So, I just got back home from my day. Left at 7am, back at 10pm. Whew. Today was a weird day all around, though, because my department had an off-site meeting all day to discuss how things are going, etc. It was at a place just across the street (and by street, I mean I-70) from our building, but it was interesting. Weird not doing our normal work all day, but nice to touch base with everyone and get on the same page about things and talk about how things could be improved, etc. Helpful for me, too, still being such a newbie. And of course, we finished at about 4:30, which means I could have gone home for the day, missed most of the traffic probably, and been home by 6 which never happens and would be a treat, but tonight was the first night of my Biblical School class, which goes from 7-9 on Thursdays. Alas. So I just hung around work for an hour or so, checked my email and stuff, listened to voicemails I'll have to answer tomorrow. Then I headed over to the John Paul II Center, where my class is held. It's the Denver Catholic Biblical School, and I'm pretty excited about it. I know, I just finished school, and I'm taking yet ANOTHER class? But this is totally low-key, and it's a four-year program (if you want to go through the whole Bible, anyway), and they have a great relationship with FOCUS so we get half off our tuition (and then work pays even a percentage of what's left after that, because they think it's a great thing for us to be doing and are very encouraging of things like that. I love my job). So, I'd be crazy NOT to! Even though I signed up for the Thursday night class (since it's when a lot of my coworkers are in it, and I guess they were encouraging young adults to do that one, or something), which means I'll be missing my favorite Thursday night shows. Although that might only be The Office, since I'm not sure when 30 Rock is on this season...but anyway, I watched most of my shows on Hulu and stuff last year, and God is a little bit more important than sitcoms.
Anyway. I'm excited about it. So far a lot of it is stuff I have learned, particularly last year in my biblical theology class, but it's a good refresher. And we'll be getting into more as we go along, I'm sure, and I'll learn new stuff or re-learn stuff I've already forgotten. Or I'll just be the smartest one in class. Haha. Definitely not.
My drive home tonight was so cool, too. I had been a little sad that I wasn't going home early tonight, and instead was going home late, but then the view on the drive (which I obviously wouldn't have seen had I gone home at 4:30) made me feel better. (You know, plus the awesome class and stuff.) It was all clear and the moon was shining when I left Denver, and stayed that way until past Castle Rock, and then I noticed it looked like it was a little hazy or something, but I could still see the moon fine. And I saw a lightning storm south, in the direction I was heading, which looked like it was heading east from Colorado Springs, so that was super cool because I love seeing lightning storms from afar. They're awesome. And then between Larkspur and Monument, all of a sudden I was like, huh, is it getting foggy, or is it just...hazy? And over the pastures and stuff it looked like maybe there were some low clouds, but obviously it was dark so hard to tell. And then all of a sudden I was in a cloud. But I could still see the moon, so it was weird. Then up over Monument Hill it was really thick, and then there was no moon, but then a little past Monument it cleared up some again, and yeah. It was just bizarre. Fog is pretty cool, but when it's night and you can't see that it's coming, it's bizarre. But hey, I'm not complaining! :-)
On the docket coming up: a post about how people will go to ridiculous lengths to justify and affirm absolutely any possible choice, no matter how heinous, out of some completely misunderstood notion of "freedom." Well, they'll justify any choice other than the choice that says "This is completely wrong."
So, that might be something to look forward to, if I actually get around to it.
Thursday, September 15, 2011
Tuesday, September 13, 2011
End of quartercentenarianism
I'm gonna be 26 tomorrow. That's weird.
One thing I'm gonna miss when I move up to Arvada: there's this herd of horses I drive past most days, either to or from work, depending on where and when they're grazing, on the north end of the Springs. Now, that makes me happy to begin with, especially when the herd of cows that sometimes grazes across Powers from where the horses graze are out at the same time. I just love grazing animals. But a couple of weeks ago, I noticed that this herd of horses includes a donkey! I'm not sure why, but I love seeing that little donkey. It reminds me of Nutmeg. :-P I just like donkeys, although I never really realized it before...
One thing I like about work is that we can listen to music while we're doing our thing. We all just listen through our headsets so we all don't disturb each other, obviously. I always always listen to my movie scores channel. It just makes me happy. Especially when my favorites come on, like the song at the end of Gladiator, or my favorite favorite, "The Ludlows" from Legends of the Fall. I didn't really care much for the movie the one time I saw it back in high school or...whenever it was, but boy did I love the score. That song in particular. Always always love it. Of course, we can't listen to Pandora at work because it's too much bandwidth or something, so some of us use Jango (which I had never heard of prior to working there), which isn't quite the same caliber but good enough. Except I get some weird scores on there - the soundtrack to Labyrinth comes up fairly frequently. I should just thumbs-down it, I guess. The score to Gremlins comes on once in awhile too, which is kind of amusing. I might get sick of that station eventually (once I've got it down to like four different scores playing over and over), but I just really love my movie scores.
Well...that's kind of all I have. I think I forgot how to blog, if I ever knew how to in the first place. I think I want to try starting up again and doing it regularly, but we'll see. I have to start packing eventually, I guess, since I'm moving in just a few weeks, and tomorrow I'm starting a class with the Denver Catholic Biblical School, which should be interesting - but means HOMEWORK. Kind of. But it's also time spent. For a good purpose, though, as I need to read the Bible more, and I've heard nothing but good things about this program. We'll see how it goes.
Au revoir, until next time, whenever that is.
One thing I'm gonna miss when I move up to Arvada: there's this herd of horses I drive past most days, either to or from work, depending on where and when they're grazing, on the north end of the Springs. Now, that makes me happy to begin with, especially when the herd of cows that sometimes grazes across Powers from where the horses graze are out at the same time. I just love grazing animals. But a couple of weeks ago, I noticed that this herd of horses includes a donkey! I'm not sure why, but I love seeing that little donkey. It reminds me of Nutmeg. :-P I just like donkeys, although I never really realized it before...
One thing I like about work is that we can listen to music while we're doing our thing. We all just listen through our headsets so we all don't disturb each other, obviously. I always always listen to my movie scores channel. It just makes me happy. Especially when my favorites come on, like the song at the end of Gladiator, or my favorite favorite, "The Ludlows" from Legends of the Fall. I didn't really care much for the movie the one time I saw it back in high school or...whenever it was, but boy did I love the score. That song in particular. Always always love it. Of course, we can't listen to Pandora at work because it's too much bandwidth or something, so some of us use Jango (which I had never heard of prior to working there), which isn't quite the same caliber but good enough. Except I get some weird scores on there - the soundtrack to Labyrinth comes up fairly frequently. I should just thumbs-down it, I guess. The score to Gremlins comes on once in awhile too, which is kind of amusing. I might get sick of that station eventually (once I've got it down to like four different scores playing over and over), but I just really love my movie scores.
Well...that's kind of all I have. I think I forgot how to blog, if I ever knew how to in the first place. I think I want to try starting up again and doing it regularly, but we'll see. I have to start packing eventually, I guess, since I'm moving in just a few weeks, and tomorrow I'm starting a class with the Denver Catholic Biblical School, which should be interesting - but means HOMEWORK. Kind of. But it's also time spent. For a good purpose, though, as I need to read the Bible more, and I've heard nothing but good things about this program. We'll see how it goes.
Au revoir, until next time, whenever that is.
Sunday, September 11, 2011
Ten years
Maybe because it's September 11, I feel like writing. Not that I have anything to say. It's one of those days we just have to acknowledge as being tough (and as tough as it might be for those of us who didn't even really "experience" it other than as Americans, I can't even imagine what today is like for those who were there, who lost people on that awful day). I've watched some of the coverage the last few days, read some of the articles, never really sure if it's better for me to turn it off or close the page, or to jump in and read and watch whatever I can. I still remember so much about that day. I was thinking about it today, and my sophomore year is the only year I can really remember the sequence of my classes in high school, more or less. It was second period that I first heard about it - one of my classmates came into my history class and told those of us who were in there already that there was a fire at the Pentagon, and something about the World Trade Towers (which, at that point, I don't even know if I really knew what they were). Next period was chemistry, where I heard from some people whose teachers had let them watch news coverage that morning that the towers had come down. People were throwing around huge numbers of how many people might have been in them, how many people worked there every day. And at some point during that class, I think, our principal came on the speakers and said something generic about what had happened, and told teachers to continue as normal and not let us watch the news coverage. Next period was English, which I had in a room that had a wall of windows that looked out East. At that time in the semester, or maybe just that day, I happened to be sitting facing that wall, and I just remember spending the whole class period distracted, staring out the windows almost expecting to see the smoke from 2000 miles away. After that I had lunch, at which point my mom called to say she was picking me up, and on the drive home, listening to coverage, I remember how quiet the roads were. Not many people out, in the middle of a weekday. It was eerie.
The rest of the day was spent glued to the TV. I knew it was big, it was huge, it was a life-changing event for the country, but I don't know how much I realized what it meant on an individual level. I was sad about it, really sad, but I don't think I really got it. We went to Mass that night - the best way to deal with anything, I think, good or bad. I spent the rest of the week in sort of a daze. My 16th birthday was Friday, three days later, and my family threw me a surprise party. I had absolutely no inkling, and it was really good for me to let myself be happy when I saw how much people cared about me.
Anyway. It really affected me, and has ever since. Especially last year, for some reason. Last year I let myself watch something that focused on the people who were trapped in the buildings above where the planes had hit - the messages they sent, phone calls they made, how their last moments must have been. And it was really, really hard for me. I guess I had never really thought about those people as individuals, and their individual experiences being trapped with no way out. It was always more of a collective thing in my mind. It's hard to personalize numbers, you know? But when you hear about the specific stories...it makes it a lot harder. It's good for me, though, to have something that really makes me sad, really makes me feel. It's made me respect and appreciate life even more. It's becoming harder for me to watch even movies where there are lots of nameless deaths (even in the new X-Men movie, there's a certain scene in which the bad guys kill lots of people, and it was hard for me to watch that. Even though it's just a movie, and they're all random people in the movie with no real roles, I can't help but think about how - even in a movie - they're people, with family and lives and people who care about them). It's hard for me to imagine how anyone can kill anyone - and that gunman in Norway a couple of months ago? I can't fathom how someone can methodically kill that many people. How can you respect life so little that you can look into the faces of dozens and dozens of people - mostly teenagers - and shoot them point blank? How can you think it's right, and honorable to take over a plane and fly it into a building, with the intent to cause as much death as possible? I just don't understand it. I don't think most people can understand it, thankfully.
There's really nothing to say about today, and yet there's so much we want to say. We want to make it make sense, in some small way. But it never will. It'll always be one of those defining moments we remember and just have to deal with. Most of us don't have to find a way to live with it like those who actually lost loved ones that day, but we still feel it. We always will. Even ten years later, I think those of us who were old enough to feel it still feel it just as strongly. I don't think that'll go away, and that's probably a good thing. It's not something we should ever forget. I don't think we ever will.
The rest of the day was spent glued to the TV. I knew it was big, it was huge, it was a life-changing event for the country, but I don't know how much I realized what it meant on an individual level. I was sad about it, really sad, but I don't think I really got it. We went to Mass that night - the best way to deal with anything, I think, good or bad. I spent the rest of the week in sort of a daze. My 16th birthday was Friday, three days later, and my family threw me a surprise party. I had absolutely no inkling, and it was really good for me to let myself be happy when I saw how much people cared about me.
Anyway. It really affected me, and has ever since. Especially last year, for some reason. Last year I let myself watch something that focused on the people who were trapped in the buildings above where the planes had hit - the messages they sent, phone calls they made, how their last moments must have been. And it was really, really hard for me. I guess I had never really thought about those people as individuals, and their individual experiences being trapped with no way out. It was always more of a collective thing in my mind. It's hard to personalize numbers, you know? But when you hear about the specific stories...it makes it a lot harder. It's good for me, though, to have something that really makes me sad, really makes me feel. It's made me respect and appreciate life even more. It's becoming harder for me to watch even movies where there are lots of nameless deaths (even in the new X-Men movie, there's a certain scene in which the bad guys kill lots of people, and it was hard for me to watch that. Even though it's just a movie, and they're all random people in the movie with no real roles, I can't help but think about how - even in a movie - they're people, with family and lives and people who care about them). It's hard for me to imagine how anyone can kill anyone - and that gunman in Norway a couple of months ago? I can't fathom how someone can methodically kill that many people. How can you respect life so little that you can look into the faces of dozens and dozens of people - mostly teenagers - and shoot them point blank? How can you think it's right, and honorable to take over a plane and fly it into a building, with the intent to cause as much death as possible? I just don't understand it. I don't think most people can understand it, thankfully.
There's really nothing to say about today, and yet there's so much we want to say. We want to make it make sense, in some small way. But it never will. It'll always be one of those defining moments we remember and just have to deal with. Most of us don't have to find a way to live with it like those who actually lost loved ones that day, but we still feel it. We always will. Even ten years later, I think those of us who were old enough to feel it still feel it just as strongly. I don't think that'll go away, and that's probably a good thing. It's not something we should ever forget. I don't think we ever will.
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