I was having an ok day. Aside from the fact that I went to bed far too late last night (again; what else is new) thanks in part to my need yesterday for a couple of naps and a couple of down-time sessions, as well as the fact that I had to work from 11-1 last night, and then had to get up for work at 9. And aside from the fact that I haven't worked out in about 15 years and am really feeling like it. Aside from that stuff, the day wasn't too bad. After work I did some crunches and arm things and then took a shower, which helped me feel a little bit better, and then I went to lunch and Latin which were both fine, and then trads was ok until the very end when we got our midterms back. Boy did that put my mood in a tailspin really quickly. I never expect that I did very well on any test I take, but for some reason this time I did (I guess I managed to forget over break the fact that I sort of pulled some of the answers completely out of nowhere when I was taking it), and at the beginning of class he commented that far too many people received A grades. So when I got mine back and it turns out that I did the worst I've done on a test (or paper) in quite some time, I was less than thrilled, to say the least. And that just sort of ruined my day. And I didn't do excellently on my sign language midterm either. Not terribly, but basically good enough I guess.
I don't know. This semester is really kicking my ass, and it's finally coming out. Six classes is a lot. Add that to the fact that I've never been very good at the work ethic thing, or at studying, plus senioritis may be starting to kick in (although, it's really no different than it's been since I started college...maybe I never got over high school senioritis. Or maybe I've just always been lazy and managed to get away with it in high school while still pulling off straight As), and it just all equals me not doing well. I think I'll be lucky if I manage even one A this semester. Maybe even just one A-. I just suck at life and school and everything and it doesn't incite a lot of confidence to bother applying for...anything. Not that I've ever had a lot of confidence to apply to things. Why would anyone want me for anything?
The worst part about doing badly on something is it makes me even less motivated to work hard next time. It should be the opposite, right? But if I do badly,
Sorry. It's just another one of those self-doubt days. Sucks when all my friends are good at what they do, and are getting job offers, and whatever. And then there's me. Who sucks. At everything. Except being creepy, so you know, I've got that going for me. If only I could turn that into a life-long career somehow...
Maybe it's just because today's Halloween. I've never been much of one for Halloween, so maybe it's like...karma for not wanting to participate in the day or something. Maybe I'll go to bed, wake up, and then something fantastic will happen tomorrow.
Or life will continue as normal, meaning (lately) somewhat sub-par, but not terrible. After all, it's just a grade, right? I need to stop basing my self-worth on grades. Although, what am I going to base it on then?
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
Tell me something
How is it that, despite owning a certain pair of flip flops for a good three months now, and despite having worn them almost exclusively for the past week (and slightly less than exclusively for a good couple of weeks prior to that), suddenly today walking around in them gives me blisters again? I guess that's what I get for paying $5 for two pairs. But seriously, it's weird.
Monday, October 29, 2007
The heater has turned on in my room. This afternoon I was just sitting at my desk, and I noticed that smell that only comes once a year, the smell of a year's worth of dust and whatnot being burned as a heater turns on for the first time again. I generally sort of like that smell, as it means winter and cold weather is here or coming. But today, when I realized I smelled it because my heater had turned on, I wasn't so thrilled. Because it's 54 degrees out. Definitely not heater-necessary. Especially not on the fourth floor. I had my window open. I had just closed it half way (maybe that's what did it, all the cooler air got pushed onto the heater which is directly below my window) before the heater turned on. And now it's sort of hot in here. I've reopened the window and have my fan blowing backwards (instead of facing me, it's now facing the heater/window in hopes that it'll push some of that hot air back and outside). Oh well. The price I pay for living in the dorm, I suppose. Could be worse.
You know what was really exciting today? I was in the shower, had just finished and was putting my robe on after drying myself off a bit. I felt something on my foot, and looked down thinking maybe it was just a hair or a drop of water or something, and see that no, it was definitely a big brown/black bug. After thinking for a second that it was a huge hairy (or otherwise) spider, I started to breathe a bit easier when I realized it was just one of these:
Ahhh! Cockroach! I'm not sure if it was that kind, specifically, but yeah. All I know is that it crawled on my foot a bit, then on the floor of the shower, then up the wet shower wall, then somewhere around the curtain, then to the next shower stall, then on the wall in the bathroom, and then I'm not sure where it went. It was moving ridiculously fast. Now, it was a rather disgusting experience that I wouldn't want to repeat, but I was just happy it wasn't a spider. Cockroaches may be gross, yes, but they don't bother me like spiders do. And I'm surprised, because we've had something of a cockroach problem since at least sophomore year, if not sooner, and this was the first I've come into contact with. I would have preferred it wasn't, you know, on my foot (and I suspect it may have been in my robe or something, crawled in there while I was showering maybe, because it seems as though it fell out while I was putting on the robe), but whatever. Ew to cockroaches. But yay for them not being spiders.
...
Um ok so I thought I had posted this, but I guess not. It's now after midnight, so whatever. I just got back from a loooong study session in Jordan, the new(ish) science building, where I've been a grand total of like twice and then it was just walking through it. When I got back to my room, I wasn't sure what state I'd find my room in. But then I touched the doorknob to unlock and open my door, and it was warm. And then I walked into my room, and it was hot. One of my posters had come halfway off the wall, so I had to put it back up, and the walls were warm to touch. And the floor is as well. And my Red Vines (the ones Mom bought me before school, that huge tub, which I still haven't finished, go me) are nice and soft from the warmth. Yeah. It's almost 86 in here, and it's 46 outside, apparently. That's a 40 degree difference (man, I should have been a math major!). Not cool. Literally. I mean, that heater's been nothing but trouble for the past month or even more. Awhile ago, it started this constant hissing, which sometimes quiets to an almost nice level, but which normally is sort of annoyingly loud. But it wasn't on, so I just dealt with it. Most of the time I had my fan going too anyway, so it wasn't like there was a whole lot more noise. Although I think it's louder than I realize. But anyway, I was just like whatever. There's not really anything they can do about it apparently either. Now, though, having it be on and hissing is just not cool at all.
There's no baseball to talk about. :-( But the Red Sox won last night! :-) I saw lots of Red Sox apparel on people today. So that's cool I guess.
So I have a test in coming up on 7 hours now. 8am. Lovely. I've studied, but I don't think I'm ever going to feel like it's enough. And I'm trying not to care anymore, because a bad grade won't kill me. As one of my friends said to me the other day (who was it? Cathy, maybe?), "A's get praise, but Bs get degrees." Yes. Although, today I discovered that it's not the top 20% of each college that gets cum laude, but the top 30%. And apparently last year top 30% was something in the 3.6 range. I have almost a 3.6, so now I sort of want to try to up my GPA so I can get cum laude. When I thought it was 20% I was like, eh there's no point in trying because I won't get that. But it's semi almost maybe doable now. Although, if it's much over 3.6 it's not really, because I don't think you can change your GPA that drastically in a year. I guess you could negatively change it drastically...but yeah anyway. Oh well. I'll graduate in May, and that's the important part. Graduating with honors doesn't really do anything other than make me feel a bit better about myself, but since I had already resigned myself to it not happening, I suppose I won't be disappointed if I don't make it. (Especially if it means I have to work hard. Because, man, I'm all about the slacking.)
Speaking of slacking, etc, tomorrow I'm going to meet with an advisor after my test (hopefully) to make sure I'm on the right track for graduation, and that I'm not missing anything and whatnot, and that the one credit things I've done so far will count towards my total credit hours, and that I can take more one credit things next semester. If I can't, I'll have to take five classes, and I don't like that idea. Four classes sounds much better. I really want to do a directed readings thing. I don't really know how one goes about it, but basically you find a professor who will "direct" you on a specific topic that you want to research, and you pick out the readings and whatnot, and then you have to write a few papers or something depending on what the prof wants you to do. But it's not a class you have to go to physically, except for meeting with the professor once a week or once every two weeks or something like that. If I could do it, I would see if my Theo of Marriage prof from sophomore year would direct me, and I'd look up something relating to marriage and family stuff. You know, the stuff that really interests me (to the point that I'm considering elongating my educational career to study it more directly). Perhaps I will make that a point of discussion tomorrow as well in my attempt at advisement.
Tomorrow is quite simply going to suck. The whole long day. Oh and ugh I have to work 11-1am. So. Very little sleep tonight, test at 8am, quite possibly skipping my Latin class tomorrow so that I don't have to worry about doing that homework on top of other things and also so that I can either sleep or work on my paper, depending on how much I do tonight (I hate skipping, but I guess sometimes it's a necessary evil? I haven't skipped at all yet, and rarely do, but I'm already going to be skipping the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, but he might end up giving us that day off...hopefully). And then after my 2pm class, I guess I'm good until I have to work. There's a thing tomorrow night, information about the ECHO program that they have here which is basically going to work in a parish somewhere and doing graduate classes during the summer, and at the end of the program (two years, I think), the people get a master's. So that's cool. That's any time between 7-10 tomorrow night. And then work. So yeah. After I get tomorrow's stuff done, I can relax a bit for a little while.
You know what I'd love to do after graduation? Get an internship or do some sort of post-graduate service at a prolife place. I don't know that there are any, though. Most of the stuff I see looking through one of the booklets I got from the Center for Social Concerns here deal with working with the homeless and poor, or with inner-city kids, stuff like that. Perhaps I should go over there sometime and ask someone in person if there's anything like what I'd be interested in. What a concept, right?
Argh. Time to get back to work. Not that it makes a difference. This test is going to be ridiculous either way, and the paper? Eh whatever. (Question though. For my Old Testament class, the one in which I have a test tomorrow, we have one more quiz and then our final. Our grade for the semester is based on the three quizzes we have and the final. Quizzes are 20% each, final is 40%. BUT, if we so choose, we can write a 7-10 page paper in addition to the final, and then the paper will be worth 20% and the final will only be worth 20%. So, I can do extra work during finals week so that my actual final will be worth less. I can't see how this would be a good arrangement, but 40% is also a lot of weight. So...um...what to do?)
Stupid homework, totally ruins college. If it were just classes, that'd be gravy. Ish. But no. That is one thing that makes me excited to start a real job sometime. The ability to go to work, do work, then come home, and not have more work to do. (Theoretically.) Must be nice.
You know what was really exciting today? I was in the shower, had just finished and was putting my robe on after drying myself off a bit. I felt something on my foot, and looked down thinking maybe it was just a hair or a drop of water or something, and see that no, it was definitely a big brown/black bug. After thinking for a second that it was a huge hairy (or otherwise) spider, I started to breathe a bit easier when I realized it was just one of these:
Ahhh! Cockroach! I'm not sure if it was that kind, specifically, but yeah. All I know is that it crawled on my foot a bit, then on the floor of the shower, then up the wet shower wall, then somewhere around the curtain, then to the next shower stall, then on the wall in the bathroom, and then I'm not sure where it went. It was moving ridiculously fast. Now, it was a rather disgusting experience that I wouldn't want to repeat, but I was just happy it wasn't a spider. Cockroaches may be gross, yes, but they don't bother me like spiders do. And I'm surprised, because we've had something of a cockroach problem since at least sophomore year, if not sooner, and this was the first I've come into contact with. I would have preferred it wasn't, you know, on my foot (and I suspect it may have been in my robe or something, crawled in there while I was showering maybe, because it seems as though it fell out while I was putting on the robe), but whatever. Ew to cockroaches. But yay for them not being spiders.
...
Um ok so I thought I had posted this, but I guess not. It's now after midnight, so whatever. I just got back from a loooong study session in Jordan, the new(ish) science building, where I've been a grand total of like twice and then it was just walking through it. When I got back to my room, I wasn't sure what state I'd find my room in. But then I touched the doorknob to unlock and open my door, and it was warm. And then I walked into my room, and it was hot. One of my posters had come halfway off the wall, so I had to put it back up, and the walls were warm to touch. And the floor is as well. And my Red Vines (the ones Mom bought me before school, that huge tub, which I still haven't finished, go me) are nice and soft from the warmth. Yeah. It's almost 86 in here, and it's 46 outside, apparently. That's a 40 degree difference (man, I should have been a math major!). Not cool. Literally. I mean, that heater's been nothing but trouble for the past month or even more. Awhile ago, it started this constant hissing, which sometimes quiets to an almost nice level, but which normally is sort of annoyingly loud. But it wasn't on, so I just dealt with it. Most of the time I had my fan going too anyway, so it wasn't like there was a whole lot more noise. Although I think it's louder than I realize. But anyway, I was just like whatever. There's not really anything they can do about it apparently either. Now, though, having it be on and hissing is just not cool at all.
There's no baseball to talk about. :-( But the Red Sox won last night! :-) I saw lots of Red Sox apparel on people today. So that's cool I guess.
So I have a test in coming up on 7 hours now. 8am. Lovely. I've studied, but I don't think I'm ever going to feel like it's enough. And I'm trying not to care anymore, because a bad grade won't kill me. As one of my friends said to me the other day (who was it? Cathy, maybe?), "A's get praise, but Bs get degrees." Yes. Although, today I discovered that it's not the top 20% of each college that gets cum laude, but the top 30%. And apparently last year top 30% was something in the 3.6 range. I have almost a 3.6, so now I sort of want to try to up my GPA so I can get cum laude. When I thought it was 20% I was like, eh there's no point in trying because I won't get that. But it's semi almost maybe doable now. Although, if it's much over 3.6 it's not really, because I don't think you can change your GPA that drastically in a year. I guess you could negatively change it drastically...but yeah anyway. Oh well. I'll graduate in May, and that's the important part. Graduating with honors doesn't really do anything other than make me feel a bit better about myself, but since I had already resigned myself to it not happening, I suppose I won't be disappointed if I don't make it. (Especially if it means I have to work hard. Because, man, I'm all about the slacking.)
Speaking of slacking, etc, tomorrow I'm going to meet with an advisor after my test (hopefully) to make sure I'm on the right track for graduation, and that I'm not missing anything and whatnot, and that the one credit things I've done so far will count towards my total credit hours, and that I can take more one credit things next semester. If I can't, I'll have to take five classes, and I don't like that idea. Four classes sounds much better. I really want to do a directed readings thing. I don't really know how one goes about it, but basically you find a professor who will "direct" you on a specific topic that you want to research, and you pick out the readings and whatnot, and then you have to write a few papers or something depending on what the prof wants you to do. But it's not a class you have to go to physically, except for meeting with the professor once a week or once every two weeks or something like that. If I could do it, I would see if my Theo of Marriage prof from sophomore year would direct me, and I'd look up something relating to marriage and family stuff. You know, the stuff that really interests me (to the point that I'm considering elongating my educational career to study it more directly). Perhaps I will make that a point of discussion tomorrow as well in my attempt at advisement.
Tomorrow is quite simply going to suck. The whole long day. Oh and ugh I have to work 11-1am. So. Very little sleep tonight, test at 8am, quite possibly skipping my Latin class tomorrow so that I don't have to worry about doing that homework on top of other things and also so that I can either sleep or work on my paper, depending on how much I do tonight (I hate skipping, but I guess sometimes it's a necessary evil? I haven't skipped at all yet, and rarely do, but I'm already going to be skipping the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, but he might end up giving us that day off...hopefully). And then after my 2pm class, I guess I'm good until I have to work. There's a thing tomorrow night, information about the ECHO program that they have here which is basically going to work in a parish somewhere and doing graduate classes during the summer, and at the end of the program (two years, I think), the people get a master's. So that's cool. That's any time between 7-10 tomorrow night. And then work. So yeah. After I get tomorrow's stuff done, I can relax a bit for a little while.
You know what I'd love to do after graduation? Get an internship or do some sort of post-graduate service at a prolife place. I don't know that there are any, though. Most of the stuff I see looking through one of the booklets I got from the Center for Social Concerns here deal with working with the homeless and poor, or with inner-city kids, stuff like that. Perhaps I should go over there sometime and ask someone in person if there's anything like what I'd be interested in. What a concept, right?
Argh. Time to get back to work. Not that it makes a difference. This test is going to be ridiculous either way, and the paper? Eh whatever. (Question though. For my Old Testament class, the one in which I have a test tomorrow, we have one more quiz and then our final. Our grade for the semester is based on the three quizzes we have and the final. Quizzes are 20% each, final is 40%. BUT, if we so choose, we can write a 7-10 page paper in addition to the final, and then the paper will be worth 20% and the final will only be worth 20%. So, I can do extra work during finals week so that my actual final will be worth less. I can't see how this would be a good arrangement, but 40% is also a lot of weight. So...um...what to do?)
Stupid homework, totally ruins college. If it were just classes, that'd be gravy. Ish. But no. That is one thing that makes me excited to start a real job sometime. The ability to go to work, do work, then come home, and not have more work to do. (Theoretically.) Must be nice.
Sunday, October 28, 2007
Hi, I'm Susie and I'm a sportsaholic.
Beisbol is currently on TV. Game 4 of the World Series, of course. And I hate this game. Rockies have been losing the whole time, and they just now got a two-run home run to make it 4-3 Boston in the bottom of the 8th. See, here's my deal: I obviously want the Red Sox to win the series, in the end. But I sort of really don't want to see the Rockies get swept. And I don't want to be done with baseball for...well until April or whenever. So this game sucks, because I don't want a win by the Red Sox to be anything but happy for me. If they win tonight, though, for a few fractions of a second I might be somewhat unhappy about it. Bittersweet, I suppose you could call it. But anyway. Plus, and here's what I hate about pro sports, when this season is over who knows who's gonna leave or not. Mike Lowell I guess is going to be a free agent after this season, and I don't want him to leave. I want them all to stay. Well, I could do without Coco Crisp and Gagne. But yeah. The starters of the World Series games and stuff, and most of our bullpen. I think Schilling's gone, though, because he's getting old. (Oh, and I'd love the series to go back to Fenway just so I can see the Bullpen Band again. I love them. But for it to go to Fenway would mean that, obviously, they lose tonight (which would mean that Papelbon would give up the 1-run lead they have now, and I'm a big Papelbon fan so that's not cool either), but that they also lose tomorrow night which would be a loss for Beckett. Unless they're winning until he leaves, and then one of the relief pitchers loses the game. Then I don't think the loss would be counted against him.)
Man, I'm too sports-obsessed. I guess I should just say I hope that the Red Sox win tonight and just be done with it. Anyway. In other sports news, the Patriots kicked bootay today. Even their backup QB got a touchdown. I unfortunately did not watch because I had thought, for some reason, that it wasn't playing here, so I didn't even look for it once I got back. I would have only missed like the first half hour. Oh well. They ended up winning 52-7. And that 7 scored by the Redskins came at the very end of the game, apparently. So yeah. Tom Brady has 30 TDs this season so far. In 8 games. Do you know how ridiculous that is? Very. I am so excited for next week's game, as it will probably be an actual competition. An 8-0 team (Patriots) against a 7-0 team (Colts). I already hate the Colts, so I really hope that next week's game doesn't make me hate them even more. But yeah. Very exited to see what happens there. Because man do the Patriots make it look easy. Twill be a game of epic proportions, methinks. Hopefully, anyway. (Actually, if I'm hoping for things I might as well hope that the Patriots completely dismantle the Colts. That would make me very happy.) And the best part about their win today? I have the Patriots defense/special teams on my fantasy team, and they've typically been getting me like maybe 8 points per game, nothing great at all. Today? 21 points. By far my highest points of any of the individual units on my team today. (Offense are all individual people, but defense is just one team's defense.)
Anyway. Must. Go. Do. Homework. Ahhhhhhhhhhh!
(Oh, and I saw the movie Benny and Joon today. I've heard about it a lot, although I never really knew what it was about or who is in it other than Johnny Depp. But it's a really good movie.)
Edit: Red Sox win the World Series! Man it'd be great if they could get a win of a world series at home, maybe, but whatever. haha. Two world series in 3 years, two world series sweeps!!! Oh and Papelbon is THE MAN. That is all. Yeah recap!
Man, I'm too sports-obsessed. I guess I should just say I hope that the Red Sox win tonight and just be done with it. Anyway. In other sports news, the Patriots kicked bootay today. Even their backup QB got a touchdown. I unfortunately did not watch because I had thought, for some reason, that it wasn't playing here, so I didn't even look for it once I got back. I would have only missed like the first half hour. Oh well. They ended up winning 52-7. And that 7 scored by the Redskins came at the very end of the game, apparently. So yeah. Tom Brady has 30 TDs this season so far. In 8 games. Do you know how ridiculous that is? Very. I am so excited for next week's game, as it will probably be an actual competition. An 8-0 team (Patriots) against a 7-0 team (Colts). I already hate the Colts, so I really hope that next week's game doesn't make me hate them even more. But yeah. Very exited to see what happens there. Because man do the Patriots make it look easy. Twill be a game of epic proportions, methinks. Hopefully, anyway. (Actually, if I'm hoping for things I might as well hope that the Patriots completely dismantle the Colts. That would make me very happy.) And the best part about their win today? I have the Patriots defense/special teams on my fantasy team, and they've typically been getting me like maybe 8 points per game, nothing great at all. Today? 21 points. By far my highest points of any of the individual units on my team today. (Offense are all individual people, but defense is just one team's defense.)
Anyway. Must. Go. Do. Homework. Ahhhhhhhhhhh!
(Oh, and I saw the movie Benny and Joon today. I've heard about it a lot, although I never really knew what it was about or who is in it other than Johnny Depp. But it's a really good movie.)
Edit: Red Sox win the World Series! Man it'd be great if they could get a win of a world series at home, maybe, but whatever. haha. Two world series in 3 years, two world series sweeps!!! Oh and Papelbon is THE MAN. That is all. Yeah recap!
Saturday, October 27, 2007
I hate traveling.
I'm not terribly upset at the prospect of leaving tomorrow (I'll be home in 3.5 weeks. Crazy. Of course, in that 3.5 weeks I have lots to do. Or at least a 10 page research paper), except for two things: well, four: I do like spending time with my family, usually, and I do have the cutest nephews ever; I really hate traveling (there's so much that could go wrong, and often does, and so much out of my control) and would be much happier if I could just drive a few hours to get back (or, heck, get someone to invent a teleportation device that wouldn't mix up my body parts or anything. Hey, it worked on Family Matters); the only time I'm going to be able to go to church is at 10pm tomorrow night, unless Keenan has their 8:30pm Mass (sometimes some dorms don't have their regular Masses the first Sunday after breaks -- Cavanaugh rarely does), which poses a problem because the Red Sox are about to sweep the Rockies tomorrow night, and the game starts at 8 so if I have to go to a 10pm Mass, I mean chances are that the game won't be less than three hours and really they don't start until 8:30 or 8:40 or so, so I think I'd still be able to see the end even in that case, but it'd be much better if Keenan has their 8:30 so I can miss the beginning instead of the end. Although it's always a crapshoot as to which innings will be interesting. But if the Red Sox do sweep tomorrow, I want to see the post-game celebration. Anyway. So the point is, if I weren't leaving tomorrow, or if I were leaving later or...today, I'd be able to go to a different Mass, either here or there, in the morning. And thus have no worries about missing any of the game tomorrow. Alas. Anyway. Plus it's fun to watch the games with my mom and family. Oh, and the fourth thing, I have a ridiculous amount for Tuesday, including a test that is going to suck, and a 3 pager which probably won't be too bad once I write it. But studying and paper-writing on the same night doesn't work well, or lead to much sleep. Especially if the Red Sox don't win tomorrow and there's a game five, as that will be Monday night. Ah, what a tough life, huh?
Um. I was going to write about the Red Sox but I already talked about that some...but yeah they won tonight. Even though they're playing in an altitude they're not used to, and even though the field is so much bigger than Fenway and Manny was supposed to have been running for his life all night trying to be all over the field, and blah blah blah. It was scary for a little while there (Rockies actually made it pretty competitive for a bit), but of course we pulled out the win. I mean, it's certainly not a given we'll win tomorrow either, but I don't think anyone would be surprised. Actually I heard an interview today, it was some Colorado or Denver radio station or something talking to some local Red Sox fans, and one woman said that a perfect world series this time around would be for both teams to win all their home games. That'd actually be kind of nice. Obviously already that won't happen, but I wouldn't be disappointed if the Rockies won the next two at home, provided the Red Sox won when they get back to Fenway, of course. Anyway though.
Thanksgiving is really soon. Which means Christmas is really soon, which means my last semester is really soon. Oh man, we'll be registering in the next couple of weeks. Wow. That right there is crazy. I don't think they have up the schedule of classes for next semester yet. I have no idea what I want to take. I can take anything I want. And you know what I want? I want to take no classes on Fridays, no night classes, and...no crappy classes. That last one is a bit more difficult to achieve, because sometimes you just can't tell. I hope there's good (looking) classes by good profs that are offered next semester, profs I've wanted to take but haven't yet, or profs I've taken already and liked. I need to meet with an advisor to make sure I'm not missing anything and that I really do only need 14 more credits after this semester, and see whether or not it's true that a person can only take three one-credit classes that count towards the total credit amount, like someone told me. That would be problematic if true, or potentially problematic. Not terribly. Anyway though. Yep.
Oh, so there's an election like next week, right? Well, I guess they sent out absentee ballots to everyone this year? I don't know, all I know is there was one waiting for me here, and I don't remember requesting one this year. I know I didn't. But anyway, so I opened it tonight after Dad asked if I knew who I was voting for. I didn't even know what there was to vote on, so he said there was only one thing, and indeed there is. Just pick four out of seven people for director of the school district in which we live. That's it. It's just this big ol' blank ballot with one little box with the circles next to the names. Crazy. But good, because that's a lot less I have to research to be an "informed" voter.
Well. I should go...get packed and stuff. Here's hoping for a good travel experience tomorrow.
Um. I was going to write about the Red Sox but I already talked about that some...but yeah they won tonight. Even though they're playing in an altitude they're not used to, and even though the field is so much bigger than Fenway and Manny was supposed to have been running for his life all night trying to be all over the field, and blah blah blah. It was scary for a little while there (Rockies actually made it pretty competitive for a bit), but of course we pulled out the win. I mean, it's certainly not a given we'll win tomorrow either, but I don't think anyone would be surprised. Actually I heard an interview today, it was some Colorado or Denver radio station or something talking to some local Red Sox fans, and one woman said that a perfect world series this time around would be for both teams to win all their home games. That'd actually be kind of nice. Obviously already that won't happen, but I wouldn't be disappointed if the Rockies won the next two at home, provided the Red Sox won when they get back to Fenway, of course. Anyway though.
Thanksgiving is really soon. Which means Christmas is really soon, which means my last semester is really soon. Oh man, we'll be registering in the next couple of weeks. Wow. That right there is crazy. I don't think they have up the schedule of classes for next semester yet. I have no idea what I want to take. I can take anything I want. And you know what I want? I want to take no classes on Fridays, no night classes, and...no crappy classes. That last one is a bit more difficult to achieve, because sometimes you just can't tell. I hope there's good (looking) classes by good profs that are offered next semester, profs I've wanted to take but haven't yet, or profs I've taken already and liked. I need to meet with an advisor to make sure I'm not missing anything and that I really do only need 14 more credits after this semester, and see whether or not it's true that a person can only take three one-credit classes that count towards the total credit amount, like someone told me. That would be problematic if true, or potentially problematic. Not terribly. Anyway though. Yep.
Oh, so there's an election like next week, right? Well, I guess they sent out absentee ballots to everyone this year? I don't know, all I know is there was one waiting for me here, and I don't remember requesting one this year. I know I didn't. But anyway, so I opened it tonight after Dad asked if I knew who I was voting for. I didn't even know what there was to vote on, so he said there was only one thing, and indeed there is. Just pick four out of seven people for director of the school district in which we live. That's it. It's just this big ol' blank ballot with one little box with the circles next to the names. Crazy. But good, because that's a lot less I have to research to be an "informed" voter.
Well. I should go...get packed and stuff. Here's hoping for a good travel experience tomorrow.
Thursday, October 25, 2007
Random thoughts seem to be the theme this week
1. Why do people like Dane Cook? I was, as usual, slow about hearing of him, and once I finally saw him, did not find his routine very funny. And now I just think he's annoying. And for some reason he's the baseball guy for this postseason (the one in all the commercials and whatnot). No idea why this is, but I don't like him.
2. I hate open-ended, pick your own topic research papers. Hate them. At least give me some parameters to work with.
3. I am so ready to live on my own. I mean, I'm probably not ready in a lot of senses, but I'm ready in the sense that, much as it's nice to live at home, I'm done with it. I need to get my own life. Part of the reason I'm not sure about grad school -- I feel like it might just be postponing the inevitable a little bit longer. Because I doubt that, if I do go to grad school, I'd officially move out of this house. I guess technically I could and just relocate to wherever it is that I end up for grad school, but then what would I do once I finish grad school? Assuming I go to DC, I don't think that I want to live in DC indefinitely. But who knows what'll happen, I guess. I just need something to happen.
4. Jonathan Papelbon is the man. His stare-downs are intense and wonderful, and his post-game celebrations are like no other. And he got a pickoff tonight when he threw to first base where Matt Holliday was drifting from, and Holliday did not get back to the base in time. You don't see pickoffs on base runners a lot (sort of like safeties in football. Maybe not quite that rare, but I don't know that I've seen one in quite awhile), and Papelbon did it in a very important time (it was 8th inning, 2 outs, with Red Sox up 2-1. So that ended the inning. Or the half of the inning). And then he proceeded to get three hitters out when the Rockies came up again in the 9th. I think it was two strikeouts and a pop up in that inning. The last one was a strikeout, I know that. Awesome. And we can't forget about Okajima, who relieved Curt Schilling after I think 5 1/3 innings. He was pretty awesome for the 2 1/3 innings he was in, throwing a lot of strikeouts. Oh, and thanks to Jacoby Ellsbury, free tacos from Taco Bell! Of course, it's only one day -- Oct 30 -- and only between 2-5pm. Which will obviously cut down on the number of people who can take advantage of said offer. Like me. I mean, I have class 2-3:15, so I could go after that, but I won't because it's a good half hour round trip of walking to and from my car, and then I have to drive to a Taco Bell somewhere, and wait in line, and I don't even like tacos that much. Haha.
5. I have a test in my Old Testament class on Tuesday. (Which, aside from sucking because I have to take a test, and I have to take a test two days after getting back from fall break, sucks because if the Rockies win even a single game, there will be a World Series game on Monday night, when we're having a review for the test.) It's gonna be a bi-otch, judging from the review sheet we have. We had one for the last test, too, and that one was 12 questions. This one is 18, and they're harder than the 12 from last time. So...that's not so cool. Oh and I just remembered, I have to write a 3 page reflection type paper thing for Theo of the Mass, also due Tuesday. Hm. Gross. I hate having to worry about homework over break. It's so mean. (By the way, I hate it when teachers complain about the tests and papers they'll have to grade over break. If they don't want to grade them, they don't have to assign them. Duh. Besides, they freaking get paid for it. I don't get paid to do homework over break, or any other time. I pay to do homework.)
6. I decided last night that I don't really want to get the James Taylor Christmas CD. There are a few songs on there that I really like, but there's too many that I don't really like. Not enough to spend money on it, anyway. Unfortunately, though, I also decided that I do want to buy the newest Michael Buble CD. The one with the song "Everything" on it. I really really like that song. And I like his voice.
7. I need to look into getting a passport. I don't know if that Canada spring break thing will actually happen, but either way, a passport is probably a good thing to have at this point. (Who knows when I might have to leave the country suddenly, you know?)
8. I miss Colt. I hate looking into the living room, expecting to see her lying in the blue recliner, taking up the whole thing, and finding it empty. I hate seeing shadows and things on the floor that, for a second, look like they could be her, but of course aren't. I hate going upstairs and, out of habit, looking into Tom's old room, thinking I might see her lying on the bed, and finding that empty too. I hate that I can't look through my pictures without coming across a picture of her, and knowing that I'll never get to take another one. I hate that she's gone.
2. I hate open-ended, pick your own topic research papers. Hate them. At least give me some parameters to work with.
3. I am so ready to live on my own. I mean, I'm probably not ready in a lot of senses, but I'm ready in the sense that, much as it's nice to live at home, I'm done with it. I need to get my own life. Part of the reason I'm not sure about grad school -- I feel like it might just be postponing the inevitable a little bit longer. Because I doubt that, if I do go to grad school, I'd officially move out of this house. I guess technically I could and just relocate to wherever it is that I end up for grad school, but then what would I do once I finish grad school? Assuming I go to DC, I don't think that I want to live in DC indefinitely. But who knows what'll happen, I guess. I just need something to happen.
4. Jonathan Papelbon is the man. His stare-downs are intense and wonderful, and his post-game celebrations are like no other. And he got a pickoff tonight when he threw to first base where Matt Holliday was drifting from, and Holliday did not get back to the base in time. You don't see pickoffs on base runners a lot (sort of like safeties in football. Maybe not quite that rare, but I don't know that I've seen one in quite awhile), and Papelbon did it in a very important time (it was 8th inning, 2 outs, with Red Sox up 2-1. So that ended the inning. Or the half of the inning). And then he proceeded to get three hitters out when the Rockies came up again in the 9th. I think it was two strikeouts and a pop up in that inning. The last one was a strikeout, I know that. Awesome. And we can't forget about Okajima, who relieved Curt Schilling after I think 5 1/3 innings. He was pretty awesome for the 2 1/3 innings he was in, throwing a lot of strikeouts. Oh, and thanks to Jacoby Ellsbury, free tacos from Taco Bell! Of course, it's only one day -- Oct 30 -- and only between 2-5pm. Which will obviously cut down on the number of people who can take advantage of said offer. Like me. I mean, I have class 2-3:15, so I could go after that, but I won't because it's a good half hour round trip of walking to and from my car, and then I have to drive to a Taco Bell somewhere, and wait in line, and I don't even like tacos that much. Haha.
5. I have a test in my Old Testament class on Tuesday. (Which, aside from sucking because I have to take a test, and I have to take a test two days after getting back from fall break, sucks because if the Rockies win even a single game, there will be a World Series game on Monday night, when we're having a review for the test.) It's gonna be a bi-otch, judging from the review sheet we have. We had one for the last test, too, and that one was 12 questions. This one is 18, and they're harder than the 12 from last time. So...that's not so cool. Oh and I just remembered, I have to write a 3 page reflection type paper thing for Theo of the Mass, also due Tuesday. Hm. Gross. I hate having to worry about homework over break. It's so mean. (By the way, I hate it when teachers complain about the tests and papers they'll have to grade over break. If they don't want to grade them, they don't have to assign them. Duh. Besides, they freaking get paid for it. I don't get paid to do homework over break, or any other time. I pay to do homework.)
6. I decided last night that I don't really want to get the James Taylor Christmas CD. There are a few songs on there that I really like, but there's too many that I don't really like. Not enough to spend money on it, anyway. Unfortunately, though, I also decided that I do want to buy the newest Michael Buble CD. The one with the song "Everything" on it. I really really like that song. And I like his voice.
7. I need to look into getting a passport. I don't know if that Canada spring break thing will actually happen, but either way, a passport is probably a good thing to have at this point. (Who knows when I might have to leave the country suddenly, you know?)
8. I miss Colt. I hate looking into the living room, expecting to see her lying in the blue recliner, taking up the whole thing, and finding it empty. I hate seeing shadows and things on the floor that, for a second, look like they could be her, but of course aren't. I hate going upstairs and, out of habit, looking into Tom's old room, thinking I might see her lying on the bed, and finding that empty too. I hate that I can't look through my pictures without coming across a picture of her, and knowing that I'll never get to take another one. I hate that she's gone.
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
13-1. That's the way to do it.
Red Sox = happiness.
And Rockies, meet Josh Beckett. (And meet our amazing offense. 7 runs in one (34 minute) inning to pad the already comfortable lead? That's what I like to call a nice ass-kicking. Of course, three of those were totally given to us, thanks to three walks in a row with the bases loaded. What a ridiculous inning that was, but hey, I'll take it.)
And just because in the past teams that have blown out the competition in Game 1 go on to lose sometimes doesn't mean it's a rule that it'll happen. I mean, it's the Red Sox. You never can bank anything typical on them. (Coming back from a 3-0 deficit in the 2004 ALCS to win it, and then coming back from a 3-1 deficit in this ALCS to win it? That's not what you call typical.) Yeah, maybe it'll feel like we used up all these runs in the first game, which we didn't need much in this game because of the amazingness that is Josh Beckett, but whatever. It's not like there's a finite number of runs that can be scored in a series, right? Eh you never know what'll happen in baseball.
(Oh yeah, and at one point tonight it just hit me how bizarre it is that the Rockies -- the Rockies -- are in the World Series. The Rockies suck, in my mind, generally. I mean, they have flashes of brilliance (they swept the Yankees this summer. That was great), but they usually find a way to give up leads and whatnot, if they get them. Weird. And also? The local Fox news just had a little on the street thing about Rockies "fans," seeing if they could identify any of the lineup and seeing what their predictions were. The ones they showed were rather pathetic in naming the lineup -- they had pictures of the guys, and the people had to say who they were. A couple knew Helton and Holliday, and someone called Matsui Matzuki. I guess it's sort of close, but no. And then some couldn't name any of them. But they still were all "Rockies in 4!" "Rockies are going to be awesome tonight, it'll be a tight game." Sure it will, people. Ah, I know I'm being mean, but come on, I bet a large percentage of the people around here rooting for the Rockies have very rarely rooted for the Rockies before their current run. I don't claim to be the best Red Sox fan or anything, but geez, at least I would be able to name people in our lineup. And I know, Red Sox have bandwagon fans too. I just don't have to be exposed to it as much because I don't live in Boston.)
Almost makes me forget the increasing pain in my toe. Almost. (It hurts today. And wasn't helped by the fact that I hit it with my other foot tonight. Man that hurt.)
And Rockies, meet Josh Beckett. (And meet our amazing offense. 7 runs in one (34 minute) inning to pad the already comfortable lead? That's what I like to call a nice ass-kicking. Of course, three of those were totally given to us, thanks to three walks in a row with the bases loaded. What a ridiculous inning that was, but hey, I'll take it.)
And just because in the past teams that have blown out the competition in Game 1 go on to lose sometimes doesn't mean it's a rule that it'll happen. I mean, it's the Red Sox. You never can bank anything typical on them. (Coming back from a 3-0 deficit in the 2004 ALCS to win it, and then coming back from a 3-1 deficit in this ALCS to win it? That's not what you call typical.) Yeah, maybe it'll feel like we used up all these runs in the first game, which we didn't need much in this game because of the amazingness that is Josh Beckett, but whatever. It's not like there's a finite number of runs that can be scored in a series, right? Eh you never know what'll happen in baseball.
(Oh yeah, and at one point tonight it just hit me how bizarre it is that the Rockies -- the Rockies -- are in the World Series. The Rockies suck, in my mind, generally. I mean, they have flashes of brilliance (they swept the Yankees this summer. That was great), but they usually find a way to give up leads and whatnot, if they get them. Weird. And also? The local Fox news just had a little on the street thing about Rockies "fans," seeing if they could identify any of the lineup and seeing what their predictions were. The ones they showed were rather pathetic in naming the lineup -- they had pictures of the guys, and the people had to say who they were. A couple knew Helton and Holliday, and someone called Matsui Matzuki. I guess it's sort of close, but no. And then some couldn't name any of them. But they still were all "Rockies in 4!" "Rockies are going to be awesome tonight, it'll be a tight game." Sure it will, people. Ah, I know I'm being mean, but come on, I bet a large percentage of the people around here rooting for the Rockies have very rarely rooted for the Rockies before their current run. I don't claim to be the best Red Sox fan or anything, but geez, at least I would be able to name people in our lineup. And I know, Red Sox have bandwagon fans too. I just don't have to be exposed to it as much because I don't live in Boston.)
Almost makes me forget the increasing pain in my toe. Almost. (It hurts today. And wasn't helped by the fact that I hit it with my other foot tonight. Man that hurt.)
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
Who says you can't learn during break?
Did you know that there are over 700 native languages in New Guinea? Actually, Wikipedia lists it as over 800. That's more than 10% of the total number of languages in the world. Not too shabby for a place with around 6 million people.
In other news, I was greatly relieved to discover that the most painful part of ingrown toenail...fixing is the shot of lidocaine they put into the toe. Unfortunately they do it like three times, and while I'd like to pretend that I wasn't very bothered by it, I have to admit that it certainly did not feel good by any means. However, it was quite bizarre to find that mere minutes later--at most--the toe was all numbed up. When she said "Can you feel this?" and I waited to feel something, only to realize that I wasn't going to be feeling anything, I smiled because I was rather amazed at it all. But I didn't smile much because I knew what was coming, and I couldn't imagine that it wouldn't be painful. (Because just thinking about it is painful.) But throughout the whole procedure (which only took something like five minutes total), I didn't feel a thing, even though I felt like I should. But I was glad I didn't, because then I could pretend that she wasn't down there doing what I knew she was doing. Because...ew. It's been wrapped in gauze since then, so I haven't looked at it. And I really really really don't want to, but I won't be able to avoid it once I take off the wrapping tomorrow morning. I cringe just thinking about it. (I don't do well with injuries. I don't like thinking about them happening, or seeing them and imagining how they happened, or being a part of any of it. I would make a terrible doctor.) But it's done now. So...that's good I guess. She kept saying "Oh this must have been awful, you poor girl, etc," and all I could think (and even said) was that it was a lot worse a couple weeks ago. It's been quite bearable the past two weeks or so. Mostly. Except when I stepped on it Friday night. But it's ok, I had four shots of Southern Comfort after that to make me feel better. (I am so weak for that stuff. Dude.) Anyway.
Hey remember this? Yeah that was cool.
And then there's this catching ditty. I first saw it the night of the Office season premiere (afterwards we watched random videos on youtube, and someone really wanted to watch that one). I had forgotten about it until people were singing it Friday night ("Dumbledore!"), so I decided I needed to watch it again because it's so bizarre but also somehow hilarious. I finally just remembered right now. So there.
It's finally feeling like fall (a month late). There was one day last week when I was sitting somewhere, for some reason, and it just felt so wonderfully fall-y, and I loved it. Smelled like fall, felt like fall, looked like fall. I'm a big fan of fall, once it gets going. And I'll be a big fan of winter soon enough, too. Assuming, that is, that we get a winter this year. I'm worried I was quite spoiled by last winter (but man, what a winter it was). But hey, maybe this year will surprise me beyond my lofty snowspectations, and maybe we'll even get a white Christmas! And a real one, where it actually snows on Christmas. (Last year was close, what with the snow that was still on the ground from the blizzard the week before...but I'm not sure there was still a lot on the ground. And either way, it didn't snow on Christmas and was probably sunny and far too warm, as it always seems to be.)
I've also decided, as of tonight, that I do want to get a hair cut. I do like my hair the length it is right now, but it's starting to get to the point where it has no bounce, and just sort of hangs. And that's no good. I realize how stupid it is to discuss my hair on my blog, but whatever. My blog, my rules. Not like I have a whole lot else going on in my life this week to talk about, anyway.
I have to be awake at 7:30 tomorrow morning to watch my nephew for a couple of hours. Which is fine, because he's a pretty cool kid, but...7:30 is early. Especially for break. Oh well. I can sleep the rest of the day, because what else am I gonna do? haha. Ah, break.
Oh wait! One more uber-exciting discovery of today! I was sending a text message on my new spiffy phone (which may or may not end up needing to be replaced, as it seems to have this thing about turning back on once it's been turned off -- it doesn't want to for awhile), just to do it, and the predictive text thing was on, which I had always turned off on past phones because I didn't get how it worked. I have been used to the "push the number with the letter you want until it gets to that letter, then wait a second if you need to use another letter from that same number, and go through the whole message like that" method. When I tried writing with predictive text on, I would do the same thing, not realizing how predictive text works. Today, with this inaugural message, I somehow discovered how it works. And it's amazing. All you have to do is hit the number with the letter you want, but just hit it once, and then go to the next number/letter immediately, and eventually it'll figure out what word you're going for. I am so blown away by this new revelation in my life. You people have no idea.
Ok, that is all.
In other news, I was greatly relieved to discover that the most painful part of ingrown toenail...fixing is the shot of lidocaine they put into the toe. Unfortunately they do it like three times, and while I'd like to pretend that I wasn't very bothered by it, I have to admit that it certainly did not feel good by any means. However, it was quite bizarre to find that mere minutes later--at most--the toe was all numbed up. When she said "Can you feel this?" and I waited to feel something, only to realize that I wasn't going to be feeling anything, I smiled because I was rather amazed at it all. But I didn't smile much because I knew what was coming, and I couldn't imagine that it wouldn't be painful. (Because just thinking about it is painful.) But throughout the whole procedure (which only took something like five minutes total), I didn't feel a thing, even though I felt like I should. But I was glad I didn't, because then I could pretend that she wasn't down there doing what I knew she was doing. Because...ew. It's been wrapped in gauze since then, so I haven't looked at it. And I really really really don't want to, but I won't be able to avoid it once I take off the wrapping tomorrow morning. I cringe just thinking about it. (I don't do well with injuries. I don't like thinking about them happening, or seeing them and imagining how they happened, or being a part of any of it. I would make a terrible doctor.) But it's done now. So...that's good I guess. She kept saying "Oh this must have been awful, you poor girl, etc," and all I could think (and even said) was that it was a lot worse a couple weeks ago. It's been quite bearable the past two weeks or so. Mostly. Except when I stepped on it Friday night. But it's ok, I had four shots of Southern Comfort after that to make me feel better. (I am so weak for that stuff. Dude.) Anyway.
Hey remember this? Yeah that was cool.
And then there's this catching ditty. I first saw it the night of the Office season premiere (afterwards we watched random videos on youtube, and someone really wanted to watch that one). I had forgotten about it until people were singing it Friday night ("Dumbledore!"), so I decided I needed to watch it again because it's so bizarre but also somehow hilarious. I finally just remembered right now. So there.
It's finally feeling like fall (a month late). There was one day last week when I was sitting somewhere, for some reason, and it just felt so wonderfully fall-y, and I loved it. Smelled like fall, felt like fall, looked like fall. I'm a big fan of fall, once it gets going. And I'll be a big fan of winter soon enough, too. Assuming, that is, that we get a winter this year. I'm worried I was quite spoiled by last winter (but man, what a winter it was). But hey, maybe this year will surprise me beyond my lofty snowspectations, and maybe we'll even get a white Christmas! And a real one, where it actually snows on Christmas. (Last year was close, what with the snow that was still on the ground from the blizzard the week before...but I'm not sure there was still a lot on the ground. And either way, it didn't snow on Christmas and was probably sunny and far too warm, as it always seems to be.)
I've also decided, as of tonight, that I do want to get a hair cut. I do like my hair the length it is right now, but it's starting to get to the point where it has no bounce, and just sort of hangs. And that's no good. I realize how stupid it is to discuss my hair on my blog, but whatever. My blog, my rules. Not like I have a whole lot else going on in my life this week to talk about, anyway.
I have to be awake at 7:30 tomorrow morning to watch my nephew for a couple of hours. Which is fine, because he's a pretty cool kid, but...7:30 is early. Especially for break. Oh well. I can sleep the rest of the day, because what else am I gonna do? haha. Ah, break.
Oh wait! One more uber-exciting discovery of today! I was sending a text message on my new spiffy phone (which may or may not end up needing to be replaced, as it seems to have this thing about turning back on once it's been turned off -- it doesn't want to for awhile), just to do it, and the predictive text thing was on, which I had always turned off on past phones because I didn't get how it worked. I have been used to the "push the number with the letter you want until it gets to that letter, then wait a second if you need to use another letter from that same number, and go through the whole message like that" method. When I tried writing with predictive text on, I would do the same thing, not realizing how predictive text works. Today, with this inaugural message, I somehow discovered how it works. And it's amazing. All you have to do is hit the number with the letter you want, but just hit it once, and then go to the next number/letter immediately, and eventually it'll figure out what word you're going for. I am so blown away by this new revelation in my life. You people have no idea.
Ok, that is all.
Monday, October 22, 2007
Bullet points and stream of consciousness.
-Yesterday, I was in windy, near (maybe up to) 80 degree weather. Today? It was around 30 when we landed (bright and early at 7:30 am, just after the sun had risen -- by the way, flying into Denver just as the sun is rising so that the horizon is quite pink, and especially when that horizon includes freshly snow-covered mountains, is quite lovely. I slept most of the flight, but woke up just in time to enjoy ten minutes or so of the sun rising -- luckily the window I was near was facing west and not east). And there was a fair amount of snow on the ground the whole way from DIA home. So...that's weird. Clearly, I prefer here's weather over yesterday's South Bend weather.
-I got a new phone. It's spiffy and sort of technologically updated and sort of makes me feel like I fit in the 21st century. Weird. Add that to the fact that we now have my little brother's TV and DVD player, since he obviously doesn't need it in Iraq, and he has this all new up to date expensive stuff, like one of those flat, widescreen TVs and whatnot. I'm not entirely sold on this TV though. But anyway. It's weird, suddenly experiencing what lots of people already do. (I'm too cheap ever to get a TV or DVD player like that though -- my DVD player was like $20 a couple years ago, and my TV is a 13 inch TV/VCR combo I got...freshman year? at a pawn shop.)
-I spent the night in the airport last night. All in all, if forced I'd say I prefer Midway to O'Hare, but I think had I been spending the night in O'Hare I would have had access to a TV and food outside of the terminal. Because Midway has basically nothing unless you're inside the terminal, and you can't get into the terminal if your airline has already packed up for the night and thus can't check you in. It wouldn't have been too bad, except for the fact that it made me miss most of the Game 7 ALCS Red Sox/Indians game. And man how I wanted to watch it, and how I hate that I missed it now reading stuff about it. Quite sad. I did get to see the first 2.5 innings on the bus from some stop where I had to switch buses all the way to Midway, and that was exciting because it was unexpected. But I love seeing the celebration after wins (if it's my team that won, obviously), and I'm sad I missed it all. Sigh. Alas.
-The server selling Rockies tickets crashed today, after selling only a few hundred tickets, when something around 8 million people tried to get on to get tickets. Crazy. Man do I wish I could get tickets to Saturday's game. How often does my team (Red Sox -- I feel like such a traitor around here now) play the home team, in the World Series, when I'm available to see it? It'd be so amazing. But alas, an unrealized dream. (Two of my friends went to Boston for fall break, because one's brother goes to BC. Had I gone with them, I would have been in Boston last night for the craziness of the celebration. This week would be ridiculous, and what a time to be there! Oh well. haha. I am glad to be home, don't worry.)
-Colorado water never fails to disappoint. I always forget just how great it is until I come home and take my first drink of it, and then I'm like, man what have I been drinking the last two months?
-It sort of sucks being here without Colt around. I mean, it doesn't suck, but it's weird, and not in a good way. I miss her.
-My mom's forcing me to go to the doctor for my ingrown toenail. I actually started crying about it (going to the doctor) a little bit tonight when my parents were saying I just had to go. I hate the doctor.
-In the airport last night, they jackhammered for two. straight. hours. They were done by midnight, but oh my gosh it was inescapably loud. And then once I started falling asleep (managed to get maybe three hours in there where I would sleep for a solid-ish hour, wake up, fall asleep for another hour, etc), I got cold. First I just had on a tshirt and fleece. Then during one wake up, after shivering a lot, I put on a long sleeved shirt over the tshirt, under the fleece. Then awhile later I was shivering again, so I put on a hoodie over the long sleeve, under the fleece. And I was still cold. And I hadn't even gotten to Denver yet!
-My flight was at 7:15 but there was one at 6am too, and they put me on standby for it but said that it was overbooked by 7 people already. I was surprised when I actually made it on that one. Meant having a middle seat instead of a window, but it also meant getting into Denver earlier. Not that much earlier, but if all I was going to be doing was sitting around the airport anyway, why not leave sooner if possible? I've never gotten standby on a flight before, so...you know...that's cool.
-Oh man! Tom Brady is the man. The score at halftime of the Pats-Dolphins game was 42-7. How ridiculous is that? They put in the backup QB pretty soon into the half, I think (I only saw the first quarter or so of the game because I went to the last men's soccer home game of the season after that), but he apparently sucked and got intercepted and whatnot and then they put Tom Brady back in. And then he threw another TD. He had 6 yesterday. That's rather impressive. Anyway. Yay for my Boston teams.
-Today I was very happy that I have a bed warmer thing under my sheets. It was really cold in my room when I went upstairs to take a long nap, and my bed just has the sheets and a really thin comforter, and then a thin blanket. At first I was like, man I'm gonna be so cold for a little while, but then I remembered, and I plugged it in and turned it on, and it warmed up quickly. Mmm.
-As soon as I got into the terminal this morning (bright and early -- 4:30. Gotta love it), the first thing I did was to get in line at one of the two restaurant things that were open in the main food area, to get something to eat. I don't generally like to buy food at airports, but sometimes it's just a necessity. The vanilla cappuccino I bought? Totally worth the $2.40 it cost. Man it was delicious.
-Let's hear it for a trip home without any unforeseen incidents! I mean, not only was my flight not delayed or anything, but I actually left early! (Different flight, but still.)
-I'm gonna go enjoy a nice long hopefully interrupted sleep now. My clothes are freshly laundered (half of what I brought home in my suitcase was dirty clothes, although I didn't take all my dirty clothes. It's just nice to do them at home when the opportunity presents itself), my bed is nice and warm, and I've got nothing on the agenda for tomorrow. Unless I end up going to the doctor tomorrow. Man that's gonna suck, whenever it happens. I can barely stand thinking about it.
So I'll sleep.
-I got a new phone. It's spiffy and sort of technologically updated and sort of makes me feel like I fit in the 21st century. Weird. Add that to the fact that we now have my little brother's TV and DVD player, since he obviously doesn't need it in Iraq, and he has this all new up to date expensive stuff, like one of those flat, widescreen TVs and whatnot. I'm not entirely sold on this TV though. But anyway. It's weird, suddenly experiencing what lots of people already do. (I'm too cheap ever to get a TV or DVD player like that though -- my DVD player was like $20 a couple years ago, and my TV is a 13 inch TV/VCR combo I got...freshman year? at a pawn shop.)
-I spent the night in the airport last night. All in all, if forced I'd say I prefer Midway to O'Hare, but I think had I been spending the night in O'Hare I would have had access to a TV and food outside of the terminal. Because Midway has basically nothing unless you're inside the terminal, and you can't get into the terminal if your airline has already packed up for the night and thus can't check you in. It wouldn't have been too bad, except for the fact that it made me miss most of the Game 7 ALCS Red Sox/Indians game. And man how I wanted to watch it, and how I hate that I missed it now reading stuff about it. Quite sad. I did get to see the first 2.5 innings on the bus from some stop where I had to switch buses all the way to Midway, and that was exciting because it was unexpected. But I love seeing the celebration after wins (if it's my team that won, obviously), and I'm sad I missed it all. Sigh. Alas.
-The server selling Rockies tickets crashed today, after selling only a few hundred tickets, when something around 8 million people tried to get on to get tickets. Crazy. Man do I wish I could get tickets to Saturday's game. How often does my team (Red Sox -- I feel like such a traitor around here now) play the home team, in the World Series, when I'm available to see it? It'd be so amazing. But alas, an unrealized dream. (Two of my friends went to Boston for fall break, because one's brother goes to BC. Had I gone with them, I would have been in Boston last night for the craziness of the celebration. This week would be ridiculous, and what a time to be there! Oh well. haha. I am glad to be home, don't worry.)
-Colorado water never fails to disappoint. I always forget just how great it is until I come home and take my first drink of it, and then I'm like, man what have I been drinking the last two months?
-It sort of sucks being here without Colt around. I mean, it doesn't suck, but it's weird, and not in a good way. I miss her.
-My mom's forcing me to go to the doctor for my ingrown toenail. I actually started crying about it (going to the doctor) a little bit tonight when my parents were saying I just had to go. I hate the doctor.
-In the airport last night, they jackhammered for two. straight. hours. They were done by midnight, but oh my gosh it was inescapably loud. And then once I started falling asleep (managed to get maybe three hours in there where I would sleep for a solid-ish hour, wake up, fall asleep for another hour, etc), I got cold. First I just had on a tshirt and fleece. Then during one wake up, after shivering a lot, I put on a long sleeved shirt over the tshirt, under the fleece. Then awhile later I was shivering again, so I put on a hoodie over the long sleeve, under the fleece. And I was still cold. And I hadn't even gotten to Denver yet!
-My flight was at 7:15 but there was one at 6am too, and they put me on standby for it but said that it was overbooked by 7 people already. I was surprised when I actually made it on that one. Meant having a middle seat instead of a window, but it also meant getting into Denver earlier. Not that much earlier, but if all I was going to be doing was sitting around the airport anyway, why not leave sooner if possible? I've never gotten standby on a flight before, so...you know...that's cool.
-Oh man! Tom Brady is the man. The score at halftime of the Pats-Dolphins game was 42-7. How ridiculous is that? They put in the backup QB pretty soon into the half, I think (I only saw the first quarter or so of the game because I went to the last men's soccer home game of the season after that), but he apparently sucked and got intercepted and whatnot and then they put Tom Brady back in. And then he threw another TD. He had 6 yesterday. That's rather impressive. Anyway. Yay for my Boston teams.
-Today I was very happy that I have a bed warmer thing under my sheets. It was really cold in my room when I went upstairs to take a long nap, and my bed just has the sheets and a really thin comforter, and then a thin blanket. At first I was like, man I'm gonna be so cold for a little while, but then I remembered, and I plugged it in and turned it on, and it warmed up quickly. Mmm.
-As soon as I got into the terminal this morning (bright and early -- 4:30. Gotta love it), the first thing I did was to get in line at one of the two restaurant things that were open in the main food area, to get something to eat. I don't generally like to buy food at airports, but sometimes it's just a necessity. The vanilla cappuccino I bought? Totally worth the $2.40 it cost. Man it was delicious.
-Let's hear it for a trip home without any unforeseen incidents! I mean, not only was my flight not delayed or anything, but I actually left early! (Different flight, but still.)
-I'm gonna go enjoy a nice long hopefully interrupted sleep now. My clothes are freshly laundered (half of what I brought home in my suitcase was dirty clothes, although I didn't take all my dirty clothes. It's just nice to do them at home when the opportunity presents itself), my bed is nice and warm, and I've got nothing on the agenda for tomorrow. Unless I end up going to the doctor tomorrow. Man that's gonna suck, whenever it happens. I can barely stand thinking about it.
So I'll sleep.
Saturday, October 20, 2007
USC? More like US-No!
(That would be more appropriate had we won today. But whatever. It's corny, but I love it -- the first time I heard/saw it, it took me like five minutes before I got it.)
I hate. Hate hate hate. USC. With a passion. You know, I don't even know what to say. Deep down, I guess, I knew that we didn't have much of a chance today. But it's our arch-rival, so it's hard not to have hope. And when we started, and we were so loud that on the second play of the game they had to call a time out, things looked good. Obviously went downhill from there (I think that, early as it was, the turning point in the game, when all the air left the sails, was when USC punted to us and the ball hit one of our guys running to help block for Zbikowski as it came down. Hit that guy's leg, which meant it was a fair ball, and a USC player managed to fall on the ball. At somewhere inside our 20, far too close to the endzone. And then they scored like right away. And then scored like eighteen more times, and we got like three more first downs the rest of the game. Utterly terrible game. And the band? I am so close right now to using a curse word that I don't use and that I hate hearing (but which I've had to hear way more than I like thanks to being at these games, where there's been far too much to curse about). I hate that band, and that song which they play over and over and over and over. Like every single play it seems like. Makes me want to run over to them and start punching, even if it means I'll get kicked out. (Of course, our band isn't a whole lot better lately, because this year they've decided to play the same three songs over and over, with the fight song and maybe one or two more thrown in there occasionally. They used to do more fun songs, like Crazy Train and Take On Me, during the games like during time outs and such, but not so much this season. And I hate it. Although to be fair they did play those two and "867-5309" towards the end of the game. That was nice.)
So anyway. Somewhat of a painful game to watch. It's all just so bizarre. We were fun to watch sophomore year! Occasionally freshman year too. Last year we were a bit too anxiety-inducing, but we still made some great plays. (I miss Brady. Sigh. Oh, and receivers that catch.) I'm worried we'll never get back to the great place we had in college football. Monk Malloy totally screwed over the football program, it seems, and that's really sad. Mostly because I was never a fan when we were really good, and I'm a fan now, and I want to be able to be a fan of a team for which I can cheer! It was so sad in the 4th quarter today when we finally got another first down, and everyone cheered like crazy. I mean, it's always good to cheer for a first down, but when that's the only thing you have to cheer about because it's such a rare occurrence, that's just...wrong. It's wrong at Notre Dame. But that's where we are. And, you know, oh well. So I'll never get to know what it's like to be lifted up for post-touchdown pushups. (I've always felt too self-conscious to request that I get put up in the past, because I don't want to kill anyone. And I still feel that way, but it's my senior year so I was hoping that I'd get to do it at least once this year. Alas.) At least I know what it's like to be a Notre Dame student, and, you know, that's what really matters.
But boy oh boy do I hope we can still manage to get back on track at some point. And I really hope we beat Navy. It's certainly not a given by any means. Rather the opposite, actually. (Geez, how are we this bad?) But man, we've had too many "historical" things happen this year (for example, apparently today was the first home game since 1933 against USC in which we've been shut out), and I'd rather not add another one (the first time in...what, forty-some years, or more, that Navy beats us). Plus I have relatives coming in for the game (I think, at least...hopefully they haven't changed their minds at this point), and I don't think either has ever been to a game, and it'd just be nice to have a win when they're here. Of course, it'd be nice to have a win every time I'm here, but whatever.
Oh but man, you know what made the game even worse for me? Having to listen to everyone emote all over the place. There was this dude next to me, who thankfully left once the score had gotten to 31-0, and throughout the first half he kept saying how much we suck, how much Charlie sucks, how every individual player who did anything badly sucks, how we don't deserve anything, how the administration sucks for not being willing to pay Urban Meyer more (he didn't want to come here, because he didn't think he could win. I'm not sure that he'd be having much better a season this year had he come here, anyway. Maybe some, but...yeah). Just a bunch of ridiculous things, like how much he hates that he paid money to see this, and he doesn't want to watch it, and blah blah blah. I finally just said "If you hate watching it so much, then don't. Just leave." And he said he'd leave when they scored 30 (after having said he'd leave if we hadn't scored by halftime, and then that he'd leave when they scored 28). So I told him that the least he could do was shut up, and he said he couldn't because...something about he can't just sit there with his arms cross, and that he has to do something. I didn't say anything else, but I'm not sure if he was serious because the more logical thing to do would be to, you know, cheer, maybe, be loud when we're on defense. But what was he doing all game? Standing there with his arms crossed. And complaining about how much he didn't want to be there. Those people piss me off. I hate it when people leave early, but when they're people who are going to turn on the team completely (he even booed our team at one point. You just don't do that, I don't care how horribly we're playing) and be annoying asses about it, then they can leave whenever the heck they want. The sooner the better. Although, our student section was pretty depressing even starting in the 3rd quarter. Far too empty. Part of that can be blamed on fall break, but come on, you just don't leave early and miss the USC game. Ok, in hindsight, it was a slaughter that I suppose most wouldn't have wanted to witness in person, but still. Far too many people left early.)
Anyway.
Enough about that. Maybe one of these weeks you'll tune in and see a happier post about a home victory, finally.
Or maybe not.
Either way, Go Irish!
I hate. Hate hate hate. USC. With a passion. You know, I don't even know what to say. Deep down, I guess, I knew that we didn't have much of a chance today. But it's our arch-rival, so it's hard not to have hope. And when we started, and we were so loud that on the second play of the game they had to call a time out, things looked good. Obviously went downhill from there (I think that, early as it was, the turning point in the game, when all the air left the sails, was when USC punted to us and the ball hit one of our guys running to help block for Zbikowski as it came down. Hit that guy's leg, which meant it was a fair ball, and a USC player managed to fall on the ball. At somewhere inside our 20, far too close to the endzone. And then they scored like right away. And then scored like eighteen more times, and we got like three more first downs the rest of the game. Utterly terrible game. And the band? I am so close right now to using a curse word that I don't use and that I hate hearing (but which I've had to hear way more than I like thanks to being at these games, where there's been far too much to curse about). I hate that band, and that song which they play over and over and over and over. Like every single play it seems like. Makes me want to run over to them and start punching, even if it means I'll get kicked out. (Of course, our band isn't a whole lot better lately, because this year they've decided to play the same three songs over and over, with the fight song and maybe one or two more thrown in there occasionally. They used to do more fun songs, like Crazy Train and Take On Me, during the games like during time outs and such, but not so much this season. And I hate it. Although to be fair they did play those two and "867-5309" towards the end of the game. That was nice.)
So anyway. Somewhat of a painful game to watch. It's all just so bizarre. We were fun to watch sophomore year! Occasionally freshman year too. Last year we were a bit too anxiety-inducing, but we still made some great plays. (I miss Brady. Sigh. Oh, and receivers that catch.) I'm worried we'll never get back to the great place we had in college football. Monk Malloy totally screwed over the football program, it seems, and that's really sad. Mostly because I was never a fan when we were really good, and I'm a fan now, and I want to be able to be a fan of a team for which I can cheer! It was so sad in the 4th quarter today when we finally got another first down, and everyone cheered like crazy. I mean, it's always good to cheer for a first down, but when that's the only thing you have to cheer about because it's such a rare occurrence, that's just...wrong. It's wrong at Notre Dame. But that's where we are. And, you know, oh well. So I'll never get to know what it's like to be lifted up for post-touchdown pushups. (I've always felt too self-conscious to request that I get put up in the past, because I don't want to kill anyone. And I still feel that way, but it's my senior year so I was hoping that I'd get to do it at least once this year. Alas.) At least I know what it's like to be a Notre Dame student, and, you know, that's what really matters.
But boy oh boy do I hope we can still manage to get back on track at some point. And I really hope we beat Navy. It's certainly not a given by any means. Rather the opposite, actually. (Geez, how are we this bad?) But man, we've had too many "historical" things happen this year (for example, apparently today was the first home game since 1933 against USC in which we've been shut out), and I'd rather not add another one (the first time in...what, forty-some years, or more, that Navy beats us). Plus I have relatives coming in for the game (I think, at least...hopefully they haven't changed their minds at this point), and I don't think either has ever been to a game, and it'd just be nice to have a win when they're here. Of course, it'd be nice to have a win every time I'm here, but whatever.
Oh but man, you know what made the game even worse for me? Having to listen to everyone emote all over the place. There was this dude next to me, who thankfully left once the score had gotten to 31-0, and throughout the first half he kept saying how much we suck, how much Charlie sucks, how every individual player who did anything badly sucks, how we don't deserve anything, how the administration sucks for not being willing to pay Urban Meyer more (he didn't want to come here, because he didn't think he could win. I'm not sure that he'd be having much better a season this year had he come here, anyway. Maybe some, but...yeah). Just a bunch of ridiculous things, like how much he hates that he paid money to see this, and he doesn't want to watch it, and blah blah blah. I finally just said "If you hate watching it so much, then don't. Just leave." And he said he'd leave when they scored 30 (after having said he'd leave if we hadn't scored by halftime, and then that he'd leave when they scored 28). So I told him that the least he could do was shut up, and he said he couldn't because...something about he can't just sit there with his arms cross, and that he has to do something. I didn't say anything else, but I'm not sure if he was serious because the more logical thing to do would be to, you know, cheer, maybe, be loud when we're on defense. But what was he doing all game? Standing there with his arms crossed. And complaining about how much he didn't want to be there. Those people piss me off. I hate it when people leave early, but when they're people who are going to turn on the team completely (he even booed our team at one point. You just don't do that, I don't care how horribly we're playing) and be annoying asses about it, then they can leave whenever the heck they want. The sooner the better. Although, our student section was pretty depressing even starting in the 3rd quarter. Far too empty. Part of that can be blamed on fall break, but come on, you just don't leave early and miss the USC game. Ok, in hindsight, it was a slaughter that I suppose most wouldn't have wanted to witness in person, but still. Far too many people left early.)
Anyway.
Enough about that. Maybe one of these weeks you'll tune in and see a happier post about a home victory, finally.
Or maybe not.
Either way, Go Irish!
Thursday, October 18, 2007
I've been good about not doing this procrastinating posting much yet this semester.
I've made it through an entire box of tissues in a week, after having gone the whole rest of the semester thus far using only one and a half or so. I had a three pack of tissue boxes when I moved in, plus whatever was left of a box we had brought with us in the car on the drive out here. I am now on the third of that three pack. Last semester, a three pack just like that got me through most of, if not the whole, semester. But there was no intensely mucous-y cold last semester (nor was there a pus-y ingrown toenail, or pink eye, or the death of a beloved cat). All in all it's been a fairly liquidy semester. It's only half over, and I already have to get more tissues. I feel like Bethany.
So hey, what should I do: Take the last bus out of here Sunday night, which leaves around 6 something and gets into Midway at like 8:30, or take the first bus Monday morning which leaves at 4:10 and gets in at 6:30. My flight's at 7:15, so maybe -- maybe -- if I didn't check a bag, I could make that. Unless it gets there earlier than scheduled, and then I'd be more ok, but it could be late and then I'd be screwed. I have a friend who's trying the first bus out thing, and she has a Saturday morning flight that's around the same time as my Monday morning flight, so maybe I'll see how she did. I'm not sure what difference there would be in traffic between Saturday and Monday mornings, though. Especially as it's a football weekend, I'm not sure how that impacts things. I'll probably just end up getting out of here on Sunday night, and setting up camp where I ended up last time I stayed overnight in Midway. Only this time I'll have my laptop and I'll make sure to bring along lots of movies. Provided I can find a plug...hm. Oh well. I'm going to try to fit my purse in my check bag (keeping important things with me, of course) and then bringing a pillow along. It'd be a lot nicer/easier if I could just sleep in the terminal somewhere, but I think they kick everyone out at like midnight. Such is life.
Oh, in other news, while I think I saw it once a loooong time ago, I have now officially seen An Affair to Remember. Well, most of it, enough to get the gist. I kind of was going in and out with the first half. But anyway. I was a little ambivalent towards it throughout, until the last scene. How anyone can watch it and not love that last scene is beyond me. Oh man. That's good stuff right there.
(I've also discovered tonight that I am screwed for this trads midterm tomorrow. I have no idea how or what to study beyond the general and generally unhelpful things he told us -- like reading the material with an eye for what the intent is and who the audience is. The format doesn't sound awful, since it's 10-15 short answer questions of some kind, and then like two longer answer ones. But, like, that could be anything. So...that sucks. I'll be so glad when it's tomorrow afternoon around 3:30 or 4, depending on when I do the finishing touches on my other class' paper which is due to my prof's office by 5. My test is from 1:55-2:45, and I basically have that paper finished, but I might want to add a sentence or two at the end or something. Who knows. Either way, win or lose, this weekend is going to be AMAZING. With the exception of some hours on Sunday/Monday. It's USC weekend, baby! The start of fall break! And the Ponge Party is tomorrow night! That's ponge as in ponj. (Like conge, better known as conjunctivitis.) As in part of the last name of our dear friend Katherine, who turns 22 on Monday, and for whom a party is being thrown tomorrow night. Hopefully culminating in an appearance at the Backer, because I could certainly use some Backer fun after this week. I'll be tired as all get-out, but the Backer makes it all better.)
So hey, what should I do: Take the last bus out of here Sunday night, which leaves around 6 something and gets into Midway at like 8:30, or take the first bus Monday morning which leaves at 4:10 and gets in at 6:30. My flight's at 7:15, so maybe -- maybe -- if I didn't check a bag, I could make that. Unless it gets there earlier than scheduled, and then I'd be more ok, but it could be late and then I'd be screwed. I have a friend who's trying the first bus out thing, and she has a Saturday morning flight that's around the same time as my Monday morning flight, so maybe I'll see how she did. I'm not sure what difference there would be in traffic between Saturday and Monday mornings, though. Especially as it's a football weekend, I'm not sure how that impacts things. I'll probably just end up getting out of here on Sunday night, and setting up camp where I ended up last time I stayed overnight in Midway. Only this time I'll have my laptop and I'll make sure to bring along lots of movies. Provided I can find a plug...hm. Oh well. I'm going to try to fit my purse in my check bag (keeping important things with me, of course) and then bringing a pillow along. It'd be a lot nicer/easier if I could just sleep in the terminal somewhere, but I think they kick everyone out at like midnight. Such is life.
Oh, in other news, while I think I saw it once a loooong time ago, I have now officially seen An Affair to Remember. Well, most of it, enough to get the gist. I kind of was going in and out with the first half. But anyway. I was a little ambivalent towards it throughout, until the last scene. How anyone can watch it and not love that last scene is beyond me. Oh man. That's good stuff right there.
(I've also discovered tonight that I am screwed for this trads midterm tomorrow. I have no idea how or what to study beyond the general and generally unhelpful things he told us -- like reading the material with an eye for what the intent is and who the audience is. The format doesn't sound awful, since it's 10-15 short answer questions of some kind, and then like two longer answer ones. But, like, that could be anything. So...that sucks. I'll be so glad when it's tomorrow afternoon around 3:30 or 4, depending on when I do the finishing touches on my other class' paper which is due to my prof's office by 5. My test is from 1:55-2:45, and I basically have that paper finished, but I might want to add a sentence or two at the end or something. Who knows. Either way, win or lose, this weekend is going to be AMAZING. With the exception of some hours on Sunday/Monday. It's USC weekend, baby! The start of fall break! And the Ponge Party is tomorrow night! That's ponge as in ponj. (Like conge, better known as conjunctivitis.) As in part of the last name of our dear friend Katherine, who turns 22 on Monday, and for whom a party is being thrown tomorrow night. Hopefully culminating in an appearance at the Backer, because I could certainly use some Backer fun after this week. I'll be tired as all get-out, but the Backer makes it all better.)
(Can you tell it's crunch time?)
So after muting my TV (hey, I gotta have the scores available in real-time!), I pressed play on my lovely self-created radio station on slacker.com. (Have I mentioned how much I love this thing?) My whole reason for this post right now is to tell you that currently playing is "Night and Day" sung by the ineffable Fred Astaire. I love Fred Astaire. More than I can say. When I first heard the song come on, I thought, "Oh Fred Astaire. That's nice." I did, after all, put him in my station. And then as I was sitting here, trying to will words to come to me for my paper, I caught a part of the song, caught his voice. Obviously I had been hearing it, but not really listening. And then I finally did for a bit, and it just hit me how relaxed and happy and his voice makes me. It's just so nice to listen to. I need to rent another of his movies, because they are pretty much the best things ever. Annoying as that FTT class was last semester, I'm really glad I took it, if only because it forced me to watch two genres I had been meaning to watch for awhile: John Wayne and Fred Astaire (or Astaire/Rogers) movies. Mmm.
And, while writing this, someone (I think Big Papi made the hit) scored a home run, or perhaps just a really long ball or something, and two more Red Sox runs scored. I think they do better when I'm not paying attention. Which, I suppose, is good for my paper. I still maintain, though, that Beckett should start the rest of the games in the ALCS. Because, um, he's amazing.
And, while writing this, someone (I think Big Papi made the hit) scored a home run, or perhaps just a really long ball or something, and two more Red Sox runs scored. I think they do better when I'm not paying attention. Which, I suppose, is good for my paper. I still maintain, though, that Beckett should start the rest of the games in the ALCS. Because, um, he's amazing.
Josh Beckett and rain on the Dome. Makings of a good night.
Wow, pouring rain in high winds looks really cool bouncing off the Dome. (I know this because I have a Dome-side view!)
We had (are having?) a tornado warning tonight. First time in my four years here that the tornado sirens have gone off on not a Tuesday late morning/early afternoon, as they do when they're being tested every month or so.
The Dome looks like it's smoking though. And when it's further illuminated by the lightning, it's pretty durn sweet.
Oh, and: Fact. Having a very important game 5 between the Red Sox and Indians the same night before a certain Red Sox fan has two papers due and a midterm to take is a very horrid situation. Especially when said Red Sox fan has enough trouble as it is being productive, even when there are no important baseball games on TV. (As evidenced by the fact that she still has yet to finish either paper, and the studying? Well, she attempted the studying, but has no idea what to do beyond read every single thing read for the class thus far, and that's just not happening.)
Ok, I guess God's telling me that I can keep up with the game with occasional updates. The Fox broadcast is really sketchy right now (keeps skipping and freezing and sucking), not to mention they keep interrupting with storm updates, even though it's pretty much over at this point. Here, anyway. And here is all I care about.
Alas. Work must be done, as sleep is going to be hard to come by tonight, methinks. (At least my class/test tomorrow isn't until 1:55. Wow, I just realized that! Amazing! I've still got plenty of time!)
We had (are having?) a tornado warning tonight. First time in my four years here that the tornado sirens have gone off on not a Tuesday late morning/early afternoon, as they do when they're being tested every month or so.
The Dome looks like it's smoking though. And when it's further illuminated by the lightning, it's pretty durn sweet.
Oh, and: Fact. Having a very important game 5 between the Red Sox and Indians the same night before a certain Red Sox fan has two papers due and a midterm to take is a very horrid situation. Especially when said Red Sox fan has enough trouble as it is being productive, even when there are no important baseball games on TV. (As evidenced by the fact that she still has yet to finish either paper, and the studying? Well, she attempted the studying, but has no idea what to do beyond read every single thing read for the class thus far, and that's just not happening.)
Ok, I guess God's telling me that I can keep up with the game with occasional updates. The Fox broadcast is really sketchy right now (keeps skipping and freezing and sucking), not to mention they keep interrupting with storm updates, even though it's pretty much over at this point. Here, anyway. And here is all I care about.
Alas. Work must be done, as sleep is going to be hard to come by tonight, methinks. (At least my class/test tomorrow isn't until 1:55. Wow, I just realized that! Amazing! I've still got plenty of time!)
Now I have a goal for break
Back at some point this summer, I put some movies on hold at the library, only to discover that they had wait lists of in some cases more than 200 or 300 people. I had forgotten about these for the most part, and today I get an email in my mailbox from the library. Three of them are now available and will be held until 7 days from today. (I think the fourth might have become available back in September, when I obviously wasn't around, so I canceled that one.) Which means that they'll be there when I get home. Talk about perfect timing. Amazing.
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
I refer to God as "he." Deal with it.
Firstly (and unrelated to the rest of this post): Slacker has disappointed me, finally. I have Dan Fogelberg in my created station, and you know what song just came on? "Another Old Lang Syne" or whatever it's called. The non-Christmas Christmas song, the one that has Christmas Eve as the context but having nothing to do with the rest of the song, the one that they play at Christmas simply because the first line says "the snow was falling Christmas Eve," the one that they continue to play year-round. I don't like this song, partially because they cheat and play it both as a Christmas song and as a non-Christmas song. And it's sort of a depressing song anyway. I guess listening to it not around Christmas is ok, now that I'm hearing it, but boy do I hate when it comes on when they're supposed to be doing 24 hour Christmas songs.
Anyway. Onto the real point of this post.
I'm sure you remember, or not, that post I wrote after a very brief, but long for me, hiatus back in September. The one where I mentioned some spiritual issues that had come up. Well, while I'm for the most part nowhere near as down in the dumps as I was at the time of that post, I'm still hanging on to some vestiges of anger or disillusionment or...I don't know what to call it, but just not happy feelings toward God. I have to preface this with something. I don't doubt that my life is wholly in God's hands, and that ultimately he has a plan for me that is far better than any I would ever be able to come up with, and further that he does want me to be happy in the end. I just happen to think that perhaps to reach those ends, right now for some reason he's letting me be unhappy with things, and letting unhappy things happen in my life. I further know that a lot of happiness has to do with what we choose to be happy about. I'm sure there are many people in the world multitudes worse off than me who somehow manage to be happier than I am. So, I guess what I'm saying is deep down, I know that a lot of my struggles with God are all on me. Or maybe all of them are on me. God is God. I'm just me.
I guess, I'm just trying to figure it out. Recently, within the last couple of weeks, I was sitting in class or in church or something and I sort of found myself listening to whatever was being discussed (either way it would be God-related as a majority of my classes can't escape the topic of God. I am a theology major, after all. Can't have theology without the theos, right?), and hearing it from an outsider's point of view. As in, an outsider to Christianity. And it just struck me, how absurd the whole concept of God and faith and Christianity and all sounds. I mean, try thinking about it as someone who's not grown up with that background. This undefinable being up in the sky somewhere, in charge of everything yet sort of removed in some senses, a being that doesn't exist in time or space or understanding, responsible for everything and everyone? And people pray to this...being, believing him to hear and care and respond? I guess it's hard to ignore a whole life's worth of beliefs, but somehow I managed it whatever day this was, and I somehow saw how people can ridicule Christians for their seemingly naive faith in what could easily be nothing. And I saw it especially in the context of Catholicism -- not only do we have this faith in an invisible, unprovable being, but we believe a part of that being to be physically present in some wafers and wine every Mass? Literally? And then we eat it? Talk about illogical.
You'd think, given the fact that I had been sort of on the outs with God lately, that I might start to internalize this realization of how weird Christianity is from the outside. But of course I didn't. I mean, it's too deep a part of me to start doing anything drastic like that. I won't pretend that I feel as close to it as I have at times in the past, but neither can I say that I don't believe any or all of it. A non-Christian, a non-Catholic Susie is simply not a Susie that can exist. It was just interesting, sort of seeing it removed from my cradle Catholicism, because I don't think I had ever really understood how people could believe there was nothing greater than us, that none of it made sense. I knew people did, and many people, but it was so far out of my realm of understanding that I just couldn't internalize it at all. Now I sort of can. Obviously, I still believe, and would even assert to know, that these people are wrong. So what's my point? To be honest, I have no idea.
Here's what I know. I sometimes get sick of reading people's blogs saying "My prayers have been answered!" with some accompanying story about how they prayed so hard, said a novena to this saint that number of times, and -- of course -- God came through. I've said novenas, I've prayed. To what end? Seemingly, so far, nothing. It makes me feel as though my prayers aren't worth the breath it takes to say them (which isn't much, since I generally do my praying internally). Saying novenas has never gotten me anywhere. So then I wonder, what am I doing wrong? Should I not be saying novenas with the expectation that there will be some sort of answer at the end, that I should just do them to enrich my spiritual life? But then, all these other people I hear about, they say novenas with the express intention of some sort of answer, some sense of peace, to come at the end. This leads me to conclude that I just don't know how to pray. Or that a lack of anything must be my answer. Like I'm not supposed to have peace, I'm not supposed to have any sort of answer at all. Me being the fallible human being that I am, it's far too easy for me to give up praying when nothing seems to come from prayers. Humans like to do things that will gain them some sort of reward or benefit. It's hard to get up motivation to do something that seems to yield nothing.
And I know, I should do it because in the end, there will be some benefit, even if I don't see it until I die. It's like working out (that other thing I hate doing and can rarely get up the motivation to do). I can work out every day for days on end with very little apparently improvement, which makes it easy to rationalize stopping because what's the point, but then once I do stop I notice a negative difference. The tricky thing is, though, that once you've gotten to the point where you've stopped, it's infinitely harder to start again from scratch. You know you should, you know that in the long run it'll be better for you and that you'll eventually see some benefits, but getting the motivation to start when you know how hard it is at first, when you weren't too excited about it to begin with, for me at least it's apparently nearly impossible.
I think this is my problem though: I expect too much happiness from God. I have somehow tricked myself into believe that if I'm a good Catholic (or Christian, or whatever you want to call it) and pray and go to church and tithe and donate my time and whatnot, then I'm entitled to get positive outcomes for my prayers. I deserve God to give me good things. I just don't think that's the truth, though. Life's full of negatives. Life just downright sucks sometimes, and that has nothing to do with how good or bad a person is, with how devoted or not a person is to God. I've never been one of those people who believes that good people deserve only good things and bad people should only have bad things happen to them, who questions God whenever something bad happens or who wonders how God could allow a horrible person to be happy. Sometimes things just happen. God never promised that life would be all roses and butterflies and candy if we follow and believe in him. But I guess I had believed that he'd at least let some good things slip through the cracks now and again for good people. And I suppose maybe he does, just not in the way I want it to happen.
I sort of wonder if this somewhat ambivalence to God stems a bit from my decision to take that semester off last year. At the time I decided to do it, I really thought that it was what he wanted me to do, even that I wasn't supposed to be at ND anymore. It didn't take long into the semester to realize that I needed to be back here, and now I am which is obviously a good thing. But I missed out on a semester here, and instead had a rather forgettable (at best) semester back in Colorado. For which I am still paying, what with my 20 credits this semester and all. Maybe it was in God's plan for me to take that semester off. But maybe it wasn't, and his complete lack of an answer sophomore year led me to believe that it was his will, somehow. And maybe there's a part of me that's mad at him for that, and I continue to be hold on to that because he's sort of always seemed distant to me. I've never really felt anything strong in the way of direction from him, and I think to make up for it I just insert what I want to do and make myself believe that it's God saying what he wants me to do. And then it turns out less than stellar-ly, and then I have to question whether that was really God's will. And I'm sure 99 times out of 100 it really wasn't. But, again, I have no idea because how can I know when God seems to have forgotten that I exist? It's impossible for me to forget that he exists.
Here I am, senior year, closing in on only one semester left before the looming Real World. I'm not really scare of the Real World, but I do wish I had any clue as to what I am going to be doing seven months from now. However, I haven't been keeping up on my end of the conversation with God lately. Mostly because it seems like he dropped his end a long time ago, and I'm sick of having one-ended conversations. See, here's the deal. I have some possibilities for what to do next year. I could apply to grad school. (Seeing as how I already paid the $140 to take the GRE, it'd be sort of a waste not to apply at the very least.) I could apply for a few service opportunities that seem interesting. I could just try to find a job back home, doing who knows what. The latter is the least tantalizing at the moment, I think, because I've done the live aimlessly at home thing too much. The problem with the other two is that I need professorial recommendations, and I've never been much of a talker in my classes. As a result, I have no professors who really know me that well who could write recommendations. This wouldn't be as much of a problem if I were in a bigger major, like engineering, where none of the teachers really seem to get to know the students much, since the classes are bigger, I think. In arts and letters majors, though, I don't think this flies as well. So I'm sort of at an impasse there.
And then there's the real issue, which I hesitate to mention here because I'm fully aware how pathetic it will sound. And maybe it really is that pathetic. But anyway, the thing is, what I really want to do is get married. I've never really wanted a career, and that hasn't changed since I've been in college. I suppose this doesn't apply as much if I did grad school or some sort of year long service thing, because really that's just postponing the Real World. But the fact is I'm 22 and no closer to getting married than I was when I was 16. Or any other age. See, when I say I want a boyfriend, I don't just want a boyfriend. I want the guy I'm ultimately going to marry. The thought never really entered my mind that I wouldn't have met him by the time I graduated college. I always figured I'd meet him in college. I probably wouldn't have taken it very well had someone told me that I'd graduate without ever having a boyfriend. Heck, I still don't take it well. My sister got married when she was 20, and started having kids right away. My little brother will probably get married before I get any closer than I am now. At least I can still commiserate about it with my older brother, but that doesn't make me feel any better, because I want him to be happy too. It's frustrating. Senior year, when everyone's making plans to go further on their life paths of choice, I'm stuck picking between the best of what to me are second choices, because I can't exactly do anything to get on my preferred path.
So, when trying to figure out what the heck it is God wants me to do since he clearly doesn't want me married any time soon, the one thing I've known my whole life I want to do, you'd think he'd be more vociferous on any or all of my alternatives. Give me something, at least. Is the lack of good profs (for me) to ask for recommendations a hint by God that I shouldn't be pursuing those two avenues, or is it just yet again another example of how much I've irreparably messed things up, since I think it's obvious by now that I make bad life choices? I know I'm supposed to live the way God wants me to, but how am I supposed to do that if I can't figure out what the heck he wants me to do?
It's sort of impossible this semester for me to try to forget about all this, forget that my life is not mine but God's. My theo classes have all pretty much meshed together so that certain points get reiterated in all of them numerous times. Kind of annoying when I'm trying to be mad at God. And then there's my Mary class, where it was brought up over and over that Mary really had no idea what would happen -- she said yes without knowing what it would bring, without even knowing who it was that she would be mothering. If she can do all that without knowing each next step, why can't I do the same without complaint? Well, clearly I'm not Mary. But I also don't have an angel coming down telling me that if I say yes, this is what will happen -- at least this first step. At least Mary knew what path she was on, or at least that she was on the right path. I don't have an angel appearing to me telling me that God has chosen me for this thing. If I did, at least I'd know I was on the right path. But obviously I don't have that. And it's tough trying to figure it out on my own.
And then there's my "A Faith to Die For" theo class. We've been talking about the virtues the past few classes. Today we talked a bit about hope, and its vice of despair. I unfortunately found myself recognizing some of the attributes of despair in myself. That's not a good thing. Basically, I suppose this is what this entire long-winded post comes down to: I really need a spiritual check-up or something. Maybe even emergency care. In writing a lot of this out, it occurred to me that it'd be really nice to discuss it with a spiritual director. One of my friends went to a spiritual director a couple weeks ago, and was nervous about it at first but seemed to have a really good experience with it in the end. I had a bit of a foray into spiritual direction last semester when I went on that silent retreat. Looking back, though, I can see that I forced it too much, and that I wasn't really very open with the whole thing. Or maybe I just wasn't very honest about it, because I didn't want to be honest with myself. Not sure. I think it might be good for me to talk about this with someone who's actually sort of experienced in counseling people about all things spiritual. I've gone through the "pretend to go through it and just go through the motions and maybe you'll start to feel it again one of these days" method, and clearly that didn't really get me anywhere. Much as I hate talking to people about anything, much as I hate admitting that I need help for anything and that I can't do some things by myself, I may just have to give up on that this time and go do it. I can't keep going the way I've been going, I know that much. I need things to change, and for that to happen, I think I need to change myself. With the help of someone else, maybe. Probably doesn't help that I have very few friends who are very strong spiritually, who are really into that sort of stuff. I can't really talk to them about it, great though they may be.
No nagging me now (Mom), I just sent an email to see about finding someone who might could direct me.
I suddenly feel the need to apologize for this all over disorganized excuse for a post. Concise I most certainly am not. I definitely wasn't intending for this all to come out like it did, but since it did, I might as well run with it and see what happens, right? Anyway. I guess if I were to sum up this whole ridiculously long thing, I'd say this: I know God's around, I know he hasn't abandoned me, and I know it's on me to find my way back to him, because he doesn't ever leave people. I just have to figure out how to do that, even if it means admitting that I'm mad at him (which I don't like to do, because I like to believe that things I might blame on him basically really fall onto me). Ok even that summary didn't make sense. I guess there's no point in trying to glean a point out of this. Sorry, folks.
Anyway. Onto the real point of this post.
I'm sure you remember, or not, that post I wrote after a very brief, but long for me, hiatus back in September. The one where I mentioned some spiritual issues that had come up. Well, while I'm for the most part nowhere near as down in the dumps as I was at the time of that post, I'm still hanging on to some vestiges of anger or disillusionment or...I don't know what to call it, but just not happy feelings toward God. I have to preface this with something. I don't doubt that my life is wholly in God's hands, and that ultimately he has a plan for me that is far better than any I would ever be able to come up with, and further that he does want me to be happy in the end. I just happen to think that perhaps to reach those ends, right now for some reason he's letting me be unhappy with things, and letting unhappy things happen in my life. I further know that a lot of happiness has to do with what we choose to be happy about. I'm sure there are many people in the world multitudes worse off than me who somehow manage to be happier than I am. So, I guess what I'm saying is deep down, I know that a lot of my struggles with God are all on me. Or maybe all of them are on me. God is God. I'm just me.
I guess, I'm just trying to figure it out. Recently, within the last couple of weeks, I was sitting in class or in church or something and I sort of found myself listening to whatever was being discussed (either way it would be God-related as a majority of my classes can't escape the topic of God. I am a theology major, after all. Can't have theology without the theos, right?), and hearing it from an outsider's point of view. As in, an outsider to Christianity. And it just struck me, how absurd the whole concept of God and faith and Christianity and all sounds. I mean, try thinking about it as someone who's not grown up with that background. This undefinable being up in the sky somewhere, in charge of everything yet sort of removed in some senses, a being that doesn't exist in time or space or understanding, responsible for everything and everyone? And people pray to this...being, believing him to hear and care and respond? I guess it's hard to ignore a whole life's worth of beliefs, but somehow I managed it whatever day this was, and I somehow saw how people can ridicule Christians for their seemingly naive faith in what could easily be nothing. And I saw it especially in the context of Catholicism -- not only do we have this faith in an invisible, unprovable being, but we believe a part of that being to be physically present in some wafers and wine every Mass? Literally? And then we eat it? Talk about illogical.
You'd think, given the fact that I had been sort of on the outs with God lately, that I might start to internalize this realization of how weird Christianity is from the outside. But of course I didn't. I mean, it's too deep a part of me to start doing anything drastic like that. I won't pretend that I feel as close to it as I have at times in the past, but neither can I say that I don't believe any or all of it. A non-Christian, a non-Catholic Susie is simply not a Susie that can exist. It was just interesting, sort of seeing it removed from my cradle Catholicism, because I don't think I had ever really understood how people could believe there was nothing greater than us, that none of it made sense. I knew people did, and many people, but it was so far out of my realm of understanding that I just couldn't internalize it at all. Now I sort of can. Obviously, I still believe, and would even assert to know, that these people are wrong. So what's my point? To be honest, I have no idea.
Here's what I know. I sometimes get sick of reading people's blogs saying "My prayers have been answered!" with some accompanying story about how they prayed so hard, said a novena to this saint that number of times, and -- of course -- God came through. I've said novenas, I've prayed. To what end? Seemingly, so far, nothing. It makes me feel as though my prayers aren't worth the breath it takes to say them (which isn't much, since I generally do my praying internally). Saying novenas has never gotten me anywhere. So then I wonder, what am I doing wrong? Should I not be saying novenas with the expectation that there will be some sort of answer at the end, that I should just do them to enrich my spiritual life? But then, all these other people I hear about, they say novenas with the express intention of some sort of answer, some sense of peace, to come at the end. This leads me to conclude that I just don't know how to pray. Or that a lack of anything must be my answer. Like I'm not supposed to have peace, I'm not supposed to have any sort of answer at all. Me being the fallible human being that I am, it's far too easy for me to give up praying when nothing seems to come from prayers. Humans like to do things that will gain them some sort of reward or benefit. It's hard to get up motivation to do something that seems to yield nothing.
And I know, I should do it because in the end, there will be some benefit, even if I don't see it until I die. It's like working out (that other thing I hate doing and can rarely get up the motivation to do). I can work out every day for days on end with very little apparently improvement, which makes it easy to rationalize stopping because what's the point, but then once I do stop I notice a negative difference. The tricky thing is, though, that once you've gotten to the point where you've stopped, it's infinitely harder to start again from scratch. You know you should, you know that in the long run it'll be better for you and that you'll eventually see some benefits, but getting the motivation to start when you know how hard it is at first, when you weren't too excited about it to begin with, for me at least it's apparently nearly impossible.
I think this is my problem though: I expect too much happiness from God. I have somehow tricked myself into believe that if I'm a good Catholic (or Christian, or whatever you want to call it) and pray and go to church and tithe and donate my time and whatnot, then I'm entitled to get positive outcomes for my prayers. I deserve God to give me good things. I just don't think that's the truth, though. Life's full of negatives. Life just downright sucks sometimes, and that has nothing to do with how good or bad a person is, with how devoted or not a person is to God. I've never been one of those people who believes that good people deserve only good things and bad people should only have bad things happen to them, who questions God whenever something bad happens or who wonders how God could allow a horrible person to be happy. Sometimes things just happen. God never promised that life would be all roses and butterflies and candy if we follow and believe in him. But I guess I had believed that he'd at least let some good things slip through the cracks now and again for good people. And I suppose maybe he does, just not in the way I want it to happen.
I sort of wonder if this somewhat ambivalence to God stems a bit from my decision to take that semester off last year. At the time I decided to do it, I really thought that it was what he wanted me to do, even that I wasn't supposed to be at ND anymore. It didn't take long into the semester to realize that I needed to be back here, and now I am which is obviously a good thing. But I missed out on a semester here, and instead had a rather forgettable (at best) semester back in Colorado. For which I am still paying, what with my 20 credits this semester and all. Maybe it was in God's plan for me to take that semester off. But maybe it wasn't, and his complete lack of an answer sophomore year led me to believe that it was his will, somehow. And maybe there's a part of me that's mad at him for that, and I continue to be hold on to that because he's sort of always seemed distant to me. I've never really felt anything strong in the way of direction from him, and I think to make up for it I just insert what I want to do and make myself believe that it's God saying what he wants me to do. And then it turns out less than stellar-ly, and then I have to question whether that was really God's will. And I'm sure 99 times out of 100 it really wasn't. But, again, I have no idea because how can I know when God seems to have forgotten that I exist? It's impossible for me to forget that he exists.
Here I am, senior year, closing in on only one semester left before the looming Real World. I'm not really scare of the Real World, but I do wish I had any clue as to what I am going to be doing seven months from now. However, I haven't been keeping up on my end of the conversation with God lately. Mostly because it seems like he dropped his end a long time ago, and I'm sick of having one-ended conversations. See, here's the deal. I have some possibilities for what to do next year. I could apply to grad school. (Seeing as how I already paid the $140 to take the GRE, it'd be sort of a waste not to apply at the very least.) I could apply for a few service opportunities that seem interesting. I could just try to find a job back home, doing who knows what. The latter is the least tantalizing at the moment, I think, because I've done the live aimlessly at home thing too much. The problem with the other two is that I need professorial recommendations, and I've never been much of a talker in my classes. As a result, I have no professors who really know me that well who could write recommendations. This wouldn't be as much of a problem if I were in a bigger major, like engineering, where none of the teachers really seem to get to know the students much, since the classes are bigger, I think. In arts and letters majors, though, I don't think this flies as well. So I'm sort of at an impasse there.
And then there's the real issue, which I hesitate to mention here because I'm fully aware how pathetic it will sound. And maybe it really is that pathetic. But anyway, the thing is, what I really want to do is get married. I've never really wanted a career, and that hasn't changed since I've been in college. I suppose this doesn't apply as much if I did grad school or some sort of year long service thing, because really that's just postponing the Real World. But the fact is I'm 22 and no closer to getting married than I was when I was 16. Or any other age. See, when I say I want a boyfriend, I don't just want a boyfriend. I want the guy I'm ultimately going to marry. The thought never really entered my mind that I wouldn't have met him by the time I graduated college. I always figured I'd meet him in college. I probably wouldn't have taken it very well had someone told me that I'd graduate without ever having a boyfriend. Heck, I still don't take it well. My sister got married when she was 20, and started having kids right away. My little brother will probably get married before I get any closer than I am now. At least I can still commiserate about it with my older brother, but that doesn't make me feel any better, because I want him to be happy too. It's frustrating. Senior year, when everyone's making plans to go further on their life paths of choice, I'm stuck picking between the best of what to me are second choices, because I can't exactly do anything to get on my preferred path.
So, when trying to figure out what the heck it is God wants me to do since he clearly doesn't want me married any time soon, the one thing I've known my whole life I want to do, you'd think he'd be more vociferous on any or all of my alternatives. Give me something, at least. Is the lack of good profs (for me) to ask for recommendations a hint by God that I shouldn't be pursuing those two avenues, or is it just yet again another example of how much I've irreparably messed things up, since I think it's obvious by now that I make bad life choices? I know I'm supposed to live the way God wants me to, but how am I supposed to do that if I can't figure out what the heck he wants me to do?
It's sort of impossible this semester for me to try to forget about all this, forget that my life is not mine but God's. My theo classes have all pretty much meshed together so that certain points get reiterated in all of them numerous times. Kind of annoying when I'm trying to be mad at God. And then there's my Mary class, where it was brought up over and over that Mary really had no idea what would happen -- she said yes without knowing what it would bring, without even knowing who it was that she would be mothering. If she can do all that without knowing each next step, why can't I do the same without complaint? Well, clearly I'm not Mary. But I also don't have an angel coming down telling me that if I say yes, this is what will happen -- at least this first step. At least Mary knew what path she was on, or at least that she was on the right path. I don't have an angel appearing to me telling me that God has chosen me for this thing. If I did, at least I'd know I was on the right path. But obviously I don't have that. And it's tough trying to figure it out on my own.
And then there's my "A Faith to Die For" theo class. We've been talking about the virtues the past few classes. Today we talked a bit about hope, and its vice of despair. I unfortunately found myself recognizing some of the attributes of despair in myself. That's not a good thing. Basically, I suppose this is what this entire long-winded post comes down to: I really need a spiritual check-up or something. Maybe even emergency care. In writing a lot of this out, it occurred to me that it'd be really nice to discuss it with a spiritual director. One of my friends went to a spiritual director a couple weeks ago, and was nervous about it at first but seemed to have a really good experience with it in the end. I had a bit of a foray into spiritual direction last semester when I went on that silent retreat. Looking back, though, I can see that I forced it too much, and that I wasn't really very open with the whole thing. Or maybe I just wasn't very honest about it, because I didn't want to be honest with myself. Not sure. I think it might be good for me to talk about this with someone who's actually sort of experienced in counseling people about all things spiritual. I've gone through the "pretend to go through it and just go through the motions and maybe you'll start to feel it again one of these days" method, and clearly that didn't really get me anywhere. Much as I hate talking to people about anything, much as I hate admitting that I need help for anything and that I can't do some things by myself, I may just have to give up on that this time and go do it. I can't keep going the way I've been going, I know that much. I need things to change, and for that to happen, I think I need to change myself. With the help of someone else, maybe. Probably doesn't help that I have very few friends who are very strong spiritually, who are really into that sort of stuff. I can't really talk to them about it, great though they may be.
No nagging me now (Mom), I just sent an email to see about finding someone who might could direct me.
I suddenly feel the need to apologize for this all over disorganized excuse for a post. Concise I most certainly am not. I definitely wasn't intending for this all to come out like it did, but since it did, I might as well run with it and see what happens, right? Anyway. I guess if I were to sum up this whole ridiculously long thing, I'd say this: I know God's around, I know he hasn't abandoned me, and I know it's on me to find my way back to him, because he doesn't ever leave people. I just have to figure out how to do that, even if it means admitting that I'm mad at him (which I don't like to do, because I like to believe that things I might blame on him basically really fall onto me). Ok even that summary didn't make sense. I guess there's no point in trying to glean a point out of this. Sorry, folks.
I am, after all, a slacker
So, in my perusal yesterday of some various blogs I check only occasionally, I stumbled across a link on one of them that sounded interesting. Turns out, it was. It's slacker.com, and it's about as amazing as the name sounds. Here's what you might not guess -- it's a radio website. It has different stations to chose from, or you can just (and here's the great part) make your own! I went to town last night, picking 47 of my favorite artists to put into a station, and man is it ever great. I have things like Journey, James Taylor, Billy Joel, Rascal Flatts, Celine Dion, Josh Groban, Yo-Yo Ma, Norah Jones, Michael Buble, John Williams, London Symphony, Enya, Bing Crosby, Nat King Cole, Andrea Bocelli, Foreigner, Neil Diamond, The Beach Boys, Frank Sinatra, Johnny Cash, etc etc. (Yes, I'd say it's a majority male voices. I just don't like female voices as much, I guess. I think I've discussed that before.) The thing I've often disliked about radio stations online is that, while I might like the general station subject, I have to listen to a lot of crap to hear stuff that I like. It's bypassed here, because I pick who I want to listen to. And while this obviously limits the amount of new music I'll hear, new artists and whatnot in genres I enjoy, I don't have to wade through the bad stuff to get to the good.
I'm beyond excited about this. Oh man.
And now I'm beyond sold. I was just listening to a song by Brenda Lee, and then a song from the movie Glory composed by James Horner comes on. I have wanted to get the Glory soundtrack since 8th grade, and either couldn't find it or didn't have the money at various times. It's so beautiful.
I'm beyond excited about this. Oh man.
And now I'm beyond sold. I was just listening to a song by Brenda Lee, and then a song from the movie Glory composed by James Horner comes on. I have wanted to get the Glory soundtrack since 8th grade, and either couldn't find it or didn't have the money at various times. It's so beautiful.
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
I suck at being productive, even when it's midterm time
The toe is actually doing a lot better than I thought. I mean, it's still not great, but it actually doesn't hurt much. I was wearing flip flops this morning to my 8am, but by the time I got back to my room I had decided to try regular shoes when I went too my 11am because my feet hat gotten wet and dirty thanks to stepping in puddles and whatnot from the rain this morning. And you know what? The toe didn't hurt at all walking around with shoes on. I'm excited. It's been awhile.
And as for the standby thing, I looked up when Frontier has flights out to Denver, and the only one after 1:30 in the afternoon on Sunday is at like 7. So I doubt it's worth it to go up there on Sunday to hope for a standby spot for one flight, after which I'll have 12 hours of sitting around Midway. Not that I haven't done it before. I've spent a lot of time in Midway, actually. So, you know, I could. I don't know if I want to though.
And...come on Red Sox. Wakefield might be looking pretty good so far, but it's only been two innings. We'll see. We need like a grand slam or something from Big Papi. Or Manny. They've both been pretty silent the last couple of games. Time for that to end now.
And as for the standby thing, I looked up when Frontier has flights out to Denver, and the only one after 1:30 in the afternoon on Sunday is at like 7. So I doubt it's worth it to go up there on Sunday to hope for a standby spot for one flight, after which I'll have 12 hours of sitting around Midway. Not that I haven't done it before. I've spent a lot of time in Midway, actually. So, you know, I could. I don't know if I want to though.
And...come on Red Sox. Wakefield might be looking pretty good so far, but it's only been two innings. We'll see. We need like a grand slam or something from Big Papi. Or Manny. They've both been pretty silent the last couple of games. Time for that to end now.
Monday, October 15, 2007
Two things, even though I should be asleep an hour or two ago
First: Rockies just won! (After I posted that last one, they got 6 runs in one inning, so it was 6-1 until the 8th or 7th when Arizona got three runs to make it 6-4, but then nothing else.) They're going to the world series, for the first time ever! Yay! (Now let's just hope that there's a similar post in five days, or even six if necessary, announcing that the Red Sox will be joining them.)
Second: Just to see what people have been saying about it, I went to amazon and looked up the Josh Groban Christmas CD. They have clips up now of the songs, so I took a listen, and man. That's what Christmas music should be.
That is all.
Second: Just to see what people have been saying about it, I went to amazon and looked up the Josh Groban Christmas CD. They have clips up now of the songs, so I took a listen, and man. That's what Christmas music should be.
That is all.
October's half over already???
So it's Monday of "midterms week," even though I sort of had two last week. (I definitely had one, and then I had a take home due last Monday which I'm just counting as a midterm. Even though we have another paper due for that class this Friday. Which sucks. Why does everyone have their midterms over with before Friday except for me? The majority of my stuff is Friday. Which means no going out Thursday with everyone. Or whoever goes out. Alas. Woe is me.) I have sign language on Wednesday, which is going to be some questions we have to answer that aren't multiple choice, but basically fill in the answer, and I think that's going to be mostly stuff about the history of deaf people. And then we're going to have to translate what she's signing, just write it on our papers. I'm more worried about the history part of it, because it's more to remember that's not as obvious as the signing part. Although that might be partially troublesome, but as long as I study up to make sure I know what all the signs are that we've learned so far, I should be ok. And then I mostly have to worry about the Trads stuff, the paper and test. They are going to be troublesome, both of them. That other paper I have due Friday, he said today that we might could turn them in after break if we so choose. I haven't decided yet what I'm going to do. It shouldn't be a hard paper to write, as it's basically a "write your own experience" type deal (no going through books and finding quotes and whatnot), but time it takes. So we'll see.
I've been EXHAUSTED all day. And yesterday. And both days followed 8 hour sleeps. Haha. 8 hours' worth of sleep? I guess that sounds less...like a 5 year old. Anyway. Not sure what my problem is. Maybe I have mono. Maybe my body's like "Dude, Susie, what's up with this? What happened to your 5 hours of sleep that's been the max recently? We can't handle all this sleep!" Maybe it's just my body giving up on ever feeling well-rested again. Either way, it's making me long even more for fall break. And man I wish I were going home on Sunday now. I don't know if this would be logical or anything (actually, I'm sure it probably wouldn't be), but I'm considering taking the bus up Sunday afternoon to the airport, after the soccer game, and just hanging out in the airport on standby, hoping to get on something earlier than Monday morning. I guess all it would really get me is an extra night of sleep in my own bed at home, since if I stay here and drive up to Chicago Monday morning chances are that I won't be getting much sleep anyway (I'd have to leave here by 4am I think, but I'm actually not sure about that at all), plus I'd have the added stress of having to drive to/through Chicago by myself. I've never done that, and it's always seemed scary from the minute I came to ND. So I had been considering just taking a late Sunday night bus and sleeping at the airport anyway. But nothing's been decided in my head as of yet. And I don't even know how the standby thing works; can I check in sometime Sunday evening and just say "Hey, I have a flight out tomorrow morning but I'd much rather leave today, so...yeah...can you try to get me on a flight?" Eh whatever. We'll see what happens.
I love tea. I had forgotten just how much I love it, but man. I'm currently on a Chai kick. The Huddle had this Vanilla Chai stuff last week that I had twice and quite enjoyed, but they haven't been replenished yet (and there's never any guarantee with them), so the past few times I've had this Chai Spice Black Tea which is also good, and lately with my meal ticket that I get for working, I've been getting a Chai Tea Latte at Starbucks instead of some coffee latte thing. (Although I'm very excited for it to get closer to Christmas so I can get a peppermint hot chocolate. Those are so Christmas. And so good. But the chai stuff itself does have a hint of Christmasiness to it too.) I don't often drink tea at home though for some reason. I think it's partially because I like drinking it through the lids that you get at places like Starbucks and whatnot, and partially because I don't like using one tea bag for just one normal-sized mug. At the Huddle, I use one tea bag for a 20oz cup. I guess I like my tea watered down?
Speaking of Christmas, I alternately want it to get here and don't. I do because, well, I love Christmas. I'm excited to watch movies like Love Actually (oh Love Actually, what a great movie), and Elf, and of course all the other Christmas favorites. I'm excited to listen to Christmas music, oh and to get the new Josh Groban CD! And perhaps splurge and get the James Taylor one too, even though I'm ridiculously in the hole at the moment. (I was strong today though -- I went to the bookstore with my friend Katie with the purpose of buying these ND flip flops I've seen recently, ones that probably won't squeak like my 2 for $5 flip flops do, and that won't be as blister-inducing, and hey they say ND on them and I'm all about that. But they didn't have them in my size, no surprise there, so I didn't get them, and I even put back a $12 Tshirt I had picked up with the intention of buying. I really want it, but I have no money to be spending. The bookstore is like a bad drug. I seriously want so much stuff in there, but it's all ridiculously overpriced, but I'm so weak. I really think it's a huge gyp that students don't get any sort of discount aside from the finals week 20% off thing that they do each semester. We should get 20% all the time. Maybe with the exception of like books. I'd be ok with that. Stupid bookstore.)
Oh yeah I was talking about Christmas. So I'm looking forward to that. What I'm not looking forward to is the fact that it means I'm that much closer to being an alumna instead of a current student, and that I only have a semester left. I'm also not looking forward to the fact that I have so many Christmas memories of Colt, and that's going to be really hard for me. She used to love to lie under the Christmas tree. All the time, her fat little body under there just chilling. And then there was her first Christmas, when we discovered her love of little stuffed animals after she somehow managed to carry this elephant thing from the basement to the living room. It was surprising at the time because the elephant was about as big as she was (she used to be rather scrawny, back in her first few months with us). God I miss her. Sigh. The other thing I'm not looking forward to is I'm rather sick of being alone on holidays. I know it's all cliche and whatnot, and I know that the whole being with people for holidays is all made worse by movies and songs and all those things that tell people they should be with someone for special things like that, but still. I'm 22, and I'm sick of never having anyone. But whatever.
Anyway.
I thought the pink eye thing was going well, so well in fact that I rather forgot about it yesterday and only remembered to do the eye drops in the morning and before I went to bed (I'm supposed to do it once every 3 hours except when sleeping, until 48 hours after symptoms have gone away or something like that). When I woke up this morning, it still wasn't bad, but it was worse than it had been all day yesterday. So I've been good today, mostly, and will continue for at least another few days. I'm sick of wearing glasses already though. They're ok, but the place where they rest on my ears gets like irritated and sick of having something be there for so long. And I just don't like glasses as much as contacts. I have no peripheral vision with glasses. I don't know how people manage it exclusively. I love the fact that I can see everything perfectly with my contacts, all parts of my vision. It'd be really nice if I didn't need either, but I'm not that lucky. Maybe when I win the lottery (ha. Haha.) I'll do laser eye surgery or something. Maybe. Which means that'll never happen (because I'll never win the lottery). Either way, though, I'll be glad when I can put my contacts back in, and when I can touch my eyes without feeling immediately like I just got some horrid disease on my hands. (Oh, and I'm being obsessive about trying to keep it from getting to the other eye, as it seems to be exclusively in my right eye, so like in the shower and stuff, when I wipe the water out of my eyes, I immediately wash my hands just in case the hand that touched my right eye touches my left, or touches something that will then somehow manage to get The Conge transferred to my left. It's very irritating, and I almost just want to stick my finger in my right eye and then my left just to get it in both and get it over with.) Plus all this hand-washing is resulting in very dry skin. But it's not too bad, so I can't really complain. (And yet, I do.)
Ha so on Friday, we had our weekly Latin quiz, and it was a doozy. Most people were still there at the end of the class period, whereas most people are done well before the end of class during typical tests. At one point, this kid asked the prof, "We get to drop our lowest grade, right?" And everyone laughed, because everyone was struggling. I'm sure some people did ok, but I definitely didn't. So much for dropping one of my 80%s, that's all I can say. Actually I was rather proud of myself on the first side -- I got all the parsing of conjugated verbs correct (he gives us a verb conjugated in some way, and we have to list the person, number, tense, voice, and mood, and then the first two principle parts of the verb), even his trick one, and I only missed two points on the section where we had to write from English to Latin the subordinate subjunctive clauses for five sentences. The five sentences on the second side that we had to translate from Latin to English, though? Yeah that didn't go so well. I mean, I did better than maybe I had thought, but man. Oh well. I'm doing Latin because I want to learn it, because I love the language, so I've reached a point where I'm not that upset about not doing that well. I am learning, and I'm not learning it with the intention of one day reading Virgil and Aquinas and Pliny and whatnot in their original texts. So whatever. I'm not going to be graduating with honors anyway, so there's no point in killing myself to get straight As, or beating myself up over a 70% Latin quiz. (Yeah, 70%. Lowest grade I think I've gotten on anything yet thus far in my college career. And I guess by extension, my entire schooling career, probably. Yay me!)
Toe is doing slightly better. I still think I may need to go get it checked out when I'm home, just because it's not healing at all. It just doesn't hurt as much any more, and I don't think it's infected like it was. I've tried soaking it twice now in warm water with epsom salt, per my brother's advice (he's been through this a number of times, and has gone to the doctor about it, and that's what the doctor said to do -- soak it and then...do some gross stuff that I haven't managed yet). It's supposed to numb it, I guess, so that you can kind of...do stuff to it that'll help. Well, my two forays into this new adventure have not yielded much in the way of numbness, but it has seemed to make it feel at least a little bit better, so that's something. But I should get it worked out before it starts to snow, at the very least, because it's still unpleasant to wear non flip flops. And snow and flip flops don't seem to go very well together...
Oh dude! Speaking of shoes. I went to Walmart yesterday (in part to get the epsom salt and a little basin in which to soak my toe), and firstly I got this little 6 pack of mini nail polishes because I have none, and when I do buy nail polish I always get the same color because I don't want to spend a lot on a color I might not like, but the mini ones were cheap and in a variety, so I was like, sweet! But when I got up to the cash register, I guess they didn't have a barcode on them, so after trying a few things the cashier, who seemed like she wasn't having a great day maybe, just ended up throwing them in my bag. It was weird, but...I had no idea what to do. I had told her what I remembered the price being, something around $5, but yeah. Anyway. And then I ventured into the shoe aisle just to see if maybe this time I could find some casual nice black shoes, and ended up finding this pair of shoes that I had bought for like $7 or 9 back in August, on even more clearance for $5! I had bought the white pair, and I found a brown pair in my size for $5, so I was very excited. I wear brown skirts a lot, so it's not terribly impractical. Plus, I mean, $5! And then the best part was that I found some black shoes like I wanted! Well, they're a bit more flip flopy than I prefer (I don't wear flip flops to church), but these have a heel on them so I sort of consider them nicer than just plain flip flops. Plus they're sort of that wooden type dealie, so again nicer than just the rubber flip flops. Anyway. They work for me, and now I can wear my black skirts again without feeling weird that I'm wearing like white shoes.
ok sorry.
Clearly I don't want to do homework. But I must. So I'll go do that now.
A week from now and I'll be enjoying the air (and water) (and view) (and company!) of home! Oh Colorado. What a hold on me you have. Even when I'm here in pretty much the best place ever.
Oh, and happy 26th birthday to the wonderful aforementioned brother, Tom! Hopefully you'll get a Rockies win and launch to the World Series for your birthday. (Currently it's 1-0 Diamondbacks, but it's not even half over yet.)
I've been EXHAUSTED all day. And yesterday. And both days followed 8 hour sleeps. Haha. 8 hours' worth of sleep? I guess that sounds less...like a 5 year old. Anyway. Not sure what my problem is. Maybe I have mono. Maybe my body's like "Dude, Susie, what's up with this? What happened to your 5 hours of sleep that's been the max recently? We can't handle all this sleep!" Maybe it's just my body giving up on ever feeling well-rested again. Either way, it's making me long even more for fall break. And man I wish I were going home on Sunday now. I don't know if this would be logical or anything (actually, I'm sure it probably wouldn't be), but I'm considering taking the bus up Sunday afternoon to the airport, after the soccer game, and just hanging out in the airport on standby, hoping to get on something earlier than Monday morning. I guess all it would really get me is an extra night of sleep in my own bed at home, since if I stay here and drive up to Chicago Monday morning chances are that I won't be getting much sleep anyway (I'd have to leave here by 4am I think, but I'm actually not sure about that at all), plus I'd have the added stress of having to drive to/through Chicago by myself. I've never done that, and it's always seemed scary from the minute I came to ND. So I had been considering just taking a late Sunday night bus and sleeping at the airport anyway. But nothing's been decided in my head as of yet. And I don't even know how the standby thing works; can I check in sometime Sunday evening and just say "Hey, I have a flight out tomorrow morning but I'd much rather leave today, so...yeah...can you try to get me on a flight?" Eh whatever. We'll see what happens.
I love tea. I had forgotten just how much I love it, but man. I'm currently on a Chai kick. The Huddle had this Vanilla Chai stuff last week that I had twice and quite enjoyed, but they haven't been replenished yet (and there's never any guarantee with them), so the past few times I've had this Chai Spice Black Tea which is also good, and lately with my meal ticket that I get for working, I've been getting a Chai Tea Latte at Starbucks instead of some coffee latte thing. (Although I'm very excited for it to get closer to Christmas so I can get a peppermint hot chocolate. Those are so Christmas. And so good. But the chai stuff itself does have a hint of Christmasiness to it too.) I don't often drink tea at home though for some reason. I think it's partially because I like drinking it through the lids that you get at places like Starbucks and whatnot, and partially because I don't like using one tea bag for just one normal-sized mug. At the Huddle, I use one tea bag for a 20oz cup. I guess I like my tea watered down?
Speaking of Christmas, I alternately want it to get here and don't. I do because, well, I love Christmas. I'm excited to watch movies like Love Actually (oh Love Actually, what a great movie), and Elf, and of course all the other Christmas favorites. I'm excited to listen to Christmas music, oh and to get the new Josh Groban CD! And perhaps splurge and get the James Taylor one too, even though I'm ridiculously in the hole at the moment. (I was strong today though -- I went to the bookstore with my friend Katie with the purpose of buying these ND flip flops I've seen recently, ones that probably won't squeak like my 2 for $5 flip flops do, and that won't be as blister-inducing, and hey they say ND on them and I'm all about that. But they didn't have them in my size, no surprise there, so I didn't get them, and I even put back a $12 Tshirt I had picked up with the intention of buying. I really want it, but I have no money to be spending. The bookstore is like a bad drug. I seriously want so much stuff in there, but it's all ridiculously overpriced, but I'm so weak. I really think it's a huge gyp that students don't get any sort of discount aside from the finals week 20% off thing that they do each semester. We should get 20% all the time. Maybe with the exception of like books. I'd be ok with that. Stupid bookstore.)
Oh yeah I was talking about Christmas. So I'm looking forward to that. What I'm not looking forward to is the fact that it means I'm that much closer to being an alumna instead of a current student, and that I only have a semester left. I'm also not looking forward to the fact that I have so many Christmas memories of Colt, and that's going to be really hard for me. She used to love to lie under the Christmas tree. All the time, her fat little body under there just chilling. And then there was her first Christmas, when we discovered her love of little stuffed animals after she somehow managed to carry this elephant thing from the basement to the living room. It was surprising at the time because the elephant was about as big as she was (she used to be rather scrawny, back in her first few months with us). God I miss her. Sigh. The other thing I'm not looking forward to is I'm rather sick of being alone on holidays. I know it's all cliche and whatnot, and I know that the whole being with people for holidays is all made worse by movies and songs and all those things that tell people they should be with someone for special things like that, but still. I'm 22, and I'm sick of never having anyone. But whatever.
Anyway.
I thought the pink eye thing was going well, so well in fact that I rather forgot about it yesterday and only remembered to do the eye drops in the morning and before I went to bed (I'm supposed to do it once every 3 hours except when sleeping, until 48 hours after symptoms have gone away or something like that). When I woke up this morning, it still wasn't bad, but it was worse than it had been all day yesterday. So I've been good today, mostly, and will continue for at least another few days. I'm sick of wearing glasses already though. They're ok, but the place where they rest on my ears gets like irritated and sick of having something be there for so long. And I just don't like glasses as much as contacts. I have no peripheral vision with glasses. I don't know how people manage it exclusively. I love the fact that I can see everything perfectly with my contacts, all parts of my vision. It'd be really nice if I didn't need either, but I'm not that lucky. Maybe when I win the lottery (ha. Haha.) I'll do laser eye surgery or something. Maybe. Which means that'll never happen (because I'll never win the lottery). Either way, though, I'll be glad when I can put my contacts back in, and when I can touch my eyes without feeling immediately like I just got some horrid disease on my hands. (Oh, and I'm being obsessive about trying to keep it from getting to the other eye, as it seems to be exclusively in my right eye, so like in the shower and stuff, when I wipe the water out of my eyes, I immediately wash my hands just in case the hand that touched my right eye touches my left, or touches something that will then somehow manage to get The Conge transferred to my left. It's very irritating, and I almost just want to stick my finger in my right eye and then my left just to get it in both and get it over with.) Plus all this hand-washing is resulting in very dry skin. But it's not too bad, so I can't really complain. (And yet, I do.)
Ha so on Friday, we had our weekly Latin quiz, and it was a doozy. Most people were still there at the end of the class period, whereas most people are done well before the end of class during typical tests. At one point, this kid asked the prof, "We get to drop our lowest grade, right?" And everyone laughed, because everyone was struggling. I'm sure some people did ok, but I definitely didn't. So much for dropping one of my 80%s, that's all I can say. Actually I was rather proud of myself on the first side -- I got all the parsing of conjugated verbs correct (he gives us a verb conjugated in some way, and we have to list the person, number, tense, voice, and mood, and then the first two principle parts of the verb), even his trick one, and I only missed two points on the section where we had to write from English to Latin the subordinate subjunctive clauses for five sentences. The five sentences on the second side that we had to translate from Latin to English, though? Yeah that didn't go so well. I mean, I did better than maybe I had thought, but man. Oh well. I'm doing Latin because I want to learn it, because I love the language, so I've reached a point where I'm not that upset about not doing that well. I am learning, and I'm not learning it with the intention of one day reading Virgil and Aquinas and Pliny and whatnot in their original texts. So whatever. I'm not going to be graduating with honors anyway, so there's no point in killing myself to get straight As, or beating myself up over a 70% Latin quiz. (Yeah, 70%. Lowest grade I think I've gotten on anything yet thus far in my college career. And I guess by extension, my entire schooling career, probably. Yay me!)
Toe is doing slightly better. I still think I may need to go get it checked out when I'm home, just because it's not healing at all. It just doesn't hurt as much any more, and I don't think it's infected like it was. I've tried soaking it twice now in warm water with epsom salt, per my brother's advice (he's been through this a number of times, and has gone to the doctor about it, and that's what the doctor said to do -- soak it and then...do some gross stuff that I haven't managed yet). It's supposed to numb it, I guess, so that you can kind of...do stuff to it that'll help. Well, my two forays into this new adventure have not yielded much in the way of numbness, but it has seemed to make it feel at least a little bit better, so that's something. But I should get it worked out before it starts to snow, at the very least, because it's still unpleasant to wear non flip flops. And snow and flip flops don't seem to go very well together...
Oh dude! Speaking of shoes. I went to Walmart yesterday (in part to get the epsom salt and a little basin in which to soak my toe), and firstly I got this little 6 pack of mini nail polishes because I have none, and when I do buy nail polish I always get the same color because I don't want to spend a lot on a color I might not like, but the mini ones were cheap and in a variety, so I was like, sweet! But when I got up to the cash register, I guess they didn't have a barcode on them, so after trying a few things the cashier, who seemed like she wasn't having a great day maybe, just ended up throwing them in my bag. It was weird, but...I had no idea what to do. I had told her what I remembered the price being, something around $5, but yeah. Anyway. And then I ventured into the shoe aisle just to see if maybe this time I could find some casual nice black shoes, and ended up finding this pair of shoes that I had bought for like $7 or 9 back in August, on even more clearance for $5! I had bought the white pair, and I found a brown pair in my size for $5, so I was very excited. I wear brown skirts a lot, so it's not terribly impractical. Plus, I mean, $5! And then the best part was that I found some black shoes like I wanted! Well, they're a bit more flip flopy than I prefer (I don't wear flip flops to church), but these have a heel on them so I sort of consider them nicer than just plain flip flops. Plus they're sort of that wooden type dealie, so again nicer than just the rubber flip flops. Anyway. They work for me, and now I can wear my black skirts again without feeling weird that I'm wearing like white shoes.
ok sorry.
Clearly I don't want to do homework. But I must. So I'll go do that now.
A week from now and I'll be enjoying the air (and water) (and view) (and company!) of home! Oh Colorado. What a hold on me you have. Even when I'm here in pretty much the best place ever.
Oh, and happy 26th birthday to the wonderful aforementioned brother, Tom! Hopefully you'll get a Rockies win and launch to the World Series for your birthday. (Currently it's 1-0 Diamondbacks, but it's not even half over yet.)
Down 1-2 in the series?
Argh, what the heck Red Sox? It's because I wore the Red Sox shirt, isn't it? So far I'm 0-2 in this thing. Perhaps it should be reserved for non-game days.
Well, guys, you had better get your act together. I don't want to see Cleveland in the World Series. Even if my brother in law does love them, and is a fan of the Cowboys who got whupped on Sunday. My college football team is 1-6, so I deserve my pro teams to be excellent, and that's all there is to it. (With my luck, though, it'll be the Indians and the Diamondbacks in the World Series. And that would just suck. Who'll want to watch that? Red Sox and Rockies, now there's a ratings winner. So...that's what it should be just based on that fact. The TV people should just decide it and make it happen. Because I said so.)
So there.
Oh, and just put Beckett in the next two games. Beckett is a machine. He'll get it done.
Well, guys, you had better get your act together. I don't want to see Cleveland in the World Series. Even if my brother in law does love them, and is a fan of the Cowboys who got whupped on Sunday. My college football team is 1-6, so I deserve my pro teams to be excellent, and that's all there is to it. (With my luck, though, it'll be the Indians and the Diamondbacks in the World Series. And that would just suck. Who'll want to watch that? Red Sox and Rockies, now there's a ratings winner. So...that's what it should be just based on that fact. The TV people should just decide it and make it happen. Because I said so.)
So there.
Oh, and just put Beckett in the next two games. Beckett is a machine. He'll get it done.
I want a job where I can just watch sports all the time.
Ok, so I wrote this last night. Forgot to hit the "publish" button. So...whatever.
I wish I had something interesting to write about. Or...something to write about. Let's see....
Oh. So the Red Sox lost last night. It was tied 6-6 at the end of regular innings, and then they went a scoreless 9th, and then in the 10th I believe it was, Boston put in Gagne (who has not done a very good job closing this year, and had been responsible for four losses during the regular season in games where he came in during the last innings), who struck out one, then let two get on base, and then he got pulled and someone else (Lester?) came out and then it was just bad. By the time that half of the inning was over, Cleveland had gotten 7 runs. 7 runs. Of course Boston didn't get 7 during the bottom of that inning, so they ended up losing. Argh. So now the series is tied 1-1, which isn't terrible by any means, but now the next three games are in Cleveland. I fully believe in this team, obviously, but yeah. I just wish Beckett could pitch every game. That'd be a little hard on him though, I guess. Maybe every other game. Or every third game. Because dude, he is the shit. Anyway.
Oh, and I guess I could mention the little fact of us losing yesterday. Whatever. I can't even be disappointed about it anymore, because it is what it is. In no way at all is BC the #3 team in the country (if it weren't for completely deplorable reffing yesterday -- on calls against both teams, but unfortunately a few very key calls against us that really affected us -- and maybe if we had put in Sharpley earlier, and if our receivers didn't have a horrible case of the dropsies, we had that game. And, let's face it, we're not that great this season. BC is not #3). I am of the opinion that the college football rankings should just be thrown out this year. I mean, yesterday LSU -- #1 LSU -- lost to #17. And then Cal, at #2 yesterday, knew they were playing for #1 once LSU lost. And Cal was playing an unranked team. (Who was it? Oregon State? I think that's who it was.) And...they lost. #1 and #2 both lost yesterday. I wonder if there will be an undefeated team even playing in the national championship. Everyone's losing this year. It's like no one wants to be good or something. It's just backwards crazy football year. Including for us. Oh and dude, the game yesterday? Freaking 4 hours long. That is just ridiculous. The TV timeouts were ridiculous -- probably made more so by the fact that those terrible refs announced it every time (they never do that), so we of course booed every time, because NBC doesn't understand a little thing called momentum. Every time there's a change in possession, it's TV timeout time. Kills momentum like nothing else. And they're ridiculously long timeouts too. Argh. And then all the penalties the refs kept calling, those didn't help the length of the game at all. Terrible refs yesterday. It was hilarious at some point when the ref wanted the time changed on the clock, I forget why, but he said "Please put nine ten back on the clock" -- only he had a very strong southern accent, as they were ACC refs -- not sure why, our ref thing is weird since we're not in a conference -- so it came out as "please put nine tee-aaaan", and when he said that pretty much the whole stadium repeated it in a mocking way. Because it was hilarious. We're bitches, whatever. haha.
So that was fun. Or not. I just hope we win at least ONE home game this year. I miss seeing the victory jig thing that the Irish Guard do when we win. Sigh. We are starting to look better, particularly on defense, so I think we can definitely manage at least a couple wins out of our last three home games at the very least (Navy, Air Force, and Duke). Hopefully. We always, no matter what, get pretty much the best performance of every team we play. Everyone wants to beat us, even when we're having the worst season in history. And I want a win for our players. Of course, they should be wanting it enough to make it happen, but whatever.
Ok so baseball is on. These Rockies games are killer. They're playing in mountain time, so starting at 8pm for them is no biggie. But that's 10pm for me. I like watching these games, because I want the Rockies to win and I want to see them win. But tomorrow night the game doesn't start until 10pm, and I have an 8am Tuesday class. I can't stay up until 1 or 2 watching a baseball game. I mean, I probably will, but I shouldn't. Especially tomorrow though, because it looks like they're going to win tonight (it's top of the 9th, they're up 4-1, and there's 2 outs right now. So if they get one more out the win the game, and just have to win tomorrow). So if they win tomorrow, then they're in the World Series, and it's at Colorado tonight and tomorrow, so it'd be amazing to see them win it. But man it's soooo late. And like the Red Sox game last night, it lasted over five hours. I stayed up until 2 because it took so long, and they ended up losing. So that sucked. So hopefully, if I do end up staying up tomorrow night to watch, it won't turn out like the Red Sox last night.
Patriots played the Cowboys today. Both were 5-0 going in, but Cowboys barely got their win last week, so I figured the Patriots could take them today. And take them they did. I guess there was a point in the 3rd quarter where they lost the lead (I was at dinner at that point; maybe that's why...) but then they ended up winning something like 48-27 or so. And Tom Brady threw for 5 TDs (I very much wished he was on my fantasy team, but of course Mom got him since she drafted before I did. Stupid Brett Favre, who I only played because the Steelers had a bye this week, only got me like two points. Booo), and it was just great. Garsh how I wish I had tickets to the Indy-Pats game on Nov 4. I think they're the only two unbeatens at this point, and while anything can happen in the weeks between then and now, it'll still be a great game I'm sure. I sooooo want to see a Patriots game in person. Man.
I wish I had something interesting to write about. Or...something to write about. Let's see....
Oh. So the Red Sox lost last night. It was tied 6-6 at the end of regular innings, and then they went a scoreless 9th, and then in the 10th I believe it was, Boston put in Gagne (who has not done a very good job closing this year, and had been responsible for four losses during the regular season in games where he came in during the last innings), who struck out one, then let two get on base, and then he got pulled and someone else (Lester?) came out and then it was just bad. By the time that half of the inning was over, Cleveland had gotten 7 runs. 7 runs. Of course Boston didn't get 7 during the bottom of that inning, so they ended up losing. Argh. So now the series is tied 1-1, which isn't terrible by any means, but now the next three games are in Cleveland. I fully believe in this team, obviously, but yeah. I just wish Beckett could pitch every game. That'd be a little hard on him though, I guess. Maybe every other game. Or every third game. Because dude, he is the shit. Anyway.
Oh, and I guess I could mention the little fact of us losing yesterday. Whatever. I can't even be disappointed about it anymore, because it is what it is. In no way at all is BC the #3 team in the country (if it weren't for completely deplorable reffing yesterday -- on calls against both teams, but unfortunately a few very key calls against us that really affected us -- and maybe if we had put in Sharpley earlier, and if our receivers didn't have a horrible case of the dropsies, we had that game. And, let's face it, we're not that great this season. BC is not #3). I am of the opinion that the college football rankings should just be thrown out this year. I mean, yesterday LSU -- #1 LSU -- lost to #17. And then Cal, at #2 yesterday, knew they were playing for #1 once LSU lost. And Cal was playing an unranked team. (Who was it? Oregon State? I think that's who it was.) And...they lost. #1 and #2 both lost yesterday. I wonder if there will be an undefeated team even playing in the national championship. Everyone's losing this year. It's like no one wants to be good or something. It's just backwards crazy football year. Including for us. Oh and dude, the game yesterday? Freaking 4 hours long. That is just ridiculous. The TV timeouts were ridiculous -- probably made more so by the fact that those terrible refs announced it every time (they never do that), so we of course booed every time, because NBC doesn't understand a little thing called momentum. Every time there's a change in possession, it's TV timeout time. Kills momentum like nothing else. And they're ridiculously long timeouts too. Argh. And then all the penalties the refs kept calling, those didn't help the length of the game at all. Terrible refs yesterday. It was hilarious at some point when the ref wanted the time changed on the clock, I forget why, but he said "Please put nine ten back on the clock" -- only he had a very strong southern accent, as they were ACC refs -- not sure why, our ref thing is weird since we're not in a conference -- so it came out as "please put nine tee-aaaan", and when he said that pretty much the whole stadium repeated it in a mocking way. Because it was hilarious. We're bitches, whatever. haha.
So that was fun. Or not. I just hope we win at least ONE home game this year. I miss seeing the victory jig thing that the Irish Guard do when we win. Sigh. We are starting to look better, particularly on defense, so I think we can definitely manage at least a couple wins out of our last three home games at the very least (Navy, Air Force, and Duke). Hopefully. We always, no matter what, get pretty much the best performance of every team we play. Everyone wants to beat us, even when we're having the worst season in history. And I want a win for our players. Of course, they should be wanting it enough to make it happen, but whatever.
Ok so baseball is on. These Rockies games are killer. They're playing in mountain time, so starting at 8pm for them is no biggie. But that's 10pm for me. I like watching these games, because I want the Rockies to win and I want to see them win. But tomorrow night the game doesn't start until 10pm, and I have an 8am Tuesday class. I can't stay up until 1 or 2 watching a baseball game. I mean, I probably will, but I shouldn't. Especially tomorrow though, because it looks like they're going to win tonight (it's top of the 9th, they're up 4-1, and there's 2 outs right now. So if they get one more out the win the game, and just have to win tomorrow). So if they win tomorrow, then they're in the World Series, and it's at Colorado tonight and tomorrow, so it'd be amazing to see them win it. But man it's soooo late. And like the Red Sox game last night, it lasted over five hours. I stayed up until 2 because it took so long, and they ended up losing. So that sucked. So hopefully, if I do end up staying up tomorrow night to watch, it won't turn out like the Red Sox last night.
Patriots played the Cowboys today. Both were 5-0 going in, but Cowboys barely got their win last week, so I figured the Patriots could take them today. And take them they did. I guess there was a point in the 3rd quarter where they lost the lead (I was at dinner at that point; maybe that's why...) but then they ended up winning something like 48-27 or so. And Tom Brady threw for 5 TDs (I very much wished he was on my fantasy team, but of course Mom got him since she drafted before I did. Stupid Brett Favre, who I only played because the Steelers had a bye this week, only got me like two points. Booo), and it was just great. Garsh how I wish I had tickets to the Indy-Pats game on Nov 4. I think they're the only two unbeatens at this point, and while anything can happen in the weeks between then and now, it'll still be a great game I'm sure. I sooooo want to see a Patriots game in person. Man.
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