More (less depressing) thoughts

First off, thank you all for all of your thoughts over the last few days. I've been significantly less...emotionally problematic over the past few days with school and stuff to distract me, but god only knows what state I'll be in at the memorial on Saturday morning. Blah.

In any case, here are some unrelated thinkings that have come up over the past day or so:

1) This one's directed towards Deb but it's not like nobody else can read it XD. So I don't know if you are knowledgeable in this particular department but would you know if I could make this like a full-time job during the summer? Or something? That would be really cool since (a) 90% of my hatred of summer comes from not having anything to do and (b) I really enjoy that job. I just don't know if I have enough work to be able to make it into a full-time thing, or if I could become like a lab assistant or something without having biology classes and stuff. So yeah.

2) New jacket! I should note that generally I don't care about what I'm wearing as long as I don't look stupid (well, more stupid than usual) and I am actually wearing clothes, but since it's been getting warmer my regular sweatshirt was becoming an oven. So this is a lightweight basketball jacket thing that has the perfect balance of breathing-ness and warm-keeping-in-ness so I am most happy. On an aside, I am rather amused by the fact that since this is a jacket built for long-limbed basketball players, a small is still just large enough for me to pull my hands into the sleeves. It's awesome.

Also I should give credit to my mom for saving me from having to decide on buying this myself since she is a very skillful text-message-clothes-buying-helper. (Today's theme is long hyphenated words!) I don't know if I've discussed this before but I *cannot* make decisions by myself regarding pretty much anything, so in a fit of desperation I sent a picture of the jacket to my mom asking if she approved.

I am such a bad college student. XD

Anyway, onward to the next enumerated point!

3) Is going to be a longer dissertation, so I am starting it on its own line.

Have you ever tried to imagine what it would be like to be someone else? I.e., not something like "Waah, if I was that person I would be so much happier whine gripe" but more literally - the other day I was on the shuttle to work and I randomly (this happens when you have a silly brain like mine) wondered what it would be like to be the driver - how it would look to be sitting where he was, the feel of the steering wheel, the chair, the pedals against his feet, air from the window. That stuff. Down to what the hat he was wearing would feel like on my head.

I don't think I've mentioned today that I'm weird.

Well, I'm weird.

Then I moved on to the homeless dude that was panhandling outside the window. Tried to imagine the feel of the dirty cardboard sign, gloves without fingers, all of the clothes, what it would be like to have a beard, the weight of the realization that I wouldn't have a real shelter to return to.

Speaking of which, I never really took the whole "weight of the world is on your shoulders" thing seriously until the other day. Have you ever had all of these obligations to attend to - emails to reply to, people to talk to, assignments to do, food to get, things to figure out - that it literally feels like all of the stuff is sitting on your shoulders weighing you down? Personally it feels like there's a big weight attached to my head and two on my shoulders. It's quite exhausting.

Another semirelated tangent: I used to do this a lot more when I was younger, but it seems related to the current conversation so here goes. I used to be lying bed, waiting to go to sleep, and then suddenly start imagining that the bed was slowly spinning until it was floating upside down and I was being held up against it by some kind of weird reverse gravity thing. (Note: Physics says no. Just saying.) It wasn't one of those things where you jerk awake because you fall down stairs or something as you're falling asleep, but I just kept my eyes closed and tried to visualize opening my eyes and seeing the ground behind me, thinking I should be falling down but instead I'm being held up.

Also I'm really, really weird.

EDIT: Hey I forgot something! So I've been taking a computer programming class, which reminded me how much I really like programming. I think it has something to do with how programmers think. It clicks well in my funky brain. In any case, I had about an hour-long identity crisis because I was worried I was suddenly more interested in programming than physics, which would mean I had to upend my entire schedule which is already precarious enough, probably sell my soul to whatever evil deity wants it...it would all be far too complicated. But then I thought about the respective career paths...I suppose it might be a stereotype that programmers spend their lives in front of a computer, but while I do enjoy programming I don't think I would like to make a career out of it. Physics research, on the other hand, will always be exciting. Identity crisis averted. New hobby found?