Special Ordering from the UC Davis Bookstore

A few weeks ago, I fell in love with a pen. An Avery eGel Retractable pen to be exact. I have no idea how I became in possession of it but I am ever so grateful. Note taking in class and for homework became enjoyable because the pen writes so smoothly, does not bleed at all and the ink’s color is so rich. Now, I’ve never been one to be excited about buying writing utensils except the time in middle school when I HAD to have Paper Mate erasable pens. My family keeps a bag of free pens we’ve accumulated over the years and that has been my school supply source. It’s only natural that in my last year as a college student I become OBSESSED with a pen. I first checked out Target when I was doing other shopping errands and ended up buying a pack of gel pens from another brand that seemed comparable. Boy was that a disappointment – the pen bled so much my test paper looked like it was about to suffer from an oil spill. Then I checked out Office Max and to my surprise they did not have it either. They said I could have an order sent to the store but it was only sold in dozens. I loved the pen but did not want to make that kind of commitment yet. I searched online but did not want to fork over money for shipping. To my delight, a girl in my class last week asked what kind of pen I was using. I gladly let her try it out and right after she said that she would be down to split an online bulk order. Right after class I wanted to check one more place before resorting to buying online – the campus bookstore.

I looked and tried out their other gel pens but was not satisfied. I noticed there were lots of other pens dispersed throughout the store so I decided to go to the customer service desk to have them do a search. The girl who helped me said they did not have any in store and that Avery is more of a paper company. (That’s why the pens so hard to find!) She was very empathetic and nice and introduced me the bookstore’s catalog.

The Bookstore can special order all sorts of things – even medical supplies for the MedCenter.

I found it amusing there was a Breakroom section.

She found my pen! They also have it available in blue.

So I decided to order 5 more black pens and 2 blue pens to try. What’s awesome about special ordering at the bookstore  is you don’t have to pay for shipping. Special orders take around 2-3 business days to arrive.

They called me yesterday to say my order was in and I picked them up today after class. I was super happy because my original pen ran out of ink on Sunday – such perfect timing!

The blue is beautiful and I thought I’d doodle on my order form for you to take a look. I feel a little silly sharing this with you all but it’s the little things in life – right? Definitely check out the store catalog if you don’t find what you’re looking for in the bookstore. Do you have any favorite school supplies? Any purchases from our bookstore that you absolutely love? Let me know in the comments – I would love to try out other writing tools.

Finding Housing

We are now concluding Week 3 of Winter Quarter. Though it’s only January – now is the time to be thinking about your housing situation for next school year. Whether you are moving out of the dorms or deciding to live with new friends,this guide should help jump start your search.

Questions for deciding who to live with:

• How many people do I want to live with?
• Are they clean?
• Are they dating or in a relationship? Are you?
• What is your comfort level with having guests stay overnight?
• Do you want a friend or just someone to share a living space with?
• Do they like to play loud music?
• Do they want a TV with cable?
• Will you keep everything in the fridge separate? Share and split grocery bills? Toiletries?
• How often would you be OK with throwing parties? Or having people over in general?
• Drugs?
• Pets?

Questions for picking a place to live:

• What is my rent budget?
• What type of lease is it? (Majority are 1 year leases)
• Do I want to share a room or have my own? Bathroom?
• House? Apartment? Townhouse? Co-op?
• How close is it to campus? To restaurants? To grocery stores?
• Which bus lines come by? How often?
• Will I or my roommate have a car?
• Is there parking spaces? Is there a fee?
• Laundry? Internet? Other amenities?

Learning from my friend’s living situations I discovered my preferences. I knew that I wanted my own room. I like staying up late and talking on the phone in bed until I fall asleep and wouldn’t want to bother anyone. I like my space. I wanted to live with just one other person. My friends who lived in threes or more would have issues especially with food and cleaning. There would always be some confusion of who’s dirty dishes were laying about or who’s turn it was to take out the trash or who finished the last of their orange juice. Living with just one other person makes things simpler. I wanted a two bedroom 1 bath apartment like my friends Sharon and Kristen had. I knew their total rent was about $1300/month. I found one for under $1000!  Very spacious. It’s also right by downtown, a 15 min walk to campus, 10 min bike ride and bus lines to the MU and Silo.

I actually met my roommate Melanie through Craigslist because the girl I originally signed my lease with got into Cal and decided to go there instead. It worked out perfectly. We both have the same interests and aesthetics and the same expectations in a living situation. Furnishing and decorating the apartment was fun. We share internet with our neighbors. We decided against a TV since we watch all our favorite shows online anyways and at our own convenience. We keep food separate but also cook and share with each other. This year I don’t see her as much now that she has a boyfriend but we still make time to hang out during the week.

After you figure out exactly what you want you can start comparing your top choices with each other. Set up appointments to visit in person. I remember freshman year around this time, I only went on the Tandemonium tour and let my friends take the lead in deciding housing. It’s really important to ask yourself these questions before signing a lease.

The site where I found my apartment and also found the most useful was the ASUCD Community Housing Listing. Popular options are Craigslist, Uloop, Marketplace and of course UC Davis Student Housing. I would DavisWiki apartments for reviews.

Did you see the new sustainable student housing they’re building for next fall? Ramble Apartments:

Looks pretty cool. I’m sure with the price to match as well. Anyways, good luck on your search! If you have any advice to add on about picking places to live and people to live with – sound off in the comments!

My Wednesday

Looking up bus times on NextBus for real-time tracking. Love their text update feature too. Just have to send “nbus unitrans <insert bus stop #>” to 41411.

Like a pack of sardines. The heater in the bus was on blast which made wearing both my sweater and coat a bit unbearable. Still thankful to not have to bike.

Discussing Tacita’s position paper on “My Life as a Book” by Anne Waldman during Writing Across Media.

Developmental Psychobiology Lab. Super crowded. I’m still on wait-list. Probably not going to get it

Mouse breeding simulation. (Quarter too short to actually breed mice).

Tumblr demo for Dr. Andy, Briony & Brittany to consider for their various projects. Invited to speak on a future panel for faculty! Too much fun & forgot to take a photo.

Chilling in the AggieTV studio before my next class.

Reviewing my planner & eating quiche @ the CoHo.

Genes and Genes Expression lecture mostly on probability theory. Gotta love those Punnett Squares.

FOUND OUT I GOT IN MY BACK UP PSYCH CLASS (via email)! It fulfills the same requirement as the other class I was originally enrolled in. So yay! I’m graduating as planned! My professor worked really hard with the department to request more computers in our lab so more people could add.

AggieTV Exec Board meeting. Video scavenger hunt discussed for bonding time! I love scavenger hunts Raffled who will cover Snoop Dogg coming in a month. Thank  you Random.org and a found penny.

Caught up with my friend Andrew who was in town. It was both our first time at Thai Canteen. Will do a proper restaurant review after more visits.

Now off to do homework due for discussion tomorrow!

Winter Quarter

Hi all – hope you all had a wonderful, fun and relaxing winter break. I know this week has been a whirlwind for us all. It’s rough transitioning from vacation back to school again. A few of my friends did study abroad last quarter and they all are in a bit of a culture shock. I thought with this being my last quarter here everything would be smooth sailing. I signed up for all the classes that I wanted with an early past time and set up an automatic payment for my last tuition and thought I was good to go. I guess being caught up with all the holidays I did not make sure that my online payment went through. I was pretty much anti computer (surprise!) over break. That mistake caused all my classes being dropped and having to re-enroll to the bottom of the wait-lists. It totally sucks. There’s nothing that the registrar can do and professors can’t make any promises on giving me a PTA number regardless of my situation. Fortunately I now have 2 out of 3 of the classes I was originally enrolled in. (Well 2 out of 4 – I am willing to sacrifice my tai chi class.) Now I’m just waiting out to see which Psychology class I can enroll in. The problem is they both have labs. All of the students are able to fit in the lecture part of the course but in lab it gets a bit crowded and usually one section is more popular than the other. In hindsight I wonder why I did not receive an email on the last day to pay for tuition. One final reminder. I received a few reminder emails since around Thanksgiving – why is there no email sent on the deadline day? I do take full responsibility for not double checking. I definitely regret not just paying it right there and then well in advance of the deadline.

Anyways, enough with the negative and on to the positive. I am for sure getting into TCS 191 Writing Across Media with Dr. Andy Jones. It’s a class I’ve been looking forward to taking ever since last year when a couple AggieTV friends told me about it. Here is the course description:

TCS 191 introduces students to experimental approaches to writing for different media and artistic practices, including photography, art installations, radio, film and film criticism, and live staged and multimedia performances. Participants in the class will explore how written texts relate to the images, sounds, and performances in digital and media production. Participants will complete a significant number of in-class and out-of-class writing assignments, both individually and as parts of groups. Our common themes, creativity and discovery, will inform all your reading and writing assignments, and prepare you to engage, challenge and impress readers, viewers, and listeners.

It’s going to be a fun and challenging class. I’m already brainstorming what I could do for our class projects. I’m looking forward to the radio script assignment because I have not played around with just audio in a while. I hope to find someone in class to collaborate on story boarding a favorite movie scene. Of course, Pixar comes to mind but I feel I want to steer away from movies that I have access to original story boards. One of the bonus assignments I signed up for is to create an Image Collection to have a visual companion for class. Dr. Andy suggested using Tumblr to host photos and so I went ahead and included quotes, links and videos in addition to photos. Check it out at http://tcs191.tumblr.com/. You can also read more about our class at http://www.andysclasses.com/tcs-191/. I believe someone is going to make a blog of class notes so when I find that out I can post it too.

Another positive for this quarter is that I learned I have friends in each of my classes! I know it’s great to make new friends but it’s awesome to have people you already know in class since everyone is so busy all the time and it makes it harder to find time to hang out. So that is comforting.

The last thing I’m psyched about is being on the Lip Dub committee for AggieTV. If you haven’t heard, see our Facebook event! We’ll be filming a promo on Sunday which will be fun. We’ll soon begin club and organization outreach to get everyone on campus involved. The song choice that naturally won the vote is Queen – Bicycle.

And for those of you who have no idea what I’m talking about – here’s an example of a lip dub:

Hope you’re transitioning back to school as smoothly as possible! Sound off in the comments if you’re having wait list issues too.

Good Luck on Finals

It’s finals -cue music. Remember to take short study breaks, keep a positive attitude, and try and get some sleep! Otherwise you’ll start hallucinating talking squirrels on campus like this guy.

(Bah-sorry the blog cuts it off. Click the image for full XKCD goodness.)

Let’s power through and do this!

Governor’s Global Climate Summit 3

Hub Culture invited AggieTV to help film and edit interviews for the third Governor’s Global Climate Summit. The two day conference was co-hosted by Arnold Schwarzenegger and other world leaders and opened up discussion about moving toward a green economy. Attendees shared their ideas and were encouraged to collaborate together to inform national and international climate negotiations. I missed out on Harrison Ford and Deepak Chopra who attended the first day but had a great time on the second anyways.

Alyson entering the tents from the green carpet.

Our set for the interviews.

It’s that time again: Class Registration



In the midst of the second round of midterms, it’s that time again. If you didn’t know already the class schedule for Winter 2011 is now available and pass times are up on MyUCDavis and SISWEB.

Tips on choosing your schedule:

Stay on track: Make sure you are meeting your college department’s AND your major requirements. This is easiest to sort out with your advisors but if in a time crunch they can be looked up on their respective sites. If you are thinking of changing majors try and file the forms as soon as you’ve decided because you won’t be able to sign up for upper division classes until Pass 2.

Ask around: Look to peers to gauge which professor would be the best fit for you. Visit your major’s peer advisors. Send a blast on Facebook. Check out Rate My Professors. Just take everything you hear with a grain of salt because everyone learns differently. What may be someone’s hardest teacher could be your most inspiring and challenging one.

Final check: Double check you won’t be overloading yourself during finals. Sometimes you may have the perfect schedule but at the very end need to take three finals in one day. It can be done but just be cautious. There are also ways to to petition to take one of those finals on another date but it is best to avoid that process if you can. Pay attention to the Exam Code for your classes and compare them on page 29 of the guide.

Balance is key: Know your limits. For some 22 units is the norm. For others the minimum 13 units is enough when factoring in extra curricular activities and work. Be realistic when choosing that 8AM class if your earliest class usually starts in the afternoon – it is winter quarter after all.

Check Availability: Pay attention to courses only offered certain quarters. One of my classes I’m taking is only offered winter quarter so I made sure all my other classes could fit around that one.

Explore: Take advantage of Freshman Seminars and learn about the history of Japanese garden design, rocket science, and zombies – oh my! Enrolling in any of the introductory <insert major> 10 courses may lead to deciding to minor or even double major in another subject.

Sign up for a PE class. We all mean to go to the ARC more so what better way to work on your fitness than to commit to a class that’s already included in your tuition? You can finally learn how to bowl correctly, rock climb or self defend.

Plan B: Make sure to have back up classes to choose from. The Open Course List is your friend. You may have to wait for Pass 2 to sign up. If you are debating between two classes you’re interested in try and sign up for both – you can also drop one after you attend the first day.

I really like to have all my CRN’s entered in the boxes on SISWEB a minute before my pass time so I can just press the submit button on the dot. Don’t do this too early or SISWEB will have you log in again. Happy scheduling and please share any tips you may have!

Davis Eats: The Dumpling House

One of my goals before I graduate is to eat at every restaurant in Davis. I say the best way to a city’s heart is through your stomach. First stop:

The Dumpling House, formerly known as London’s Fish & Chips, still has all the the deep fried goodness you’d expect plus asian comfort food. Didn’t know about the take over until AggieTV featured it. I love coming here because it’s like visiting an old friend who always puts you in a good mood. Whether coming here to share a plate of dumplings with a friend or enjoying an unagi bowl to myself I am never disappointed.

After having their freshly made dumplings you’ll never bother to buy that bag of Ling Ling’s from Costco again. But I definitely only order them with a friend or two because they give so much – 12 for $6.50.  According to Daviswiki you can buy a frozen pack of 50 for $18.75.

It always feels so cozy inside with the warm yellow walls.

These are some of the best fish tacos I’ve had and all for $5.50. Next time, deep fried Snickers bar – I’m coming for you.

The Bike Garage

My bike seat was loose – moving every time I got off. After a week of annoyance I finally decided to stop by The Bike Barn for help. They referenced me to The Bike Garage over at the parking lot next to the MU bus stop. Who knew there was a place on campus where you could learn how to repair your bike for free?

I looped around the parking lot mystified of its whereabouts and ended up asking a bus driver. I hope these photos will help you out!

Everyone was really nice and encouraging. It was sorta like a tutoring center but for do-it-yourself tuning up.

To check out a wrench to tighten the bolts on my seat I just traded my student ID.

I even learned how to pump air into my tires & more importantly when to stop. Now I happily ride my bike worry free. Check it out for all your bike repair needs.

Wu Wu Wu !

Score! 3rd place for Team Jumba! Papa Jumba is a smooth sunnies seller.