okay, so… reading week/spring break wasn't as calm and quiet as i thought it was going to be. i ended up working over 42 hours. which is great… especially since i worked holiday monday. >_> i get paid for that tonight at midnight. imma gunna bee reech. >:B

and i got my vacation pay… i knew it was coming. :D over $500. yay for that. :D

still haven't got my free alberta money. everyone got theirs a month ago. every time i try calling them to get my money, the line is busy. their 800 number is busy. o_O what's with that? i just want my $400. -_-

and it's tax time. i've got all my forms together except two, which is great. i want to get it done ASAP.

summary of my financial situation: $_*

i was extremely frugal (by my standards) during the month of february, so i kind of went nuts: i spent over $400 since the weekend. :B i pretty much have three things vying for my money: ipod, updating my computer's hardware, and a trip to anywhere. those are my short-term goals which i want done before or during the summer. these goals have been prioritized based on one criterion: cost. as much as i want the ipod nownownow, i decided computer upgrades were more important. for my own frickin' sanity's sake. -_- and because i hate lagging out every time i go AFK for longer than an hour in maplestory. and i hate how the sims 2 takes half an hour to load up, and fifteen minutes to switch lots (playing nightlife is a beach! -_-). plus i was running on 300MB of free hard drive space. i've been hovering around that for the past month or two.

i bought an external hard drive on saturday. it holds a quarter of a terabyte. *_*!!!!! that should last me a couple of years. :D and i didn't even pay $200 for it. it was a good deal, yes indeedy. the 160GB one cost more. future shop had a lovely sale, and i got the last one. >:D so that was that. i have way too much crap on my computer that i don't have the heart to delete. mostly videos that were a pain to get. and mp3s. some of these things i waited weeks to complete, and i don't trust my "new" dvd burner one bit (that i bought half a year ago). stupid piece of crap. don't shop at best buy.

i have never bought memory before, but that was the main thing i needed. my computer came with 256MB of RAM, which, even at the time, was a bit low, but i got the computer for a good price, and i know memory is easy to upgrade. well, i bought 1GB of RAM yesterday and installed it. i notice a difference, but it's minimal. photoshop takes 10 seconds to open now instead of 30. i haven't tried opening any programs that are massively memory intensive. i haven't done a defrag in ages, though, so i'll do that first. i noticed that i didn't have service pack 2, so i got my computer to install that before i left for school in the morning. it should be done by now. (i'm writing this from school before i go directly to work). i'll do a defrag overnight tonight. then i'll try opening video games and video editing programs. all at the same time. >:D

so, yeah, all in all, i spent about $300 on computer upgrades. the ipod costs $500+. a trip to anywhere could cost anything (if i go to vancouver, i want at least $800 to my name before i even think of going). i'm so excited that the next thing i will buy is an ipod. *_* hmm, i think i shall pay down my credit card a bit too. depends on my tax return. i want to have mr. visa down to 0 before i go to vancouver (or anywhere), but i can do that a little bit at a time. it's not that much. $400?

okay, enough about money. lbeth hasn't been going into painful details like she normally does, so i'm doing it for her.

i went to zellers yesterday. i bought new shoes. they make black marks. :( but they're nice. and they were cheap. and will make fine work shoes. they make me an inch taller than i already am. >:D and i bought some pajama bottoms. yay for pajama bottoms.

i went to the pet store yesterday. big mistake, that. they had two young ferrets. soooo cute. ;_; except one of them had diarrhea in its litter box. X_x if it wasn't for that, i would have stolen them away for sure. :( oh, and i saw some weird catfish that swim upside down! O_O i had no idea there were such creatures. soooo weird. at first i thought they had antennae sticking up, but nope… they were swimming upside down. their dorsal fin was facing down. @_@

i'm nearly died yesterday because i had two hours of sleep to my name. i can't even remember why. i'm pretty sure it wasn't maplestory. i downloaded a bunch of new music (celebrating my new hard drive), so i think i was listening to that. x_x what a crappy reason. i fell asleep during my zoology lab and almost fell asleep in the middle of working (and i didn't stop to rest… i'm talking about falling asleep standing up while in the middle of a task). you'd think i'd learn from my mistakes, but i didn't. i just had to put that new memory in last night. i got about four hours of sleep. and, again, i have to work late night. i hate myself and want to die. *rainbows* :)

today is day six of seven. seven days straight of working the evening shift. well, not in a row. i had sunday off, and i get thursday and friday off this week. but i haven't had a day shift since the beginning of last week. it's really taking its toll on me. the bus is my second bed. i need to start taking a pillow with me. i fell soundly asleep on the bus this morning (due to the slow traffic… yay for heavy snowfall! X_x) and nearly missed my stop to get off.

tomorrow will be interesting. i have an assignment due for my 4:30PM bio lab that i haven't started yet. i really want to sleep in, so i guess i should go to sleep as soon as i get home from work, right? i hope i have the willpower to do that.

i got four out of five of my exam marks back. i'm pretty disappointed across the board. i got 78% on my music midterm!!! i wanted 90+! i blame work. the stress was so high the week before last. i've never been that stressed in my life. i look at the questions i got wrong, and i feel like screaming. most of them are ones i knew, but i guess i was momentarily stupid. i know what ritornello form is! -_- play me any song from the baroque period and i can tell you if it's ritornello or not. geez. -_- at least i got all the songs right that i had to memorize. even though i screwed up one latin name of a gregorian chant, i was close enough and got the mark anyway. i think the final will be easier… i think he said he's going to make the listening part multiple choice, or we'll just have to know the composer only (not the song title). and i have an assignment still to do in that class, so i can bounce back.

what else… my zoology lab test, which i was pretty confident in, i ended up getting 69%!! which was the class average. i hate getting average. but ugh!! i studied for that the most!! -_- i have another lab exam at the end of the term, and it'll be easier, hopefully. memorizing fish classification is torture. although, bird classification looks pretty crazy too. i'm sure mammalian isn't a breeze (i'll find out next tuesday). as for the zoology course midterm… i got 75%. i'm not sure what to think about it, really. i was hoping for better, but there were quite a few questions on the multiple choice section that i drew a blank on, and i knew my grade wouldn't be the greatest.

i haven't had my bio lab yet, so i don't know what i got for that one. bio course midterm, though, was the worst mark, and i knew it would be. it was the hardest exam, and it was the one i studied the least for. i was actually relieved i got 56%, because i was expecting 40%, to be perfectly honest. yeah, it's a fail (actually, it's a D, but D = F in my book), but it's not the worst. it's something i can recover from with a lot of work. i'm doing well in the lab (we'll see how well tomorrow), and the midterm isn't worth as much as the final. if i get 100% in everything else in the course (including the final), i'll get a final grade of 90%. >D which won't happen, but i have to stay positive here. two people did get 100% on the midterm, though. @_@ freaks.

that reminds me. i'm pretty sure my lab partner dropped the course. and i'm not crying over it. >_> if you don't know the difference between a prokaryote and a eukaryote, you should not be taking cell biology. -_-

you know, i could just keep blogging and blogging, but i guess i should end this before it gets so long that people will go, "ahhh! too long! not reading it!!" even though it's already that long. i'm sure sisko will think that if he ever sees this post.