Genius! I'm so jealous of Utahians ( <-- looked that term up on Google) right now. Their governor just declared government employees will be switched to a 4-day work week in an effort to cut state energy and gasoline costs! In turn for getting Fridays off, the employees will put in 10-hour work days Monday through Thursday, but get paid the same as if they were working 5 days a week (kind of a "duh" there).

Personally, I love the idea. Two extra hours a day is a small sacrifice for a whole extra day to enjoy with family and friends. It means you can take longer trips, relax a little bit longer, and generally work yourself into a better mood by Monday. I know I definitely feel better after three day holidays rather than regular two day weekends. One extra day can make all the difference in mind and body. Best of all, you save gas money and our ozone layer from not running your car, and the state saves millions of dollars by not running the AC and electricity full blast for a 5th day. Double win!

Now if only California could do something like that!

I'm bored in my apartment all alone, so I stole this meme from SigelPhoenix. Feel free to do it - I'd certainly be interested to see the results! =]
___________________

Hi, my name is: Tiffany

When I'm nervous I: speak in a very subdued voice, if I talk to any people at all, and scavenge for food to eat.

Last night I: went to the shopping mall, ate at Hard Rock Cafe, emptied my room, and shoved everything from the living and dining room to the kitchen and bathrooms so as to make way for the carpet cleaners tonight.

PART 1: YOU
Were you a planned baby? I dunno, I just know there was a baby in the making three years before me, but that baby never made it.

Were you the first? Yes, unfortunately. Fortunately?

PART 2: YOUR PERSONALITY
Do you have low self esteem? In some aspects, yes. I always feel like I've never done a good enough job, and that everybody else is always doing better than me. =[

Are you happy right now? Yes, but I wish I were doing better in school and had better time management.

PART 3: APPEARANCE
Are you comfortable with the way you look? Yes. I like my body shape and the way I fill clothes. The only thing I wish I could keep up is my semi-flat belly that I get from my Abs/Back class.

Describe your hair: Long, straight, black, and uncombed.

PART 4: RANDOM
Ever been kicked out of a bar? Not old enough to be inside one to be kicked out.

PART 5: THE OUTDOORS
Do you prefer indoors or outdoors? Indoors. Nature and I only get along so much.

How's the weather? Hot and hot. Blazing sun, sweaty backs, burning skin.

Do you like walking in the rain? Not really - it makes me feel like acid rain is washing into my pores.

Do you like thunderstorms? When I'm toasty and snug inside my house.

PART 6: FOOD
Are you a vegetarian? Never when I eat out or make ready-to-cook meals, but when I start meals from scratch, they're usually all veggies. I find preparing meat too much work for what little time I have available.

Anything you absolutely could eat forever? Chipotle Chicken Fajita Burritos with extra corn and bell peppers. :O

What is your favorite dessert? I'm not much of a dessert person.

PART 7: RELATIONSHIPS AND LOVE
Do you want to get married? Sure.

Been married before? Not that I'm aware of.

Are you truly in love? Tee-hee.

PART 8: RANDOM QUESTIONS
Where is your cell phone? Right next to me.

Cheesecake? blech. Definitely not one of my favorite desserts. I'll usually eat the crust and two small bites of the cream cheese part, and I'm done.

Your dream last night? None. I didn't feel like I slept - which was bad for my 8 hour ER shift starting at 8AM this morning. 8D

Your favorite drink? Pepsi or Sobe Green Tea.

Where did you grow up? Bay Area

Tattoos? On other people. I like my body the way it is. I think fit, unadultered female bodies are the sexiest body types. I like clear skin, what can I say. :O

Ketchup? As a dip after I get an original taste of the food.

Your computer? The wires running through the hinges of my laptop are getting messed up, thus giving me a fuzzy screen.

Your life? Free.

What are you thinking about right now? How I'm going to read the Narnia Chronicles all night and spend all day at Borders tomorrow! 8D

Favorite color(s)? Emerald silk.

When is the last time you laughed? Just an hour and a half ago, when my roommate called me up to see how I was doing by my all lonesome self in my apartment. :D

Last received call? Serene, above.

Part 9: LIFE
What friend knows the most about you? Probably Mu, but I hide little things here and there from everybody.

Who do you blame for your mood today? My 8-hr shift at the ER.

What should we do with stupid people? Fire them.

What is making you sad right now? That my GPA is terrible, and that I'll need to ace every class within the next two years to get a good GPA. :[

What was the first thing you did this morning? Hit the snooze alarm several times.

Last person you went out to dinner with? Mu at the Hard Rock Cafe. =0

Do you drink lots of water? No, water's flavorless. =[ I try to, but I take really small sips in general.

How do you vent your anger/sad? I complain to a person or two, and then hate the world for being so stupid. Or for me being stupid.

What theme does your room have? Crap-strewn-everywhere theme

Are you a mama's child or a daddy's child? I guess my mom.

The last website you visited? Youtube, to watch this Dai dance. Dai is probably my favorite dance style out of all the Chinese ethnic groups. Dai people have a great respect and love for peacocks. Look at 3:50 - you see her looking exactly like one!

Who was the last person you took a picture with? The Housers.

Last person you went to the movies with? Um... I don't remember. I'm too cheap to go to the movies often.

What did you do/will you do for your birthday this year? I'm going to take my friends on a Chinatown Alleyway Tour.

Is anything alive in your room? Yes, a fat cow.

Today, would you rather go back a week or go forward a week? Go back a week, so I could do better on my o-chem test.

What are you looking forward to right now? All the fun stuff I can do in the summer - specifically food related. =D Or actually, more in the near future, going to Borders all day tomorrow.

Part 10: IF YOU HAD TO
If you HAD to dye your hair a color what color would it be? Dark red highlights, but I like my hair the way it is. I'm actually afraid to dye my hair in fear of damaging it. People always ask if I have highlights anyway.

If you HAD to get a piercing (not ears) what would you get? A small nose-ring.

Spring Break feels sooooo good. I'm glad to be home again. I've never been away from home for more than three weeks, so this month at school was long and agonizing. I missed home a lot, and I realized my parents missed me a lot too. Waking up naturally is more theraputic than any massage, and I've been pigging out on home-cooked food since I got back. =9

I had my last final Friday morning (it was o-chem), and afterwards, I just felt all the tension from the past two-three weeks fall from my shoulders. I went home and took a nap in my own bed, which I haven't been able to do for the past two weeks because I was camped out in a study room near campus for a majority of the time. I only went to the bf's place to sleep for a couple hours a night before getting up and going back to the study room pretty much the whole time. =__=

Finals were brutal, and it was even more unfair that finals were scheduled to begin right after the last day of instruction without any day off. The reason they did that was so we could have a full week for Spring Break instead of an almost-a-week of vacation with one day of class put in somewhere in the middle. Last year we had three days off, first day of instruction, and then a three-day weekend because of the Cesar Chavez holiday, which was obviously stupid. I still don't know what would have been better - an extra day to study and do better on my exams or a whole week for break...

Anyway, on Saturday, I woke up early to go to Farmer's Market for the first time in a really long time. I bought some green onions to make Maangchi's jeon for dinner, but I couldn't find any chives anywhere because they weren't in season yet. Finally, I gave in and just bought a little box from Savemart for $1.50, which is a ripoff because I have relatives who complain the chives are growing like weeds in their backyards. =[ My pancake came out pretty tasty and crunchy on the outside, but I didn't spread it thin enough, so it was starchy and uncooked on the inside. Luckily Mu liked it a lot and ate it all. I think kimchi will be my next effort.

Other than that, I went to work in the afternoon for a bit to catch up on slide filing, and then went to Starbucks to get the Java Chip frap I had been craving for two weeks. I walked home from Safeway because it was sunny and perfect... only to find out all my roommates had already left for home. D: All of them had finals on Saturday except me, so I was expecting to see one of my roommates around in the evening, but it turned even she left before 5PM. It was a surprise that I was left in the apartment all by myself, but I cooked, cleaned out the fridge, and tidied up my room - all the stuff I'd been neglecting for the past month or so.

I didn't realize how glad I was to have this quarter over and done with. All the school work plus extracurriculars and work and then compounded with roommate problems built up a lot of stress on me. One of my housemates is sick, and although my other housemate took care of her most of the time, I was still aggravated and worried, and I think that went for the rest of us too. She was sick and at the same time studying really hard for finals so that she wouldn't be kicked out of school, so we were hesitant to remind her to clean up after herself or at least keep up with her share of responsibilities because we didn't want to send her into some hyperventilating fit. It came to the point where I was tired of cleaning up after said roommate and bugging her to pay me back for rent and other things that I just stayed out of my apartment during finals week to try and concentrate on studying instead. Hopefully she's getting everything in her life straightened out this break, otherwise I don't know what to do. I don't want to play bad cop, but if it comes to that...

But onto positive things! I have a lot of stuff lined up next quarter. I've made a schedule on Excel with everything on it, and it kind of stresses me out just looking at it, but I think I can handle it. I'm doing a lot more health-related internships, which should be exciting. This is what I'm going to be doing next quarter:

- Classes. I'm taking O-Chem 118C - the final part of the horrible series, Physics 7B, French 100, Abs and Back Conditioning class, and BIS 102: Structure and Function of Biomolecules. D: Not looking forward to more memorizing, but I look towards studying abroad in France sometime in the future as my motivation.

- Emergency Medicine Research Associate Program (EMRAP). I'll be working in our medical school's ER with the doctors helping them with their research, mainly interviewing potential candidates and whatever else I take initiative on. Serene, one of my housemates, also got into the program, so we're excited to be finally doing something together!

- Imani Clinic. One of the six student-run, free clinics in Sacramento, mainly serving the African-American population. I was so happy when I found out I got selected, much more than I was for EMRAP. Being one of the 20 students selected out of a couple hundred applications is ego boosting in many ways. =P I've been wanting to do a clinic for so long - this is one of the few (only six) opportunities where I actually can get the hands-on experience taking vitals, doing lab work, translating, and community outreach, which is so much better than volunteering in a hospital where I'm just the nurses' bitch cleaning beds and restocking shelves. =P

- Film Fest. We finally have our movie line-up, and I'm really please with the movies this year. We're showing Colma: The Musical, Dark Matter, American Pastime, New Year Baby, Tie a Yellow Ribbon, and Journey From the Fall. All spectacular, free, Asian American-related movies to be shown in May. Publicity will finally be picking up, so I need to prepare this week while I still have the time.

- Chinese Dance. Finally nearing our performance in May. Still doing a lot of fundraising, of which Picnic Day will be the biggest and most stressful. We're making Dan Dan noodles and Ai Yu and grass jelly drinks. Hopefully we'll make the rest of the money we need to rent out the theatre.

Oh, and I still have Asian American Association and work, but I'm trying to minimize those as much as possible. =P

Why is it when I was in school I could barely stay up till 1AM, and now I'm still up at 2AM? =/

Omgggg, the weather outside is gorgeous today - all sun, no wind, fresh air.... and here I am in the basement of the library studying for o-chem. Oh, cruel cruel world. I gave up going to retreat so I could study for my midterms. ;___; *sigh* maybe the weather will still be pretty when I emerge for my dinner break.

I bought my Tegan & Sara ticket today! I'll be seeing them in concert on April 21st!

Now if only Mika came to sing at Davis. I would die from joy. =3