Aven the Hungry

Warning: Picture heavy, and they're all of my snake. If you don't like 'em, ignore this entry. :P

Aven is not a particularly photogenic snake (when he's paying attention to the fact that I'm taking pics of him, he has a magical ability to make them all fuzzy, at any rate), but when he's eating, he's much too distracted to turn on his magic.

So yesterday I fed him a mouse and got some pretty neat pictures. ;) But we'll start with a couple of his fuzzified pics just so you can see how adept he is.


What is this thing you're aiming at me?

Aven finds elbows very funny since they're not near as flexible as him. :c

See his extreme lack of teeth? Actually he has plenty, but they're so small you can't see them. Random fact of the day: Corn snakes are back-fanged; their fangs are at the back of their mouth. They're much better for holding on to things, but not so good for the initial bite.

I think it's amazing how much their skin can expand when they eat. .o.

Aven is a master of impressions, look at those mouse-foot mandibles he's got going!

Now he's a Narwhal. ;)

Where'd the mouse go? D:

Soo... there you go. Aven's funny to watch eat since he finds every lump and jutting part he could and gets caught on it... eating this mouse took him about 20 minutes. He's silly when he starts eating too, since he always tries to eat from the middle first, then tries a back foot... yesterday he had some sort of obsession with the mouse's front paw and dragged him around by that for a few minutes. xD Eventually he did find the head though, lol

Oh Printer, I loathe thee.

Although I've been having a lot of fun playing with Aven (I'll write a blog about him soon as I've got some good pictures to go with it) all weekend, Sunday night had come and it was time to rush through the last few problems of my math homework. After finishing it, I went upstairs to print out the answers so I could grade it, since we're expected to have this done prior to turning it in (and so I can correct everything and learn stuff if I got something wrong... :0 so nice).

Most of my friends already know that I hate my printer, mostly because if I leave it on then it loves to make random loud noises, and if I try to turn it off when the computer is off, it turns the computer back on, not to mention it's only black and white rather than having color ink. Half the time I try to print things it gives me random sheets of paper with one line of smiley faces or with some sort of manual-looking thing on it.

It's extremely irritating, to say the least.

So, anyways, I turn on the printer and tell the computer to print out my answer sheets. But today there was another obstacle I hadn't suspected- someone had left a mound of junk sitting on top of the printer, right where the paper comes out again. I probably don't have to mention that this made the printer get a paper jam.

This printer has paper jams all the time, mostly because of me making it stop printing off it's dumb manuals and smiley faces without letting it finish doing so, but obviously that wasn't the problem today. I pulled out the sheet that had gotten crushed against the junk (after moving it, of course), but that didn't fix the jam. There was another one still inside the printer since this one obviously can't figure out that when there's still one paper being printed, it shouldn't go and pull up another one.

So I fiddled around for a while, trying to figure out how to get this paper that was caught in the depths of my printer out, and basically dismantled the whole outside of the thing in the process. This didn't get me far though, since I only took off the front and top of it, and eventually I Googled how to get a paper jam out of my printer. (Thank heavens for Google! xD)

It showed me how to pop off the back of the printer and that made everything much easier. I ripped the paper a bit pulling it out, but it being halfway printed on and rather crinkled, that didn't really matter.

So, thinking everything's fixed, I tell it to print again.

Out come the smiley faces and manuals.

I press the Cancel button, turn it off, unplug it from the computer, plug it back in, and tell it to print. First come smiley faces, so I press cancel. But it doesn't stop printing, it just starts printing out the answers.

Well, I'm good with that.

Until it finishes and starts printing out more copies of them. I press Cancel, and it starts giving me manuals. But I've got what I need now, so I hit Cancel and turn it off, and the printer (not surprisingly) jams again. Luckily this one is much easier to fix, and finally I'm on my way.

But seriously?

I want a new printer. :c

I actually get this! 8D

This is going to be a rave sort of entry rather than my usual grumpy complaining. :0 Pay attention, because it’s out of the norm. For me, at least.

Normally when it comes to math I’m an utter failure. I think it’s a really neat subject and I wish I got it, and I do work hard at getting it, but I just don’t. When I have a good teacher I do a little better, but good math teachers? They’re in extremely short supply. I’ve had two in my entire school career. My current one is not among them (although I do like him ‘cause he smiles at me when I come to class and it gives me hope xD).

But lately we’ve been doing derivatives, and I actually get it. *gasp* For once I’m not the stupid one in my study group always asking, “Repeat that to me again? What the heck are you talking about? That doesn’t make any sense at all. Can you just give me the answer so we can move on? DDDx” <-(yes dearies, that’s an emote for showing frustration. I’ve had to explain it too many times. Extra D’s are extra aggravation towards a subject). Instead, they’re all asking me. :0 I sit there and whiz through the problems (well, comparatively, since even though I get them they’re still extremely slow to work) and then they’re all like, “Hey Mary, how do you do this one?” and I can explain it and make sense. Not only that, I explain it, make sense, and they learn from me. Math.

Yes.

I feel so almighty and intelligent.



The other half of this amazing rave entry is that today we went to the hardware store because my mom had to return some screws that were the wrong length, but she forgot the receipt so they needed her ID, which she also didn’t bring (don’t worry, my dad was driving so there was a licensed person getting us down there). My dad had just dropped us off and by then was hidden in the depths of Walmart, finding snacks for him and the boys to eat during Priesthood session.

And lo and behold, my driver’s license was in my pocket! So I whipped that out all dramatic-like and got to sign for the return and all that stuff. Made me feel all special and prepared inside.



But good things can never last, so I have a bit of a rant to throw in too. ‘Cause seriously, if you’re going to be so boorish as to catcall, do it from a respectable vehicle (i.e. manly trucks), not a bike that it looks like you stole from a 6-year-old. You already look dumb when you start shouting things at me, but from a little kid’s bike? No.