I had the BEST spring break! I got to go to Disney World for the first time! I ALSO got to go to Universal Studios Orlando, specifically Harry Potter World, for the first time!
We did it in a pretty intense way. We had two days at Disney, and one at Universal. Did you know it IS possible to complete all of Disney (Epcot, Hollywood, Magic Kingdom, Animal Kingdom) and all of Universal’s Islands of Adventure in that amount of time!? It sure is! You have to take advantage of magic hours, where Magic Kingdom and Hollywood Studios are open until 3AM and 1AM respectively and only open to resort guests. Between the lack of families with small kids and the lack of people with no stamina for MAGIC, the lines get so short it’s ridiculous.
We started at EPCOT, which I liked a LOT more than I expected (it was my favorite park, actually)
Hogsmeade itself! I loved the snow covered rooftops in 80 degree weather!
Repping my USC Brain Awareness Week shirt at Seuss Landing at Universal Studios!
The entrance to Hogsmeade!
Before all the magic of universal studios and disney, I had a little adventure with my computer
I had to disassemble my entire laptop (I'm typing this post on it now, so it survived!)
I accidentally got an SD card stuck in the CD drive (long story – the holes are RIGHT next to each other…) and it turns out the Dell Studio is HILARIOUSLY designed in such a way that the Optical Drive and Fan are the two very deepest components. I had to take out the hard drive, keyboard, RAM, and essentially EVERYTHING before I got to the disk drive. Ironically, I had read in reviews of the computer before buying it that the fan and optical drive were hard to get to and I remember thinking “when the heck would THAT matter?”
It was legitimately fun to look at the insides of my computer and see how it was all connected though. I’ve been learning about hardware implementation in my Electrical Engineering classes, so I was really proud of how much I knew about the innards without having to look up the parts.
I put it back together and the ONLY thing that doesn’t work anymore is the keyboard backlight…
Why did I resort to the drastic measure of potentially destroying my computer just to get the disk drive working (after all, CD’s are on their way out)?
MASS EFFECT 3, THAT'S WHY!
Yep – that’s how I spent the second half of my break. Two days of marathon Mass Effect. I don’t have time to play games during the semester, so I went hard core over break, haha. Regarding the ending debates… I was definitely disappointed by how little closure it gave, and certain GAPING plot inconsistencies, but I DO have to give them credit for the fact that this is the longest I have actively thought about a game and its ending after the fact.
But alas, now I’m back, and BOY is school stepping it up to make sure I appreciate the break I just had. Three midterms and two huge projects in the next two weeks = sleepy steve. Throw Associated Students of Biomedical Engineering EBoard Elections on top of that (I’m gonna be co-president!) and, oh, I dunno… RELAY FOR LIFE IS NEXT WEEKEND and you’ve got a recipe for EASILY the most stressful two weeks I’ve had in college so far. I am powering through though, haha. Nothing I can’t handle, it’s just a lot to worry about at once. Relay is honestly taking up the most time, followed by organic chemistry.
We have exciting things going on with Relay though! In the last week we got to over $32,000 and set up Paint the Campus Purple – our biggest marketing event of the year!
It starts with the trees in Alumni park
Add some balloons in the bushes
signs along trousdale
medallions on the ground
Draping the campus center balconies
treat the light posts like flags and put tiny ribbons on the steps of troy
spell out relay in the windows
set up a tent at Tommy with information
Put clothespins and flyers on people's backpacks and bike baskets!
and THAT, my friend, is how you market an event!
So break was awesome and greatly needed, and now I’m ready to tackle the perfect storm of two weeks! Woohoo! Here we go!
