And the rest of this paper.
In no particular order, they are:
Better Dig Two - The Band Perry
Blow Me (One Last Kiss) - P!nk (Warning: Explicit Content)
Beer Money - Kip Moore
Live While We're Young - One Direction
Showing posts with label procrastination. Show all posts
Showing posts with label procrastination. Show all posts
Tuesday, December 11, 2012
Crank It
I'm not going to lie, I'm having a hell of a time getting through this paper. But what's helped - other than some extremely useful suggestions from my professor - is that I've been cycling through some staple songs on YouTube. I get the feeling they're going to be the ones getting me through the next few days and my upcoming two exams.
And the rest of this paper.
In no particular order, they are:
And the rest of this paper.
In no particular order, they are:
Thursday, January 26, 2012
Things to Know XXIII
- I keep temporarily losing my phone.
- What that really means is that I keep leaving it various coat pockets or backpack pockets and forgetting, for a while - usually about two hours - where exactly it is.
- I'm kind of okay with that.
- We're having a bit of a heat war in our house.
- Namely the guy I share a wall with phoned Buildings and Grounds yesterday night and told them he "had no heat" and they came and turned it up to 70 (when it had been at 68).
- I think he's trying to smoke me out of my room so he can move in here and have the bigger room, the nicer view, and about twice as much heat vent.
- I don't really think that, but it makes for an interesting thought.
- Mini fridges can freeze coffee creamer when turned all the way up.
- Found the previous out the hard way Tuesday morning.
- I will most likely crawl outta bed tomorrow morning and walk to breakfast because not only am I out of coffee creamer - as mine froze and had to be thrown away - but I'm also out of milk.
- Pretty sure my Focus was hit by a train.
- "Take a yard stick and whack it."
- Sometimes I forget I have a tattoo.
- Having a plan doesn't necessarily always mean you have to like the plan you have when it took a lot of tears, internal screaming, and faith in places you weren't quite sure you wanted to put faith to begin with in order to get said plan.
- "Peter Pan is the boy who never grew up. Peter Pan is the dead boy. Neverland is the land of dead boys."
- Thank you, Modern European Drama for completely changing my worldview on the subject of Peter Pan and thus rendering the childhoods of four college students a little more skewed.
- All things considering, it does kind of make sense.
- Paperwork sucks.
- Sleep is good.
- Have I mentioned my Focus has been hit by a train again?
- I have been distracted by YouTube for the past hour and a half, and need to actually go finish the rest of the play I need to read for tomorrow morning, bright and early at 8:35.
- I love my schedule.
- I also love my dorm bed when I'm not feeling like my corner single is a sauna in disguise and trying to enhance my Weight Watchers.
- Speaking of that - at least 4 pounds down. And still going strong.
- There's something morally right and confident-building in there somewhere, but I'm a little bleary-eyed to really attempt to decipher that.
- What that really means is that I keep leaving it various coat pockets or backpack pockets and forgetting, for a while - usually about two hours - where exactly it is.
- I'm kind of okay with that.
- We're having a bit of a heat war in our house.
- Namely the guy I share a wall with phoned Buildings and Grounds yesterday night and told them he "had no heat" and they came and turned it up to 70 (when it had been at 68).
- I think he's trying to smoke me out of my room so he can move in here and have the bigger room, the nicer view, and about twice as much heat vent.
- I don't really think that, but it makes for an interesting thought.
- Mini fridges can freeze coffee creamer when turned all the way up.
- Found the previous out the hard way Tuesday morning.
- I will most likely crawl outta bed tomorrow morning and walk to breakfast because not only am I out of coffee creamer - as mine froze and had to be thrown away - but I'm also out of milk.
- Pretty sure my Focus was hit by a train.
- "Take a yard stick and whack it."
- Sometimes I forget I have a tattoo.
- Having a plan doesn't necessarily always mean you have to like the plan you have when it took a lot of tears, internal screaming, and faith in places you weren't quite sure you wanted to put faith to begin with in order to get said plan.
- "Peter Pan is the boy who never grew up. Peter Pan is the dead boy. Neverland is the land of dead boys."
- Thank you, Modern European Drama for completely changing my worldview on the subject of Peter Pan and thus rendering the childhoods of four college students a little more skewed.
- All things considering, it does kind of make sense.
- Paperwork sucks.
- Sleep is good.
- Have I mentioned my Focus has been hit by a train again?
- I have been distracted by YouTube for the past hour and a half, and need to actually go finish the rest of the play I need to read for tomorrow morning, bright and early at 8:35.
- I love my schedule.
- I also love my dorm bed when I'm not feeling like my corner single is a sauna in disguise and trying to enhance my Weight Watchers.
- Speaking of that - at least 4 pounds down. And still going strong.
- There's something morally right and confident-building in there somewhere, but I'm a little bleary-eyed to really attempt to decipher that.
Tuesday, November 29, 2011
For All This Life
I've been on this earth twenty-two years. In those subsequent years, the toughest things I've had to do have been walking away from a great relationship with a wonderful person because I was going away to college, getting stuck in an airport for a single night due to a sudden monsoon in Philadelphia, having unexplained belly pain resulting in surgery my first semester of college, leaving my mother in an airport twice, only this time it was her that was leaving and me that was staying (not that it helped), calling my mother a few weeks later to tell her I wasn't coming home and didn't know when I could even think about getting on a plane and getting across the Atlantic, and the following five days of living in the Virgin Atlantic terminal at Heathrow Airport.
It's a toss up of whether all of the previous - collectively - trumps the past four months.
It's been difficult. That could be the understatement of 2011, truthfully, if sitting in my professor's office and, after going over the last exam and talking about where to go from there, fighting on three separate occasions not to cry is any indication. I've done really well since the first month of the semester to not let the center of my brain hijack the rest of it, which is the sort of scientific way of saying I haven't let myself panic as badly as I used to. It's probably not good for my heart, either, the amount of caffeine I ingest on a regular basis.
I don't want to use the word overwhelmed but that's really what it boils down to. Between what's going on up here - no need to insert the laundry list of stuff as that's already been done - and what's going on at home, it's difficult to get the distance required. 45 miles doesn't feel like 45 miles. Even if it were 3,000 I don't think it would work. Sometimes there's just not enough space on the planet to get the distance that feel necessary.
It's also difficult to not let the distance you need hurt the people who need you.
Yeah, that's one I'm still trying to wrap my head around and there are days when I'm successful and days when, well, I'm a giant fail at it. Lately, it seems that my failure days outnumber my non-failure days. It's a struggle, more often than not, to find my motivation and my Focus (slippery little bastard), and to do all I need to do when the only thing I really want to do is curl up in my amazingly comfortable dorm bed and block out the outside world and sleep for a solid eight hours. My beloved sister insists I can sleep when I'm dead, which I think has taken root in the back of my head because it's ten past midnight and I'm working on homework. I'm hoping - more or less planning, actually - to be in bed by three. Which means I have some things to get done right the hell now.
The bright side is that there is a light at the end of the tunnel. There's the fact that spring semester is going to be glorious. There's also the fact that I will be returning to Wales two weeks after graduation for three weeks. Yup, I was accepted into the summer program, and will be returning to a place that grew to be a second (third, maybe?) home.
But there's a lot to do between now and then. A lot to do. Still, there are days when you sit there, think, get a little lost in your head and wonder can I do this? Am I good enough to do this? Have I gotten in over my head? The next thought you think is the true kicker.
Is it really worth it?
There are days when I go cross-eyed looking at my own reflection in the mirror really wondering if the ends justify the means. I've been assured by numerous people they do indeed, but here, right here in this hot as hell corner room, you wonder. You really, really wonder.
Sitting here introspecting isn't getting my lesson plans done. And you know how much I love those damn things.
It's a toss up of whether all of the previous - collectively - trumps the past four months.
It's been difficult. That could be the understatement of 2011, truthfully, if sitting in my professor's office and, after going over the last exam and talking about where to go from there, fighting on three separate occasions not to cry is any indication. I've done really well since the first month of the semester to not let the center of my brain hijack the rest of it, which is the sort of scientific way of saying I haven't let myself panic as badly as I used to. It's probably not good for my heart, either, the amount of caffeine I ingest on a regular basis.
I don't want to use the word overwhelmed but that's really what it boils down to. Between what's going on up here - no need to insert the laundry list of stuff as that's already been done - and what's going on at home, it's difficult to get the distance required. 45 miles doesn't feel like 45 miles. Even if it were 3,000 I don't think it would work. Sometimes there's just not enough space on the planet to get the distance that feel necessary.
It's also difficult to not let the distance you need hurt the people who need you.
Yeah, that's one I'm still trying to wrap my head around and there are days when I'm successful and days when, well, I'm a giant fail at it. Lately, it seems that my failure days outnumber my non-failure days. It's a struggle, more often than not, to find my motivation and my Focus (slippery little bastard), and to do all I need to do when the only thing I really want to do is curl up in my amazingly comfortable dorm bed and block out the outside world and sleep for a solid eight hours. My beloved sister insists I can sleep when I'm dead, which I think has taken root in the back of my head because it's ten past midnight and I'm working on homework. I'm hoping - more or less planning, actually - to be in bed by three. Which means I have some things to get done right the hell now.
The bright side is that there is a light at the end of the tunnel. There's the fact that spring semester is going to be glorious. There's also the fact that I will be returning to Wales two weeks after graduation for three weeks. Yup, I was accepted into the summer program, and will be returning to a place that grew to be a second (third, maybe?) home.
But there's a lot to do between now and then. A lot to do. Still, there are days when you sit there, think, get a little lost in your head and wonder can I do this? Am I good enough to do this? Have I gotten in over my head? The next thought you think is the true kicker.
Is it really worth it?
There are days when I go cross-eyed looking at my own reflection in the mirror really wondering if the ends justify the means. I've been assured by numerous people they do indeed, but here, right here in this hot as hell corner room, you wonder. You really, really wonder.
Sitting here introspecting isn't getting my lesson plans done. And you know how much I love those damn things.
Monday, November 28, 2011
15 Reasons to Love Knitting
(These are in no particular order.)
1. It's like a reset button for my head.
2. Imaging poking vital areas of the body with a bluntly sharp object - especially someone you're not quite fond of - produces a rather shark-like smile.
3. Something has to bring me out of my coffee induced delirium for me to actually get some decent sleep.
4. Repetitive motion I don't really have to think about does wonders for my blood pressure.
5. Revisiting #2 is also quite good for my blood pressure.
6. It's a fairly productive way to procrastinate.
7. Knitting is soothing.
8. When you finish a product, people look at you like you've actually accomplished something worth talking about.
9. Two very important concepts: Pretty colors and something shiny.
10. It's not a miracle cure by any means, but it works.
11. Teach someone to knit and you've possible taught them to clothe themselves for the rest of their life.
12. Revising #11: Or until their attention span runs out.
13. I'm really a 94-year-old woman at heart.
14. It's fun. (Yes, that's all there is to this one.)
15. If you're really good at it, you can do it both sober and drunk.
1. It's like a reset button for my head.
2. Imaging poking vital areas of the body with a bluntly sharp object - especially someone you're not quite fond of - produces a rather shark-like smile.
3. Something has to bring me out of my coffee induced delirium for me to actually get some decent sleep.
4. Repetitive motion I don't really have to think about does wonders for my blood pressure.
5. Revisiting #2 is also quite good for my blood pressure.
6. It's a fairly productive way to procrastinate.
7. Knitting is soothing.
8. When you finish a product, people look at you like you've actually accomplished something worth talking about.
9. Two very important concepts: Pretty colors and something shiny.
10. It's not a miracle cure by any means, but it works.
11. Teach someone to knit and you've possible taught them to clothe themselves for the rest of their life.
12. Revising #11: Or until their attention span runs out.
13. I'm really a 94-year-old woman at heart.
14. It's fun. (Yes, that's all there is to this one.)
15. If you're really good at it, you can do it both sober and drunk.
Tuesday, November 23, 2010
Things I Learned in High School
[In no particular order.]
- Taking independent study band sucks.
- Especially when you take it so you can take ACE US History, and normally this wouldn't be a big deal, only the ACE history book is so damned dry you'd expect it to light itself spontaneously on fire.
- Even though you have friends that you could tell anything to, there are some things that you simply can't tell them.
- When your math teacher and your sophomore English teacher are married to each other, it's a little difficult to get away with writing in a composition book in class because she knows it's the novel.
- It's okay to have the same teachers for multiple classes multiple years.
- Unless you sit there in AP English wondering why she couldn't have retired before you got there.
- Trumpet plungers were not meant to be thrown at the wall for entertainment, unless of course they were, and yours truly still has the record for the longest distance from the wall and Andrew has the record for how many times in a row he could get it to stick.
- Of course I have a band lesson this period, and not just because I want to miss class.
- It's okay to "kill" people if you're going to process them in Forensics class soon after.
- Though it's not very helpful when the dead body keeps squirming because he doesn't like bugs.
- How to hawk baked goods in the crowds on vintage weekend outside the bars because they were the easiest people to get to part with their pocket change.
- FYEX (First Year Experience) had to be the more worthless "class" ever.
- One of the trumpets falling off the risers every year during the first week of school.
- "A wooden clarinet is the orgasm of clarinets."
- Being Raggedy Ann for Halloween my senior year and lifeguarding IAC's still wearing my red, hand-made yarn wig.
- Powderpuff Football. Only we forgot most of the time to go for the flags as it was simpler to flat-out tackle people.
- Scuba diving in the pool.
- The massive bruise on the inside of my thigh from the giant's ladder in Lifetime Sports
- Jesse's face when he found out I'd sprained my ankle playing indoor soccer in the middle of basketball season.
- Though, the above didn't really matter because it's not like I played in the games, anyway.
- Having whooping cough as a sophomore and continuing on with life like I wasn't trying to hack up a lung simply by walking from class to class.
- My love of films can probably stem from film analysis sophomore year.
- I can write flash fiction; it might not come out very good or make much sense, but I can do it.
- I vowed never to take any more business classes ever after sophomore year.
- Though we made the family "dream" of having an ice cream boat kind of come true that year, with the magnets to prove it.
- My classmates weren't as unobservant as I once thought.
- Humming the Vonage theme song in public yields a lot of interesting looks from boys in leather jackets.
- Music Club trips to NYC were, in some ways, the highlight of the year.
- Riding three hours to Buffalo on a school bus was an interesting experience, especially for my rear end.
- I got really good at getting on the bus in the morning, leaning against the window, and falling back asleep for the twenty minutes it took to get to town.
- I cemented how easy it was to live out of a Jansport backpack on a daily basis, in an academic sense.
- It's a bad idea to let your friend fake-bleed you at the Freshman Humanities Renaissance Fair in the courtyard because it somehow leads to higher-ups thinking that you and two other girls have been cutting yourselves.
- In order to get out of there as soon as possible, showing said higher ups the slightly oozing patch of psoriasis you've digged open on your ankle will do the trick nicely.
- You might think you have things under control, but until you break out completely and totally in itchy bits that may or may not leave scars because of something that you have no genetic control over, you find out just how much you really have to keep your head high to live with things.
- I found out that, sometimes, when you really love someone, you let them go to make sure you don't hurt them.
- The above, however, does not ensure that they will be there when you return at a time convenient for you.
- Eating school food made me the fan of tacos that I am today.
- I think I wasn't too far into my sophomore year when I realized that I didn't want to be one of the popular girls; I just wanted to be me, whoever that was going to develop into.
- How not to sugarcoat things.
- Sunday in the Park with George is a truly awful musical when you're eighteen and there's such shows like Avenue Q and Monty Python's Spamalot to be seen instead.
- I don't like rye bread, and while it might look similar to wheat, it sure as shit isn't.
- Never had the urge to drink illegally while in high school.
- High school is a different ball game that takes a bit to get used to, and it doesn't help when you're about as down as you could get when you get in there.
- I learned how to temporarily shut up and go with the flow because that's what it took to do a good job on a job that needed to get done.
- You can be a bit busted if you know how to sit there and superglue yourself back together while paying attention in math.
- How not to give a damn about certain things.
- How to make my mom understand that being in the nineties in calculus might not be something that I achieve, and how to settle for high eighties when I'm still trying my best.
- How to play alto saxophone because who ever heard of a clarinet in jazz band?
- The opening to Colt 45 while tooling around the nation's capital for senior trip.
- That it's kind of cool to think about double calculus as double potions, but it's nowhere near as cool.
- I can't stand Ernest Hemingway.
- How cool having a sister is, and how much we do, despite our age difference, have in common.
- Going to Open House still in a uniform and cleats is perfectly acceptable.
- Trying to get to first base in softball to listen to your dad give you advice and tell you bad jokes to make you giggle.
- There are things in life more important than soccer.
- The new basketball uniform shorts were the most comfortable things in the world.
- Riding on the bus with the baseball team wasn't all it was cracked up to be.
- Riding the bus, period, wasn't all that it was cracked up to be.
- How to feel like you're stretched in fifty different directions, but still together enough to get everything finished that you need to, and well enough that nobody thinks twice about it.
- There's only so many times that you can say, "Eh, tomorrow" because your tomorrows start to run out.
- What it feels like to finish something significant.
- Writing a senior thesis in five weeks absolutely sucks.
- Being yourself, no matter how crazy and unconventional that might be, is so much easier and so much more worth it than trying to be anyone else.
- I'm about as bad at economics as I am at math.
- I like dressing up and looking decidedly female every now and then.
- Coffee is not only lovely, but also a necessity.
- Going to Europe and then returning and having the opening night and subsequent three performances of the school play when you have no voice makes life very, very interesting.
- Graduation is one of those things that always seems like it'll never get there, and then when it's looming, you wonder where the time's gone.
- A locker only holds so much stuff before it decides it won't shut, open, or even move.
- The instructions, "Put in your combination and then continue to turn like a doorknob" would have been really helpful that first time standing by 477 and wondering how to get into it.
- I don't think I was ever late to English my first year because my locker was right across the hall from the English room.
- I took one art class, and that was more than enough for my four years in that building.
- Sadly, cafeteria food doesn't get much better when you hit high school.
- Cafeteria's came with vending machines.
- Get there early enough so that you have a parking space.
- Doesn't matter what kind of car you drive, just as long as you have one to drive.
- How I ever passed my Earth Science regents is beyond me because there were eight seniors in a class of sophomores, and most of us, since it was the end of the day, slept through most of it.
- AP Calculus, AP Economics, and AP English was going to be the death of me my senior year.
- New York State Regents are, for a lack of a better phrase, the shitty things on the face of the Earth.
- The SAT's are just as bad as everyone says they are.
- Giving blood is fun. What's not so fun is passing out and scaring the living bejeezus out of your two best guy friends when you fall out of your chair.
- Playing softball after giving blood is always advisable - when half the team has done it, what else can you do?
- Things weren't always easy. Do the best you could, and hope for the rest to sort itself out.
- NYSSMA is a great excuse to miss school, though they'll flay you alive when you have whooping cough and are trying not to hack up a lung while you play classical music.
- When in NYC, one must visit in a Starbucks. That is nonnegotiable.
- I was the band geek, the writer, the athlete, and the chick with enough brains to graduate tenth out of ninety-seven. It hasn't always been easy, but if you stick to what you know and follow your instincts, the end result is pretty good.
- Taking independent study band sucks.
- Especially when you take it so you can take ACE US History, and normally this wouldn't be a big deal, only the ACE history book is so damned dry you'd expect it to light itself spontaneously on fire.
- Even though you have friends that you could tell anything to, there are some things that you simply can't tell them.
- When your math teacher and your sophomore English teacher are married to each other, it's a little difficult to get away with writing in a composition book in class because she knows it's the novel.
- It's okay to have the same teachers for multiple classes multiple years.
- Unless you sit there in AP English wondering why she couldn't have retired before you got there.
- Trumpet plungers were not meant to be thrown at the wall for entertainment, unless of course they were, and yours truly still has the record for the longest distance from the wall and Andrew has the record for how many times in a row he could get it to stick.
- Of course I have a band lesson this period, and not just because I want to miss class.
- It's okay to "kill" people if you're going to process them in Forensics class soon after.
- Though it's not very helpful when the dead body keeps squirming because he doesn't like bugs.
- How to hawk baked goods in the crowds on vintage weekend outside the bars because they were the easiest people to get to part with their pocket change.
- FYEX (First Year Experience) had to be the more worthless "class" ever.
- One of the trumpets falling off the risers every year during the first week of school.
- "A wooden clarinet is the orgasm of clarinets."
- Being Raggedy Ann for Halloween my senior year and lifeguarding IAC's still wearing my red, hand-made yarn wig.
- Powderpuff Football. Only we forgot most of the time to go for the flags as it was simpler to flat-out tackle people.
- Scuba diving in the pool.
- The massive bruise on the inside of my thigh from the giant's ladder in Lifetime Sports
- Jesse's face when he found out I'd sprained my ankle playing indoor soccer in the middle of basketball season.
- Though, the above didn't really matter because it's not like I played in the games, anyway.
- Having whooping cough as a sophomore and continuing on with life like I wasn't trying to hack up a lung simply by walking from class to class.
- My love of films can probably stem from film analysis sophomore year.
- I can write flash fiction; it might not come out very good or make much sense, but I can do it.
- I vowed never to take any more business classes ever after sophomore year.
- Though we made the family "dream" of having an ice cream boat kind of come true that year, with the magnets to prove it.
- My classmates weren't as unobservant as I once thought.
- Humming the Vonage theme song in public yields a lot of interesting looks from boys in leather jackets.
- Music Club trips to NYC were, in some ways, the highlight of the year.
- Riding three hours to Buffalo on a school bus was an interesting experience, especially for my rear end.
- I got really good at getting on the bus in the morning, leaning against the window, and falling back asleep for the twenty minutes it took to get to town.
- I cemented how easy it was to live out of a Jansport backpack on a daily basis, in an academic sense.
- It's a bad idea to let your friend fake-bleed you at the Freshman Humanities Renaissance Fair in the courtyard because it somehow leads to higher-ups thinking that you and two other girls have been cutting yourselves.
- In order to get out of there as soon as possible, showing said higher ups the slightly oozing patch of psoriasis you've digged open on your ankle will do the trick nicely.
- You might think you have things under control, but until you break out completely and totally in itchy bits that may or may not leave scars because of something that you have no genetic control over, you find out just how much you really have to keep your head high to live with things.
- I found out that, sometimes, when you really love someone, you let them go to make sure you don't hurt them.
- The above, however, does not ensure that they will be there when you return at a time convenient for you.
- Eating school food made me the fan of tacos that I am today.
- I think I wasn't too far into my sophomore year when I realized that I didn't want to be one of the popular girls; I just wanted to be me, whoever that was going to develop into.
- How not to sugarcoat things.
- Sunday in the Park with George is a truly awful musical when you're eighteen and there's such shows like Avenue Q and Monty Python's Spamalot to be seen instead.
- I don't like rye bread, and while it might look similar to wheat, it sure as shit isn't.
- Never had the urge to drink illegally while in high school.
- High school is a different ball game that takes a bit to get used to, and it doesn't help when you're about as down as you could get when you get in there.
- I learned how to temporarily shut up and go with the flow because that's what it took to do a good job on a job that needed to get done.
- You can be a bit busted if you know how to sit there and superglue yourself back together while paying attention in math.
- How not to give a damn about certain things.
- How to make my mom understand that being in the nineties in calculus might not be something that I achieve, and how to settle for high eighties when I'm still trying my best.
- How to play alto saxophone because who ever heard of a clarinet in jazz band?
- The opening to Colt 45 while tooling around the nation's capital for senior trip.
- That it's kind of cool to think about double calculus as double potions, but it's nowhere near as cool.
- I can't stand Ernest Hemingway.
- How cool having a sister is, and how much we do, despite our age difference, have in common.
- Going to Open House still in a uniform and cleats is perfectly acceptable.
- Trying to get to first base in softball to listen to your dad give you advice and tell you bad jokes to make you giggle.
- There are things in life more important than soccer.
- The new basketball uniform shorts were the most comfortable things in the world.
- Riding on the bus with the baseball team wasn't all it was cracked up to be.
- Riding the bus, period, wasn't all that it was cracked up to be.
- How to feel like you're stretched in fifty different directions, but still together enough to get everything finished that you need to, and well enough that nobody thinks twice about it.
- There's only so many times that you can say, "Eh, tomorrow" because your tomorrows start to run out.
- What it feels like to finish something significant.
- Writing a senior thesis in five weeks absolutely sucks.
- Being yourself, no matter how crazy and unconventional that might be, is so much easier and so much more worth it than trying to be anyone else.
- I'm about as bad at economics as I am at math.
- I like dressing up and looking decidedly female every now and then.
- Coffee is not only lovely, but also a necessity.
- Going to Europe and then returning and having the opening night and subsequent three performances of the school play when you have no voice makes life very, very interesting.
- Graduation is one of those things that always seems like it'll never get there, and then when it's looming, you wonder where the time's gone.
- A locker only holds so much stuff before it decides it won't shut, open, or even move.
- The instructions, "Put in your combination and then continue to turn like a doorknob" would have been really helpful that first time standing by 477 and wondering how to get into it.
- I don't think I was ever late to English my first year because my locker was right across the hall from the English room.
- I took one art class, and that was more than enough for my four years in that building.
- Sadly, cafeteria food doesn't get much better when you hit high school.
- Cafeteria's came with vending machines.
- Get there early enough so that you have a parking space.
- Doesn't matter what kind of car you drive, just as long as you have one to drive.
- How I ever passed my Earth Science regents is beyond me because there were eight seniors in a class of sophomores, and most of us, since it was the end of the day, slept through most of it.
- AP Calculus, AP Economics, and AP English was going to be the death of me my senior year.
- New York State Regents are, for a lack of a better phrase, the shitty things on the face of the Earth.
- The SAT's are just as bad as everyone says they are.
- Giving blood is fun. What's not so fun is passing out and scaring the living bejeezus out of your two best guy friends when you fall out of your chair.
- Playing softball after giving blood is always advisable - when half the team has done it, what else can you do?
- Things weren't always easy. Do the best you could, and hope for the rest to sort itself out.
- NYSSMA is a great excuse to miss school, though they'll flay you alive when you have whooping cough and are trying not to hack up a lung while you play classical music.
- When in NYC, one must visit in a Starbucks. That is nonnegotiable.
- I was the band geek, the writer, the athlete, and the chick with enough brains to graduate tenth out of ninety-seven. It hasn't always been easy, but if you stick to what you know and follow your instincts, the end result is pretty good.
Monday, November 22, 2010
Things to Know: International Edition VI
- I'm down to four more weeks - a little over maybe - of living in Wales.
- Thursday is Thanksgiving.
- Thursday is also the day when Louise turns one and twenty.
- One and twenty is olden talk for twenty-one (thank you, Horatio Hornblower).
- Have I mentioned lately how much I love Jamie Bamber?
- So, we made handprint turkeys in my primary school class today - after a Powerpoint about Thanksgiving - and I took my bracelets off so I wouldn't get paint on them. Then forgot to put them back on. Therefore, I feel kind of naked and you can totally see my tan line. Or tan chunk, rather.
- My next-door-neighbor has gone home/to visit his girlfriend for the week.
- Due to the previous, Louise can actually shave her legs now.
- I haven't shaved in approximately three weeks.
- Give or take.
- On the housing front, I just send the Res Ed people an email saying that I wanted to be placed in Beta Sigma, which is the Hope House, the theme house in support of the American Cancer Society.
- The room is actually the smallest single on campus, but it would be an assured single, and I could figure out what to do about a meal plan - doing a possible partial one, which might save my mama some money this upcoming semester.
- The piece that I want to do titled Things I Learned in High School is definitely going to happen, but there's no release date yet.
- Who does release dates for blog posts, anyway? Books yes, blog post? Eh. Possibly.
- Anyway, I know that's probably going to make you giggle, which is another reason to write it, too.
- My wrist looks really, really naked without my bands.
- It's kind of freaking me out.
- My handprint turkey I left in the classroom, but when I get my bands, I'll nab my turkey, too.
- Yes, I have plans to hang him on the fridge using my Mind the Gap magnet.
- Whether he will come to New York with me or be left to live with the flat mates for the rest of the year has yet to be decided.
- I've made a home here. And I have to leave it in a month.
- Thursday is Thanksgiving.
- Thursday is also the day when Louise turns one and twenty.
- One and twenty is olden talk for twenty-one (thank you, Horatio Hornblower).
- Have I mentioned lately how much I love Jamie Bamber?
- So, we made handprint turkeys in my primary school class today - after a Powerpoint about Thanksgiving - and I took my bracelets off so I wouldn't get paint on them. Then forgot to put them back on. Therefore, I feel kind of naked and you can totally see my tan line. Or tan chunk, rather.
- My next-door-neighbor has gone home/to visit his girlfriend for the week.
- Due to the previous, Louise can actually shave her legs now.
- I haven't shaved in approximately three weeks.
- Give or take.
- On the housing front, I just send the Res Ed people an email saying that I wanted to be placed in Beta Sigma, which is the Hope House, the theme house in support of the American Cancer Society.
- The room is actually the smallest single on campus, but it would be an assured single, and I could figure out what to do about a meal plan - doing a possible partial one, which might save my mama some money this upcoming semester.
- The piece that I want to do titled Things I Learned in High School is definitely going to happen, but there's no release date yet.
- Who does release dates for blog posts, anyway? Books yes, blog post? Eh. Possibly.
- Anyway, I know that's probably going to make you giggle, which is another reason to write it, too.
- My wrist looks really, really naked without my bands.
- It's kind of freaking me out.
- My handprint turkey I left in the classroom, but when I get my bands, I'll nab my turkey, too.
- Yes, I have plans to hang him on the fridge using my Mind the Gap magnet.
- Whether he will come to New York with me or be left to live with the flat mates for the rest of the year has yet to be decided.
- I've made a home here. And I have to leave it in a month.
Thursday, October 21, 2010
To 200 And Beyond!
First thing on my agenda for the evening (or morning, depending on which part of the world you're currently inhabiting) is that - and I don't even know how I missed it because I was keeping careful track - Murphy and Me XXVI marks the 200th post for The Wandering Sagittarius.
Whoa. That's kinda cool.
200 posts for a blog that's not even been in existence for two years. I'd say that's pretty cool. A decent accomplishment. And, said blog seems to find a new follower or two every day. Heck, we're even getting comments on entries now.
In that case, a great big, tremendously important Thank You goes out to all those who clicked the follow button, or the comment one, or somehow stumbled upon the place and more or less watches uncertainly while trying to figure out if poking a sleeping dragon - or a white-haired bear - with a stick is really something you want to do.
But really, my snark is worse than my bite.
I feel kind of proud of myself for coming out of my little blogging bubble. I've started to comment on more of the blogs that I've been following for a while - nearly a year, in some cases, two - and I've noticed a couple of things.
Not all blogs have comments that go straight through to the actual blog post. Some have to be approved before they show up.
Now, I know that's user preference. I get that. I'm only incredibly dense on some days, not all of them. But...why have a comment button at all if you're going to pick and choose which you display and which you don't? If you write about a controversial topic, something that might not gel with everybody that reads your blog but is generally going to foster discussion, what good does it do to have the ability to censor the comments coming through? I'm not saying this happens, but theoretically, you could be playing only one side of the issue. And the person who sees the other side might be too scared to comment because, well, the people in the pool aren't going to like the color or style of their swimwear. Just doesn't make sense to me.
Then again, just because it doesn't make sense to me doesn't mean it doesn't make sense to someone else.
Trust me, I'm going to be the last person to tell you how to run your own blog. Mostly because I wouldn't want someone to try that on me. And, I'm not going to lie, I can see it now.
Louise, why do you have to be so damn combative on your blog? Can't you stay nice and neutral, keep both feet on one side of the line?
Erm, well...no. I can't. There are lines you shouldn't cross - those are pretty damn obvious - and lines that you can not only flirt openly with, but you can also sit there and make out with. Those are the fun ones. Generally, the first lines that you flirt with, in anything, are the ones that you can use to make a little box around yourself. It's cliched, it's probably been overused, but hey, cliches had to be made some way.
So those lines in that box? Well, call it dipping your toes in the river to test the temperature. Even if you put the smallest part of your big toenail on that line, you've still pushed it.
It's not so much like openly rebelling by dumping a catastrophic amount of tea in a harbor, but more like learning to live a little more. A little bigger. Notice that bigger doesn't mean grander. You can live big and quietly. It's a combination of what you do and how you do it.
Which, when you're translating parts of your life into a widely viewable blog for all of the internet to see, can seem really big and really loud. And twenty kinds of scary. Like life though, it's only overwhelmingly scary if you let it be that way. It's also only as awkward as you make it. That little gem I learned from both my mother and my sister in the fallout of the soccer season that never was. That was a curveball. A nasty one. But I picked myself out of the dirt, gripped the bat a little harder, and aimed for the pitcher's head on the next swing.
Didn't knock him out, but I got to first. And from there, well, it's a little more dodging and reading the situation.
I like my metaphors, if you can't tell. Though, when I start to sound like Doc from The Boondock Saints you should probably take a step back and ask if I'm still alright. Chances are I might be a little on the spastic side. That's okay; hand me some coffee or tea and shove me in the direction of the nearest writing utensil and paper.
I think what I'm trying to say is that it's been a fantastic first 200 posts, and if I was a little braver I'd pull random bits from the archives to show you how much growth is possible when you just let yourself be.
Now, I know it's late, but I'd like to make a toast. So, raise your tea cup (mug, in my case), and give a healthy, hearty salute to friends, followers, lurkers, fellow bloggers, and everyone else who has even the smallest hand in this whole crazy process, 200 in and a lot more to go. Thank you all.
Whoa. That's kinda cool.
200 posts for a blog that's not even been in existence for two years. I'd say that's pretty cool. A decent accomplishment. And, said blog seems to find a new follower or two every day. Heck, we're even getting comments on entries now.
In that case, a great big, tremendously important Thank You goes out to all those who clicked the follow button, or the comment one, or somehow stumbled upon the place and more or less watches uncertainly while trying to figure out if poking a sleeping dragon - or a white-haired bear - with a stick is really something you want to do.
But really, my snark is worse than my bite.
I feel kind of proud of myself for coming out of my little blogging bubble. I've started to comment on more of the blogs that I've been following for a while - nearly a year, in some cases, two - and I've noticed a couple of things.
Not all blogs have comments that go straight through to the actual blog post. Some have to be approved before they show up.
Now, I know that's user preference. I get that. I'm only incredibly dense on some days, not all of them. But...why have a comment button at all if you're going to pick and choose which you display and which you don't? If you write about a controversial topic, something that might not gel with everybody that reads your blog but is generally going to foster discussion, what good does it do to have the ability to censor the comments coming through? I'm not saying this happens, but theoretically, you could be playing only one side of the issue. And the person who sees the other side might be too scared to comment because, well, the people in the pool aren't going to like the color or style of their swimwear. Just doesn't make sense to me.
Then again, just because it doesn't make sense to me doesn't mean it doesn't make sense to someone else.
Trust me, I'm going to be the last person to tell you how to run your own blog. Mostly because I wouldn't want someone to try that on me. And, I'm not going to lie, I can see it now.
Louise, why do you have to be so damn combative on your blog? Can't you stay nice and neutral, keep both feet on one side of the line?
Erm, well...no. I can't. There are lines you shouldn't cross - those are pretty damn obvious - and lines that you can not only flirt openly with, but you can also sit there and make out with. Those are the fun ones. Generally, the first lines that you flirt with, in anything, are the ones that you can use to make a little box around yourself. It's cliched, it's probably been overused, but hey, cliches had to be made some way.
So those lines in that box? Well, call it dipping your toes in the river to test the temperature. Even if you put the smallest part of your big toenail on that line, you've still pushed it.
It's not so much like openly rebelling by dumping a catastrophic amount of tea in a harbor, but more like learning to live a little more. A little bigger. Notice that bigger doesn't mean grander. You can live big and quietly. It's a combination of what you do and how you do it.
Which, when you're translating parts of your life into a widely viewable blog for all of the internet to see, can seem really big and really loud. And twenty kinds of scary. Like life though, it's only overwhelmingly scary if you let it be that way. It's also only as awkward as you make it. That little gem I learned from both my mother and my sister in the fallout of the soccer season that never was. That was a curveball. A nasty one. But I picked myself out of the dirt, gripped the bat a little harder, and aimed for the pitcher's head on the next swing.
Didn't knock him out, but I got to first. And from there, well, it's a little more dodging and reading the situation.
I like my metaphors, if you can't tell. Though, when I start to sound like Doc from The Boondock Saints you should probably take a step back and ask if I'm still alright. Chances are I might be a little on the spastic side. That's okay; hand me some coffee or tea and shove me in the direction of the nearest writing utensil and paper.
I think what I'm trying to say is that it's been a fantastic first 200 posts, and if I was a little braver I'd pull random bits from the archives to show you how much growth is possible when you just let yourself be.
Now, I know it's late, but I'd like to make a toast. So, raise your tea cup (mug, in my case), and give a healthy, hearty salute to friends, followers, lurkers, fellow bloggers, and everyone else who has even the smallest hand in this whole crazy process, 200 in and a lot more to go. Thank you all.
Thursday, April 29, 2010
Things to Know XII
[I know it's been a while since you've had a decent list. Bear with me.]
- Strangely enough, I've got a handle on things. Really.
- I made it through my chem test yesterday night without freaking out completely, something that I'm quite proud of (and so is the woman that I saw at the Counseling Center).
- Physics in action is quite a sight to behold: Reaching for a tissue and tipping the picture frame off the printer and into the iced coffee, which then hits the floor and splatters everywhere.
- Physics in action is sometimes not entirely fun: Case in point - said coffee catastrophe.
- One of my favorite things in my dorm room is the photo of my sister and I - me in my graduation robe, her with her favorite red heels off, both of us under a tree on a June day.
- One of my other favorite things - the photo of the small child that is more like me than one would think possible, pigtails and all, as we sit on the steps of the porch.
- And yeah, the boys of Boondock are always lovely to look at.
- My sister may disown me for watching Glee. I'm fairly okay with this.
- My room smells like coffee when you walk through the door. This is due to the foot and a half stain on the $20 indoor/outdoor dark green carpet from Wal-Mart for when I moved in last August.
- There are worse things that my room could smell like.
- I'm not entirely sure why I can't access the site that gave me my blog background to search for one for my sister in exchange for monster cookies.
- Yes, I allow myself to be bribed with baked goods.
- It's the Townsend Bakery, what do you expect?
- You're probably all waiting to hear about the shenanigans that I got up to in Toronto because I couldn't tweet them. Patience. I'll get to it.
- Is it bad that I'm looking forward to going back to work?
- Fred has turn signals!
- I could quite possibly declare my minor today.
- For the first time in quite a while, I feel really comfortable with myself and my own skin. Not quite warm enough to let bare arms run rampant, but it's getting there.
- I'm currently in the process of growing my hair out again, because, quite simply, I miss the length.
- My winter hat is tied to the door handle to dry from its run in with coffee.
- I took both FOCI to Toronto - Murf came back with fur missing; my sister's is singed in more than one place. I think they did well.
- My current can't-possibly-live-without-listening-to-this-right-now playlist is as follows: I'm Alive (Kenny Chesney), American Honey (Lady Antebellum), Rain is a Good Thing (Luke Bryant), Hey Good Lookin' (Jimmy Buffett), Hell on the Heart (Eric Church), The Truth (Jason Aldean), This Everyday Love (Rascal Flatts), Drops of Jupiter (Train), 100 Years (Five for Fighting), and Smile (Uncle Kracker).
- The other playlist is one that begins with Lady Gaga and only gets weirder from there.
- Yes I listen to Jimmy Buffett. I think we've been over this.
- Hey hey. Tomorrow is Friday.
- And things can only go up from here.
- Strangely enough, I've got a handle on things. Really.
- I made it through my chem test yesterday night without freaking out completely, something that I'm quite proud of (and so is the woman that I saw at the Counseling Center).
- Physics in action is quite a sight to behold: Reaching for a tissue and tipping the picture frame off the printer and into the iced coffee, which then hits the floor and splatters everywhere.
- Physics in action is sometimes not entirely fun: Case in point - said coffee catastrophe.
- One of my favorite things in my dorm room is the photo of my sister and I - me in my graduation robe, her with her favorite red heels off, both of us under a tree on a June day.
- One of my other favorite things - the photo of the small child that is more like me than one would think possible, pigtails and all, as we sit on the steps of the porch.
- And yeah, the boys of Boondock are always lovely to look at.
- My sister may disown me for watching Glee. I'm fairly okay with this.
- My room smells like coffee when you walk through the door. This is due to the foot and a half stain on the $20 indoor/outdoor dark green carpet from Wal-Mart for when I moved in last August.
- There are worse things that my room could smell like.
- I'm not entirely sure why I can't access the site that gave me my blog background to search for one for my sister in exchange for monster cookies.
- Yes, I allow myself to be bribed with baked goods.
- It's the Townsend Bakery, what do you expect?
- You're probably all waiting to hear about the shenanigans that I got up to in Toronto because I couldn't tweet them. Patience. I'll get to it.
- Is it bad that I'm looking forward to going back to work?
- Fred has turn signals!
- I could quite possibly declare my minor today.
- For the first time in quite a while, I feel really comfortable with myself and my own skin. Not quite warm enough to let bare arms run rampant, but it's getting there.
- I'm currently in the process of growing my hair out again, because, quite simply, I miss the length.
- My winter hat is tied to the door handle to dry from its run in with coffee.
- I took both FOCI to Toronto - Murf came back with fur missing; my sister's is singed in more than one place. I think they did well.
- My current can't-possibly-live-without-listening-to-this-right-now playlist is as follows: I'm Alive (Kenny Chesney), American Honey (Lady Antebellum), Rain is a Good Thing (Luke Bryant), Hey Good Lookin' (Jimmy Buffett), Hell on the Heart (Eric Church), The Truth (Jason Aldean), This Everyday Love (Rascal Flatts), Drops of Jupiter (Train), 100 Years (Five for Fighting), and Smile (Uncle Kracker).
- The other playlist is one that begins with Lady Gaga and only gets weirder from there.
- Yes I listen to Jimmy Buffett. I think we've been over this.
- Hey hey. Tomorrow is Friday.
- And things can only go up from here.
Saturday, April 10, 2010
Things to Know XI
- I watched a 3-D movie last night for the first time: How to Train Your Dragon with two girls from my floor.
- How to Train Your Dragon is a really, really good movie and reminded me of my cat. Okay, Toothless reminded me of my cat.
- Said cat, Pepper, actually resembles a pot-bellied pig more than a feline because she's been licking the fur off her sides.
- I took my best friend for a bike ride around one of the littler squares by where I live. She just wasn't sure it was that little.
- Pam works just as well on rusty bike chains as does WD40.
-I got a C on my physics test that I thought for damn sure I was going to fail miserably.
- I had NO H8 painted on my cheek, duct tape over my mouth, and my photo taken in protest of Prop 8.
- I was voted slightly without consent to be the layout editor next year for martini. They just verified that that was alright when I walked through the door at the meeting.
- They'll more or less have to wait for me to come back from abroad unless we want to trust the editions through the internet.
- I finally got my NYC blog post done. It is appropriately massive. And can be found here.
- We leave for Toronto in two weeks.
- The semester is almost over with. Uh.....
- I've got a bunch of free weekends now that I am not doing the sound board from the production of, Devotion to the Cross. Because I had too many evening conflicts that they apparently couldn't work around.
- I just instead have a 10-15 page paper to write instead.
- My sister is going to punch me the next time she sees me because I keep promising her Murphy and I haven't actually given it to her yet.
- That whole no procrastination thing? Yeah, gone out the window at the moment.
- There is a clothes island in the middle of my room. Therefore there is only one path from the door to the bed.
- I'm ready to go back to work.
- I am bad at being feminine - I forget to shave my legs for weeks at a time.
- I've had so much coffee in the past week that I'm impressed I haven't died of caffeine overload.
- Tonight is Relay for Life. Cue the voluntary all-nighter for the sake of hoping to one day abolish cancer.
- It's quite frightening - cancer, that is - because as a scientist in the chemistry and biology fields, you know exactly what happens in the body to form cancer, and you know the effects of the ways to fight it.
- In this regard the human body is incredibly resilient.
- Last summer I went out to visit my best friend for a week - not in her hometown but as she was vacationing on Martha's Vineyard. This year - and I need to have this talk with mom and dad - but I'd like her to come out for a week. Specifically the one where we're at the lake.
- The only snag in that plan is that I might have to work, and I'm not sure how many cruises I'll have.
- Did I mention I'm ready to go back to work?
- I don't know where I'm going to live next year. I'm more or less okay with this.
- Until I learned it was illegal to pitch a tent on the quad. Damn.
- Technically it was also illegal to go sledding on campus, but we did that anyway.
- How to Train Your Dragon is a really, really good movie and reminded me of my cat. Okay, Toothless reminded me of my cat.
- Said cat, Pepper, actually resembles a pot-bellied pig more than a feline because she's been licking the fur off her sides.
- I took my best friend for a bike ride around one of the littler squares by where I live. She just wasn't sure it was that little.
- Pam works just as well on rusty bike chains as does WD40.
-I got a C on my physics test that I thought for damn sure I was going to fail miserably.
- I had NO H8 painted on my cheek, duct tape over my mouth, and my photo taken in protest of Prop 8.
- I was voted slightly without consent to be the layout editor next year for martini. They just verified that that was alright when I walked through the door at the meeting.
- They'll more or less have to wait for me to come back from abroad unless we want to trust the editions through the internet.
- I finally got my NYC blog post done. It is appropriately massive. And can be found here.
- We leave for Toronto in two weeks.
- The semester is almost over with. Uh.....
- I've got a bunch of free weekends now that I am not doing the sound board from the production of, Devotion to the Cross. Because I had too many evening conflicts that they apparently couldn't work around.
- I just instead have a 10-15 page paper to write instead.
- My sister is going to punch me the next time she sees me because I keep promising her Murphy and I haven't actually given it to her yet.
- That whole no procrastination thing? Yeah, gone out the window at the moment.
- There is a clothes island in the middle of my room. Therefore there is only one path from the door to the bed.
- I'm ready to go back to work.
- I am bad at being feminine - I forget to shave my legs for weeks at a time.
- I've had so much coffee in the past week that I'm impressed I haven't died of caffeine overload.
- Tonight is Relay for Life. Cue the voluntary all-nighter for the sake of hoping to one day abolish cancer.
- It's quite frightening - cancer, that is - because as a scientist in the chemistry and biology fields, you know exactly what happens in the body to form cancer, and you know the effects of the ways to fight it.
- In this regard the human body is incredibly resilient.
- Last summer I went out to visit my best friend for a week - not in her hometown but as she was vacationing on Martha's Vineyard. This year - and I need to have this talk with mom and dad - but I'd like her to come out for a week. Specifically the one where we're at the lake.
- The only snag in that plan is that I might have to work, and I'm not sure how many cruises I'll have.
- Did I mention I'm ready to go back to work?
- I don't know where I'm going to live next year. I'm more or less okay with this.
- Until I learned it was illegal to pitch a tent on the quad. Damn.
- Technically it was also illegal to go sledding on campus, but we did that anyway.
Sunday, March 7, 2010
Things to Know X
There is one week left before spring break.
Said week cannot go fast enough for me.
Why is it so difficult for me to do my lab reports?
I'm a chemistry major who's back up plan in life is teaching, doesn't have a first-plan, and hates being in the lab. Is there something wrong with this picture?
I go to NYC in approximately two weeks for class.
This will require me to move my physics lab - namely, out of my section (the night) into the afternoon. There is a good chance that Fizziks boy will be there.
I can't seem to find Murfee. I have no idea where he's hiding, or even if he's still at this end of the lake.
I had forgotten how much I like to ice skate.
It's becoming really difficult for me to make myself do homework.
I was a bad person this afternoon - I went to Subway to get some dinner because I'm more or less living in the publication sweet tonight, and got Dr. Pepper to drink.
This is only an issue because I'm not supposed to have carbonation.
On the scale of the three things that I can't have that cause pain when I do, soda is somewhere between a little bit of white pasta and a whole lot of white bread.
I filed the next batch of paperwork required for going abroad.
I am now in possession of an International Student Identification Card (ISIC). The photo is absolutely horrendous.
My room is a mess and I have no ambition to pick it up. It's a week before break.
Found out yesterday that my ex-boyfriend is dating the girl who lives at the other end of the hall on my floor.
They're both wonderful people and I have nothing against them but it was a little difficult to see for the first time.
Still haven't figured out how to respond to comments that people leave on my blog.
Would be helpful, when responding (or trying to) to said comments, if I actually looked for them or had some system of notification. One had been sitting in there for a couple of days.
Jimmy Buffet and Zac Brown Band's rendition of Margaritaville is absolutely lovely.
I blame my soccer coach for my being a half-assed Parrothead. That, and that CD on the boat last summer that was all Jimmy Buffet. I think I can blame that on Greg.
I love my job. Which reminds me that I might need to stop down and see if they got my message because they haven't gotten back to me.
I'm ready to go back to work.
I'm more than ready for Easter because I. Need. Coffee.
A trip to NYC isn't going to be complete without stopping at a Starbucks, and if we do, I can't get coffee. I'll have to get hot chocolate. Not bad, but not exactly a mocha, either.
Getting an education doesn't necessarily mean just college - I had the privilege of a crash-course in 93 Oldsmobile tail lights, replacing bulbs, fuses, where the fuse panel is, how to replace them, where the ticker is for the turn signal, where that is, how to replace it, and dealing with auto parts people.
Irony - Your car won't start start in the parking lot of Advance Auto Parts.
Said week cannot go fast enough for me.
Why is it so difficult for me to do my lab reports?
I'm a chemistry major who's back up plan in life is teaching, doesn't have a first-plan, and hates being in the lab. Is there something wrong with this picture?
I go to NYC in approximately two weeks for class.
This will require me to move my physics lab - namely, out of my section (the night) into the afternoon. There is a good chance that Fizziks boy will be there.
I can't seem to find Murfee. I have no idea where he's hiding, or even if he's still at this end of the lake.
I had forgotten how much I like to ice skate.
It's becoming really difficult for me to make myself do homework.
I was a bad person this afternoon - I went to Subway to get some dinner because I'm more or less living in the publication sweet tonight, and got Dr. Pepper to drink.
This is only an issue because I'm not supposed to have carbonation.
On the scale of the three things that I can't have that cause pain when I do, soda is somewhere between a little bit of white pasta and a whole lot of white bread.
I filed the next batch of paperwork required for going abroad.
I am now in possession of an International Student Identification Card (ISIC). The photo is absolutely horrendous.
My room is a mess and I have no ambition to pick it up. It's a week before break.
Found out yesterday that my ex-boyfriend is dating the girl who lives at the other end of the hall on my floor.
They're both wonderful people and I have nothing against them but it was a little difficult to see for the first time.
Still haven't figured out how to respond to comments that people leave on my blog.
Would be helpful, when responding (or trying to) to said comments, if I actually looked for them or had some system of notification. One had been sitting in there for a couple of days.
Jimmy Buffet and Zac Brown Band's rendition of Margaritaville is absolutely lovely.
I blame my soccer coach for my being a half-assed Parrothead. That, and that CD on the boat last summer that was all Jimmy Buffet. I think I can blame that on Greg.
I love my job. Which reminds me that I might need to stop down and see if they got my message because they haven't gotten back to me.
I'm ready to go back to work.
I'm more than ready for Easter because I. Need. Coffee.
A trip to NYC isn't going to be complete without stopping at a Starbucks, and if we do, I can't get coffee. I'll have to get hot chocolate. Not bad, but not exactly a mocha, either.
Getting an education doesn't necessarily mean just college - I had the privilege of a crash-course in 93 Oldsmobile tail lights, replacing bulbs, fuses, where the fuse panel is, how to replace them, where the ticker is for the turn signal, where that is, how to replace it, and dealing with auto parts people.
Irony - Your car won't start start in the parking lot of Advance Auto Parts.
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
Soap Box Derby
A 5'4 girl with a bandanna over her curly brown hair inserts the key in her corner single and pushes open the door. She turns on the slightly illegal Medusa lamp in the dormer window, dumps her bag on the floor, and takes off her coat. She takes her well-used, beat-up Soap box out of the closet, and lets it thump to the floor. Then she stands on it.
I'm getting really comfortable up here, and I'm not entirely sure this is a bad thing.
I'm also beginning to wonder if there is more of a personality connection between me and my sister than previously decided. Her Facebook status sums it up quite nicely for me: A whole lot of cranky with a heaping side of snark today.
My inner snark? Oh, damn, yes in full blast. Hell, I don't even need a microphone while I stand up here. Quite honestly, my day didn't start well, and it surely didn't end well. Through no fault of you lovely people, but quite honestly I am sick of humanity at the moment. I am sick of working with people.
Honestly, this is no surprise. When I was in middle school, I used to get sick of dealing with the same people at the end of the year, and usually wound up beating somebody up. They were usually boys, who I was sick of hearing relentless shit about myself and all that was lacking through the year, and so, usually on the second to last or the actual last day, I would just snap a little. Enough to literally hoist one up by his lapels and slam against the fence around the tennis court at the middle school, slam a finger in a locker (and he called me some truly interesting names after that, and we were only in sixth grade - but we had an understanding of each other after that), and some punches when the teachers weren't looking. I had to be kind of careful about the girls that would annoy me, mostly because I had to play sports with them, and that was a certain disasterful clusterfuck in itself. Absolutely ridiculous in some instances, and the limit of my patience (already thin on the best of days) was stretched.
Anyway - tangent as usual - I get sick of dealing with people. It's a personality flaw, coupled with the brutal honesty that usually comes from my snark-tastic brain through the small filter, and out my mouth. And, contrary to popular belief, having a brutally honest outlook on life (and mouth to go with it) doesn't mean that you're immature in any way. It doesn't mean that you can't keep your mouth shut, it just means that when push comes to shove you're not going to sugarcoat things that might...well, probably should be sugarcoated. This is how I operate. In the cases where I'm not saying anything, it's because what's rolling around in my head is probably more offensive that I can really care to admit at that point, and I'll keep it o myself, thanks. But that doesn't mean that I'm not thinkin' it.
And once again, when push comes to shove, if you need to hear it and actually listen and take it in, sit down, shut up, and open your ears. I apparently know my ass from my elbow [thank you, E], especially if it's something that you're not really inclined to believe about yourself but need to hear anyway. I might be an optimist, but I'm not a flailing idiot. Expect the worst and hope for the best.
That being said....to my theater professor who thinks that I'm going to start skipping physics labs to show up to rehearsal in the early stages when I haven't even read the script and started to figure out what sounds go where? You're off your freakin' rocker. Let me put it this way: Science labs in this college are mandatory. You miss a lab without a damn good reason, you are going to fail your science course. This is non-negotiable. So, in Louise's grand scheme of priorities, doing sound as a project for Stagecraft (project, while semi-mandatory, still not quite to the level of the science lab) Devotion to the Cross (seriously? You want college kids to come to this, right?) is sitting toward the bottom of the list.
Perspective. Priority. Louise's To-Do List. These things, while they mix accordingly some days, aren't always fully miscible. That's a science term, if you couldn't guess, coming from the Chemistry major.
She crouches and then sits on the box, instead of standing. Brings her legs up to sit cross-legged.
I like this a little better. It's a little more informal and less like I'm more or less screaming at people. I don't like to scream, contrary to popular belief. I do try to keep a lid on that temper that comes from my mother's side of the family, the one that we all have but will deny until we're blue in the face. And while I consider myself more toward my father, personality and temperament wise, you piss me off and we're going to have issues. I've gotten better about not throwing punches (I have no desire to be a Jim Kirk in a bar brawl), but I've got snark, wit, and in most cases, paper and pen to do my dirty work.
It's times like this that I'm glad I live alone. Because this side of me, while an integral part of who I am, isn't entirely...attractive to some people. Not quite...endearing. And I can be charming and endearing, usually.
I'm really tempted to continue this and begin to really rant and rave, and that's my choice. Whether or not you'd really like to read about the incredible amount of shit in my week that's made me quite nasty today...well, that's your choice.
I'll keep this short and sweet.
At the end of the day, you have to be true to yourself. And you have to realize that you're not perfect, that you have character flaws, and that's the whole shebang. So, this part of me where I need to level with people, call them on their shenanigans and, when the time is right and it's necessary, admit that I'm wrong, is still going to be there in the morning. This part of me where I tell you the honest truth with no sugar because you need to hear it, even though, yeah, I'd really like the best to happen, that's going to be there when I wake up cursing at my alarm clock. And the moment you lose any of that, to try and please other people, to try and keep your flaws under wraps and on the lower end of the smile that you show the world, you're not only selling yourself short, but you're screwing the customer in the process, too, since they're not getting their money's worth.
And nobody wants to drink Keystone when they paid for Glenora.
She stands up, off the box, and slips it back into the closet.
I'm getting really comfortable up here, and I'm not entirely sure this is a bad thing.
I'm also beginning to wonder if there is more of a personality connection between me and my sister than previously decided. Her Facebook status sums it up quite nicely for me: A whole lot of cranky with a heaping side of snark today.
My inner snark? Oh, damn, yes in full blast. Hell, I don't even need a microphone while I stand up here. Quite honestly, my day didn't start well, and it surely didn't end well. Through no fault of you lovely people, but quite honestly I am sick of humanity at the moment. I am sick of working with people.
Honestly, this is no surprise. When I was in middle school, I used to get sick of dealing with the same people at the end of the year, and usually wound up beating somebody up. They were usually boys, who I was sick of hearing relentless shit about myself and all that was lacking through the year, and so, usually on the second to last or the actual last day, I would just snap a little. Enough to literally hoist one up by his lapels and slam against the fence around the tennis court at the middle school, slam a finger in a locker (and he called me some truly interesting names after that, and we were only in sixth grade - but we had an understanding of each other after that), and some punches when the teachers weren't looking. I had to be kind of careful about the girls that would annoy me, mostly because I had to play sports with them, and that was a certain disasterful clusterfuck in itself. Absolutely ridiculous in some instances, and the limit of my patience (already thin on the best of days) was stretched.
Anyway - tangent as usual - I get sick of dealing with people. It's a personality flaw, coupled with the brutal honesty that usually comes from my snark-tastic brain through the small filter, and out my mouth. And, contrary to popular belief, having a brutally honest outlook on life (and mouth to go with it) doesn't mean that you're immature in any way. It doesn't mean that you can't keep your mouth shut, it just means that when push comes to shove you're not going to sugarcoat things that might...well, probably should be sugarcoated. This is how I operate. In the cases where I'm not saying anything, it's because what's rolling around in my head is probably more offensive that I can really care to admit at that point, and I'll keep it o myself, thanks. But that doesn't mean that I'm not thinkin' it.
And once again, when push comes to shove, if you need to hear it and actually listen and take it in, sit down, shut up, and open your ears. I apparently know my ass from my elbow [thank you, E], especially if it's something that you're not really inclined to believe about yourself but need to hear anyway. I might be an optimist, but I'm not a flailing idiot. Expect the worst and hope for the best.
That being said....to my theater professor who thinks that I'm going to start skipping physics labs to show up to rehearsal in the early stages when I haven't even read the script and started to figure out what sounds go where? You're off your freakin' rocker. Let me put it this way: Science labs in this college are mandatory. You miss a lab without a damn good reason, you are going to fail your science course. This is non-negotiable. So, in Louise's grand scheme of priorities, doing sound as a project for Stagecraft (project, while semi-mandatory, still not quite to the level of the science lab) Devotion to the Cross (seriously? You want college kids to come to this, right?) is sitting toward the bottom of the list.
Perspective. Priority. Louise's To-Do List. These things, while they mix accordingly some days, aren't always fully miscible. That's a science term, if you couldn't guess, coming from the Chemistry major.
She crouches and then sits on the box, instead of standing. Brings her legs up to sit cross-legged.
I like this a little better. It's a little more informal and less like I'm more or less screaming at people. I don't like to scream, contrary to popular belief. I do try to keep a lid on that temper that comes from my mother's side of the family, the one that we all have but will deny until we're blue in the face. And while I consider myself more toward my father, personality and temperament wise, you piss me off and we're going to have issues. I've gotten better about not throwing punches (I have no desire to be a Jim Kirk in a bar brawl), but I've got snark, wit, and in most cases, paper and pen to do my dirty work.
It's times like this that I'm glad I live alone. Because this side of me, while an integral part of who I am, isn't entirely...attractive to some people. Not quite...endearing. And I can be charming and endearing, usually.
I'm really tempted to continue this and begin to really rant and rave, and that's my choice. Whether or not you'd really like to read about the incredible amount of shit in my week that's made me quite nasty today...well, that's your choice.
I'll keep this short and sweet.
At the end of the day, you have to be true to yourself. And you have to realize that you're not perfect, that you have character flaws, and that's the whole shebang. So, this part of me where I need to level with people, call them on their shenanigans and, when the time is right and it's necessary, admit that I'm wrong, is still going to be there in the morning. This part of me where I tell you the honest truth with no sugar because you need to hear it, even though, yeah, I'd really like the best to happen, that's going to be there when I wake up cursing at my alarm clock. And the moment you lose any of that, to try and please other people, to try and keep your flaws under wraps and on the lower end of the smile that you show the world, you're not only selling yourself short, but you're screwing the customer in the process, too, since they're not getting their money's worth.
And nobody wants to drink Keystone when they paid for Glenora.
She stands up, off the box, and slips it back into the closet.
Thursday, February 25, 2010
A Many Layered Thing
I'm well aware that it's 9:51 at night, and that I probably should be doing some of my chemistry homework (though it's due Monday, but there is still a quiz tomorrow) and I should also email my cooperating teacher and tell him that, due to the snow we are getting and will continue to get, I'm not driving out a windy, curvy, worse-plowed road than the ones that I live on to spend about twice the amount of time it takes me to get out there and risk putting my car (the only one that I have) in the ditch on the way to or from. Not happening. I'll probably leave some of that sentence out, for politically correct reasons.
So, at the moment or rather, since coming back from the martini meeting about twenty minutes ago, I've been flipping from Twitter to some blogs, checked my email a few times, and then kind of wondered, after reading Writing Well Is *Not* Enough Anymore. Damn it over at velveteenmind and the part where she mentioned trying to randomly find blogs using search engines, what would happen should I try and search for my blog without actually searching for it.
Opened a new tab. Hit the home button to bounce back to Yahoo! and then typed in sagittarius. Alrighty. There are an incredible amount of websites defining a sagittarius, and probably providing star charts with the constellation and line drawings of centaurs and whatnot, and I started flipping through the pages of results. And found a gem.
How to Date a Sagittarius.
Found, of course, at eHow where you can apparently learn to do anything that needs doing, and probably some stuff that should have been better left alone.
I clicked on it. I'm curious. How, exactly, does one go about dating a sagittarius?
Keep in mind the article is only two and a half stars out of five. Still...I'm gettin' a kick out of it. And it's a really long week so any extra excuse to smile is great.
First line: Sagittarius, the noble Centaur, makes for a compassionate and very exciting friend.
So far, so good. And not only do Sagittarius's come with actual instructions, we come difficulty ratings and a list of materials that you will need. These materials include picnic lunches and camping gear. So, let's get down to business.
Step 1: Go walking, hiking, or camping. Sagittarians tend to have lots of energy and love the outdoors.
Step 2: Invite a Sag to a political demonstration or campaign rally. Issues of justice are important to them.
Step 3: Take your Sag to a big party. They're fun-loving and usually out-going.
Step 4: Behave in a principled fashion. Sagittarians are very idealistic and will respect only those who are honest and fair.
Step 5: A Sagittarian won't appreciate a purely frivolous gift, seeing it as a waste of money which could be better spent helping someone.
Step 6: Be prepared for a fascinating time - your date may jump from a dry philosophical discussion to an intense psychological encounter.
This the part where I'm supposed to tell you that whoever wrote this hadn't met a Sagittarian in his/her life. But I can't, because, oddly, this fits. At least, this fits me. These are things that I am, things that are in my character and my personality, and it's quite interesting to see them all laid out here, in a 6 Step method. Now, is this going to work if you attempt to ask me out on a date? Probably not. Because, seriously, just ask me for coffee or something since, asking me to go to a political rally or something might make me slightly angry and I'm not really fun to be around when I'm even slightly pissed off. Also makes me snark better.
Now I've gone back to the list of stuff to look through, and found another interesting thing. Which is a look-through of the planets and how they affect a Sagittarius. Which, is quite long and I'm not really going to say anything about it other than, take a look at it here, and that, hands down, my favorite line of that whole thing is: Saturn in Sagittarius: feels safe and secure as long as it understands every situation that it's in. This is not always the most practical placement ("The house is on fire, but that's OK; I know how it started. Never mind that. Get out of the house!).
There is the general consensus that my ruling planet is Jupiter. Notice that I'm not arguing with this. Sagittarius is also a fire sign. And, oddly enough, I came across another personality trait paragraph that, pretty much, is me to a T. It's slightly frightening in a way. That can be found here.
And this, my friends, is classic Louise at her best:
Sagittarius is the traveler of the zodiac and considers every day an opportunity for another adventure. This is a cheerful, spontaneous, and idealistic individual with an exceptional sense of humor. Though there is not a malicious bone in his body, Sagittarius often suffers from foot-in-mouth syndrome, giving honest assessments where a little tact might suit the situation better. (The rest found here.)
So, out of the 50,100,000 search results for the word sagittarius, I didn't have enough patience to sit through there and search until I found the link for my blog.
But if you type in wandering sagittarius then I'm the first to pop up out of 430,000 results. Which makes me giggle about as much as the steps to landing me as a date does, as mentioned previously.
And now, I really must go do some homework and get to sleep, and hell, I might even take something for the cold that I'm trying to incubate. Hope this made you giggle - I know it made me chuckle.
So, at the moment or rather, since coming back from the martini meeting about twenty minutes ago, I've been flipping from Twitter to some blogs, checked my email a few times, and then kind of wondered, after reading Writing Well Is *Not* Enough Anymore. Damn it over at velveteenmind and the part where she mentioned trying to randomly find blogs using search engines, what would happen should I try and search for my blog without actually searching for it.
Opened a new tab. Hit the home button to bounce back to Yahoo! and then typed in sagittarius. Alrighty. There are an incredible amount of websites defining a sagittarius, and probably providing star charts with the constellation and line drawings of centaurs and whatnot, and I started flipping through the pages of results. And found a gem.
How to Date a Sagittarius.
Found, of course, at eHow where you can apparently learn to do anything that needs doing, and probably some stuff that should have been better left alone.
I clicked on it. I'm curious. How, exactly, does one go about dating a sagittarius?
Keep in mind the article is only two and a half stars out of five. Still...I'm gettin' a kick out of it. And it's a really long week so any extra excuse to smile is great.
First line: Sagittarius, the noble Centaur, makes for a compassionate and very exciting friend.
So far, so good. And not only do Sagittarius's come with actual instructions, we come difficulty ratings and a list of materials that you will need. These materials include picnic lunches and camping gear. So, let's get down to business.
Step 1: Go walking, hiking, or camping. Sagittarians tend to have lots of energy and love the outdoors.
Step 2: Invite a Sag to a political demonstration or campaign rally. Issues of justice are important to them.
Step 3: Take your Sag to a big party. They're fun-loving and usually out-going.
Step 4: Behave in a principled fashion. Sagittarians are very idealistic and will respect only those who are honest and fair.
Step 5: A Sagittarian won't appreciate a purely frivolous gift, seeing it as a waste of money which could be better spent helping someone.
Step 6: Be prepared for a fascinating time - your date may jump from a dry philosophical discussion to an intense psychological encounter.
This the part where I'm supposed to tell you that whoever wrote this hadn't met a Sagittarian in his/her life. But I can't, because, oddly, this fits. At least, this fits me. These are things that I am, things that are in my character and my personality, and it's quite interesting to see them all laid out here, in a 6 Step method. Now, is this going to work if you attempt to ask me out on a date? Probably not. Because, seriously, just ask me for coffee or something since, asking me to go to a political rally or something might make me slightly angry and I'm not really fun to be around when I'm even slightly pissed off. Also makes me snark better.
Now I've gone back to the list of stuff to look through, and found another interesting thing. Which is a look-through of the planets and how they affect a Sagittarius. Which, is quite long and I'm not really going to say anything about it other than, take a look at it here, and that, hands down, my favorite line of that whole thing is: Saturn in Sagittarius: feels safe and secure as long as it understands every situation that it's in. This is not always the most practical placement ("The house is on fire, but that's OK; I know how it started. Never mind that. Get out of the house!).
There is the general consensus that my ruling planet is Jupiter. Notice that I'm not arguing with this. Sagittarius is also a fire sign. And, oddly enough, I came across another personality trait paragraph that, pretty much, is me to a T. It's slightly frightening in a way. That can be found here.
And this, my friends, is classic Louise at her best:
Sagittarius is the traveler of the zodiac and considers every day an opportunity for another adventure. This is a cheerful, spontaneous, and idealistic individual with an exceptional sense of humor. Though there is not a malicious bone in his body, Sagittarius often suffers from foot-in-mouth syndrome, giving honest assessments where a little tact might suit the situation better. (The rest found here.)
So, out of the 50,100,000 search results for the word sagittarius, I didn't have enough patience to sit through there and search until I found the link for my blog.
But if you type in wandering sagittarius then I'm the first to pop up out of 430,000 results. Which makes me giggle about as much as the steps to landing me as a date does, as mentioned previously.
And now, I really must go do some homework and get to sleep, and hell, I might even take something for the cold that I'm trying to incubate. Hope this made you giggle - I know it made me chuckle.
Saturday, January 30, 2010
Words of Wisdom from My Buddy Murphy II
(This is the second half of the amazing poster that I have in my room. And Murphy's words of wisdom. Remember: He was an optimist. Again, bold ones indicate favorites.)
If you're feeling good, don't worry, you'll get over it.
90% of everything is crud.
All warranties expire upon payment of invoice.
Where you stand on an issue depends on where you sit.
Never eat prunes when you are famished.
Nature is a mother.
Don't mess with Mrs. Murphy!
There is always one more bug.
Whenever you set out to do something, something else must be done first.
Everything east of the San Andreas fault will eventually plunge into the Atlantic Ocean.
The race is not always to the swift nor the battle to the strong, but that's the way to bet.
The bird in hand is safer than one overhead.
If everything seems to be going well, then you obviously don't know what the hell is going on.
The light at the end of the tunnel is the headlamp of an oncoming train.
If more than one person is responsible for a miscalculation, no one will be at fault.
Nature always sides with the hidden flaw.
Never sleep with anyone crazier than yourself.
Celibacy is not hereditary.
Never argue with a fool, people might not know the difference.
To know yourself is the ultimate form of aggression.
Beauty is only skin deep, ugly goes to the bone.
When in doubt, mumble. When in trouble, delegate.
In case of doubt, make it sound convincing.
You will remember that you forgot to take out the trash when the garbage truck is two doors away.
Murphy's Golden Rule: Whoever has the gold makes the rules.
Never play leapfrog with a unicorn.
It is morally wrong to allow suckers to keep their money.
There's never time to do it right, but there's always time to do it over.
A Smith and Wesson beats four aces.
If you're feeling good, don't worry, you'll get over it.
90% of everything is crud.
All warranties expire upon payment of invoice.
Where you stand on an issue depends on where you sit.
Never eat prunes when you are famished.
Nature is a mother.
Don't mess with Mrs. Murphy!
There is always one more bug.
Whenever you set out to do something, something else must be done first.
Everything east of the San Andreas fault will eventually plunge into the Atlantic Ocean.
The race is not always to the swift nor the battle to the strong, but that's the way to bet.
The bird in hand is safer than one overhead.
If everything seems to be going well, then you obviously don't know what the hell is going on.
The light at the end of the tunnel is the headlamp of an oncoming train.
If more than one person is responsible for a miscalculation, no one will be at fault.
Nature always sides with the hidden flaw.
Never sleep with anyone crazier than yourself.
Celibacy is not hereditary.
Never argue with a fool, people might not know the difference.
To know yourself is the ultimate form of aggression.
Beauty is only skin deep, ugly goes to the bone.
When in doubt, mumble. When in trouble, delegate.
In case of doubt, make it sound convincing.
You will remember that you forgot to take out the trash when the garbage truck is two doors away.
Murphy's Golden Rule: Whoever has the gold makes the rules.
Never play leapfrog with a unicorn.
It is morally wrong to allow suckers to keep their money.
There's never time to do it right, but there's always time to do it over.
A Smith and Wesson beats four aces.
Thursday, December 10, 2009
Split Directives
Quite honestly, if I want to have any inkling of what's going on in the outside world, I'm going to either turn on CNN or pick up the newspaper. I am probably not going to turn to a blog by a college student that offers me bits and pieces in secondhand form.
Now, I'm not knocking my fellow collegiate bloggers. Really, I'm not. And I'm all for collaboration. I mean, just look at TTB. That's a wonderful collaboration between me and my sister. [And if my cousin sweet talks us a little bit and updates a little more often, we might let him have a slice of the proverbial pie - bad pun fully and completely intended]
A personal blog - and I define person in this case as something that has your name to it, that is instinctively and inherently yours - should be about you, because you feel that your life is either so wonderful that everybody needs to pay attention, or so dreadfully boring and mundane that people are going to get laughs when you share that you almost fell down the stairs while trying to ogle the guy on the third floor and didn't really watch where you were going. Which, is a completely hypothetical situation because the guy that I like doesn't live in the same building as me.
A personal blog really shouldn't regurgitate news unless it is something you really feel passionate about or that has some immediate impact on your life.
And, hot damn, if I had my name scrawled across the top of the page, I'd love to have my own staff of writers to go along with it.
But, in a way, that would defeat the purpose of it being a personal blog. And it would be kind of creepy, because, honestly, they would probably have to live with me to understand the sort of shit that happens in my day, because while it's probably normal and completely uninteresting to you people, I find it somewhat hilarious some days, simply because that's the way that I am.
I guess the point I'm attempting to badly articulate [it's late, I'm procrastinating on my lab report] is that if it's going to be a collaboration, give it a collaborative name, at least. Give it a name that doesn't single anybody out, even if you are the administrator [seriously, who does that unless you're actually getting paid to maintain it, and then yeah, it makes sense - which, by the way, where's somebody handing me a paycheck for writing a certain amount of times per week?] so that it gives a feeling of unity. It's all well and good to be at the top of the proverbial food chain, but really....If you put your name on it, you might as well just own up to it.
Which, by no means, is insinuating that I'm the queen of blogging.
I have neither hit a hundred posts nor been at this for a year, but I think that my writing speaks for itself. I write well, I keep it real and down-to-earth [do you expect me to be anywhere else, really? It's finals, people] and you can find a number of different types of writing if you look through the older posts - memories, family, embarrassing moments, bits of fiction [from my novel or otherwise] including a mini-series creation-thing that was spawned because I might as well have married Murphy because I keep getting all his luck. Not quite the same as marrying for money [which I don't think I could do if I tried because, frankly my dear, I just don't give a damn about that kind of stuff] but it's pretty easy to see where good ol' Murph and I stand.
Which reminds me that my Focus now shares the same name. Coincidence? I think not.
The point with what you can find on my blog is simple. You can find me. You can find Molly Louise in each and every one of those posts, and I don't have to cite where I found them since they come from myself. These are little extensions of myself. Including the title. Which, if some of you aren't familiar with your astrological sign (Zodiac), then you might be a little confused.
My birthday is November 25. My astrological sign is a Sagittarius - a centaur. A centaur is a half-man, half-horse...thing [I'm at a loss for how to describe it after that] and is usually depicted in mid-stride with a bow. The Sagittarius has its own constellation in the sky [just like Scorpio and the Big Dipper (well aware the latter one is not an astrological sign, but damn, wouldn't that be cool if it was?)] and, personality wise, people who are under the Sagittarius are said to have certain traits.
One of them is "wandering feet."
I love to travel. Absolutely adore it. That's partly why I'm complete ecstatic to be going to Wales next Fall, and why I was absolutely giddy over the summer with traveling to Massachusetts. I like being in new places and exploring them. Coming from a tourist town, you'd think I wouldn't be all that happy to be doing the tourist-thing, but I really do have a penchant for looking out of the window of plane, bus or car [haven't ridden by train yet, but never fear, I will rectify that sometime soon, hopefully] and wondering Where the hell am I? It's a good feeling. Which I am now going to modify with this: That feeling is absolutely fabulous as long as you have even an inkling of where your destination is. Being completely lost, while that's probably an adrenaline rush of sorts, is not conducive for happy traveling. Neither is being stuck in the Philadelphia airport for twenty-one hours, but I digress at this point, as usual.
The Wandering Sagittarius - That's me. And in this blog so aptly named, you will find bits and pieces [occasionally whole chunks] of me. I don't have a team of writers of writers at my disposal, I'm definitely not getting paid for this, and I'm not doing this for fame and fortune.
And let me point this out right now.
I do not write for fame and fortune.
I write because I love to, and I share because I want to bring other people the joy that writing brings me. My dream is not to be a bestselling author because of the royalty fees, but because I want to walk into a bookstore [specifically a Barnes&Noble], grab myself some Starbucks coffee, and wander through the shelves until I can find my book sitting on the shelf. That is what I want. Anything after that is extraneous.
I write with my sister over at TTB because we both like to write, and we like to share one part of all that ties our family together - baking. Love and baking.
The Wandering Sagittarius [the blog] exists to give a perspective. A unique, college-stressed, science-major perspective on life, love, family, and anything and everything in between. Occasionally the lines get crossed, blurred, and suddenly sometimes disappear. In the end, everything turns out, sometimes not nicely, exactly, but that's life.
So, with something this attached to me, you're not going to hear news from CNN unless it impacts the person currently tapping away on the keyboard while she should be doing her formal chem lab report. And because I'm kind of computer stupid in a way, if I want you to take a look at something, I'll hand you a link to direct your attention.
Bottom line. Group effort = Group name. Even if you're the one in "charge" and you did "most of the work" it's still a group. You still collaborated. Give credit where credit is due, but please, don't name it after yourself if you get regular advice and other things from other sources. That's just tacky. And by regular I mean you have a list of contributors and they have dashes next to their name with what they provide your blog with.
But, Louise. Your sister appears regularly in your blog. Yeah, but she has her own [which I appear in, as well] but that's from her point of view and with her unique writing style. Mine is from my point of view, and my unique writing style. Occasionally, we blend and write things together. Or, she'll write something and I'll write something in return.
And yes, I'm well aware that this way of doing things does not work for everyone. Everyone has their own ideas on how to run a blog, and how they want it laid out, and what they want in it, but...think for a minute.
Original grass to chew or regurgitated cud to suck on?
Now, I'm not knocking my fellow collegiate bloggers. Really, I'm not. And I'm all for collaboration. I mean, just look at TTB. That's a wonderful collaboration between me and my sister. [And if my cousin sweet talks us a little bit and updates a little more often, we might let him have a slice of the proverbial pie - bad pun fully and completely intended]
A personal blog - and I define person in this case as something that has your name to it, that is instinctively and inherently yours - should be about you, because you feel that your life is either so wonderful that everybody needs to pay attention, or so dreadfully boring and mundane that people are going to get laughs when you share that you almost fell down the stairs while trying to ogle the guy on the third floor and didn't really watch where you were going. Which, is a completely hypothetical situation because the guy that I like doesn't live in the same building as me.
A personal blog really shouldn't regurgitate news unless it is something you really feel passionate about or that has some immediate impact on your life.
And, hot damn, if I had my name scrawled across the top of the page, I'd love to have my own staff of writers to go along with it.
But, in a way, that would defeat the purpose of it being a personal blog. And it would be kind of creepy, because, honestly, they would probably have to live with me to understand the sort of shit that happens in my day, because while it's probably normal and completely uninteresting to you people, I find it somewhat hilarious some days, simply because that's the way that I am.
I guess the point I'm attempting to badly articulate [it's late, I'm procrastinating on my lab report] is that if it's going to be a collaboration, give it a collaborative name, at least. Give it a name that doesn't single anybody out, even if you are the administrator [seriously, who does that unless you're actually getting paid to maintain it, and then yeah, it makes sense - which, by the way, where's somebody handing me a paycheck for writing a certain amount of times per week?] so that it gives a feeling of unity. It's all well and good to be at the top of the proverbial food chain, but really....If you put your name on it, you might as well just own up to it.
Which, by no means, is insinuating that I'm the queen of blogging.
I have neither hit a hundred posts nor been at this for a year, but I think that my writing speaks for itself. I write well, I keep it real and down-to-earth [do you expect me to be anywhere else, really? It's finals, people] and you can find a number of different types of writing if you look through the older posts - memories, family, embarrassing moments, bits of fiction [from my novel or otherwise] including a mini-series creation-thing that was spawned because I might as well have married Murphy because I keep getting all his luck. Not quite the same as marrying for money [which I don't think I could do if I tried because, frankly my dear, I just don't give a damn about that kind of stuff] but it's pretty easy to see where good ol' Murph and I stand.
Which reminds me that my Focus now shares the same name. Coincidence? I think not.
The point with what you can find on my blog is simple. You can find me. You can find Molly Louise in each and every one of those posts, and I don't have to cite where I found them since they come from myself. These are little extensions of myself. Including the title. Which, if some of you aren't familiar with your astrological sign (Zodiac), then you might be a little confused.
My birthday is November 25. My astrological sign is a Sagittarius - a centaur. A centaur is a half-man, half-horse...thing [I'm at a loss for how to describe it after that] and is usually depicted in mid-stride with a bow. The Sagittarius has its own constellation in the sky [just like Scorpio and the Big Dipper (well aware the latter one is not an astrological sign, but damn, wouldn't that be cool if it was?)] and, personality wise, people who are under the Sagittarius are said to have certain traits.
One of them is "wandering feet."
I love to travel. Absolutely adore it. That's partly why I'm complete ecstatic to be going to Wales next Fall, and why I was absolutely giddy over the summer with traveling to Massachusetts. I like being in new places and exploring them. Coming from a tourist town, you'd think I wouldn't be all that happy to be doing the tourist-thing, but I really do have a penchant for looking out of the window of plane, bus or car [haven't ridden by train yet, but never fear, I will rectify that sometime soon, hopefully] and wondering Where the hell am I? It's a good feeling. Which I am now going to modify with this: That feeling is absolutely fabulous as long as you have even an inkling of where your destination is. Being completely lost, while that's probably an adrenaline rush of sorts, is not conducive for happy traveling. Neither is being stuck in the Philadelphia airport for twenty-one hours, but I digress at this point, as usual.
The Wandering Sagittarius - That's me. And in this blog so aptly named, you will find bits and pieces [occasionally whole chunks] of me. I don't have a team of writers of writers at my disposal, I'm definitely not getting paid for this, and I'm not doing this for fame and fortune.
And let me point this out right now.
I do not write for fame and fortune.
I write because I love to, and I share because I want to bring other people the joy that writing brings me. My dream is not to be a bestselling author because of the royalty fees, but because I want to walk into a bookstore [specifically a Barnes&Noble], grab myself some Starbucks coffee, and wander through the shelves until I can find my book sitting on the shelf. That is what I want. Anything after that is extraneous.
I write with my sister over at TTB because we both like to write, and we like to share one part of all that ties our family together - baking. Love and baking.
The Wandering Sagittarius [the blog] exists to give a perspective. A unique, college-stressed, science-major perspective on life, love, family, and anything and everything in between. Occasionally the lines get crossed, blurred, and suddenly sometimes disappear. In the end, everything turns out, sometimes not nicely, exactly, but that's life.
So, with something this attached to me, you're not going to hear news from CNN unless it impacts the person currently tapping away on the keyboard while she should be doing her formal chem lab report. And because I'm kind of computer stupid in a way, if I want you to take a look at something, I'll hand you a link to direct your attention.
Bottom line. Group effort = Group name. Even if you're the one in "charge" and you did "most of the work" it's still a group. You still collaborated. Give credit where credit is due, but please, don't name it after yourself if you get regular advice and other things from other sources. That's just tacky. And by regular I mean you have a list of contributors and they have dashes next to their name with what they provide your blog with.
But, Louise. Your sister appears regularly in your blog. Yeah, but she has her own [which I appear in, as well] but that's from her point of view and with her unique writing style. Mine is from my point of view, and my unique writing style. Occasionally, we blend and write things together. Or, she'll write something and I'll write something in return.
And yes, I'm well aware that this way of doing things does not work for everyone. Everyone has their own ideas on how to run a blog, and how they want it laid out, and what they want in it, but...think for a minute.
Original grass to chew or regurgitated cud to suck on?
Monday, December 7, 2009
A Tweeting Twit (Or Two)
I am well aware than you are able to call someone you don't like a "twit," but that is not what's happening in this post. [Give me some credit and some time, before we make that assumption.]
My sister likes to bring her readers The Ollie Chronicles - which often include texts between the two of us (which has taught me to remember what exactly I text because it has a tendency to end up on her blog). That, my dear readers, has inspired me to transfer our latest (my latest rediscovery really) Twitter conversation. Which, contrary to popular belief, probably has some major formatting issues in store for me. But hey, I thought it was pretty damn funny.
[However, unlike Twitter, you can read down the page here and it will make sense.]
HaBryerton: My sister (@MollyLouise10) is in a state of panic. She lost her History Notes notebook - her FINAL, FINAL paper is due next Tuesday
HaBryerton: Whew....@MollyLouise10 found it - someone on campus was nice enough to turn it into the College Library help desk. Whew. #crisisadverted.
MollyLouise10: I figured my facebook friends would probably wanna delete me if I started stream-of-consciousness writing.
MollyLouise10: Yup....procrastinating like it's my job on my teacher cert stuff.
MollyLouise10: okay, so a footrest probably isn't what you'd call this, but because my legs are short enough, it works for me.
MollyLouise10: Haha...I think I love this.
HaBryerton: Nice of you to join us here in twitterville @MollyLouise10
MollyLouise10:@HaBryerton Is this all the welcome wagon I get? There's not even cookies.
MollyLouise10: Probably needs to put the graham crackers and canned frosting away.
HaBryerton:@MollyLouise10 you need to pipe down with your cookie requests before you FOCI fly the coop and head for Townsend
MollyLouise10:@HaBryerton I know. The little buggers have really good ears. And I don't need mine taking an impromptu road trip at the moment.
HaBryerton:@MollyLouise10 We should create a twitter account for the FOCI - I think that would be a hoot
MollyLouise10:@HaBryerton I'm down with that. Jointly, or one for each?
HaBryerton:@MollyLouise10 IDK - What do you think?
MollyLouise10:@HaBryerton One for you and one for me might work best so A) We don't get confused and B) Neither do the people who might follow it.
HaBryerton:@MollyLouise10 good point - I will add that to the do list for the week
MollyLouise10:@HaBryerton Would that require naming them?
HaBryerton:@MollyLouise10 Me thinks that would require naming them and that is where I am stuck
MollyLouise10: Have I mentioned lately how much I hate paperwork?
HaBryerton:@MollyLouise10 And, I think that is part of the reason I have yet to do something like that for mine - I can't come up with a name.
MollyLouise10: I'm thinking mine's a Leo. Just....gut feeling.
MollyLouise10:RT @MollyLouise10 I'm thinking mine's a Leo. Just....gut feeling.
MollyLouise10:@HaBryerton I was trying to get what I wrote to reply to you and failed epically.
MollyLouise10:@HaBryerton In all reality, mine probably should be named "Murphy"......
MollyLouise10:@HaBryerton Should I start listing characters from my book and various wanderings and maybe you'll see something you like?
HaBryerton: Yes!!! Yes!!! RT @MollyLouise10: @HaBryerton In all reality, mine probably should be named "Murphy".....
MollyLouise10: Alrighty then...we'll just name my little wandering focus Murphy.
HaBryerton: no! RT @MollyLouise10: @HaBryerton should i start listing characters from my book & various wanderings & mayb U'll C something U like?
MollyLouise10: @HaBryerton Just a suggestion....I like my head where it's at, thanks.
HaBryerton: If I ever have more children, I should name them MURPHY! RT @MollyLouise10 Alrighty then...we'll just name my little wandering focus Murphy.
MollyLouise10:@HaBryerton Could always call yours "Bugger"
MollyLouise10:@HaBryerton I thought you weren't going to have anymore children?
HaBryerton: @MollyLouise10 I'm NOT so there will not be any children named Murphy
HaBryerton: @MollyLouise10 Now...That sounds too much like snot RT @MollyLouise10: @HaBryerton Could always call yours "Bugger"
MollyLouise10: @HaBryerton Guess we'll be waitin on the off chance that *I* have kids.
MollyLouise10: @HaBryerton No, that would be "Booger" - which might be appropriate.
HaBryerton: I think we have a better chance of hell freezing over RT @MollyLouise10 Guess we'll be waitin on the off chance that *I* have kids.
HaBryerton: @MollyLouise10 "booger""bugger"......same thing
MollyLouise10: @HaBryerton No. One's the British term for someone who's behaving less than nicely/a British swearword.
MollyLouise10: @HaBryerton And the other is the green stuff that comes out of your nose.
So good to know it takes part of a college education to know the definition of a "booger." Hope you enjoyed that as much as I did, and I was part of the pair that actually had that conversation.
And now, we return you to your regularly scheduled programming [also known as Molly actually gets to work on homework.]
My sister likes to bring her readers The Ollie Chronicles - which often include texts between the two of us (which has taught me to remember what exactly I text because it has a tendency to end up on her blog). That, my dear readers, has inspired me to transfer our latest (my latest rediscovery really) Twitter conversation. Which, contrary to popular belief, probably has some major formatting issues in store for me. But hey, I thought it was pretty damn funny.
[However, unlike Twitter, you can read down the page here and it will make sense.]
HaBryerton: My sister (@MollyLouise10) is in a state of panic. She lost her History Notes notebook - her FINAL, FINAL paper is due next Tuesday
HaBryerton: Whew....@MollyLouise10 found it - someone on campus was nice enough to turn it into the College Library help desk. Whew. #crisisadverted.
MollyLouise10: I figured my facebook friends would probably wanna delete me if I started stream-of-consciousness writing.
MollyLouise10: Yup....procrastinating like it's my job on my teacher cert stuff.
MollyLouise10: okay, so a footrest probably isn't what you'd call this, but because my legs are short enough, it works for me.
MollyLouise10: Haha...I think I love this.
HaBryerton: Nice of you to join us here in twitterville @MollyLouise10
MollyLouise10:@HaBryerton Is this all the welcome wagon I get? There's not even cookies.
MollyLouise10: Probably needs to put the graham crackers and canned frosting away.
HaBryerton:@MollyLouise10 you need to pipe down with your cookie requests before you FOCI fly the coop and head for Townsend
MollyLouise10:@HaBryerton I know. The little buggers have really good ears. And I don't need mine taking an impromptu road trip at the moment.
HaBryerton:@MollyLouise10 We should create a twitter account for the FOCI - I think that would be a hoot
MollyLouise10:@HaBryerton I'm down with that. Jointly, or one for each?
HaBryerton:@MollyLouise10 IDK - What do you think?
MollyLouise10:@HaBryerton One for you and one for me might work best so A) We don't get confused and B) Neither do the people who might follow it.
HaBryerton:@MollyLouise10 good point - I will add that to the do list for the week
MollyLouise10:@HaBryerton Would that require naming them?
HaBryerton:@MollyLouise10 Me thinks that would require naming them and that is where I am stuck
MollyLouise10: Have I mentioned lately how much I hate paperwork?
HaBryerton:@MollyLouise10 And, I think that is part of the reason I have yet to do something like that for mine - I can't come up with a name.
MollyLouise10: I'm thinking mine's a Leo. Just....gut feeling.
MollyLouise10:RT @MollyLouise10 I'm thinking mine's a Leo. Just....gut feeling.
MollyLouise10:@HaBryerton I was trying to get what I wrote to reply to you and failed epically.
MollyLouise10:@HaBryerton In all reality, mine probably should be named "Murphy"......
MollyLouise10:@HaBryerton Should I start listing characters from my book and various wanderings and maybe you'll see something you like?
HaBryerton: Yes!!! Yes!!! RT @MollyLouise10: @HaBryerton In all reality, mine probably should be named "Murphy".....
MollyLouise10: Alrighty then...we'll just name my little wandering focus Murphy.
HaBryerton: no! RT @MollyLouise10: @HaBryerton should i start listing characters from my book & various wanderings & mayb U'll C something U like?
MollyLouise10: @HaBryerton Just a suggestion....I like my head where it's at, thanks.
HaBryerton: If I ever have more children, I should name them MURPHY! RT @MollyLouise10 Alrighty then...we'll just name my little wandering focus Murphy.
MollyLouise10:@HaBryerton Could always call yours "Bugger"
MollyLouise10:@HaBryerton I thought you weren't going to have anymore children?
HaBryerton: @MollyLouise10 I'm NOT so there will not be any children named Murphy
HaBryerton: @MollyLouise10 Now...That sounds too much like snot RT @MollyLouise10: @HaBryerton Could always call yours "Bugger"
MollyLouise10: @HaBryerton Guess we'll be waitin on the off chance that *I* have kids.
MollyLouise10: @HaBryerton No, that would be "Booger" - which might be appropriate.
HaBryerton: I think we have a better chance of hell freezing over RT @MollyLouise10 Guess we'll be waitin on the off chance that *I* have kids.
HaBryerton: @MollyLouise10 "booger""bugger"......same thing
MollyLouise10: @HaBryerton No. One's the British term for someone who's behaving less than nicely/a British swearword.
MollyLouise10: @HaBryerton And the other is the green stuff that comes out of your nose.
So good to know it takes part of a college education to know the definition of a "booger." Hope you enjoyed that as much as I did, and I was part of the pair that actually had that conversation.
And now, we return you to your regularly scheduled programming [also known as Molly actually gets to work on homework.]
Monday, November 23, 2009
Run That By Me Again
Okay, so I thought I was done with blog posts for tonight, but apparently I was wrong. I'm sitting here, doing the last bit of my education homework (seminar tomorrow, bright and early, how many are actually going to be there, I have no idea) and I'm trying to answer a reflection thing about Examples of Responses to Conflict. And I remember this thing, back when I was in middle school, about having three R's or something. I know that two of them were Respect and Responsibility, but I can't, for the life of me (and my wandering Focus) remember what the third thing was.
So, I thought, I'll jump on the middle school website and have a look-see.
And I tell you, holy crow, things have changed since I was in middle school, and I only graduated from high school in 2008. Let me give you some examples.
The first thing that caught my eye from the side panel of options was this thing called MASH. Now, courtesy of my uncle, I'm a decent fan of M.A.S.H, the TV show. I'll watch it anytime I can find it on. After clicking the link, I'm treated to this acronym.
M.A.S.H.
Mandatory After School Help
Which, for students in grades 5-8 (our middle school), Monday through Friday, are required to attend if they have one (1) unexcused absence, a missing homework assignment(s), if they are late (tardy) to school. If you don't hand in your homework assignment, you attend MASH that day after school, until it's done. Once you hand it in, 25% will be taken off your grade. If, after attending MASH fail to hand it in, you will receive a zero (0) for the assignment and can not make it up otherwise. I love the second bullet point, in the further explanation after the basic who, what, where, etc. "In order to promote accountability, students that do not attend MASH will be disciplined for insubordination and serve one day of in-school suspension (ISS)." And you will continue to attend MASH until your back work is handed in.
Now, I'm all for accountability and doing homework and turning things in on time - I might procrastinate horribly, but I get my work done and handed in. And I do quite well, if I do say so.
This, however, I'm leery of. This, to me, seems a little excessive. I get that you want to teach kids responsibility and to do things on time and to do them well, but that's kind of what we have parents for. The routine for me, when I was that age (and let me remind you, it was not that long ago) was that when I stepped through the door in the afternoon, I sat down and I did my homework. Course I changed out of my good clothes and into my "everyday" clothes first, but still, I sat down and I did my homework. If I needed help, I asked for it, or struggled through it on my own to be checked over later by a parent/adult. That was just the way things worked.
I was a good kid, but there were a few snags. I served ISS once, got kicked out of a classroom (and really didn't know what to do with myself, because that was the first time that that had happened, and the last, by the way) and, when I was in high school, had a few unexcused absences on my report card that, usually, when mom and I thought about it, we could come up with where I'd been and forgotten to hand in/write a note. And I'll pick now to remind you that I graduated 10th in my class (out of 97, with an grade average of 94.5).
My point, I guess, is where is the wiggle room? You'd think, in trying to teach them good and respectable study habits, that there would at least be a little wiggle room in case it doesn't take well the first time, right? I mean, we don't want to set our kids up for failure, correct? That's what they tell us in the seminar, what students naturally assume about their teachers - They do no want to set you up for failure. Educators want the exact opposite - they want you to succeed. My chemistry professor has said such on multiple occasions - He'd like us all to have an A in the course. Now, that won't happen, but it won't happen for lack of effort, believe me.
What are we teaching our middle schoolers? Better do all my work because it's going to help me learn the material and do well on my test and also when I get into my advance things, like high school and college, or better do all my work so I don't have to stay after school in MASH or during school in ISS and miss valuable class time?
One thing that I found that made me giggle a little: ** parents and students please note: students are not permitted to have caffeinated energy drinks at school **
Makes me wonder if they've gotten rid of the soda machine that was in the cafeteria.
College kids live on that crap. So, for a matter of fact, do high school kids. Hell, I go skating sometimes on the weekends, at open skate, and they'll be middle schoolers in there that have 16oz Amps in their hand, skating hand-in-hand with their pre-teen boyfriend who's toting a 16oz Monster.
Someone going to tell them that they can't have certain things in their packed lunch, too?
Ah. The marvelous age of covering your books.
Just for giggles, I checked out the high school website, too.
Well, NYS has changed how they list their mathematics courses, again. Now, instead of mildly puzzled, I'm slightly confused. They show you sequences for your maths, depending on what you had and if you need more help. Understandable, really. But when I was in school (seriously, not that long ago) we were using Math A, Math B, pre-calc, and calc. Now they've got Algebra in there, and Geometry, and I'm glad that I've gone through the system, as that would most likely confuse the hell out of me.
The sciences are a less-confusing. Gotta have 3 of them to graduate. Gotta pass 1 Regents to graduate with a Regents diploma, 2 Regents for an Advanced Regents Diploma.
Huh. Didn't know there were electives in the sciences. Didn't take any of them. But took all the other science classes offered. Still not entirely sure how I got the grade I got on my Earth Science Regents. It was at the end of the day, mid-afternoon, and you all know how well I do with classes at those times.
I guess you really do learn something new every day. Didn't know the school offered psychology and sociology as electives. Where was this option when I was there?
Found a typo on the website. They're missing a "p" in the word performing so it just looks like "erforming arts." Oh, and make sure you don't sleep in class. That's right on the website as a no-no. Usually is for any class.
So, I thought, I'll jump on the middle school website and have a look-see.
And I tell you, holy crow, things have changed since I was in middle school, and I only graduated from high school in 2008. Let me give you some examples.
The first thing that caught my eye from the side panel of options was this thing called MASH. Now, courtesy of my uncle, I'm a decent fan of M.A.S.H, the TV show. I'll watch it anytime I can find it on. After clicking the link, I'm treated to this acronym.
M.A.S.H.
Mandatory After School Help
Which, for students in grades 5-8 (our middle school), Monday through Friday, are required to attend if they have one (1) unexcused absence, a missing homework assignment(s), if they are late (tardy) to school. If you don't hand in your homework assignment, you attend MASH that day after school, until it's done. Once you hand it in, 25% will be taken off your grade. If, after attending MASH fail to hand it in, you will receive a zero (0) for the assignment and can not make it up otherwise. I love the second bullet point, in the further explanation after the basic who, what, where, etc. "In order to promote accountability, students that do not attend MASH will be disciplined for insubordination and serve one day of in-school suspension (ISS)." And you will continue to attend MASH until your back work is handed in.
Now, I'm all for accountability and doing homework and turning things in on time - I might procrastinate horribly, but I get my work done and handed in. And I do quite well, if I do say so.
This, however, I'm leery of. This, to me, seems a little excessive. I get that you want to teach kids responsibility and to do things on time and to do them well, but that's kind of what we have parents for. The routine for me, when I was that age (and let me remind you, it was not that long ago) was that when I stepped through the door in the afternoon, I sat down and I did my homework. Course I changed out of my good clothes and into my "everyday" clothes first, but still, I sat down and I did my homework. If I needed help, I asked for it, or struggled through it on my own to be checked over later by a parent/adult. That was just the way things worked.
I was a good kid, but there were a few snags. I served ISS once, got kicked out of a classroom (and really didn't know what to do with myself, because that was the first time that that had happened, and the last, by the way) and, when I was in high school, had a few unexcused absences on my report card that, usually, when mom and I thought about it, we could come up with where I'd been and forgotten to hand in/write a note. And I'll pick now to remind you that I graduated 10th in my class (out of 97, with an grade average of 94.5).
My point, I guess, is where is the wiggle room? You'd think, in trying to teach them good and respectable study habits, that there would at least be a little wiggle room in case it doesn't take well the first time, right? I mean, we don't want to set our kids up for failure, correct? That's what they tell us in the seminar, what students naturally assume about their teachers - They do no want to set you up for failure. Educators want the exact opposite - they want you to succeed. My chemistry professor has said such on multiple occasions - He'd like us all to have an A in the course. Now, that won't happen, but it won't happen for lack of effort, believe me.
What are we teaching our middle schoolers? Better do all my work because it's going to help me learn the material and do well on my test and also when I get into my advance things, like high school and college, or better do all my work so I don't have to stay after school in MASH or during school in ISS and miss valuable class time?
One thing that I found that made me giggle a little: ** parents and students please note: students are not permitted to have caffeinated energy drinks at school **
Makes me wonder if they've gotten rid of the soda machine that was in the cafeteria.
College kids live on that crap. So, for a matter of fact, do high school kids. Hell, I go skating sometimes on the weekends, at open skate, and they'll be middle schoolers in there that have 16oz Amps in their hand, skating hand-in-hand with their pre-teen boyfriend who's toting a 16oz Monster.
Someone going to tell them that they can't have certain things in their packed lunch, too?
Ah. The marvelous age of covering your books.
Just for giggles, I checked out the high school website, too.
Well, NYS has changed how they list their mathematics courses, again. Now, instead of mildly puzzled, I'm slightly confused. They show you sequences for your maths, depending on what you had and if you need more help. Understandable, really. But when I was in school (seriously, not that long ago) we were using Math A, Math B, pre-calc, and calc. Now they've got Algebra in there, and Geometry, and I'm glad that I've gone through the system, as that would most likely confuse the hell out of me.
The sciences are a less-confusing. Gotta have 3 of them to graduate. Gotta pass 1 Regents to graduate with a Regents diploma, 2 Regents for an Advanced Regents Diploma.
Huh. Didn't know there were electives in the sciences. Didn't take any of them. But took all the other science classes offered. Still not entirely sure how I got the grade I got on my Earth Science Regents. It was at the end of the day, mid-afternoon, and you all know how well I do with classes at those times.
I guess you really do learn something new every day. Didn't know the school offered psychology and sociology as electives. Where was this option when I was there?
Found a typo on the website. They're missing a "p" in the word performing so it just looks like "erforming arts." Oh, and make sure you don't sleep in class. That's right on the website as a no-no. Usually is for any class.
Roll On, Play List
So, I'm procrastinating badly, since I got my giant post done (the one before this, where I recap my 19th year) and since I don't really feel in the mood to start my homework yet (who has homework due the day before you officially have off for Thanksgiving break?)
Anyway, since I'm listening to music videos and have my mp3 player plugged in to charge, I thought I'd give you guys a run down of songs that I absolutely can't live without at the moment/I don't get tired of hearing.
"I'm Alive" - Kenny Chesney featuring Dave Matthews
"The Truth" - Jason Aldean
"Cowboy Casanova" - Carrie Underwood
"Sober" - Pink
"Wild At Heart" - Gloriana
"Shoulda Said No" - Taylor Swift
"Love Story" - Taylor Swift
"The Blood of Cuchulainn" - Jeff and Mychael Danna (The Boondock Saints opening theme)
"Her Diamonds" - Rob Thomas
"3 a.m." - Matchbox Twenty
"Last Beautiful Girl" - Matchbox Twenty
"Crash" - Dave Matthews Band
"Mud on the Tires" - Brad Paisley
"Toes" - Zac Brown Band
"La Vie Boheme" - RENT Soundtrack
"If I Had a $1,000,000" - The Barenaked Ladies
"One Week" - The Barenaked Ladies
"Wagon Wheel" - The Old Crow Medicine Show
Anyway, since I'm listening to music videos and have my mp3 player plugged in to charge, I thought I'd give you guys a run down of songs that I absolutely can't live without at the moment/I don't get tired of hearing.
"I'm Alive" - Kenny Chesney featuring Dave Matthews
"The Truth" - Jason Aldean
"Cowboy Casanova" - Carrie Underwood
"Sober" - Pink
"Wild At Heart" - Gloriana
"Shoulda Said No" - Taylor Swift
"Love Story" - Taylor Swift
"The Blood of Cuchulainn" - Jeff and Mychael Danna (The Boondock Saints opening theme)
"Her Diamonds" - Rob Thomas
"3 a.m." - Matchbox Twenty
"Last Beautiful Girl" - Matchbox Twenty
"Crash" - Dave Matthews Band
"Mud on the Tires" - Brad Paisley
"Toes" - Zac Brown Band
"La Vie Boheme" - RENT Soundtrack
"If I Had a $1,000,000" - The Barenaked Ladies
"One Week" - The Barenaked Ladies
"Wagon Wheel" - The Old Crow Medicine Show
Friday, November 20, 2009
The 19th Year: Rewind
Um...so, I'm not sure how many of you valued readers and followers out there are aware, but I turn twenty in two days. Yes, twenty, as much as my sister would like to ignore that (I won't tell you how old she'll be, she might get mad at me for that - but the answer is in this blog somewhere, and I know you people can do math) because to her I'll always be her little sister, big-eyed and small in the front seat of mom's car as we drive to Barnes and Noble.
So, I thought I would take the opportunity and share a little bit of what my nineteenth year on this planet has been like.
At three in the morning on November 25, 2008, my friends barged into my dorm room, decorated in the near-dark while I was still in bed, and at least let me climb out of it before they silly stringed me and my half o the room, also throwing silver star confetti into the air. (If my computer weren't asking for me to upload a flash player, I'd put the video here for you to see. You'll just have to make due with a photo or two.)
Julie baked the cupcakes, and they all decorated the windows of my room in spectacular fashion. Yes, there is no "h" in birthday, and there's a thing about visiting Seneca Castle because I was under the impression that there was a legitimate castle in Seneca Castle and then realized it was false advertising.
The rest of the day, once I'd drank enough sparkling apple cider and eaten cupcakes to be properly sugar high, and eventually gone back to sleep, entailed a calculus review thing that I attended, and then it was time to pack up and wait for dad to come get me.
Pretty sure we celebrated my birthday along with celebrating Thanksgiving, which was cool, since we've done it before. Sometimes (like next year, I've looked at it) it actually falls on Thanksgiving, which just means turkey instead of pizza and pie instead of cake (but there's also usually one floating around.)
Here's not one of my bright moments. Before he was my boyfriend, and, now, more importantly, my ex, he was my best friend. Personally, I would love to know who simply goes to dinner about forty minutes from home, but hey, that's none of my business. So, when I get a call from them - "Can we come visit?" - there was just...I couldn't say no. Let me be more specific - I couldn't say no to him. Which, came back to bite me in the ass like it always does because while I thought I had a lid on this, I clearly didn't. They didn't stay long, him and the new girlfriend (eventually fiance - and please, let's not talk about that) yet the effects were a little more than I had bargained for.
It took the reprise of "I'll Cover You" from RENT after "You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown" Rehearsal for me to sit there on the floor of the auditorium and simply start to bawl my eyes out. There were only three other people there, and I must have sat there and cried for a good forty minutes. Then my friends that were there, bundled me back to my room and from there to Wegman's to get pints of cookie dough ice cream, because that was really the only thing that you could do in that situation. And she stayed with me, through my pint and a half of ice cream (one of my other friends had bought Hagen-Daaz, wondering if it was as good or better than Ben and Jerry's) and drinking our way through bottles of Izze soda. Yeah, so...not one of my better days.
I think the next order of business, the next big thing, was the trip to NYC that I planned.
Well, that my sister and I had planned. Early that semester I had applied for, and been accepted into this career services thing through my colleges called "A Day of Publishing in NYC." It's about as self-explanatory as it looks, no joke. We visited some of the big publishing houses in the industry - McGraw-Hill - they were very amazing to us. One of them is a college alum, and after posing for pictures with him, we heard about how he'd gotten from college to where he was. He explained it was networking. Let me point out right now that the weather outside had been absolutely horrible - a combination snow/rain, downright damn cold, and I was running late. When Heather and I finally found the building, and I got my visitors pass - complete with horrible picture of me in my hat and looking thoroughly bedraggled and like every inch the country child in the big city that I was - I actually shared the elevator with one of the McGraw-Hill Top Dogs. Didn't know it at the time. And of course we're on the fifty-something floor, which means the view out of the floor-length windows of the city skyline is absolutely gorgeous and I'm really tempted to go stand by the window and simply gawk (which, I didn't) and I did my best not to notice that I was wearing my hospital bracelet around my wrist.
Yes, the Day of Publishing was the day before my Surgery.
Not to mention that yes, while I'm wearing my good brown pants with the red pinstripes in them, and my red sweater, I'm also wearing my Converse because when my mother hems pants, she damn well makes sure you won't be walkin' on the bottoms, especially if you're her slightly vertically challenged youngest child.
Which, no joke, the woman (who's also someone very important in the company) and kind of in charge of this whole affair, on their end, notices. And this is the type of woman that if she were to take a "What Animal Are You?" quiz on Facebook it would come back barracuda every time. Somehow, I think she liked me. I think it was the Converse.
From there, it was to Conde Nast.
But the most important one, that was RandomHouse. Now, when I heard that we would be going to RandomHouse, I literally started salivating. I've sent RandomHouse a copy of my coverletter. It's most likely lost in the slush pile that is a commercial publishing house, but a girl can hope, right? And I prepared, too. I took copies of my cover letter with me, and, actually, in the end, it really didn't matter. They guy from the fiction department told me to mail a letter again. And he didn't say that he'd look at it. Which, is understandable, but you'd think you'd at least humor the person in front of you by looking at it. But hey, maybe that's the publishing industry.
On the plus side, I now know what it's like on that side of the letter. I think I'll stick to my side.
Right. So, after having some communication issues about shuttle times back to the hotel, Heather and I finally made it out of the city and back into the Sunfire and headed back toward upstate. That was quite the ride back - we encountered snow and horrible wind up in the Poconos (but you could really see the lights from the ski resort, and the chair lifts, which was cool) and of course I couldn't have anything to eat after midnight, which cut down on the fact that you wanted to fall asleep in the front seat and couldn't even have chocolate to keep yourself awake at one in the morning.
Rolling right into that was the first time in my life that I've ever surgery. I remember laying there in the day surgery ward, and mom was sittin' next to me, holdin' my hand because I was scared. I knew it was supposed to find out what was wrong with me, to see what was making me have pain that I wasn't supposed to have, but how calm can you be when you know someone's going to slice you open and look at your insides?
One of the last things I remember was when they put the first half of the sedative in my IV line, and things kind of blanked out for a minute, and I came to again after they'd somehow gotten me onto the table. And I remember looking up and looking at this guy, who I think was the doctor - I think - and saying, because I could hear Matchbox Twenty playing in the background, "That's Matchbox Twenty" and then the next thing that I remember was that I was waking up a little bit when some of the nurses rolled me on my side and my belly kind of hurt.
I have three scars. Two on the sides, rather near my hips, and one in my belly button where they literally sliced it in two.
I missed the first time that my niece went tubing because I couldn't do anything but walk short distances and sit. I still had internal stitches, by my belly button, and still wasn't allowed to lift anything heavy. Two weeks out of surgery I moved back into my dorm room. Heather had to come with us because I couldn't lift anything. Walking back and forth to class that first week was all that I really could do, and I had to be careful not to slip.
Course at that time, it's the middle of hockey season, so, the Saturday night that first week, two of my good friends and I decided to go to a hockey game. And we're taking the short cut by the BPOE Elks club, down the snowy path, and one of them is in front of me, to catch me, and the other has a death grip on my arm.
Well, we missed the game. It was played at earlier that day at 4, and we arrived in what would be at timely manner for the 7 p.m. game. So, while we were there, we stayed and ice skated. Now, at that point, I had never ice skated in my life. And we did it, me included, with the stipulation that A) We wouldn't tell my mother because I still wasn't allowed do anything but walk, eat, sleep, and go to class and B) That they wouldn't let go of me.
And when we hit the ice and my first thought was, I'm not sick anymore.
Which, didn't actually hold true for as long as I wanted it.
The boyfriend in February.
I brought my best friend from college home for Easter. She met most of my crazy, large, happy family and while I think she was a little shell-shocked at first, I'm pretty sure she had fun.
I pulled two all-nighters for my first year of college. The first was for Relay for Life; Freddy came back for that, and after it was done in the morning, we all went for breakfast at a place downtown. It was awesome. The second was when I was procrastinating on my final history paper. (The second probably wasn't an all-nighter, but close enough.)
I started my own blog, which you fabulous people are currently reading.
There was another medical procedure in my future, um, but this was a little less in its recovery time and more important in its preparation, instead. I never want to turn 50, plain and simple, if I have to do this again. And if I never taste anything lemon-lime flavored again in my life it will be too soon. On the bright side, I got to have lunch afterward, brought home doughnuts, and then crashed in my bed once I got home. Because I had been under conscious sedation - basically you're so out of it but still awake - they don't want you to drive for twenty-four hours. And by drive, they generally assume you'll be driving a car. But, lucky me, that afternoon was my safety procedures meeting at my job. And I work on a dinner boat. And I found out then that I'm the lucky one that gets to drive it, should the captain become incapacitated. So here I am, up in the pilot house, literally hands on the wheel, and going to myself, I can't drive a car but I'm expected to park this 200 plus passenger boat without breaking it? My next thought of course, was, Please Greg, don't let me crash your baby. I don't have the money to cover the insurance. But everything turned out okay. And Greg did most of the actual parking of said boat.
I think of my earlier posts this year, back when I started blogging, was about some of my favorite cruises that far into the season. We were only a week or two in, dealing mostly with high school cruises - senior class dinners (both college and high school) and all-night parties. But one Sunday we had a group from Canada, who had played a concert the night before in Corning. Thinking back, I think I can label this one as my favorite cruise from last summer. They were a Welsh choir (which makes me entirely happy, considering where I'm going in less than a year) and they were just absolutely amazing. Sunday dinner has entertainment, but when our music took a break, the choir started. Of course, we're right in the middle of serving dinner, and next thing you know, this choir who, when they first came on board, started either playing the spoons with their soup spoon and dinner spoon or made hats out of their napkins, starts singing the best version of "Sloop John B" that I have ever heard.
My summer passed kind of quick, and in the middle of July my best friend Em, from Massachusetts, says to me, "We're staying in Martha's Vineyard for two weeks, do you want to come out for one of them?"
Hell. Yes.
So, I get the time off from work, buy my plane tickets after much debate how exactly to get there by myself, and before you know it, mom's driving me to the local airport at an ungodly hour of the morning so I can get on a 5:40 flight to Philadelphia to get my other flight to take me to Boston.
I love to travel. I do. There's just this feeling I get in my chest when I leave the place that I've always been to go explore somewhere new. And when we were taxiing down the runway, it was...it was awesome. Except for the part where I got stuck in Philadelphia for 21 hours on the way back. And ended up getting a flight into Ithaca, instead, while my luggage went to Elmira, and I landed at 1:20, got home at 3 after eating dinner, and went to work at 4. It was great, it was one of the most fun experiences, to be out there in the Vineyard, and to see the island, and go to the beach, get smashed by the waves, and generally just have a blast.
I think this picture explains everything.
Here's another not so fun part of my nineteenth year. I spend two weeks in pre-season soccer, and a few days before the last weekend (school starts on the following Monday) I have this interesting conversation with one of my teammates about the level of play and fitness. Of which, while my heart is undoubtedly there, my body simply isn't. After an almost excruciating talk with the coach, it's decided that I will not play soccer this season, for the first time in fourteen years, and will instead take the season off and work on my fitness, hoping to rejoin the team in January. As soccer has been my life for fourteen straight years, this was not pleasant to handle. My mother, bless her, drove 45 minutes to be here with me that same night because I was not handling it well. And, considering I had a few days to go before I could kind of vanish into the proverbial background, I was not there all-together yet. Despite my first inclination, meals weren't difficult - the team had sort of been informed, and nobody really said anything about it. They went to practice, and I - I took a cycling class and biked all over town, interspersed with running. When school started, I played a little bit with the men's club team, and generally did homework and other things. I still went to games and cheered for the girls, my friends, and it was okay.
Then came the emails where the coaching staff needed to know how many were going to Brazil.
Honestly, I hadn't played that season. I hadn't even been asked to be on the JV sideline, I hadn't been asked to do anything further with the fundraising, and, quite simply, it was more stress than I probably needed. When I really thought about it, I realized that I would gladly trade one week in Brazil for an entire semester somewhere else, specifically somewhere in the UK/continental Europe. Soccer at that level, was simply not an option for me anymore, as painful as it is to recognize and accept. It doesn't mean that I still don't play - I just play for fun, like I've always done. Now it just has a different kind of connotation.
And, now that I have the option of hindsight, I can see that everything worked out in the end. I tried out for the campus production, Eurydice, got cut from that, and then tried out for the community theater show. I made that. I got to be part of the first performance in the new community center's black box theater. I made new friends, had new experiences, and learned something a little different. You might think I'm trying to convince myself that I'm okay, and maybe I am. But this is the direction that I've veered into, and it's working. And intramural soccer is coming up, so I'll have something else to do, too.
It's no secret that I'm in the teaching program. And, actually, I taught my very first lesson last Thursday, November 19th. I taught covalent bonding to 28 impressionable Regents chemistry students, who, were very well-behaved at the time. I was incredibly nervous, but it turned out quite well, in the end. And, I think, they got it. Which is enough to make anybody happy.
This past Sunday (yesterday, actually) my family had my birthday party because we're traveling to my cousin's for Thanksgiving and it was the best day to do it. Which, among the hilarity that ensues whenever we have a family get together, what I come away with, most memorably (other than my niece helping me open my presents) is
"I was so pissed I needed a torch to find my crumpet in the telly." (Which, if you know some phrases/words in British, you should find this quite entertaining)
Which brings me to now. November 23. In two days, at 10:25 p.m., I will turn 20 years old. In a sort of honor to that, I'll do a quick run-down of my favorite memories from my 19th year, in case there was so much text in this one that your head was swimming three paragraphs in (and there may be more photographs, too!):
+My friends bought me the 12-scooper from Friendly's after my no-dairy week when the doctor's were trying to figure out what was wrong with me. They then assisted me in eating it.
+A crazy trip to NYC with my sister - and a badass road mix CD from my brother-in-law that, every time we hear certain songs, think of that trip specifically
-Surgery
+Ice skating for the first time
+Almost making Dean's list first semester of first year
-The trip to Greece (NY) to get sets, also in which Steve tipped his car
+The hilarity that was "You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown"
+Reconnecting with friends while seeing Star Trek for the first time (the new one)
+Traveling to see my best friend and getting stuck somewhere on my own for the first time
+Legitly keeping a journal
+Watching Madaline in the Lake
-The idea that an exboyfriend of mine would be working with me over the summer
+Getting up 5 days a week and working out at 6 in the morning
I think this video, and this song, embodies the idea that life is a journey, a hard one, sometimes, but a journey nonetheless and that, despite what it might try to throw at you, it's still the only place that you'd rather be.
Well, as per usual, I don't really know what the hell I'm doing in terms of trying to put something here, so I'll just put the link. And damn it, Heather, you need to at least listen to it! It's my birthday, humor me. "I'm Alive" - Kenny Chesney, ft Dave Matthews
And here is where I freely admit my love of country music. There, I said it. It should have been obvious, but yes, it's now in print.
[I would like to thank everyone in my life and those from whom I borrowed the pictures from (Facebook, most likely) and thanks to my family for simply being as amazing as you are. Thank you.]
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)