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2008 16 October :: 2.34pm
:: Music: Sons and Daughters
To everyone who will never see this:
(This isn't about you. If you think it's about you, it's not. It's about a certain vous.)
Not everyone's religion is your religion. You can't just push your views on me and I can't just push my views on you.
I believe in God. But my god seems to be a little nicer than your god. And if that makes me wrong, or a heathen or whatever, I don't care. I'm living in a happy, nice world with a happy, nice God who loves everyone, where free will means free happiness and where people are happy and love each other. If that's not a world you like, that's fine because it's my world. And I'm happy here.
I just don't understand why anyone would want people to not be happy.
I don't understand how what you do makes you happy. Does judging others make you feel better? Does alienating your friends and family make you happy? If it does, then that's fine. I'd only ever want you to be happy. But if it doesn't? Why do you keep doing it?
Nick's little sister got married last night. She turns 20 in November. As much of a horrible ideas as I thought getting married at that age was, after it all, I am so happy for Jess and Ryan. They obviously love and care for each other quite a bit and share the same ideas and faith. They're both silly and a little ditzy. And besides, people probably think the idea of Nick and I getting married is ridiculous too.
In the end, I had so much fun dancing and dressing up and partying and celebrating with them that none of it mattered. Not waking up at 7 to get my hair sprayed into a fake updo at 8:45. Not getting my makeup done and feeling guilty about Nick's mom spending over 200 dollars. Not the stupid fights we had only weeks before. The only thing that mattered was seeing Jess walk down that aisle yesterday and feeling so happy for her. For everyone.
I filled out my app for degree yesterday and Pichot turned it in to the office today. I'm graduating in May. This is the weirdest, scariest feeling I've felt since those four months in France. And I feel bad eating Tums like candy here.
Classes are going okay. Ceramics class sucks because on a scale from one to a lot, I have negative five art skills. And there are art students in class even though the title specifically says FOR NON-MAJORS. GET OUT OF MY CLASS, ART KIDS, YOU'RE MAKING MY BAD ART LOOK WORSE.
French is god-awful. I shouldn't expect a 400 level French class to be not hard but it is terrible. We watched four versions of Madame Bovary and for our test on Monday he expects us to tell all the movies apart by director's name. I cannot tell them apart. There's the French color one, the American black and white one, the French black and white one and the British miniseries. But if you ask me, vrai ou faux, dans la film de Renoir, Léon a cassé la vitre avec son main, I couldn't tell you.
Everything else is okay. Tai Chi is making my legs hurt. 1776 is playing at Civic theatre and I'm planning on seeing it this weekend.
OH! Will.i.am is coming to my school on Sunday. Crazy, right? I am pumped.
! الحمد لله
I started my last year of college last week. I do not want to talk about how much this is freaking me out.
I am so sorry that I haven't updated lately but things have been crazy. On Mondays and Thursdays, I have class from 9am - 7pm with 5 minutes between classes and work crammed in there too. Otherwise, I have one or two classes.
Here's the rundown:
Mondays/Thursdays
I have Cartography at 9. This class is awesome because I've always wanted to be a useless cartographer and it's taught by Bieneman. Did I ever tell you I had his wife in elementary school? She was my fourth grade teacher. Her mother passed away this week.
At 10:50, I go to work until 1:25.
Don't even get me started on these new kids. They deserve their own post.
At 1:40, I have French Film and Lit. It's only the second week of school and I already am just reading the SparkNotes. The class would be so much less painful with you girls but I'm surviving okay with...the one girl whose name I still don't know after four years and some other girl.
Five minutes after the end of French class, I have Ceramics. It's really just a class to help me calm down but I've already broken two pots and found two very not artistic buddies. I am so not artsy.
Five minutes after the end of feeling dumb, I have Arabic. Which is, quite frankly, awesome. It is difficult but a ton of fun. I feel like such a genius when I get a word right or when I understand what's going on. Also: heritage! I hope I get to talk to my mom's relatives before the kick the bucket because now I know my blood languages (as my mom calls it).
Tuesdays/Fridays
I have a confession to make. Because I couldn't afford the textbook and he stressed homework so much, I dropped my history class. So now I have to take it next semester.
In other news, at 10:50, I have Tai Chi. Which is reaching Folk and Square Dance in awesomeness. The prof learned Tai Chi directly from some famous family who created a form of Tai Chi. He is a hoot. I have a thousand stories from him. He fell off a curb and landed on cement about a year ago and had trouble walking again. His hip hurt when he walked so he couldn't walk across the room until he tried doing Tai Chi. When he walked by doing his Tai Chi moves, his hip didn't hurt any more. Since he is injured, his wife does most of the demonstrations. She also helps him remember how old he is when he adds thirteen years to his age. Both of them are pretty old, 60s and 70s, but they are hilarious. He calls himself Monk and his wife Natalie Teager. Most of the class is taken up by his stories.
On Tuesdays, I have Arabic at 6 (work before that (10:50 to 5) but I have Arabic only Mondays through Thursdays so I just have Tai Chi and work on Fridays.
On Wednesdays, I am not working for the first time in my life. So all I have is Arabic at 6. I sleep, I read, I do homework, I relax.
Overall, this semester is awesome but very stressful. I have a lot of work ahead of me.
He was driving his moped from Kroes to Courtland, right by my parents' house when he was hit by a car. The police say he didn't yield but I think he really just thought he could make it across in time. He wasn't wearing a helmet.
He was 18. He was going to attend Aquinas in the fall. I was getting his information ready for STAR when Ashley found out.
I saw him do stand up at Rockford High School. He was a funny kid.
Katti and Oliver are here all weekend (today is only the beginning) and I am pumped.
It is going to be an awesome weekend.
ALSO! I am getting my haircut on Saturday. ALSO! Nick is getting a facial (AT THE SAME TIME) because I told him how awesome it was and called them and set up an appointment and told him he was going.
ALSO! You all = awesome people and I love you.
Happy (early) birthday to all you birthday peeps this weekend. Holla at me and tell me how awesome your birthday weekend is going.
Up: I got beginning boosts (TWICE) in Mario Kart. And then I never got it again.
Up: Work sped by. And I got thanked for being nice to someone. Which was weird but neat.
Up: Nick let me choose dinner and I ate chicken nuggets from Wendy's. And it was num-num.
Down: Our lease is up at the end of June, not July. That would be this month, not the next month. That would be a week and a half to find a place to live, not a month and half. So. Yes. Needless to say, I am freaking out.
Down: I am PMS-ing like whoa.
Down: My Marian Keyes book took a bad turn. So bad that I shouted at the characters to STOP and DON'T because they are ruining everything. I do not think they are STOPping. I should go check.
Mario Kart
Katti/Oliver bought Mario Kart Wii over the weekend. I are hooked.
I got my first sparks today. Blue and orange. I was proud of myself.
Picky thing one: blue shells show up a lot more than they used to. Maybe it is because I am in first place a lot more often but I never get one to throw at people, I only ever get them thrown at me. Every lap. Picky thing two: I oversteer and then overcorrect and then over the edge of the map I go. Stupid maps without walls. Stupid maps with walls, actually, messing up my sparks. Picky thing three: I am obsessed with those stupid sparks. They distract me from actually racing and I just focus on milking the drift for orange sparks.
For those with the game (Jason/Michelle), how in the world do I do the boost at the start? I have tried the Mario Kart 64 timing at the arm drop and it's not working. That is picky thing four.
I also suck at bikes. I need to practice more, I guess.
I still use Peach. I always have. Baby Peach gets used sometimes to because she is too darn cute.
Anyway, here is our Mario Kart friend code: 3652 1810 6619. This game is way fun, just frustrating. My New Year's resolution of not swearing is always put on hold as DK or stupid Mario go blowing past me.
I love you all.
P.S. Drafting? AWESOME.
P.P.S. Wario's mine level and DK's snowy retrofitted level SUCK. I hate them. I hate them like whoa.
P.P.P.S. We saw The Happening on Friday. I read what it was beforehand and was expecting horrible things. What did I get? A horrid movie. It was bad. And way too over the top. I just kept promising myself that if M. Night showed us one more person killing themselves, I was walking out. I stayed and just kept looking away and covering my ears. It was BAD. The people throwing themselves off of buildings made me think of September 11th and the thunking noise they made as they hit the ground made me want to throw up. The dialog was awful.
P.P.P.P.P.S. Hulk, on the other hand, was awesome. Nick is right, I am a closeted comic book fan. I am excited for Cap'n America's movie.
I don't know about you but I never knew
On Nielsen ratings and Nielsen boxes: Read more..
So it's like some crazy exclusive quilt-making club that no one is allowed to see, hear, join or talk about. You only get to see the quilts and wonder why your favorite quilt design got discontinued. Then you can only conclude that they obviously aren't recruiting the right type of quilters. If they were, the Arrested Development quilt would still be available.
venus was a fly trap
the man you loved devoured
i used to dream about your sister
standing in the shower
but i was never cool
you thought i was a cowboy
i wonder where my gun is
can you spare a bullet, senorita?
i will always be the worst
generation X-wing
that's got to be the death star
i used to dream about the future
i used to dream about a lot of things
but i was never cool
so you can call me loser
yeah, you can call me
anything you want to, senorita
i will always be the worst
help me up with
a pair of wings
a little rope
all those things
she always said i'd find the cure for cancer
i read my horoscope but i just can't pull it off alone
i can tell you how this ends
i think the high price of gas is GREAT!
people are supposedly driving less and less, which means a decrease in pollution, noise, congestion, and isolation behind metal and plastic encasing.
a latency effect is an increase in social contact and interaction. perhaps more human touch. more exercise. more cooperation.
of course, it could also bring about a lot of crime. a lot of anxiety, depression, frustration.
this is a really interesting situation and time to be alive. it's exciting. things are happening. let's see what the fuck we can come up with to destroy or save ourselves.
The Story
We always knew that my great (great?) uncle was on the Titanic. My grandmother (and my mother) always told us about how he survived by dressing up as a woman and sneaking on a lifeboat. Not honorable but hey, he was third class, he wouldn't have survived anyway. And that sums up my grandmother's side of the family.
Anyway. Back when the Ellis Island website first became searchable and the manifest of the Titanic was not searchable, my mom spent a week searching for him. She found him on the Carpathia as one of the survivors. She couldn't find him at Ellis Island but when she finally figured out that someone dated all the papers three months ahead, she found him there.
But he was never on the official list of Titanic survivors. She searched and searched and looked and looked. She told me about how she started looking for him as a little girl but could never find him.
Well Titanic was on last night and I thought, hey, let's just try to look for him. And I went on Encyclopedia Titanica and looked at every page. No Philip Zennie on the lifeboats, no Philip Zennie in third, second or first class. I called my mom and told her that Titanic had inspired me to find him and we looked together. I got really excited because the site had biographies for every survivor. But we still couldn't find him. I sorted the survivors by age.
This is why we can't have nice things
GTA IV has gotten to that point of no return that all GTA games eventually reach: Rachel can't beat this goddamn mission and therefore will never get any farther in this game ever. Many controllers were slammed around and curses were shouted. Then I looked at gamefaqs and it just said shoot the guys. I CANNOT SHOOT THEM, I AM DEAD. BUT THANK YOU, STUPID WALKTHROUGH MAN.
So I am watching Titanic. I hate this movie. Ugh. Time to change the channel. Okay, I guess I will watch Love Sick: Secrets of a Sex Addict. Oh, Lifetime. Why do you make me watch these terrible, terrible movies?
Trapped in the Closet
Now I know this is OFN (and I'm behind by two years) but did you know that there are now TWENTY-TWO CHAPTERS of Trapped in the Closet?
And that you can watch all of them online at (for some crazy reason) ifc.com?
And did you know that if you get confused, there's a character map?
I didn't know. And my life was forever changed.
I was watching from chapter 11 on but decided to start all over again because it was just so good the first five times.
Sorry, guys. I was just happy this said I wasn't from Michigan. Eat that, stupid friends!
What American accent do you have?
Your Result: The Midland
"You have a Midland accent" is just another way of saying "you don't have an accent." You probably are from the Midland (Pennsylvania, southern Ohio, southern Indiana, southern Illinois, and Missouri) but then for all we know you could be from Florida or Charleston or one of those big southern cities like Atlanta or Dallas. You have a good voice for TV and radio.
So. Season finales for shows this season? Kind of very lame.
The season finale of Bones is stricken from my world. Like the last Harry Potter book, it never happened.
And House? Really? I didn't like her but...really?
The Office was better than the last couple episodes. But Jim and Pam were supposed to get engaged! I was upset. Until the very end.
Anyway, lame.
I am ill and hoping to recover tomorrow so I can go to work but I am feeling completely awful. I am going to have to go to work and just be useless I guess.
I want a milkshake.
Bleh.
I love you all.
P.S. IRL, life has been lame. Father of kid who used to work with us died. Father of blogger I like is really sick. Laura is gone and I really need her.
P.P.S Oh and I am a bridesmaid now. Which is not lame but awesome. Pumped, I am.
