Packing

Blah!
My contract ended so I moved out, but I am still here so I am room less. I mean, the guy I sold my contract to has been very nice and offered to let me stay in the room still, but that isn't fair. I mean, I don't mind sleeping on the couches at all. In fact, I love it, haha. It makes me feel like I am at Grandma's house again and all the cousins are there and we will do something exciting in the morning in heaven, otherwise known as Orange County. What is driving me crazy is all my stuff. It is just so much to organize it is just blowing out my mind and it is beyond me to even start. The disorganization is driving me crazy. I have some planning and stuff to do with getting my blogs ready, setting my project goals for India, preparing my field study for next summer and I just can't think! Just knowing that all my stuff is piled up downstairs and all the stuff not put away by my room mates upstairs is killing me. I just can't think! I just need to throw it in a box and not worry about organization and just getting it done. Except most of what I use day to day is what I will be taking to India so I can't really pack it so it will have to stay strewn about and blah! Blah Blah Blah!

And I'm Back...Sort of

So with my summer projects starting up, I thought it would be a good idea to get this going again. Man, it has been a while since I have been on here. Mostly I have been over on LJ. Blogger just doesn't have the same sense of community. I am working on redesigning this blog and a few other things. Maybe I will finish it? I don't know. That is the goal at this point.

So I guess the big news is that I am going to India this summer with HELP International. I am excited. I will probably post more about HELP in the near future. Anyhow, I leave May 9th and I will be back August 2nd or 3rd, I think. I will be working on development projects which at this point include micro finance evaluations, public sanitation, gardening, and maybe some stuff with employment. I don't think I am really ready, but, well there isn't much time, so I will have to be.

I have a two other blogs in incubation. I am not exactly sure when they will be ready to be unveiled. One is for this summer, so actually I will have it up in the next week or two. The other is for next summer's project...so it may take a little more time before I have properly conceptualized it. Forgive any bland designs at first, I am not exactly sure what I want with them yet.

Anyhow, this is the official restarting of my blog/s! I will be around, for better or for worse. My India blog will probably be more active over the next three months, but for now at least, I will be here.

So haircut.

I got my haircut today. It isn't anything revolutionary, its just shorter. And not a lot shorter, but just, shorter. I went to Paul Mitchell like usual. The girl that cut my hair had been there for almost a year already, so she did okay. It was nothing amazing though. I am suspicious she took a chunk out of my hair on the side, but I haven't had time to check it out yet. Oh, and there was a male student there today. I've never seen a man there before. I guess that's cool. One time I am going to do something interesting with my hair. I haven't a clue what, but it will be amazing. I just wish the people at Paul Mitchell were better at recommending things. I don't know what I want with my hair. I never really do anything with it. I mean, all these people are studying hair cutting and they can't recommend a hair cut to me. I just want to tell them go, be free, do something with my hair, I trust you for the most part. I mean most guys only have between a half inch and three inches of hair, you can't do anything too insane with that. Oh well. Maybe when I move into the real world and have to go to an actual hair cutting salon or whatever they will be better about that.

I move out of Glenwood in less than a week. Huzzah! I am way tired of Glenwood. It isn't that amazing and my apartment always smells bad. Either my Mexican room mate neglects to take rotting food out of the fridge, or else my Japanese room mate does not do the dishes/just breathes (the room always smells so bad when he has been sleeping in it for a while), and finally there is something wrong with the disposal. I don't know what it is, but it smells. Now I just make sure and run the disposal everyday before I go to bed and that seems to help. I think someone in my apartment puts food down there but then doesn't run it, I don't know. I liked my old apartment that I had already cleaned and everything. Oh well, I hope the Rivera will be better. I trust that it will. And this apartment isn't so bad, it just has its quirks. Mostly its just Glenwood, not this specific apartment or its occupants.

Oh! I recently discovered slushy Otter Pops. I bought a box to celebrate the beach house week and have been enjoying them. Well the other day I checked if the ones I had put in a few hours before were frozen and they weren't. They were squishy, which gave me a brilliant idea: "why not eat it now when its slush." Actually what gave me the idea was how eating the frozen ones kind of makes your mouth raw after a while from sucking on the rough ice, but if they are soft, no roughness. It's genius. So I ripped one off to try. However that didn't go quite as planned because as I ripped a blue one off it basically tore an orange one in half and spilled slushy orange all over the freezer. I wasn't really mad though. It just surprised me. It made me laugh actually. Plus it froze solid really quickly, so I just pulled if off basically, I didn't really have to scrub sticky off or anything. Otter Pops are so good.

Oh, my paycheck got electronically deposited today! How exciting! Now I can start paying off my clothes. I had to buy a bunch because I accidentally ripped a pair of jeans (blah!). I am still trying to see if I can have them repaired, but for now, I bought another pair courtesy of the Levi's sale that came along so conveniently. Also I have no winter clothes at all and the soles of my only pair or shoes just ripped apart. I found two hoodies online on sale and I bought a pair of vans and another pair of chucks. All I need now is some sort of winter coat. And I might look into another pair of Levi's and another pair of shoes. They last longer and look better I think if you can rotate through your shoes rather than hammering on one all the time. Oh and socks. Almost none of my socks currently have heels, so I wear my Rainbows a great deal. I am excited to wear regular shoes and socks again. But I need to fix my feet first. I have crazy callouses. So I use a pumice stone and then wash my feet and then put on lotion every night and I should be okay in a few weeks. I am tired of cracked feet! Stupid dry Utah.

I am kind of excited to start school, but kind of not too. Well, I'm not not excited, I am just a little nervous that I will get in and then realize I hate my life. I am tired of not having anything to do all day though. I wish I had more hours to work, if just to keep busy.

Oh, and here is my schedule for all of your stalking pleasure:

Accounting 210
Information Systems 201
Rel A 211 The New Testament (first half)
Rel C 351 Survey of World Religions (its the only Gaskill class I could find)

8:00a			REL C351 - 11 8:00a - 9:15a 234 MARB		REL C351 - 11 8:00a - 9:15a 234 MARB
9:00a		REL A211 - 14 9:00a - 9:50a 323 MARB		REL A211 - 14 9:00a - 9:50a 323 MARB
			I SYS201 - 5 9:30a - 10:45a 260 TNRB		I SYS201 - 5 9:30a - 10:45a 260 TNRB
10:00a
11:00a		ACC210 - 1 11:00a - 12:15p 151 TNRB		ACC210 - 1 11:00a - 12:15p 151 TNRB
12:00p
1:00p					TMA101 - 5 1:00p - 1:50p NELKE HFAC
2:00p
3:00p
4:00p		TMA101 - 002 4:00p - 4:50a F430 HFAC		TMA101 - 002 4:00p - 4:50a F430 HFAC		TMA101 - 002 4:00p - 4:50a F430 HFAC

So I am excited I think. It is only five classes, but fourteen credits. It shouldn't be bad at all. Acc 210 should be a lot of work and very telling. So I am excited to see the results of that class as it will help me find which direction I am going with college. I was going to take some dance classes, but I don't want to spring for shoes, I already have enough to pay for without that. Plus, even though it is sort of fun, it is just stressful. I have a love/hate relationship with the BYU ballroom dance program. It is so much work and so much stress and the nervousness of having to find someone to dance with and then even harder: find someone to practice with. And everyone always reads more into it than there is. (I know, I've talked to the girls about it, haha). So I am taking at least this semester off. I would rather focus on getting to the gym and running instead of letting it fall away because of a class. With my schedule like this I can make time to build myself up. I am tired of being skinny, so bulking up is more important to me than being able to dance. Besides it would probably be easier to learn anyways if I was stronger. So I am excited I think. Except not for winter. Boo winter. I hope winter just forgets to come this year.

So Today's Adventure

This will probably be shorter as it hurts to type, haha. Today after work I was walking home, but I had to cover for my supervisor, so thus I was stuck at work until 10:00 rather than 9:30 like usual. Also, because it is the day after Pioneer Day the Tanner building was closed. I am not exactly sure why actually. Anyhow, it was closed and normally I take the Tanner building stairs to get down the hill, but today I had to walk down the open air Richards building stairs. It was raining the whole time, but only slightly more than sprinkling, so it wasn't too bad. As I got to the foot of the stairs I heard this chirping/squeaking noise. At first I thought it might be an injured dog or lost puppy or something so I went to investigate and discovered that actually it was a couple of quail taking shelter under a truck. They were both sitting flat on the ground talking to each other so loudly so I crouched down to watch for a second on account of the strangeness of the scene. The man got a little nervous, as he was closest to me, and stood up and as he did so three tiny quail babies ran out from under him and dove under the mother sitting near the far truck tire. Well, this was too much, I had to get closer. Quail are so shy to begin with that you hardly see them before they run off into the underbrush, and here not only were there a male and a female quail, but a family to boot. So I went over to the other side expecting the mother to pop up and run away with all her babies, but surprisingly she didn't. She actually didn't even seem to notice me getting close until her husband, who had fled to the mulch, sounded the alarm. Then she got all nervous and I was mercilessly enjoying having this family pinned to my location because they wanted to save their babies. The father was about two feet away from me the whole time because I was between him and his family and the mother just huddled in fear sitting on a bunch of babies. Quail babies are so cute! Haha, they are so small, it is so comic.

I didn't just torture them though, I actually helped them. As I was sitting there listening to the nervous chirping of the parents and the oblivious chirping of the babies, I realized that some of the baby chirping was coming from behind me. So I looked around and saw nothing but a storm drain. I walked over and looked down and there about three or four feet to the bottom of the storm drain were two little quail babies running back and forth chirping. Well, I couldn't just leave them there! I had to try! They were so helpless! So I tried the storm drain. Fortunately (and unfortunately as I would later discover) the storm drain grate cover thing was not bolted down, but was kept in place by virtue of its prodigious weight. I began to lift and wiggle it out of place until I could pull it back enough to slip inside. I thought that was going to be the hard part. You wouldn't believe how fast quail babies can run. Here I am trying to save them and they are darting back and forth over this tiny space I can barely turn around in, while I am desperately hoping they don't run down the pipe where they will be lost forever. Thankfully there was an inch deep lake surrounding the pipe, so they were stopped before they could get in there. However they both decided that they had to take the plunge before they would let me save them, stupid little buggers, haha, but so cute! Anyhow, so I save them and have them both carefully in hand as I climb out. Apparently a large human climbing out of a storm drain is much more frightening that a human walking up, or maybe the quail parents knew their babies were in the storm drain and that is why they hadn't gone anywhere. I don't know, anyhow, when I returned to the surface all hell had broken loose in the quail family and the parents were watching me with little babies running absolutely everywhere. I have to commend their courage though, Mrs. Quail came charging at me before she lost her nerve at the last second, turned and fled. Although come to think of it, it may actually be because that whole puff-yourself-up-and-charge tactic may have no thought or strategy beyond the puffing up and first step. Anyhow, I put her children down and they ran after their fleeing family. One of the babies I had rescued was running so fast he/she would get really tall and sprint off and then become unbalanced and fall flat on his face. I felt bad, but it was so funny to watch, and I didn't think it hurt very much even though it was cement because he was probably going a maximum of like a quarter mile an hour and really an inch isn't very far to fall on your face, even at the breakneck speed of a quarter mile an hour.

However my troubles were not over. Family happily united (although honestly I think at this point the parents had decided to cut their losses with the children and run), I had now the task of putting the storm grate back. Things were going fine until I realized that the way I was putting the drain cover back, it was highly likely that it would fall in. Sure enough as soon as the thought crossed my mind it tipped and started to fall back in. Maybe started isn't the right word. It fell back in, and I nearly did as well. Thankfully I had a pretty good grip on it at the time and I threw my foot up onto the curb just in time to catch myself from being pulled into the storm drain with this dag blasted hunk of heaviness. I didn't realize it weighed so much. I could just feel it go through my whole body. I don't know if you have ever felt that extreme sort of everything that you feel when you know that you are hanging by a thread and it is going to take everything you have and more to complete the physical task placed before you. Which isn't so bad, I suppose, when you can spread it out, like cleaning a yard or running eight miles. But when its a frickton of iron thrown into your hands at once over a cliff, it is a little more intense. It was kind of a cool, but at the same time blind panic-y sort of feeling, haha. I couldn't let it drop, because I knew if I let it drop I would never be able to get it out again and most of BYU is closed for the day, so I had no idea who to go to for help anyhow. So I dug both my feet in and just began to strain against it. I have no idea how I lifted that dang thing out, but I did, and this time I maneuvered it into place before starting to push it in. Of course once it was half way their I had nothing left to give and am futility nudging this massive grate back into place. While I am thus engaged some stupid girl walks by and sees all the quail babies running everywhere and stands there like and idiot going "HOW CuUuUuUuTE!" And I just want to slap her and say "You have no idea lady." But instead I get down on my knees to shove this shifin' grate back into place.

For my efforts I scored a pretty neat slash/crush wound on the back of my right hand, a skinned palm on my left hand, scuffed forearms, a sore left leg and right arm from when the stupid suicidal grate jammed me into a rather uncomfortable position as it decided to derelict its duty as storm drain cover. Of course things on the home front are not well. As I stand up and dust myself off I turn to find that Mr. and Mrs. Quail turned and ran straight for the bushes up over the curb so there are four or five quail babies running back and forth like ninnies not knowing what to do. So here I am sore and tired trying to herd quail babies back to their parents and the stupid things are just running like mad and as soon as I do catch one it is doing its darndest to jump the three feet out of my hands to its death. I am sure it may have looked rather comical as I am running back and forth madly trying to get these stupid quailies back to the general area of their parents before the others get away. Needless to say I think I got them back all safe and sound. I'll tell you what though, every one of those stupid babies better have an unusually long and successful life after all that crap.

Bonjour!

I really had no idea what else to put in that dag blasted title. I haven't heard anyone speak English for like the last four hours. My room mate and all his friends have been in my apartment talking with someone over the internet, all in Japanese. It's cool I guess. I am sort of used to not being able to understand people. I find it amusing really. The rest of the time I get to listen to my other room mate talking on the phone in Spanish. Sometimes I hear a sentence or two in English during the day, but not often.

So I went to work today because my boss told me I was covering a shift for one of the people on day crew who had to go help his fiance with their marriage. I really didn't want to go to work. I already worked eight hours today and another four would just be so long. I would be their right now actually, haha, but I'm not. So the reason: I get there and there is somebody else there and apparently my boss decided to give it to someone else, but neglected to tell me this. I'm not mad about the lost hours. It would be nice to have, but I don't really have the drive to work twelve hour days, especially when this particular shift is so mind numbingly boring. For serious, and Indian security guard has more to do than I do. At least they get a little cabin, haha. I am just mad that I hurried to get my laundry done and then took a crappy half hour nap so I wouldn't fall asleep during work and then walked all the way to work to find out that I wasn't working at all. Oh my goodness, the girl sitting next to me has the pinkest gmail thingy I have ever seen. And she is wearing a bright pink shirt. I think I would probably have to gouge my eyes out before I could ever even be friends with her. I mean she's cute and all, and really I don't have anything against pink, but she is like PINK.

When I was trying to write PINK I accidentally pressed control P and it made everything explode. It was kind of scary. It opened a new window to some random website and submitted this post, haha. So hopefully no one is on blogger right now. Although I haven't really told anyone I'm writing in here and I don't really want anyone to read it to begin with, so I am kind of glad.

I am tired of being bored. I need to find some new hobbies. And yes I will start hanging out with people next semester hopefully. I don't really know how that works, I've never really done it before. I don't want to bother people, but I suppose the way things are going will prevent me being a functional part of society, and being useless would be very depressing. So I will actually talk to people in like a month, but for now, no. Really I just started wrong. I made a mistake mistake freshman year reacting to my hope that college would be different than high school. Yeah, that was dumb. Then I made a different mistake in the MTC as a reaction to the mistake I made freshmen year, and then when I returned from my mission I made the same mistake from freshmen year trying to fix the mistake I made in the MTC, haha. Freshman year I just tried to be outgoing and I realized I wasn't. Granted I tried for like a week and then realized I hated it. I accidentally implied I wanted to date two girls, which was the furthest thing from my mind at the time, and well, that was awful. Although in my defense I put most of the blame on them. I was just trying to network, they were the ones who took everything out of context. So that was miserable and I just started avoid my freshman ward. The clincher was the first Sunday of winter semester freshman year when one of the most popular people in the ward sat down next to me and asked me if I was new. It was way awkward. And I made sure they felt it, haha. So in the MTC I just tried to be myself, nerdy and everything. That didn't really go over well. I think mostly I just creeped people out. Well, sucks to their ass-mar, haha. So then I got back from my mission and tired to be outgoing again but I realized I had nothing to support it with and that I didn't want to be outgoing and that I have no patience for the love games these stupid Provo people play. I mean really. It is impossible to have a decent conversation when guys go into show off mode and turn into complete belligerent idiots to show off their mojo and then all the girls are just waiting to turn everything into some sort of flirtation. And not because they are interested, but so they can be on guard to stop anything. I mean forgive me if I am incapable of determining if I want to date you after one family home evening. I wish it were easier to have girls who are friends. Not girlfriends. I don't understand how anyone makes friends here when the only way to do it seems to be through romantic over tones. Well frankly that is for the birds. So I just rejected all of it this semester. I am not going to play your game people. I have put together my own game plan. It may not work, I am woefully out of practice with working with people, but we shall see. I'm just going to be honest. No, I don't mean I'm just going to go around confessing feelings for everyone, I mean I am just not going to take any crap. I am going to do what I want to do, say what I want to say, and tell people what I think. I am going to make it very clear where I stand, I will not back down from awkward silences, nor will I find them awkward. So we shall see how it goes. I think tunnel singing is gay, I don't know why anyone thinks making movies/doing skits is a good idea, and I think facebook is the dumbest idea ever. It is pointless. It is for self obsessed show offs to advertise how amazing they are to everyone else. And if you don't want to post how often you take a crap and don't run around screaming with your shirt off at least twice a week, you will never make the cut. Well you know what, screw the social order. It seems the only thing that they have to hold over you is ostracism. This is where I think my plan will work. I chose ostracism. No, that's wrong. I ostracised the social order. How's for them apples, huh? The clique didn't find me lacking. I found the clique lacking. Too bad for all you show offs. I am not going to play the audience anymore. If you don't like it, if you can't take it, then leave. I don't need you.

So I am excited to see how it works out. I do want to be social, don't get me wrong. I do get lonely sometimes. But I am tired of playing by everyone elses rules, especially when I play with a handicap. Anyhow, I just love not caring what people think anymore. It is wonderful to not worry about what other people think about what I am wearing, about what I say or do. I'm doing it for me. I've never met another person worth doing something for. And it is liberating. I don't think I will ever go back to living any other way. And you know what, the funniest part is all the open minds can't take it, they can't accept it. I am through with the tyranny of the open mind.

And enough ranting, haha. But now I forgot what I was going to say. Life is wonderful. It is kind of sucky right now, but this is only a low point. Things will turn around. I can't want to get away from college. It is probably the biggest disappointment of my life. It isn't anything like what I thought it would be. It isn't what people and movies and songs said it would be. It is just high school on a larger scale. Still the same popularity contest. Still the same retarded people. I think the worst betrayal is the intellectuals. They prostitute their minds and their writing abilities and their good taste worse than the athletes show off their strength, mostly because it isn't as obvious as when the athletes do it. And I suppose I am a hypocrite. I always have been an iconoclast.

And Life Goes On

Really it would be rather depressing if it didn't. Suicide would be much more convenient if it weren't so final. It would be a much more effective statement. "If I don't get a pony I'll die!" You know, if it could be like childhood when people very often died and it was almost never final, not even for villains. Except then in that case if you could commit suicide and it wasn't permanent and you would just be back later it would lose all of its effectiveness and we would be back to square one with yet another manipulative, but ineffective argument while someone invents some sort of ubersuicide (and I mean that prefix in the German, not American sense) that would become what suicide is to us today. But I suppose it is a rather horrible thing to talk about something so serious as if it were nothing but a game. And it is serious. It is a terrible thing, but if we can't talk about terrible things, if we must always take them seriously, well, it would be exhausting to always be walking on eggshells. If you wish you may extend that metaphor out to what the metaphorical meaning of the inevitable e. coli breakout would be in that situation.

I am tired lately. I love my job but I am tired of getting up early. It is exhausting just knowing that you must get up so soon. I am always so tired until about eight or nine o'clock and then I just want to stay up all night. I don't know what is wrong with me. You would think by then I would collapse with exhaustion, but no, it is not so. I don't really like staying up late. I always get that mildly hopeless tired depression. It springs on you slowly until you are caught in it and all you can see is how nothing is going to work and tomorrow is pointless and you just want to lay in bed forever and not bother with anything. And once you have gotten that far you don't even want to leave. It's like the doldrums, like stockholm syndrome. You know tomorrow will break bright and happy and after you have had even a few hours sleep you will be so refreshed and all will be well, but you don't want it to. The sleep depravation creates a sort of surreal regression back to teenage outlooks where you actually want to be miserable, if only to say I told you so. I told you if I don't get a pony I would die, so serves you right. Really the psychology of adolescence is boggling. So thus I love and hate the night. "Long live the night and all its splendour" or however it goes, haha. I wonder why it makes me think of that.

And that is basically the story of my life at the moment. A lot of work and then a great deal of nothing. But that is a lie. Last week I actually did a great deal of things. I saw Harry Potter. It was brilliant, I loved every minute of it. The ending was a little lackluster, but most the rest was just wonderful. I love all the social drama, haha. It is so entertaining to watch all the awkward interactions that those poor characters were dragged through. I went with some co-workers from, well, work. I didn't bring a date, I hadn't any to bring, and I didn't regret a moment of it. I tried not commenting on the movie, but I have never been very good at that, so I hope I didn't bother too many people. Oh, and Professor Slughorn is also Harold from Moulin Rouge. From then on I kept seeing him that way and it made his character so much more enjoyable to fuse it with Harold. Anyhow, it was great fun and I enjoyed myself immensely. Then on Friday I, what did I do on Friday? Well, I must not have done anything because I haven't the slightest clue what I did on Friday. I went to work, I remember that. I remember that I didn't feel like reading the books I had brought with me, which was rather depressing because I didn't have anything else to do. Needless to say the office was much cleaner after I left work that day than it usually is.

On Saturday I had work as usual. We took an unusually long breakfast that morning. I don't know why, we just sat their chatting and enjoying breakfast. We still got our work done early. Sweeping and mopping the second floor never takes nearly as long as I think it will. One of my co-workers killed a deer on the way to work. The poor dear was crushed by it. Oh my, that was a rather unfortunate way to refer to her, and I didn't even intend it. The co-worker in question is rather unhappy with me at the moment as I found the whole situation quite funny, and she really was very distraught. Very unkind of me, but I am unrepentant. I spent most of the rest of the day with Justin. We went to Salt Lake to get his brother's car and then we went to the India Palace for lunch. It was way good. I got a veg biryani and Justin got chicken tikka masala, although to be honest I ordered for him. He also ordered mango lassi, which was pretty good. Not perfect, but good. It was way too much food though. Really we should have just ordered one thing, which I shall do in the future. After lunch we ended up at his house where we played through part of Halo 2. Now to be honest I really have very little patience for video games these days. They just bore me to tears, but I really want to know the story behind Halo, and you can't really get it any other way than by playing through the games. But we play them together, and really that makes video games infinitely more tolerable and even sustainable fun if you play them with other people. And then I went home. Obviously. I called Brad and asked him if he could drive me to the store because I totally forgot to go to the store to get food to make on Sunday. He wasn't available until 11 p.m., but I agreed anyhow because I didn't want to walk to the store in the dark. *breath* And then I woke up late on Sunday morning so I was rushing to cook and get ready before church. Thankfully I only overslept by an hour, any more than that and I wouldn't have known what to do. I made pulled-pork with root beer sauce. It just sounded crazy so I had to try it. It isn't bad, it is kind of sweet actually (duh). I don't know if I would make it again, but it was kind of fun putting root beer instead of chicken broth or soup or something into a crock pot full of vegetables and meat. Next time I think I will put in literally six or eight times the amount of hot sauce I put in. I think the spicy sweet root beer chili flavor would be amazing. Except I said I wasn't going to make it again, whoops. After church my home teachers came and it was one of the most awkward things I have ever experienced. One of the guys kept looking at his companion while he was talking and never at me. So I began to stare imperiously at him in protest. I suppose that was actually the opposite reaction of the one I should have had. Whoops again.

It just seems so much more boring when I talk about my day. I don't think I will do it again. Highlights, highlights, highlights, that is what I shall do from now on. Witty/disturbing/entertaining anecdotes full of sarcasm, righteous indignation, and fun are much more entertaining to write than trying to list out everything that happened. And then on top of that to make it interesting. That my dear is what we call a novel. And I don't love you near enough to make a novel out of that tripe, if it is even sold enough to be formed into anything extendable.

I am reading Eat, Pray, Love right now. It is a very good book so far. The authoress has a marvelous voice. It is so conversational, it just sucks you right in and you feel like you are there with her seeing and experiencing what she is experiencing. Elizabeth Gilbert is a stupid woman, however. I totally disagree with much of what she is saying. She does have some good points though. I don't really believe that you need to go all around the world for a year straight to find the things she is looking for, but we are all different, I suppose. Mostly the problem I think is that I really haven't a clue who she is and I don't really trust her. She is a flaming liberal New Yorker, which isn't a vice so much as it is grounds for caution. None of her conclusions can be taken a face value without a thorough study of their foundations. Although I won't do that because I am reading the book for enjoyment so I will nod to her like I understand and not really listen to what she is saying because I am just enjoying the beautiful vista she is building as I watch her pull words from the basket on her arm and place them in the mosaic that is becoming her book, for she is telling it again to me, as she has told it to so many others. And I suppose that is the point of a book. I read chiefly for pleasure. I don't really see why anyone should be expected to read at all except for pleasure. If it isn't fun to read, then what is it? Why are you doing it? Although there is much to be said for the fruits that come of hard labor, I personally have never gotten very much out of a book I did not choose to read. I believe this to be a great flaw of modern education. So many books are forced upon students and not offered or dangled before students. If there really isn't any reason to read a book other than someone said it was a classic, well, girls gone wild (I refuse to give the distinction of capitalization to trash) has quite a fan base and soon it will be old. If it is a considered a classic in ten or twenty years, should I watch it? Really presenting a list of "classics" and then forcing people to read them is destructive to the books imprisoned in those lists. If their true qualities are discussed rather than their status, more people might discover that most of those books are not the stuffy aristocrats speaking another dialect of English most people think they are, but are in fact some of the most entertaining, brilliant, and even energetic personalities of the book world. But I won't get started on modern education. To quote a good friend of mine "the whole theory of modern education is radically unsound." To which I agree resoundingly, however for the opposite reason that prompted Aunt Augusta to speak her mind. So I guess I really don't agree at all and have said something completely different with the exact same words. How very strange that such a thing could happen.

Oh my

Okay, I have to get this dag blasted thing going. I promised myself I would, and so I will. Basically I blame LiveJournal, haha. I like it so much better. Blogger is so much more superficial because LJ is all about writing. I feel like with Blogger I have to post pictures and make it trendy and cool and have updates with things that say things and I realized that that isn't what I want. What I started out making this wasn't what I wanted it to be. Sorry Chrissy and Kaite, haha, if you read this, It was too much like my cousins. An OC kid I am not, I can't do things that way, and so I won't. But I have to keep this going, so it is going to be more like a journal, I don't really ever take pictures, I don't have anything to photograph. Maybe if I ever have them I will post them.

I hid my twitter account, and I will probably delete it this week. Twitter is the dumbest thing I have ever seen. It is almost as bad as myspace. Myspace is worse because it is all about whoring yourself out, plotting strategic moves to get the most comments/reactions out of the least effort possible. Twitter is just meaningless. What can you say in less than 140 characters other than "****ing traffic" or "I hate my life" or "Look at me!" To me it was just a firehose of meaningless information that I couldn't connect to anything else that didn't matter, that didn't need to be said. As an aside, why the hell don't they call tags tags in blogger? What is this labels crap? But Twitter, haha, so I'm not doing it anymore. It's dumb. 'Nuff said.

Oh, and I turned on my facebook. I've actually had one since October, but I left it hidden. Right now it is extremely limited in who I have added. No familia, I won't add any of you. That's not why I got it. It is frighteningly similar to Twitter though. Just a mass of meaningless information with a little myspace comment whoring thrown in on the side, sprinkled with a little pocket organizer to make it different. Mostly I turned it on so I could not add people. I like the ironic humor. I may just defriend everyone and leave it there as a silent protest to meaningless websites. Maybe they have more meaning if your relationships outside of them have meaning. I prefer LJ, it forces you to say something. And I guess Blogger is the same too.

But life. I moved next door because Glenwood is retarded. Things are kind of icky in this apartment, but not bad. I just have no desire to do the initial cleaning in this apartment. I already put so many hours into the last one and now I have to start all over again. Blah! But cleaning checks are next week, so here is my excuse. I figure if I put in three hours a day until Tuesday I can have things ready to go. Then its just a few hours of cleaning on Saturdays to keep the apartment up. It is just the initial cleaning that is miserable. But my roommates are nice, even if they are messy. I guess I have been lucky with my random roommates. I haven't really had any horror stories so far. Everyone has their quirks, but heaven only knows so do I, haha.

I enjoy my job. I am getting tired of the hours, I think I will work until next May and then I will quit. I have enjoyed the experience, I have learned a lot. I learned to get up early, to make myself go to bed, so I think I can get by now without having work in the morning to make me get up. Instead I have other things to learn, but all in good time.

I am not in school right now. I wish I was, but honestly I don't even know what classes to take. Things will be put into perspective after fall semester, after that I will be able to forge ahead, right now I am kind of in limbo waiting for things to clear up so I know what direction to go, or at least a few directions not to go. So for now I am just working. I picked up another shift, which I am excited about. That means I officially work 34 hours a week, plus any time I cover for people. I know, I know, I should have gotten a real job at a real company, but I've never done that before, and I didn't have the heart to go get rejected again and again. I regret it now, but that is why I am quiting in May, so that I can go get a real job. Even if it pays less it will be nice just in that it is more like a career. Coming home and not having anything to do all day is just miserable. But I have gotten a lot of reading done, haha. This year I have read (in no particular order):

Sense and Sensibility
Howl's Moving Castle
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Through the Looking Glass
Proof
Tales of H.P. Lovecraft
Unaccustomed Earth
The Graveyard Book
Coraline
Red Earth and Pouring Rain
Memoirs of a Geisha
Atlas Shrugged
Petronella Saves Nearly Everyone
The Book of Lost Things
Stargirl
The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy
Life, the Universe, and Everything
So Long and Thanks for all the Fish
The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
(The Other Book in the Hitchhikers Series I don't remember the name of)
Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell
The Ladies of Grace Adieu

And that is all I can remember. I think there are a few more, but oh well. I liked most of them. A few I will never read again, and only three I wish I hadn't read. And actually I am not done with Atlas Shrugged quite yet, but I might as well be. I am currently reading:

The Tale of Genji (I will finish it before this year ends!)
The Brothers Karamazov
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (it is an awful book, terribly written, but so amusing, don't read it, for serious)
Everything Is Illuminated
The Last Mughal

I have been muddling through the Tale of Genji and the Last Mughal for months now, so I don't anticipate finishing them anytime soon, but so long as the Brothers Karamazov keeps up, I don't see any reason why I can't clip right on through it. I spent today slogging through John Galt's freaking 55 page speech in Atlas Shrugged. Oh. my. goodness! 55 pages! With no breaks, no commentary, and it was so repetitive! It took an hour or two, but I got through it. And it wasn't that bad, but I mean, 55 pages of the same basic idea was a little much. Come now Ayn dear, we all love your philosophical ramblings, but ten pages would have been completely sufficient for the point you were trying to get across.

I know, I know I need to be more social, and I am working on it. I'm actually keeping contacts in my phone this time rather than just deleting them a few days after I put them in. I even answer the phone! Aren't you proud of me? I don't really like it, but I am sure that one of these days I will have a mental break down if I don't. I have totally ostracized my ward. I did it intentionally and I regret nothing. I just couldn't deal with them. It was too many people, too much information, I just felt overloaded by all the people that wanted my attention so I just shut them all out. This year has been hard adjusting to the idea that I don't have to just survive until my mission, now I actually have to do something. But I have made some major breakthroughs. I have learned so much about myself. And I don't mean to say that in a cliche way, like so many retarded people say it, because its actually true, haha. I can pin it down to about three or four major points that I never thought about, that I never realized before. And reading Atlas Shrugged has just sort of put the capstone on it all. It really has changed my world view, weltanshuuang, if you will. I love that word (I hope I didn't put too many u's in) and I don't use it out of arrogance, but out of sheer love for that wonderful word. I wish it was possible to use it more often and have people understand what you mean and not think you are trying to throw your brain around.

I nearly bought the smaller Oxford English dictionary, but I exercised self restraint and didn't. It was so hard. I wanted it so badly. It had 600,000 definitions in it. Imagine it: 600,000 different words/meanings, and therefore words, haha! Imagine what you could do with that. And that is nothing compared to the real Oxford dictionary which has 1,800,000 words. I would very much like to have 1,800,000 words at my disposal. Anyhow, I bought Coraline, Petronella Saves Nearly Everyone, and Eat, Pray, Love (or whatever it is called), and the second Dune book instead to make myself feel better. Sorry Dad, I know I said I wouldn't buy anymore books, but these are the last, the very last, I promise. I desperately need copies of Demons, Anna Karenina, War and Peace, Stardust, the rest of the Dune series, and a few others, but I will wait. I will spend more time with those, ephemeral, fickle, inconstant, nothings at the Library that stab you in the back with their due dates just as your relationship is blossoming instead of expanding my personal library, which I would just like to point out is severely lacking. How anyone expects me to get by with such limited resources at my disposal is beyond me. Granted more than half my library is in piles at the foot of my bed, but that is besides the point.

Some random guy just complemented me on the speed of my typing. I'm not really sure what to say. Typing slow is ridiculous. How do you expect to accomplish anything if you slow down the already insufficient ten lane highway letting a trickle of ideas out of your head onto the screen?