mixture of melted cheese and ketchup-dippage, in a while.

So it turns out that I'm not the only complete dork already thinking about next summer. I thought that I was a trader or something for considering applying to MITES as a priority over SAMS or AP/EA next year, but some other people just discovered it a few minutes ago. They're applying next year too. Grrr competition!

In electronics we get to finally solder together our dice games after a pathetic attempt to put them together on the protoboards. It's going to be fun going back to the airport with that in my luggage, whether carry-on or checked. I can imagine the whole situation playing out.

[At the airport on 8-11-07]
TSA screener: Who's bag is this!
Me (again, nervous): um...mine
TSA: well something looks funny in here, we need to run it back
[2 rescans later]
TSA: excuse me, ma'am, we'll need to search your bag
[pulls out a bag of wires, books, electronic dice game, etc.]
Me: um, that's nothing to be suspicious about, it's a dice game..see, just press the red button!
TSA: DO NOT touch that!
Me: No, it's okay, I swear it's not a..uhm..uh, it's safe, okay
TSA: we're going to have to confiscate and further investigate this
Me: but...but...
[walks away sadly because there is nothing left I can say]

I doubt that will happen, but it'll probably cause some suspicious looks. It doesn't even have a red button! My button is blue, so there. The flashy red lights do not signal the preparation of explosives.

Off to Junior Assembly, toodles!