I realize school has only been out for two weeks, but I miss it like crazy. Lacking any other blog topic (my mind is still a pile of mush, sorry), I thought I’d make a list of things I miss.
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Construction sites. They’re building a large parking structure in the campus parking lot, and I enjoyed seeing the construction progress. Same too with the apartment building at 12th and K. I’m sure it’ll be done by the time I go back to school in August.
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Going outside during the day. This seems odd, but really, it’s true. During the school year, I have to walk between classes, and wait outside for lightrail and buses. I’d probably spend about two hours outside during the day. Now I get to work at 7:30 in the morning, and don’t go outside until it’s time to go home at 5pm. I could go outside during the day, but it’d only be for a few minutes on my break.
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Assigned reading. Yes, I realize this makes me look like the biggest geek. But I like reading new authors, and it’s nice to have some direction in who to read. I wouldn’t have known I like Blake and Wordsworth and Donne without my Brit Lit classes.
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Seeing people not related to me. Since I work with my Mum for my aunt, the majority of the people I see on a regular basis are related to me. I miss seeing people who didn’t know me when I wore diapers. Really, it means I need to get out more.
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Quality blog posts. My mind has turned beyond mush since the end of the semester, and I can only hope that I snap out of it sometime soon.
I’m sure I miss more things than that, but that’s all that I can think of at the moment. I need to stop playing Sims2 at night, and start writing again. My fiction has been seriously lagging, and I can’t even bring myself to read a book that isn’t a romance novel.
Warning: Serious gloating ahead.
So, I just checked my grades, because my sister’s were all posted yesterday. I’ve been checking on and off for a week, and while my English grades have been up for awhile, I’ve been waiting for my Math grade to post.
Final grades for the Spring 2006 semester.
Will you look at that? Seriously, and A in Math? I totally didn’t expect to pull my grade up from a B, since I did horrible on the quizzes, and stopped turning in my homework at the end of the semester.
But the gloating is all about the 4.0. Not just for the semester, but the whole year! Genius! This should go a long way towards petitioning all my drops and failures off my transcript for when I transfer. I really fucked up my first two years in college, and it took a two year break to get to where I needed to be.
So, while I feel like a looser that everyone I graduated with—if they attended a four-year college right out of college—has already gotten their B.A., and at 23 I’m still working on my A.A. But, I’m so very proud of my grades, and am glad I took that break.
If I hadn’t have taken that break, I’d have a A.A. in Business now, hate my job, and probably wouldn’t have ever even thought of going on to get a B.A. As it is, I’m on track to finish my A.A. next year, transfer to Sac State in fall of 2007 to get my B.A., and am even thinking about getting a Masters.
I would have never dreamed I’d be an English major, or that I could do all this. It took that break to really decide what I wanted to study, and now I’m happier than I’ve ever been.
Now, to convince my Dad that I need a really good present for doing so well… Like a spinning wheel. I really want one of those.
—”Somebody Told Me,” Hot Fuss: The Killers
As a end-of-semester present to myself for doing so well and not stressing out, I bought myself a knitting book. Not just any book though, but one written by those blog goddesses Kay Gardiner and Ann Shayne from masondixonknitting.com.
I have wanted this book ever since Ann and Kay announced that they had signed a book deal. Released last March, this book has managed to make it to the top of the “must have knit book,” alongside other bloggers like Stephanie Perl-McPhee, and Wendy Johnson. And, oddly enough, there are actually patterns that I want to make1 so badly that I’ve been eying my stash to see what kind of cotton I’ve got hiding in there.
- K thinks it’s funny that I own over 25 knitting books, and have only made patterns out of maybe five of them. [back]
Today is You’s birthday, and I’ve been stressing out all week about throwing him a virtual-party.
Oddly enough, his birthday coincides with the first time I ever met him—Memorial Day weekend, 2002. It seems so strange that we’ve been friends for four years. Even stranger that it feels like I’ve known him forever. In the beginning, we were not the closest of friends. I met him through a mutual friend, and we started hanging out in the same circles. Most of the time, we didn’t have much to talk about, so we talked about sex. I mean, doesn’t everybody?
Later on, we fell out of touch until he called me up out of the blue, and asked me to lunch. We started all over again that day, and it was rather nice.
Now, he’s my best friend. He’s a reflection of myself that I thought I would never see. People always assume that we’re secretly trying to date each other (even while having relationships with other people), but that just isn’t true. I spend far too much time alone with myself to want to date someone who reminds me of me.
When we talk about things, he really listens. He never interrupts, which makes me feel instantly terrible when I do it to him. We like to read, and often read the same things so that we can discuss them like we’re smart people.
It’s gotten to the point that I can’t comprehend not being friends with him. Even if we didn’t talk for a year, I know that when it comes right down to it, I can always rely on him, even if he isn’t quite dependable.
Even though at the moment things are pretty iffy—what, with neither of us having a car, and his girlfriend hating me and wishing I would die—he’s still my best friend, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
One of the best days of my life has to be be when he told his girlfriend in a fight that I was his best friend, and of course he was going to hang out with me. It was the first time that someone had ever said I was their best friend, and I didn’t already know it when they said it. I got a little bit drunker after that, and we did end up in bed together, with my sister…
Okay. So we just slept. I suppose I shouldn’t make it sound so slutty.
Anyways. Happy 24th birthday to You, and I hope we do something fun tomorrow to celebrate, even if it’s just getting a hangover.
- “Pennyroyal Tea,” In Utero: Nirvana1
- I realize this doesn’t seem like a birthday song quote, but Nirvana is one of our shared favorite bands, and You really likes this song. Or I could be wrong, but anyways I thinks this quote fits rather well with our friendship. [back]
Conversation between Dustin and I last Friday, when he took me out to dinner.
Dustin: I dressed up for you.
Me: Me too.
Dustin: Really.
Me: Yep, otherwise I would have worn my “Everybody Loves A Fall Out Boy” t-shirt.
Dustin: Not everyone loves a Fall Out Boy.
Me: If I were fifteen, I’d have to break up with you now.
Yes, that’s all I have for you bunch today. Working on a podcast, a book review, and a special Sunday Edition of Unsympathetic. Also, since Monday is a holiday, I’ll be taking that off as well. Happy Memorial Day Weekend! I hope everyone is doing something at least semi-fun this weekend.
—”Reinventing the Wheel to Run Myself Over,” Take This to Your Grave: Fall Out Boy
The other day, Ben Gray over at Open Switch posted a brief homily re: beauty. I’m not a big commenter, but I couldn’t help but drop my two cents like it was worth fifty bucks. Apparently, though, I was on to something.
Both Ben and Shawn Anthony from Lo-Fi Tribe seem to think what I said was worth something, and Ben emailed me to encourage my participation in this month’s ping homily.
After a few emails back and forth (where the conversation devolved into 9rules and whether anyone’s heard if they’re in yet), I thought that maybe I should jump in, and talk about what it means to me. After all, I have been looking for quality topics to write about.
But, first, the qualifiers.
When I first started reading 9rules and the related blogs (and damn do they have a lot), I tended to skip over the religion community, because I am not very religious at all. I wasn’t brought up into any religion at all; my mum abandoned Catholicism, and my Dad “grew out of” being Lutheran. When I attended church when I was little, it was always a Lutheran church, unless my grandparents were visiting from New Jersey.1
My parents decided that religion and God was something each of had to find for ourselves, and other than “Bible School” before age seven (and still, my mum only sent us there so she could have an afternoon for herself), they did not help nor hinder our spiritual discoveries. For me, this lead to wild ideas2 about what God and heaven were all about, and for my siblings, it’s turned them into atheists.
I’m much more stable than I used to be in my beliefs3, and I’ve gotten to the point where I don’t believe in any specific religion. I’ve only got my ideas, and ideas influenced by what I’ve seen and read and experienced.4. So, in religious terms, I am Agnostic, believing that there is a god, but the rest of my beliefs skew the spectrum, as everything is hobbled together in my head.
What does this have to do with participation in the ping homily? A lot, really. Because of my beliefs, I didn’t think I would fit in with the religious community at 9rules, and figured that they wouldn’t find value in what they said. I’m too used to people who preach at me, trying to explain why I’m wrong and their right, and I don’t have the time or the patience to deal with that. Especially since I’m not out to convert people to my way of thinking. I don’t particularly care what other people believe, as long as their beliefs do not harm me.
However, after the encouragement from Ben, I went and looked what the requirements and purpose of the ping homily was, and realized that I too can fit in with them.
I think Shawn Anthony was right on when he said:
It’s about your meditation upon serious religious and spiritual themes and issues. It is all about your own expression, writing, and spiritual belief.
And how could I not fit in to that? So, with reassurances all around, I feel comfortable enough to participate in this month’s ping homily.
- Actually, I still attend church with my grandpa when he comes out. I secretly like the pageantry involved in being Catholic, and if I had had to choose a religion when I was little, I would have totally picked it. [back]
- When I was little, I used to believe that we were all in a collective dream, and our deaths really meant that we were woken up in heaven. So, babies deaths were just people who were light sleepers and woke up real easy. [back]
- Aside from the “dream” belief, I ran through quite a few others. Our lives as lived inside God’s tummy, anyone? But now, pretty normal, I think. [back]
- Which caused me to curse God on numerous occasions, because I fully believe he isn’t listening. [back]
Thank god K is always good for some blog fodder.
Yesterday, when I get home from work, my dad tells me that K had called a little bit before, and she left a message for me. “J’s here, and I’m laughing.” That was it. The whole message. My parents and I sit down for dinner, and we discuss why K seeing J is funny.
I’ve got several conjectures, the most concrete of which is that J forgot which Costco K works at, and walked in with a guy who is not You. This is probable, since neither she, nor You or his mom have a Costco card. I can just see K laughing at J when J realized that K was there. Besides, K sees everyone who walks in and out of her store, since she works in Membership.
K calls at the end of dinner, to tell me the full story.
J was at Costco with her fat friend B, buying the new pink Razr (which is a horrid shade of pink, and I would never trade in my black one for a pink one, even if pink is my favorite color). When J wandered off to look at things while the phone guy set things up, K went over and talked to him, since she and he are friends.
She’s convinced him to ask the worst question to J, after all the papers are signed and he has gotten his commission.
“So, how’s the cancer going?”
Yeah. Seriously. I hope he asked. I hope she got red and pissy. And I wish more than anything I was there to see it. I love my sister, because this just made my day. I’m sure she’ll let me know later how things went down.
It’s a really long story about why this is funny to us, because, well, we’re mean, spiteful bitches over in this corner of the world.
—”Who I Am Hates Who I’ve Been,” Mmhmmm: Relient K.
Apparently, without school, I have nothing to write about.
My mind is blissfully blank, although I do wish there was something that I felt the pressing need to write about. As it is, I feel like I’m wasting everyone’s time. Perhaps I should be telling you to all run along and play nicely until my mind comes back?
No, I didn’t think that would work, either. I suppose with the semester being over, I can take the energy that I was pouring into my papers, and instead work on in-depth, hard-hitting blog posts. But, that’s not really going to happen either. But, I will finally stop putting off all those topics that I’ve been wanting to write about, but have been too lazy to actually write about them.
I could jot down a list, but then people might expect me to follow it, and those who know me know by now that that’ll never work out. I always set out with big ideas, and they get whittled down to the one easy thing that I couldn’t get rid of. Because I’m lazy and all that.
I also realize that this post is almost like a recap of yesterday, but I need to work through this funk to get to the good stuff. Not that I’m sure there is good stuff. But, I’m sure it can’t all be bad.
I’m going to quit while I’m ahead. I’ll spend the rest of the evening knitting, and then perhaps I’ll have something worthwhile to write about tomorrow. Perhaps. But I’m not making any guarantees.
After my math make-up test today, I’ll have finished another year of college. Not my first year, though. That I did straight out of high school, and made a mess of the whole thing. No, this is my first year where I got nearly straight A’s (every class except math), and didn’t drop out of a single course.
This is amazing to me. I mean, I always thought I was smart, but this is really the first time I’ve ever pushed myself to actually do good in school. I never got straight A’s in high school. I never even tried. And the B I got in math this semester isn’t going to dampen my enthusiasm . I’m actually thrilled that I did so well, considering that math is really, really hard for me. All those rules for what to do when really make it hard for me to remember how to work a problem without external help with the way of a book, but since we have to take tests without notes, I did my best, and it’s good enough to let me go on next semester. Only two more Math classes to go until I’m done with Math for good. Yay!
However, with school done for the semester, I have no idea what to do with all this time on my hands. It’s very weird to get home and not have any homework that needs to be done. No papers that need writing, no equations that need to be solved. No real reason to sit down at the computer and get things done.
This lack of school work to be done does leave time for things I haven’t really done much of. TV watching, for instance. Although, I kind of liked not watching so much TV. But, with the TV watching comes knitting, because then I feel like I’m really getting things done.
I have a couple of projects on the needles that I need to get back to, and some socks that need pairs. So, this summer, instead of blogging about school work, I’ll be blogging about knitting. And reading. And writing. And pretty much the same old stuff, just repackaged into something new. Maybe.
But I’m still having school withdraws. I’ll let you know when I get my books for next semester. Because I’m forcing myself to not buy them now. I need some sort of vacation, I guess.
— “Losing a Whole Year,” Third Eye Blind: Third Eye Blind
I want to start a new feature around here, but I don’t know how well it’ll be received. I read books. A lot of them. This week alone, I’m on my fourth book, and I still have two days to go.
So, what I’d like to do is review books. Not to the extent of a book report, but something similar just the same. I’d love to review ARC’s but seriously, where am I going to get those? (so, if you’re an author, send me an ARC, and I’ll totally review for you).
The book for todays review was published awhile ago, and is a really well known author. I mean, who hasn’t heard of Anne Rice?
Like the geek that I am, I love open source arguments.
Actually, I like legal arguments of any kind. Say, for example, a legal fight between Debbi Stoller and Sew Fast Sew Easy over the phrase “stitch and bitch” (updates over at Girl From Auntie). My love for legal documents and arguments cause me to waste time at work, because if I catch a choice phrase on a deposition transcript while I’m copying it, I have to stop and read a few pages.
This sick, strange love manifested pretty early, and it’s one of the main reasons why I wanted to become a lawyer in high school. Now I’d be happy as a paralegal, I think, or a researcher. I love looking things up. Writing about them? Not so much.
So, when I come across legal arguments being played out on the internet, I take notice. I take interest (I take a sad look at myself when I realize I’ve just badly quoted a Dashboard Confessional song). I try to keep up on the proceedings. I read legal documents when released.
And really, I just find another way to waste my time.
Like, today, for example. I have an English final today, and I can bring a page of notes with me. Did I do a page? No. Did I do anything? No. Why? Because I procrastinate so badly. And legal arguments are the best way to do it.
—”Several Ways to Die Trying,” A Mark, A Mission, A Brand, A Scar: Dashboard Confessional
