:D

8D


Well, that's a load off my mind.
Didn't do perfectly, but at least I didn't have to play the hardest parts.


Time to get to work!

.

Shit, I can't handle this. I can't live with this sense of impending doom.

Therefore, I'll just live for Monday. Thank the powers that be for Labor day. And Ikea, to which we are taking Hawky dear as a birthday present :D

You had better be able to go :D



Quail apologizes for being remiss in her posting duties. Regular updates will resume (with alarming regularity) after the future has lightened up a bit. e.g. when auditions aren't 2 days away.

Thanks, guys!

So, as many of you know, Hawk is now officially one year older.
So she'd like to thank the people who wished her happy birthday.

Thanks to the advent of speed communication such as Facebook and AIM, she has a LONG list of people who wished happs. An extremely long (around 100?) list. People who she hadn't talked to in YEARS popped up on her wall.

So really, this is an appreciation post. I <3 you all for taking the 15 seconds to scribble a few sentences, to which I feel obliged to post on (some of) your wall(s) and blog about, siphoning about 30 minutes of my own time. Thankyew fairy mooch.

Anyway, my thoughts on getting older.
What the heck can you do at 17 that you can't do at 16? :\

Impending doom!!

School starts tomorrow.

So what shall I do with my today?

Experiment the effects of Tiger Balm upon potential zits.

That is all.

Mood Swings

I have quite a bit to write about a fascinating Joel Stein article on how success in the Olympics ought to be judged.




However, I can't wrap my mind around the disappointing baton drops by BOTH the U.S. 4x100 relay teams.

The shame.

I also hate the college application process. Not that I have foraged siginificantly far enough to legitimately claim that I have in fact "started."


On a completely different note, I have now defined "wargle" to mean the action of a wombat eating watermelon. Why "wargle"? Well, lately I've determined that eating watermelon gives me a stomachache. Maybe I eat too fast. And "wargle" seems to be onomatopoeia for pain. And if the great hawk is in pain, so ought to be the insignificant (delicious) wombat. (Do hawks eat wombats?)


Expect a more content-filled post later. Maybe it will be a little more unidirectional than this one.

..but maybe not.

IT'S ALIVE

YES THE THING I WAS WORKING ON AT WORK WORKED!

AND WORK = FxD!


Okay, enough chatter about work now.

Hmm, Quail is having serious anxiety attacks about upcoming seating auditions. It's not so much that I want a good seat; it's more like I'm concerned that I can't learn the notes in time. The conductor is as intimidating as they come.

Quail is also concerned about lack of self-control and will. RAWR. MUST FIGHT ON!

Though today was quite fun. Sometimes it's great just to leave work early and go to the swings at the park before going home. Listening to music and swinging as high as the swings will go.....
That's what I call a good time.


OH NOES SUMMER IS ALMOST GONE DDDDDD:

Revelation

There is something that we here at the Eyrie must reveal to you readers. Even our innermost circle--the faithful ducklings who lean on F5 in hopes of a new post--do not know this nugget of information, an invaluable scoop about our foundings. But we at the Eyrie feel that it is your due as our readers to know this.

You see, Hawk was not originally called Awkward Hawk.

Her name was to be none other than Thrusting Thrush.

Her signature was not to be clumsy moments and awkward silences, but rather smooth dance moves.

Please observe.


Hawk apologizes for the horrible quality, as it was captured with her lovely little webcam.

Pearls of Wisdom

So this morning, my mom says, "Tuck in your chins."

Puns aside, I'm very insulted.

But more amused than anything else.

Can-can, can you do the cam-cam?

So I received my replacement camera.

Wouldn't you know, they sent me a completely new one. Thank you, HP!
I was happy until I realized the little caveat that Quail has already pointed out.

Thank goodness Hawk is now experienced in the ways of opening obnoxious packaging.

The new camera is actually a better model than mine was. But shh.
However, the heating problem is still there and the mic has gone dead. Plus the lens turns pink every so often.

So is it just me, or did I get even more problems? But hey..better model. With a free headset! Yes, feeling like a member of N'Sync easily eclipses the new troubles that cam has brought me.

Guh I give up. I guess I'll just send mine back to that helpful service rep, pretend there are no troubles with the new one (and feel incredibly foolish when he examines it and finds out there's no problem for him), and resign this issue forevermore.

ahHAha!

AND WE'RE BACK!

While Hawk was Indiana Jonesing it away with her formidable plastic packaging of doom (which she will have to deal with all over again when she gets her new one....), Quail was quite literally hacking away at undergrowth. With a bassoon.


Well, not quite. It was mostly just dusty, with a high occurrence of trees. Loooooots of trees.

And the undergrowth being hacked away at was more like an overgrowth of notes on the page. It got pretty bad. So far, the score is 37 - 3 with the notes in the lead. BUT NEVER FEAR!
Dramatic comebacks have never failed Quail in the past! WE WILL SEE IN THE FINAL SHOWDOWN ON THE 31st!

In other news, Quail is glad to be back among fellow nerd-types. The (lone) reader might think that symphony camp would be FULL OF NERDY GOODNESS, but it was surprisingly....not. There was drama. There were instruments. There was drama over instruments. And there was copious making of "Top 5" lists. As well as general gossiping. Blah.
THERE WAS ONLY ONE OTHER PERSON WHO I COULD CRACK SCIENCE JOKES WITH. We were ALL ALONE D:
Surrounded by those philistines who would roll their eyes and say "You guys are such nerds." in a deprecating air as if they were somehow higher in the phylogenetic tree...
I don't know how I survived.

We did manage to have quite the nice nerd-out over setting and loading electrophoresis gels. That was quite exciting.

Some interesting quotes are possibly going up here if I get them from the person who wrote them down.

For now, ta ta!

TooOhOhAte

So living in 2008 and watching the 08/08/08 ceremony ought to have tugged a few heartstrings out there.

We are watching history being made. World record after world record smashed to smithereens. Phelps becoming the most decorated Olympian in history; I mean, who didn't get excited watching the 400 meter relay? He's got half of America's golds to his name. Additionally, May-Walsh battle ahead in beach volleyball, not having lost a game.

But along with history and achievements come the media, and the media drags along controversy. Phelps has been painted as a glutton for consuming 12,000 calories a day. The man deserves it. Give him a break.

But there may be a real issue behind the ages of the Chinese women's gymnastics team, and the proof is in every photograph of the team. And the Chinese are already under definite criticism for denying a bucktoothed girl the chance to appear in the opening ceremony, lending her voice instead to a cuter kid.

Tensions run high as countries butt heads in what should be a friendly sport. But let us not forget that in the meantime, Georgia and Russia are locked in violent combat. However healthy competition may be, it does promote hard feelings, and politics is an integral part of the current status quo. The Swedish wrestler who threw down his medal in disgust blamed politics for the judgment that lost him the gold.

But what does that mean for us, the teenagers who don't spend our entire lives training or following politics? Specifically, I've dedicated about 2 hours a day for primetime NBC screenings. What have I observed?

Well, those mens' gymnasts are pretty cute...

Burnin' Hot

After the whole hacking through plastic escapade, I was enjoying having a little camera perched on my monitor. Until I noticed that it practically burns whenever I adjust it. Additionally, there was a one-time dealy with a faulty microphone. So I fired off an email to HP. May I add that it was an extremely unprofessional complaint in which I was too lazy to capitalize? I was expecting a response with a simple "apply ice pack and quit whining" (only in technological gobbledegook).

Not so.

I got not one, but two phone calls from HP. The people I talked to were not only friendly, completely fluent in English (apparently outsourcing has not touched our friend at Hewlett...YET), and seemingly high-ranking (I winced once I remembered how much effort I had put into that complaint), but they seemed to be extremely concerned about my little cammy.

Then I began worrying about my impulsive complaint. Is the heating that big of a deal? Was the mic a one-time glitch? Am I about to make a fool out of myself? (They know my NAME. I was thinking about typing in my usual Internet alias. Right now, I'm trying to decide how seriously they would haven taken a person called 'Pipster.')

So the end result is that they're going to send me a replacement and I have to FedEx my little buddy back.

Maybe there really is an issue, but maybe there isn't.

Moral of the story is, don't complain to an effective customer service unless you REALLY want your problem taken care of.

I also notice that Quail and I seem to take turns being the active one. Perhaps if our faithful reader pool (that's you) expanded, there would be more posts. Hint hint.

Plastic Shards in my Carpet

So everyone knows that obnoxious hard plastic packaging that comes with pretty much every type of electronics sold these days. Yes, my eager beaver readers, we finally have a blog-worthy story.

Hawk finally caught up with the rest of the civilized world and bought a webcam.
However, the prized piece of technology came in..you guessed it...plastic that would probably withstand a couple dozen depth charges and aerial assaults.
Why on earth would a packager want to market a produce encased in packaging almost impossible to open? Are they TRYING to piss off their customers?

But Hawk believed that the webcam was worth the pain of working her scissors between two layers of the polymer. Besides, there was the added benefit of feeling very Indiana Jonesy*. You know, hacking through the underbrush with a machete. Only modernized.

So at first hack with the trusty office scissors, a little gap opened. However, a stronger push caused the weaker of the two contenders to yield. The following pictures are not for the weak-hearted. Horrible layouts and graphic images of abused office supplies follow.

Undaunted, our valiant Hawk attacked with a letter opener.

The ruler is of course there only for comparison. Hawk is not foolish enough to fight plastic with plastic.

Bad puns aside, it was time for serious business. Out came the Fiskar children's craft scissors.



They worked shockingly well, and Hawk
was incredibly amused by the little
camera-shaped indent inside the plastic.

Yet the journey was far from over, as there appeared a SECOND LAYER of plastic between Hawk and her prize. By now incredibly annoyed and cursing the inventor of packaging plastics, Hawk attacked with a vengeance.

The result? Well, as you can see here, it wasn't pretty.

Hawk now turns her attention to recycling and finding herself a spiffy fedora before her next adventure.





* Hawk has never watched any Indiana Jones movies, but she swears to sometime before Wal-Mart begins packaging their cheap underwear in hard, molded plastic containers.

Note: The deluge of images in this post are not indicative of future posts by the Hawk. She was merely carried away by the awesomeness of her little webcam. Or, to put it more bluntly, she was camera-whoring and loving it.

Beep!

Man, getting lazy about blogging again. Not good D:


Work went on as usual.....

and then rehearsal.....

and then blah.

Yet I still managed to stay up til 5 AM? D:

So, next week, Quail will be at camp and non-responsive. Mmyes.

Maybe I'll take pictors! : D

Oh, and happy 8/8/08, everyone! Enjoy the opening ceremony of the Olympics!

Hurgh

FIRST: YAY HAWKY IS BACK 8D
Now I gots to drag you to Ikea, yesyes?


Back to what I was going to say before I saw the new post:

Museums give me headaches. Probably because the lack of fresh air D:

Feel free to ignore things past this line:
--------------------
My thoughts on the 'gender divide':
The more people keep bringing it up, the more obvious it is. If you keep talking about how "OH YEAH WOMEN ARE DOING THIS TO BREAK THE GENDER DIVIDE"
or "THIS IS SUCH AN ACHIEVEMENT FOR A GIRL, SHE IS BREAKING THE GENDER DIVIDE", you're just further perpetuating the thought that there is one.

Sure each gender has their respective skill sets, sure some people aren't part of the norm, but really, IS IT THAT BIG OF A DEAL? I thought the point was to make it so that there's no need to think about such things anymore?
If people still get touchy over it, then that means something is still wrong.

Anyway, I'm multi-tasking too much, which means my thought process was all over the place this time.

Also: If my parents don't believe what I say, and don't let me get a word in edgewise (when they're lecturing me about how I don't talk to them) is it any wonder that I don't feel like talking to them very much?

Bah, not a happy post. Rantyrantrant.
---------------------------

You know what? Physics homework is actually quite therapeutic. I like physics. It's quite phun.

Return of the Hawk

Hawk is back!

And extremely sad. After such a great six weeks of research and hanging out, she had to say goodbye to all the friends she made. Some are Bay Area kids also, but others come from hundreds or thousands of miles away. :(

And Hawk is extremely aware that she has not provided many updates with what she has been doing...

But those will come after she catches up on sleep.