What do these three things have in common? Possibly a lot of things, but chief of all they are relevant to me (at least recently).

This semester we’re taking Bio 22 –that’s General Zoology– as one of our sciences (we also have Plant Anatomy and General Chemistry). And we have finally, finally opened up a frog. It’s really nothing like dissecting a plant, let me tell you. It was exciting, fresh, and surprisingly fun.

At the very start all of us were mildly squeamish, and nobody wanted to “hurt” their frog. But it seemed our hesitations contributed more to their suffering in the end. The quick and clean technique to get your frog relaxed, paralyzed and ready for skinning is to do it heartlessly. A painless paralyzation: something we realized too late when our toad was already bleeding quite a bit from our inexpert pithing.

The most fun part was finding our groove as we skinned everything. It’s not really easy, even with the awesome (borrowed) dissecting tools. The fascia really took to the skin at some parts, and we always had to be careful of muscle, as we had to keep those intact.

But here, have a picture of our nameless toad last meeting, after it had already rested in a 10% formalin solution for about three days:

This week was also witnessed me doing something extremely new for myself. I went to a bank and saved money. That’s right. This is all so unlike last year’s me, who kept money on hand and spent in a minute. IMPROVEMENT, yay (it’s not through any personal discipline, however, just some restriction of access, but still).

I won’t have the easiest access to my holiday earnings anymore (though that is belied by the withdrawing system; who am I kidding?), so I can definitely save up to that thing I’ve been meaning to buy. “That thing” can range from a tablet, plain dress, knit sweater, laptop case to a paperblanks notebook. Actually there’s probably a lot more in my wishlist. Ehem.

 

On the subject of habits:

Well, I’m not really sure what I want to say about this (I’m making this all up as I go along). But, in defiance of my earlier statements, I’ve recently splurged on paint tools. In order to do some artistic things. I now have a 24-tube Pebeo acrylic set and some new brushes (in my defense I bought them before I went to the bank). I don’t have my canvases at hand, but I’ve been meaning to finish that sea painting I had going for a while before classes resumed last November. I think.

I also tweeted early about the fact that I have not-accidentally drawn Louis Tomlinson of One Direction. And it was relatively awesome, and, not to be defensive, it wasn’t really about me being a fan. It was just a really good picture for drawing practice. Shape analysis and those things.

All I have to do is build up the habit of drawing every second I can. Honestly.

And also to build up the habit of reading every second I can as well. The percentage each activity takes up in my time confuses me, so I won’t bother to determine which one’s my priority. I have new, unread books in my phone at all times. And they aren’t even fanfiction stories, which are sometimes more fun to read.

This part’s begun because I wanted to read Life of Pi, because of the movie that’s coming out soon. I will be posting a crit some time alongside the movie review. I was really enamored by the storytelling, and it was the main reason why I looked at forums and quotes for another book to read. I’m currently staring at Impulse, which is such a challenging and novel read (though I’ve barely begun).

I’d like to say that studying, cleaning up and exercising are habits I’d be retaking. But they’re not. 

I am still as health and appearance conscious as ever, though I think that’s because I’m a teenager with high dreams and life, and not because of some personal affair with discipline and logical benefits.

 

Lastly, I’ve noticed that in writing this post I used too much “though”, parentheses and compound sentences, but since it’s my blog no one can do anything about it.