Ten Thousand Flashcards

On too many job interview road trips.

2011-06-23T21:31:00.000-07:00

This is what 3-5 days of my week feel like lately. I am, at this point, after 15 or so interviews, entirely burned out. Sick of doing these things

Pack. Pack interview clothes, clothes to wear while driving to avoid ruining interview clothes. Various diversions: netbook, mp3 player and headphones, kanji textbook, coloring books if I think I'll have way too much downtime. Food, so I don't have to spend so much money.
Drive. At least 150 miles. Probably more like 400. Less, if I'm lucky, more if I'm not. Listen to the Book of Mormon soundtrack, Lady Gaga, the Spice Girls if I'm feeling really tired. Work on my Kevin Rowland impression for future kareoke moments.
Arrive somewhere. Usually the same chain of hotels. I've already earned a free night thanks to a summer promotion. I like to stay here because they always have wifi, usually pools.
Room. Bring my shit to my room. Put all the food in the fridge. Make sure the wifi is working. Lay around and try to shake off all that driving. Go swimming and do as many handstands as possible in the shallow part of the pool. Read books all night, or pass out immediately. Watch Conan if I think of it. Apparently, the only time I feel the need to watch "late night" shows is when I'm in a hotel.
Morning. Do some streching, try to practice handstands if there's enough wall space to lean on, put on makeup because interviews are one of the few occasions when I feel like I'm really supposed to wear it. Still not sure if it actually is making a difference in making me look professional. Check out. Depending on what time the interview is, idle away some time at a Denny's.
Interview. Answer questions about my "educational background," try to remember that doesn't just mean where I went to school. Talk about the classroom management style that I don't really have yet, my strengths and weaknesses. The types of sports or activities I'd like to coach. I wish people didn't insist on asking me what sports I can teach. Apparently, most schools do NOT have varsity unicycling. Try not to be sarcastic.
Aftermath. Tell myself and others that the interview went well. In reality, have no idea because no matter what everyone just smiles at me. Not sure if that means my answers are good or my naivete is disarming.
Drive. again. As fast as possible.
Repeat 3-7 or be home. Feel guilty for not spending more time with the cats, buy them fancy feather toys to compensate.

2011-06-12T15:24:00.000-07:00

I'm just going to put this right here so I don't forget about it.

Ridiculousness of Online Dating

2011-06-12T11:10:00.000-07:00

I wanted to share some of the more ridiculous interactions that I've had via OKCupid. I've had my profile on there since January or so. Not much useful has come of it. Pretty much all of these are from people who contacted me first. Most did not receive return correspondence. Also, I'm not going to bother putting [sic] on the end of all of these. They are quoted as sent to me.

From a guy whose profile features an out-of-focus headshot, wearing a Lakers cap:
                  hi hey whats up cute pic how are you doing to night.

From someone who also "no longer has an account" and apparently was unwilling to state what, exactly, he thought made us such a compelling match
                 you have the prettiest smile and i love your profile and i think we have a lot in common and love and talk and get to know you better.

From someone who tried to make a case about why we would be a good match, this is an excerpt
                  I Day dream about stuff like " what if i had the power to turn everything into candy... " or " what if i could win at everything forever? "

From someone with a profile picture of only his abdominals
                  cute pics doc :) (NB: my screen name is Doctor Atreides)
                  me: Thank you for validating my existence.
                  i hope i did more than validate it, lol

From Ignacio
                  hi my name is Ignacio
As someone I told about that one responded, "Doesn't that make you want to know more!" No, no it doesn't.

From someone who may have a weak command of the language
                  hi i saw your profile and it's nice and very nice pics of ya

From someone with an odd vetting process
message title: You kindle reading faggot
message content: I ride a unicycle, btw.
my response: I'm glad to hear that you ride a unicycle, but I have to say that introducing this message with "You kindle reading faggot" is perhaps not your strongest opening move. .
him: Kindle reading nigger?
me: Hey guy, don't talk to me.
him: You're a 92% match, I had to gauge your sense of humor.

I guess I failed that test.

From someone who wants to read the Holy Quran in its original language
                  Hey how are u? I read ur profile, and u have a lot going on I respect that.. the thing that caught my eye is u kno arabic Bcuz I need to learn it so I can read the Holy Quran in its original language.. if u can help me or would like to get to kno me better go ahead and respond an we'll take it from there..

From someone who uses hyperbole
                  hi most sexyy girll l have ever seen

From someone who also thinks I'm attractive
                  U are so cute.
                  Are u down to chat?

And finally my personal favorite,
From someone who "no longer has an account"
                  What should i do to make you crazy about me ?

California Geography

2011-06-12T10:51:00.000-07:00

Having now driven around quite a bit for job interviews, I am more familiar with California geography than I ever thought I would be, than I ever really wanted to be.

My dad seems to know just about every route and alternate route and backroad in the state. I used to think that he was some kind of logistics savant (he may be that still), or something, but now I realize he knows so much because he has driven everywhere. Twice. For my most recent journey, I was driving to northern California (Willits, specifically) and I mentioned I was trying to beat the traffic on the 210 by leaving early. "You're not leaving early enough for that," he told me, "you should take the 138 to Lancaster..." what then followed was an extremely specific set of instructions, whose accuracy was, in fact, corroborated by Google maps. "This part of the 138 is called Pear Blossom Highway. It passes through some weird town, Little Rock, I think." I was not sure why he had so much information about the middle of the god damn desert, but I decided to roll with it.

The thing about taking a back road, especially one that snakes through the desert, is that you're never sure it's going to work out until you get to the end of it. It just seems like you're driving into oblivion. Like if the world were flat you might drive off the side of it without noticing, scrub brush and the odd Joshua Tree seeing you off. But of course, this is what makes it a viable alternate route: there are no people. I know I'm not in the middle of nowhere on the 210 because it's so full of people. But then again, it's so full of people.

So my job interview was in Willits this time. I drove up to Ukiah (about 25 miles south of Willits) and spent the night there on Thursday. Friday afternoon I had a lesson demonstration--for actual students on the last Friday of the school year. Nice--and interview. I didn't get out of town til around 4P.M., but I drove the whole day home that day anyway. Normally, when driving to that part of the state, one goes through Oakland, but I knew at that time of day it would be a bad idea. So, I decided to go via yet another less-traveled road. I took the 20, which links up the 101 and the 5, and I spent about 40 minutes driving right next to a giant lake, I looked it up later and found out that it's called Clear Lake.

I've applied to so many jobs, over 200 now, and most of the time, I don't even look up where they are, I just apply because I'm so desperate for work. So, driving through the state I'm seeing all these town names that I recognize for putting in applications. I found myself saying things like "Oh, so that's where Elk Grove is," on my drive back.

I really hope I get a job soon because I can't keep experiencing geography at this rate.

Thoughts on things students ask me; an unofficial diagnosis

2011-05-25T18:44:00.000-07:00

As it is probably known by readers of this blog (such as they are), I have a tattoo on my wrist. It's Arabic. It says "الحياة جميلة" and that translates to "Life is beautiful." This is an aspirational statement on my part. I acknowledge that life is not always beautiful, but I would like it to be and it's a good goal. It's good for me to keep in mind. The weird thing is that a surprising number of people, students/young people especially, ask me if it's my name. I don't know why anyone would tattoo themselves with their own name. In case you forget it? Preparing for traumatic brain injury and the possible amnesia that follows? Because your name is just so cool that you can think of no other words to eclipse its awesomeness? It's such a weird thing to ask. I really don't know why that's the go-to guess.

Students and children at circus also ask my age fairly often, which doesn't bother me. However, there seems to be a class of people who, when I state that I am in my mid 20s, follow up with "Why aren't you married?" or an equivalent (do you have a boyfriend? don't you want to get married?). If I say that I'm not married sometimes they'll even go on to say "but don't you want kids?" I think this may just be a cultural divide, usually when I get this question it's from people who weren't born in the US or whose parents weren't, but I somewhat resent the expectation that at 25 I should be married and making some babies already!

An unofficial diagnosis.
It was suggested to me that I have Asperger's syndrome by someone whose opinion I value and I decided to look into it. For the uninitiated, Asperger's syndrome is an autism spectrum disorder on the high functioning end of the spectrum. People with Asperger's (Aspies, as they seem to be affectionately called) experience distress and difficulty with socializing. They (we, I suppose) have strict routines and devotion to their own narrow interests. Most of the people diagnosed with this are men. The more intelligent you are, the less likely you are to be diagnosed. Apparently, most psychologists are not very good at spotting this unless they are experts in autism.

Here is a list of traits for women with Asperger's.

I read this and sort of freaked out because I have essentially all of these traits. So then I bought three books about it, obviously. I won't go into the specifics, but reading about Asperger's has made me almost 100% certain that I have it. I felt weird about it at first. Somewhat relieved, but also distressed. A number of friends reminded me that I am still the same person and I appreciate their support with this. In the last month or so, I've been letting this simmer in my brain and I'm comfortable enough to make it public (such as 6 people reading my blog can be public) on the internet.

I am somewhat on the fence about pursuing formal diagnosis. I'm pretty settled on this in my mind. Getting a diagnosis of Asperger's as an adult means finding a specialist. Inevitably, one's parents are interviewed, which is something I would like to avoid at this juncture (they're not really in the loop on this). Also, I'm worried taht with a diagnosis I might have trouble getting insurance because this would be counted as a pre-existing condition.

I am feeling better about this now. As long-time readers may recall, I periodically feel like I'm going insane and I wonder what the hell is wrong with me and why I am not like other people. I feel that this explains it rather neatly. I am not a crazy person. I have Asperger's. I experience things differently. Knowing this helps me order things that have happened in my life and make some sense out of some of the bad parts. Some of the good parts also, I suppose. I feel like now I have a clearer idea of what makes me feel crazy and what I can do about it, which is really positive because I've never felt that way before.

In which I feel shallow

2011-05-16T21:09:00.000-07:00

Considering that I'm kind of awkward in person, and I don't know where to find people anyway, I've been trying to meet interesting people on the internet. I've talked to a few interesting people, which is pretty alright. I want to meet friends or potential boyfriends. But it seems like whenever I talk to dudes from the internet, they are only interested in the more-than-friends part. So, that's downer number one, since I just want someone to chill out with.

Secondly, I have become increasingly aware that I really am only attracted to skinny dudes. The downside of the internet is, depending on where you find people, you don't know what they look like right away. I really feel like an asshole when a guy seems cool, but then I'm just not attracted to him. I'd rather tell a guy I'm not attracted to him then drag it out, but I still kind of feel like a jerk. Like, if only I were less shallow, I wouldn't have these problems. I just like what I like though.

The effect of this is not great on my self image. I'm starting to feel that if I want skinny dudes to be attracted to me, then I should be skinnier. This is totally the wrong reason to lose weight. I should be losing weight to be more bad ass, if anything.

Thoughts on Suburbia

2011-04-22T22:07:00.000-07:00

Today I was reminded of the profound oddness of seeing people on the streets of suburbia. Rather, the profound oddness of seeing certain types of people. Here are some types of people that one expects to see: women running in the morning, people walking dogs, parents walking children to school, teenagers with skateboards. I was driving to the store this evening and I saw a guy just standing on a corner. My initial reaction was to find it weird, then, of course, I remembered that it's totally normal to be on the street; it's a public space. I think that suburban people are only found on the streets to do something like run for exercise. They don't walk around as transit, They do not convene in public. Suburban affairs are conducted in doors. Past 7 o'clock or so, most of the people are in their houses, with no intention to leave.

Last week, I saw a couple of boys riding bikes around, with a van following them very slowly. It took me a moment of reflection to realize that driving the car, was the children's parent. Gods forbid one would actually ride a bike with one's children! It was difficult to fathom the depths of this man's ridiculousness. You can't even ride around a little bit with your kids?

Fucking suburbia.

In which there are even more dinosaurs

2011-04-04T20:17:00.000-07:00

Because they make me chuckle, here are some more of my dinosaurs. Click for larger.

My New Hobby

2011-04-01T15:22:00.000-07:00

My master teacher has a super smart 7 year old daughter who is currently obsessed with dinosaurs. Yesterday, I was demonstrating my MS Paint wizardry to my master teacher, so I decided to use a dinosaur picture from the internet to explain how things are done. This resulted in an ankylosaurus with a painted on smiley face, which I saved and she later showed to her daughter. Her daughter thinks it's the best thing she's ever seen, so I started making more of them, both for her amusement and mine. Here are some I made today, presented for your consideration.

In other topics, I had a girl from my high level ESL class today ask me if she sounded stupid; she told me to "be honest." We talked about it for a few minutes and I put it together that she is concerned that when she speaks in English, she doesn't sound as smart as she feels in her head. My immediate reaction was that's exactly how I feel when I speak Spanish. She asked me if she could do some non-classwork writing and have me look at it and read outloud and have me help with her pronunciation. I agreed of course, but then added the caveat that she has to do the same for me in Spanish. This should be awesome.

I made the mistake of mentioning the circus in 5th period today. Those kids went totally nuts over it. Lesson learned.

In Which I Learn Things about Myself (also teaching)

2011-03-31T18:39:00.000-07:00

Thing the first: I don't think I can teach in a very low level class. I lack the ability to break things down beyond what I feel are their most basic components. There are only so many ways I can explain a thing and if you can't get it after that, I can't help you. This is tricky for me because, for many things, I pick them up without great difficulty. I can't make parts of speech any simpler than "types or categories of words." Just not gonna happen. My master teacher says that it's good to know this about oneself. This is why I'm not in elementary schools. I should probably teach AP classes.

Related to this is the matter of vocabulary. I have spent a great amount of time cultivating my English vocabulary. I enjoy having just the right word for just the right situation. When working with ELD and low performing students, I can't use my full range of language because no one will know what the hell I'm talking about. In my first period, I was reading an essay about poetry slams to them and it had a bit that was the main point of poetry slam. I was describing this and the only words I could think of were "manifesto" and "creed." That's great except those words have zero meaning to these kids. It's frustrating.

Thing the second: I am extremely hard on myself/I lack self-confidence. Also, I'm really stressed out about everything. Unfortunately, being aware of one's issues is not the equivalent of fixing or not having issues. Even my student teaching supervisor, who I've talked to all of four times, said that I'm being too hard on myself. Well, if I knew how to be easy, or just regular, on myself, I would do it. I'm pretty sure I'm suffering from Impostor Syndrome. Uhm, yay? I wish I had any idea how to deal with this. It's kind of fucking me up because I'm so unwilling to talk myself up that I'm botching employment opportunities. But I feel like I'm lying when I say I'm good at things, so it's really hard to know what to do.

Thing the third: my master teacher has a 7 year old daughter who is really smart and I am kind of the adult version of her kid so we're kind of giving each other insights about that. My master teacher pointed out to me today that part of what messes me up is what when I'm faced with a choice, I see 400 options or courses of action, whereas a normal person sees maybe two. So I get overwhelmed, can't decide and sometimes go in a completely different direction. I do really well when someone narrows it down for me a little bit. I mentioned to her that I had no idea what I was doing in resume and cover letter writing, and she pointed me in the right direction and I was able to fix it immediately. But when there's too much choice, I am ruined.

Otherwise I am really enjoying student teaching. I am feeling a bit less shy about it now so I am being more normal/goofy. I think I have a pretty good rapport with the kids, which is great. I've realized that my favorite teaching game is password (put a word on the board, a student in front of the board, and the other students have to get the first student to figure out the word). I also like putting the "confetti" text effects from MS Word on things because it amuses me (and also the students).

I've been busting my ass to get a job. I think I've applied for like 70+ positions now. I hope I get something. I've also started applying for some non-teaching jobs. I want to work with information, either as a teacher, librarian or archivist of some sort. So, I've been looking up major university libraries and applying to some jobs there. Something will work out.

Things Learned

2011-03-16T16:05:00.000-07:00

I have realized something about myself: I love it when I see a dude wearing goggles. It fucking makes my day. Additionally, if I see a picture of a dude wearing goggles on a dating website, I will send a message to said dude no matter where he lives.

More on student teaching experiences

2011-03-06T09:07:00.000-08:00

I've now done a month of student teaching. I am not sure I have ever been this exhausted before. Student teaching on its own wouldn't be so bad, but then I have my student teaching seminar once a week, and circus every day. Essentially, I have no down time. I'm looking forward to spring break, even though I'm going to be working during it.

It's interesting working with the lowest level ELD class. In that class, most of them are Spanish speakers, there's one guy who speaks Arabic and one guy who speaks Vietnamese. So I can communicate with everyone, except this Vietnamese kid. I keep saying things like "This weekend I'm going to start learning Vietnamese!" because it's frustrating for me not not be able to speak the other person's language when I'm trying to teach. I guess this is how my master teacher feels pretty much every day; I don't know how she does it. This Vietnamese kid came to class late in the year, so he knows even less English than the other guys in the class. This week, I brought in a really good picture dictionary that has English and Arabic words with each picture. I let him flip through it and point things out to me that he wanted to learn. From this, I learned that he likes chess, motorcross and boxing. The problem came in when he pointed to the Arabic transliteration listed with each picture, asked "what's this?" and then proceeded to try to pronounce the Arabic words of things. Which is dandy, except he barely knows any English, so the last thing he needs right now is Arabic vocabulary. I'm going to be so mad if that kid learns Arabic.

One of my classes is for "long term" ELD students and this particular class is mostly for kids who need accommodations. About one-third of them have IEPs so the class is basically one big accommodation. This is interesting for me to teach, since I am not really familiar with the low end of the academic spectrum. There's one girl, in particular, who I keep noticing. I can tell she's trying, but she just can't quite make it happen. She gets this look on her face that's so sad when she gets things wrong. Normally, if you wanted to be smarter, my advice would be, "read everything all the time," but you can't say that to someone who has a 3rd-grade reading level (well, you can say it, but that would make you the asshole in this case).

We started doing a whole-class SSR for this period. So, either my master teacher or I reads outloud for 10ish minutes, and then we ask the students to draw a picture of what they understood. They're actually pretty interested in the story, which I was surprised about. They all stay quiet. I've only heard one or two people complain that it's "stupid." Traditionally for SSR, students read on their own, but with this class that would be a total disaster. Probably none of them would bring something to read, so we would have to provide it, and then I'm sure they wouldn't get as much out of it as when we read outloud. This is something I want to incorporate into my class, when I start teaching on my own. Even if I'm teaching a first year language class, I think it would be beneficial. Students would be exposed to more vocabulary than just what they get from their textbook, they would see the language in action, in context sooner, and it would make reading in the target language accessible. My master teacher pointed out that the only problem with that plan is that I'd have to provide all the books myself. I pretty much collect books anyway, so I don't see that as much of a detriment.

In other topics, I am finally going to go to Mexico! Despite spending most of my life in reasonable proximity to Mexico, I have never been there. In fact, I've never been to any Spanish-speaking country, which simply offends my sense of decency. Once student teaching is over, I'm going to Mexico City to sightsee and, as I put it to one friend, "look at museums and buy handicrafts." I'm super excited about it. Both my parents have told me that they will not stop worrying the whole time, since I'm going by myself. I told them too bad, since I'd already booked my tickets. It ends up being like a birthday present to myself and a celebration for being done with my credential, which is nice.

On Assessment; An Open Letter

2011-02-22T16:01:00.000-08:00

Last weekend, I wrote up lesson plans for my intermediate ELD class for the week and I sent them to my master teacher to review. I was kind of disappointed when she sent them back with a ton of corrections, but I was also really happy that she took the time to help me improve, too. Apparently a lot of master teachers are less helpful.

I realized a couple things both about what I thought I knew and about how little I've learned from this credential program. Let's talk credential program first. This program taught me a lot of "strategies" for things to do in class. Graphic organizers! Pre-reading activities! Group work! but it really failed to link all of those concepts together into a cogent way. So, I was planning my lessons in terms of "we are going to do an activity. Then there will be another activity." It was all activities for their own sake. Activities are not an end in themselves, rather a means to an end. In the notes from my master teacher, she told me that I have to have measurable objectives and I have to measure them to make sure that the students actually learned something that day. I wish the credential classes had made this point more clearly. After thinking it over for a bit, it dawned on me that that's what all that crap we did at school was for. Activities are not just for the students to learn, but for you as the teacher to assess how they're doing at it.

Today then, for example, they were learning vocabulary about natural disasters and how to identify and use foreshadowing. To assess if they learned anything, I had everyone write a two paragraph beginning of a story where they were supposed to foreshadow for the rest of the story. Then we played a game called "password," wherein one person doesn't know what the word is and the rest of the class has to describe it to them. From watching them play the game and from reading their essays, I have a pretty fair idea of what they understood today. They knew what all the disaster words were (floods, earthquakes, tornadoes), but they had a hard time describing it. The writing proved more interesting. I provided a model for them to go off of, but I did not realize how much they were going to take from the model. I wanted them to write about a time when either they experienced a disaster (my model was about trying to get home when it snowed and the buses stopped running) or just any story. Now that I think about it, there is absolutely nothing surprising about them adhering strongly to the model, but I didn't expect it at all.

My lesson today went a lot better than the ones I did last week and I'm sure that it's because I had a much clearer idea of what I wanted the students to know at the end of class, rather than just "We are doing this chapter because we need to get through this book," which is a silly way to run class (I knew it was a silly way to run class, but I hadn't yet figured out an alternative). The frustrating part is that as soon as I improve one part, I realize that there were still other things that need improving. Unfortunately, this process is one of slow calibration to figure out what all needs to happen on any given day.

And now, an open letter to everyone who uses juggling in metaphors and similes while talk to me:

Dear everyone who uses juggling metaphors and similes while talking to me,

I know you're trying to pick a topic that you think I will relate to. In a way, I appreciate that. It's a little better than the constant comparisons I hear between teaching and parenting at school. So, good effort. However, since I actually juggle and teach juggling, even, on a regular basis, it is difficult for me to consider juggling on the level of figurative language. Also, juggling does not work the way you imagine it does. Yes, I know that to you, juggling represents a lot of things going on at once, but it does not represent that for me. I can juggle and do other things at the same time. It doesn't take too much of my focus to juggle. Teaching is much scarier. And children are too heavy to juggle anyway.

Best,
Lindsey

On OkCupid

2011-02-17T15:51:00.000-08:00

I signed up for OkCupid about a month ago now and I'm still not exactly sure what I'd like to get from it. Definitely would like to make some new friends, I suppose. A common question seems to be "what are you looking for?" and I've had a couple of dudes ask me that now. Most of these dudes are pretty dissatisfied with "Probably just friends for the moment and then seeing how things go."

So, some anecdotes:

I had one guy talking to me for a week or two, who has not talked to me since I told him he needed to chill out and slow down. I don't feel that committed to someone after talking to them for a week via the internet.
In a similar trope, a guy who lives over 100 miles away was like "Hey, we should get together," and then when I pointed out that we lived kind of far he was like "I'll have to plan a weekend trip." We had been chatting for less than an hour. Slow down!
The best conversation so far has been a message from a guy saying "I see you speak languages. I'm writing a novel with people speaking said languages. Can I ask you for translations?" Naturally, I replied that one typically charges for such service. He wrote me back to ask for my rates. I did not anticipate getting freelance translation jobs from OKCupid, but I'll take it.
I have talked to a couple cool, sane-seeming people, as well, but the intense, potentially crazy people are definitely more assertive.
Also, it's kind of awkward when someone is like "you're sexy and you have nice curves" when they've only seen a couple of pictures of you on the internet. I feel like that's not something you want to lead with, maybe save it for meeting in person.

In conclusion, mixed feelings so far, but at least it's entertaining.

In which student teaching begins

2011-02-13T12:46:00.000-08:00

As those of you on the facebook know, it has been a really good week; I started student teaching, I received passing scores on my Spanish CSETs and I got accepted to the APLE grant, which is a loan assumption program for up to $11,000 if I agree to teach foreign language classes in California for four years.

Student teaching has been good so far. I think I'm really going to enjoy working with my master teacher because we have fairly similar attitudes and approaches to teaching. She's a really awesome teacher and I hope I can learn a lot from her. The classes I'm in are ELD (English Language Development, also known as ESL or English as a Second Language). I probably would have been student teaching for Spanish, but I didn't pass my CSETs early enough, but I did pass the English CSETs in November. It's actually pretty lucky to be teaching in ELD, something I'm actually interested in, rather than in a regular old English class. I'm pretty sure I would hate teaching regular English.

I love working with the kids in the ELD classes, but it is hard. The hardest part right now is figuring out what proportion of foreign language to English to use (legally, 100% English, but whatever). Obviously, I don't speak every language, so this really applies only to our Spanish and Arabic speakers in my case. But considering that the lowest level class is more than half native Spanish speakers, this is coming up a lot for me. It's also difficult because different kids need or want different amounts of Spanish. I had one kid tell me, "I speak English, you know." Kid, I know you speak English, but you need to respond when I speak to you in English. Also, I really like to speak Spanish, so that makes it hard as well.

It's also kind of weird student teaching at the high school that I graduated from because I'm working with a totally different class of kids. When I was in high school, I was in all AP/honors classes and I basically only interacted with the same. The ELD students are basically disenfranchised from most school things. The only AP classes any of them are allowed to take is AP Spanish or AP math classes. Technically, it's illegal to not even let ELD students try the tests, but the unfortunate part is that none of their parents are going to do anything about it since they're immigrants who don't speak much English themselves and they aren't familiar with the system. That's really depressing for me. The other thing I noticed during this week's rally is that the "big" organizations like student government and cheerleading are overwhelmingly blond. There were a couple of students from the ELD classes who performed in the rally; they were in the hip hop dance club. Again, super depressing to see these kids not being able to/not being welcome to participate in a lot of the other aspects of school life. The good news is that the ELD students really have a tight community. My master teacher leaves her class open at lunch and there are always 30 or more kids in there everyday and they're all really nice to each other.

I'm still not sure if I will want to be an ELD teacher myself. I wouldn't be opposed to it necessarily, but rather I think it is just a huge time and emotional investment and I don't know that I could/would want to do that. Teaching Spanish or something seems a lot easier (not that I've ever taught a Spanish class). But I do think I'm really going to enjoy teaching ELD for student teaching.

The other depressing aspect of ELD teaching is that my master teacher is, in theory supposed to keep to the same scope and sequence schedule as all the regular English classes. That is insane. Luckily, the principal at the school is sympathetic to the cause, since she is familiar with ELD teaching, so we aren't really expected to do it, but the idea is to keep along as much as possible. Essentially, the state expects magic from ELD teachers.

In other things: I rode my bike to school four days this week. It doesn't even take that long: about 10 minutes including traffic lights, etc. It takes about 15 to get home since I have to ride uphill (wah womp). I've been trying to keep up on my Arabic studying (CSETs in May, ugh), but I think it's going to be difficult to maintain it what with circus and lesson planing and what I call my social life. I got a book of Nizar Qabbani poems, which is pretty awesome. They're short poems so it's basically like bite-sized pieces of Arabic that I can look at for a few minutes when I have some downtime. Whereas when I read a book or something, I need to know I have at least an hour or so to do it, otherwise I won't even get started. Apropos of nothing, my new favorite phrase is "Japanese bondage festive." The combination of the words (and I suppose surrounding context that will remain secret) just makes me chuckle.

I think I'm going to try to blog at least once a week, in part so I can think about/share my thoughts on student teaching and because I don't think I have more time to blog than that.

In which study habits are again considered

2011-02-05T15:38:00.000-08:00

I've been studying Arabic a lot lately because 1) it is great and 2) I am taking the CSET for Arabic in May. Making and keeping a study strategy is a constantly evolving process for me. Things that used to work don't work any more, I find a better way to do things, I get bored of other things, etc. Also, what worked for me for Spanish isn't necessarily going to be what works for me for Arabic. For example. it's a lot easier for me to pick up a book in Spanish and proclaim "We're doing this!" and get reading. Arabic intimidates me more and it's hard for me to want to read because it just makes me feel like there's so much I don't know and that it's impossible to know everything. Also, the dictionary work on Arabic is time consuming. It's easy to use something like Word Reference for Spanish, but their Arabic dictionary is not very good, so I have to do it the analog way and actually use the dictionary. Arabic dictionaries are their own kind of special, but that's a topic for another time.

The last few weeks, I'd been working on Standard Arabic: An Advanced Course. I like this book a lot, but it's hard to just plow through a textbook and anything will get boring if you do the same thing every day. The good of this book: it is mostly reading and it is arranged by topic. So one chapter was on Muslim Spain (my favorite) and they had a short introduction in English, then a series of paragraph-long readings in Arabic, then progressively longer Arabic passages, some with comprehension questions and then a long one at the end asking you to write a precis.

This week I started working on the Anthology of Arabic Literature, Culture and Thought from Pre-Islamic Times to the Present. What I really like about this book is it seems really comprehensive and it's not in chronological order. Instead of starting with the extra-difficult pre-Islamic poetry, it starts with some awesome modern poetry and then goes into modern novels. Later, it introduces older literature. I'm actually really enjoying the poetry. One of my friends suggested that I read more poetry to ease into reading more, but I complained that poetry is all figurative language and rhetorical devices, and thus difficult. However, despite being all figurative language and rhetorical devices, poems are short (mostly). So, that's really a lot more accessible. I'm really enjoying the poems of Nizar Qabbani and I ordered one of his collections of poetry.

Here's one of his love poems, with my shitty translation of it.

تعري ... فمنذ زمان طويل
على الارض لم تسقط المعجزات
تعري ... تعري
انا اخرس
و جسمك يعرف كل اللغات

Disrobe ... since it has been a long time
Miracles did not fall to the ground
Undress ... undress
I am mute
And your body knows every language

In which technology is buggy

2011-02-03T20:59:00.000-08:00

Since I've started biking around town (I've ridden 17 miles/27 kilometers this week!), I've been using a handy android (and other platforms) app called RunKeeper. It's great--when it works right. I'd say it's been working for me between 50-65% of the time. The other times, it gives me hilarious results. For example, this happened when I was riding from my house to the University, about 2.5 miles.

What's truly hilarious about this to me, is not so much that I rode from Salinas to Palm Springs in under 20 minutes, but that I only used 117 calories doing so. I should find a way to market myself as a "green" energy source and get "energy star" certified. Damn.

The good thing about this app is that when I get home, I can get on the website and edit it to show what I actually rode, which was rather less impressive, but still worthwhile.

Unrelated to cycling, but I didn't want to make a new post for it. I was idling the OKCupid chat, then this happened.
Anonymous Asshole: hi sexy

Me: that's no way to start a conversation

Anonymous Asshole: Uh yes it is. I said hi and think your sexy. Nothing wrong with that unless there is something seriously wrong with you

Me: well, you better call a psychiatrist for me then because I think that's a bullshit way to start a conversation

Anonymous Asshole: Dumbass

And then I blocked him. Obviously, I'm the dumbass in that situation. I laughed and laughed.

Brief thoughts on computers

2011-02-02T15:48:00.000-08:00

I dusted out my PC yesterday for the first time in about a year. I think I need a new rule to clean it on the equinoxes or something so that I remember to do it at least twice a year. It was really bad. Unsurprisingly, now it's running a lot cooler.

I've been thinking that I want to be a better nerd and I want to learn how to build my own PC. Right now I sort of know about it, but I want to know about it specifically. So if anyone has some books or internets to recommend that are a good beginner's guide to hardware, I'd appreciate that.

And since we're talking computers, I updated my linux to the new distro (kawaii koala or whatever the fuck kind of koala it is) and now my sound won't work at all. Super irritating. I tried a few fixes that I found on linux forums, but nothing work. I'm thinking that my sound card isn't supported, which is shitty. At least I have windows to fall back on, but it is still a disappointment. I'm thinking about learning some more about running linux, but I don't really know that I want to invest that much time in it.

A long rant on education classes and other things

2011-01-28T10:46:00.000-08:00

Having just about finished my "education" classes for my teaching credential, I feel qualified to say that it is no wonder that education in this country is so fucked up.

Of the five classes I took, I felt that two of the teachers we had were well qualified and motivated, one was middling, and one--who we had for two of the five classes--was just awful.What the hell? Are there not enough teachers out there who are motivated and skilled teachers who are willing to pass on their methods to the next generation of teachers, or did I just get extra unlucky? Of the good teachers, one ended class halfway early every time, which is great one the one hand (yay, going home early!), but on the other hand, we could have actually learned something from that guy, so that's fairly disappointing.

We have had a number of textbooks, maybe one of which was really useful. The rest seem to create some pedagogical echo chamber reiterating the importance of vocabulary acquisition and the use of graphic organizers. As a whole, they had very little to do with my field: applied linguistics/language acquisition. The only good thing about having such mediocre texts is that it did inspire me to go off on my own and find things that I think are useful. But you know, the majority of people don't think that way. Most people, when presented with this situation just say, "This is easier than I thought it was going to be!" and move on. And I get that attitude, I do. Everyone is busy, you have a job, some of the people in my class have kids. But if you're going to be there, spending the time and money to start a new career, don't you want to start it with as much knowledge as possible? Nothing is going to be as good as classroom experience, but don't you want to at least know what is happening in your field? I think that teachers have a personal responsibility to keep current with the research of their discipline, even if only a little bit. My master teacher was telling me that a lot of the teachers at her school with masters degrees have them from education programs. I'm assuming that's because it's so easy. I wonder if they are better teachers for it? I wonder if teachers who have a masters/Ph.D. in their field of teaching are better teachers than those with a masters in education? Granted, there are a lot of people who are highly educated and terrible instructors (just look at any college campus), but I'd be interested to know if there are any statistics on that.

I was talking about this with my dad and it was his view that having high standards is great because it makes you want to be good at things, but shitty because it mostly just makes you go insane since you can't do much about it. He also gave me a few "that's just how the world works," which is extremely depressing. People have low/zero motivation--even about the things that they are most interested in--and there is nothing you can do about it so just roll with it and pick your battles. That was his message. I told him that this message was "the most depressing thing ever," but he just came back with "that's reality." I'm far from an optimist, but damn. I haven't even started yet and he's already telling me that no one can accomplish anything. Apparently, the only way to get things done is to be in it for the long game. My dad also told me that when he was working as an electrician 25 years ago at the same hospital he is now the facilities manager of, he would see things that need fixing and his boss would just tell him no, that it was someone else's problem. Now, he is the boss and he says he is fixing some of the things that were problems 25 years ago. Holy shit! Conclusion: my dad's version of reality is pretty sad.

Since classes have been so understimulating, I feel like I've been way more of an obnoxious asshole than I typically am. It's expensive and I have to sit there for long classes and we have basically nothing to do, so I mostly heckle the professor. That's something I kind of hate about myself, but I think goes back to the high expectations. I have high expectations for myself and the people around me. I expect to learn something from going to classes designed to make me into an educator. I expect to do something other than jigsaws every day. And honestly, I expect to have to do work once in a while. And not bullshit work that is just because someone said that we should all do it, but work that actually teaches me something. Here are some examples of total bullshit work.

TPAs. I totally forget what this stands for, but we have to do four of them throughout the credential program. They are long, repetitive case-study assignments wherein one must select teaching strategies for hypothetical students and justify their use. It's completely pointless. It takes me around six hours to do, so I know it's taking other people even longer than that. You know what would actually be useful instead? Selecting teaching strategies, perhaps writing a brief justification for their use, actually using them in the classroom, and then thinking about how it went and what one could do better or differently next time. Bam, done! I just made the education world better.
This fucking presentation that we have to do for class next week. We have group presentation, the content of which is so prescribed, it reads like an assignment for fifth graders. The syllabus lays out the assignment stating how many slides to do of each topic and provides links for where to find this information. Everyone in the class has already read these and submitted the compulsory notes on the topics. Now, every group is going to give the same presentation. In a graduate level class? Are you fucking kidding me? I told my professor that I would be going "off book" in my presentation regarding the topics of content area literacy and language acquisition. Why? Because I have something more useful to add. My professor keeps chiding me for not making the material relevant to my teaching practice, but at least he's been cool when I say "I think this is stupid and I'm going to do something I find useful."

I am just so sick of laziness and mediocrity. Laziness is the new normal. My classmates keep calling me an overachiever, but I've mostly been retorting to that with "I just achieved ahead of the deadline," but you know, I'd rather be an overachiever if regular achieving doesn't do anything. It makes me think of the conversations I have with people when I say that I am a language person and I speak a few languages. People always say "oh, you must just have a natural (or god-given, if they're really trying to irritate me) talent for languages!" And I say, "No, I am good at languages because I have made the effort and spent a huge amount of time on it. Anyone who spent as much time as I did on this would be at least pretty decent as well," but no one wants to hear that because it is easier to believe that some people are just good at things. People, you are good at the things that you make an effort in! So make an effort once in a while! Ultimately, I think that's what our teaching system is lacking: effort.

The Conversation That Makes Me Crazy

2011-01-21T16:30:00.000-08:00

At my house, my "office" has the misfortune of being in a big open room, in which my desk and bookcases occupy a corner. I would like it to be treated like a private room, since there is nothing else of interest in here--no TV or anything--, just a bunch of chairs that the cats sleep on. This room does, however, have a few large windows that face the street. And my grandpa likes to join the cats in their favorite hobby: sitting on chairs and staring out the window. That, in and of itself, does not bother me.

Anytime I'm listening to music, watching a show, or have sound emanating from my computer for any reason and that sound stops (whether because it ends or I stop it), if my grandpa is in the room, the conversation will go something like this.

Grandpa: You didn't turn that off on my account, did you?
Me: No, it just ended/I paused it/I am now reading/I got sick of listening to crappy trance music, etc
Grandpa: Because if you did, you didn't have to.
Me: I didn't, I just was done listening.
Grandpa: I wouldn't want you to turn it off just because of me, in fact I like it.
Me: I didn't turn it off because of you, I'm just done with it.
Grandpa: I don't want to bother you, so you just keep listening and don't let me stop you.
Me: You didn't stop me, it was just over.

At this point, I might turn something on just to be done with this conversation. It's actually gotten to the point where if the show I'm watching is ending, I will queue up something else if he's in here just to avoid yet another iteration of this discussion. I probably have this conversation once or twice a week. It's not because he doesn't remember having it, he's just so intent on not bothering me, that he ends up bothering the fuck out of me.

My new hobby

2011-01-16T12:28:00.000-08:00

Who knew coloring was so relaxing? This shit is downright therapeutic.

This is from my Mexican Folk Art coloring book and I did this over the course of watching about eight episodes of Warehouse 13. Not sure if it's going to help with anxiety in the long term, but it's definitely helping right now.

In which fitness is discussed

2011-01-15T20:43:00.001-08:00

Unfortunately, this is a post about exercise and fitness that I'm writing in January. I expect that gives the impression of relating it to New Year's Resolutions and the mass fixation on swearing to lose weight in time for summer. That said, this isn't a post about New Year's or weight loss. It's a post about exercise and fitness and it just happens that I've been getting interested in that over the last few months. Anyway:

I'm not totally sure how to introduce this topic. I think my recent interest in having a certain degree of exercise competence is because I want to be the badass that I imagine I have the potential to be. I want to be able to nonchalantly do handstands (much the way I bunnyhop on a unicycle, I suppose) and that sort of thing. I also like the idea of being strong, I guess there's a sort of prestige in that and also it's not a "feminine" thing to be strong, so I guess I like that aspect of it. But I also really like the flexibility aspect. I keep thinking I am going to ask some of the contortionists I know what sort of stretches they do (I keep forgetting/not seeing them) because I think contortion is awesome. I like the idea of exploring the flexibility limits of the human body. Sort of related to that, last month I decided to start going to yoga.

I've been doing yoga for about a month now; I only go a couple times a week because that is all the time I have. I had no idea it was so push-up intensive. Probably not all yoga is but this style,
Vinyasa, seems to be. This shit is hard. I do pretty okay at some stuff because I'm more flexible than the average bear (not more flexible than the average yogi though), but I am not really strong. A lot of the poses require a ton of arm strength and I just don't have it. Crow pose, for example, is totally fucking ridiculous.

Additionally, I find myself wanting to lose some weight just so I can be more flexible at yoga. There are a number of stretches that I know I could reach farther on, but fat is in the way. That's kind of awkward to share with the inernet, but whatever, there it is. The problem with that is I am just not willing to go out of my way to lose weight. As the douchebag doctor I saw the other day told me, "You will not lose weight from exercise." That's too bad, since that's they way I'm most amenable to it. Ugh, discussion of that is for another time.

I've also had my interest piqued by a few other little things. The 100 push-ups challenge (or whatever it is) seems cool. Essentially, it eases you into being great at push-ups with the goal of doing 100 after six weeks. Doing 100 pushups sounds like something impossible, which is kind of why I want to try it, I suppose. I also appreciate that it takes zero equipment and only takes a few minutes a day. Related to that, I keep hearing about people having success with the Couch to 5k program. I hate running, but I like the idea of being able to run if I had to (what if I was at the zoo and a bear escaped and started chasing me? I feel the need to be ready for anything). I doubt I am going to do this in the immediate future, but I am keeping it in mind for when I am ready to drink the running kool-aid.

Finally, I bought a bike about two weeks ago, with the intent of commuting around town on it. This one is definitely more of a practical consideration than anything. I am hoping that I'll be student teaching at the high school that's about 2 miles from my house so I can bike and save some money. That's some serious savings since gas is at $3.30 right now. It will have the added bonus of giving me thighs of steel, since it doesn't have gears. I sacrificed gears for cool-lookingness: I bought a used beach cruiser with fenders. Also, my bike has this sweet basket on the front that you can just lift off and use as a shopping basket. I can't wait to bike more. The only sad part is that I wanted to just start biking everywhere immediately, but I am not that fit, so I'm trying to slowly ease into it, which is way less fun.

I feel like this is the yeah when all my shit is going to come together and I'd like being awesome at exercise is a bit of a part of that. I don't really care if I lose weight doing it, but just to be like "hey, I can do 100 push-ups" and not be being a sarcastic asshole as I say it has a certain appeal.

This one goes out to

2011-01-14T13:00:00.000-08:00

Today’s blog is by special request.

As many of you know, when I first cut my hair short, I shaved it down to about an inch. It definitely wasn’t stylish, but I was pretty satisfied with it anyway. I’ve since grown it out into a much more acceptably femme sort of style. It’s still really short, but it’s cuter. That is the context for this recent quotation from my dad, “I like your hair a lot better right now. When you first cut it, it looked like you had just gotten out of a camp.”

In further anecdotes about the state of my hair: I see the same stylist as my mom and my grandma. It's probably about as dumb an idea as seeing the same therapist as family members, but we do it anyway; she always makes my hair look good. When I saw her to get my hair done this week, she told me that both my mom and my grandma had been asking her when I was going to grow it out. I told her "not in the foreseeable future. And you can let them know that, too." Long hair is such an inconvenience. Plus, it is way less awesome.

My family is a little bit special sometimes.

Another great quotation with bonus analysis

2011-01-12T11:22:00.000-08:00

From The Art of Teaching Spanish: Second Language Acquisition from Research to Praxis edited by Rafeal Salaberry and Barbara A. Lafford:

In an interesting small-scale study, Seliger (1979) investigated the relationship between grammatical rules of thumb and performance and found no connection between the two. Learners knew the correct rules but still could not apply them, while others, including natives, did not know the correct rules but still could produce the correct forms.

This makes sense to me. Explicit knowledge of a "rule" does not mean that you'll remember how to produce it, especially in spontaneous speech. It is hard to apply abstract knowledge like that, especially if the L2 input is lacking in examples. Here's an example of a "rule of thumb" I found for Spanish regarding where to put the stress accent:

If a word ends in a vowell, 'n' or 's' the stress is usually on the next to last syllable.
If the word ends in a consonant other than 'n' or 's' the stress is usually on the last syllable.
If the stress on a word doesn't follow the first two rules, then the syllable that is stressed needs a written accent mark on the vowel.

That makes...enough sense I guess, but it is really abstract. Especially if students are doing something like reading outloud, it is totally useless for them to stop and say "what does this word end in? where is the stress." Whereas, someone like a native speaker with a lifetime of comprehensible input knows where the stress goes because she or he is used to hearing the word correctly. I'm sure native speakers would not know this rule. I am only passingly familiar with it and I'm a non-native speaker so, you know, it's not a popular one. And, it's really hard to remember.

So, if "rules of thumb" are stupid, what is the alternative? According to the article the first quotation came from, the answer is to link it to content. That seems like a good answer. Say students learned a few nursery rhymes or proverbs early on in their language education. Then they could have something memorized with the applied rule that they could refer back to. Proverbs also have the added bonus of making learners culturally competent.

Finally, this is, in my view, a really important concept to keep in mind when teaching language. I remember learning a lot of rules like this throughout language classes, I am pretty sure they did not make me better at the language. You know what made me better at Spanish? Reading a lot of books and watching even more television.

A Quotation

2011-01-05T13:41:00.000-08:00

This is an awesome quotation from "The Rise and Fall of Languages" by R.M.W. Dixon

There is one major myth in modern linguistics which is responsible more than anything else for the discipline losing contact with its subject matter, the study of languages. It goes as follows. There are essentially two types of linguist. The descriptivists, who do field work and write grammars. And the 'theoreticians' (i.e. the formalists, people working on non-basic theories) who do not gather data themselves but rather interpret it, from the point of view of their chosen formalism. The myth is that the work done by the 'theoreticians' is more difficult, more important, more intellectual, altogether on a higher plane than the basic work undertaken by the descriptivists.

This is wrong, from every angle. First of all, every person who describes a languages is also a theoretician; they have to be, to make any analytic deductions. Every point in a grammatical description is a theoretical statement, and must be justified by appropriate argumentation.

In which goals are stated

2011-01-03T14:06:00.001-08:00

It took a bit to think of what I want to accomplish this year, but I think I've figured it out now.
1. Read 50+ books: at least 9 in Spanish, 1 in Arabic.
2. Finish my teaching credential/become certified to teach Spanish, Arabic and social science.
3. Do yoga (or equivalent exercise) at least once a week.
4. Ease in to commuting by bike around town, hopefully to be riding with ease by the end of the year.
5. Start learning a new language. Which language is still to be decided.
6. Plan an awesome vacation. I may be too poor to go on vacation this year, but next year I will definitely go on vacation. Planning ensues.

Books of the Year 2010

2010-12-23T16:59:00.000-08:00

Once again it is time to put forth the list of all the books I read in the last year. If I don't write them down, I forget and then I wonder what I did all year. So, here it is. Title, author and date I finished it. Also there is a 'k' next to ones that I read on my kindle.

Nine Princes in Amber by Roger Zelazny 1/2
Guns of Avalon by Roger Zelazny 1/4
Sign of the Unicorn by Roger Zelazny 1/9
The Hand of Oberon by Roger Zelazny 1/11
Wicked: Memorias de una bruja mala by Gregory Maguire 1/15
The Courts of Chaos by Roger Zelazny 1/15
Trumps of Doom by Roger Zelazny 1/22
The Zoroastrian Faith: Tradition and Modern Research by S.A. Nigosian 1/30
Blood of Amber by Roger Zelazny 2/6
Sign of Chaos by Roger Zelazny 2/14
Infoquake by David Louis Edleman 2/22 k
Knight of Shadows by Roger Zelazny 3/1
Prince of Chaos by Roger Zelazny 3/8
Multireal by David Louis Edleman 3/19 k
Geosynchron by David Louis Edleman 4/16 k
Dragon Keeper by Robin Hobb 4/21 k
Fool by Christopher Moore 4/28 k
Shades of Grey by Jasper Fforde 5/3 k
Dragon Haven by Robin Hobb 5/25 k
A Dirty Job by Christopher Moore 6/15 k
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by Frank L. Baum 6/15 k
Hijo de bruja by Gregory Maguire 6/19
The Sparrow: a Novelby Maria Russell 7/15 k
Palace Walk by Negeib Mahfouz 7/19
Breve historia de la literature espanola 7/27
Salmon Fishing in the Yemen by Paul Torday 7/29 k
Introduccion a la linguistica hispanica 8/11
Sex at Dawn: The Prehistoric Origins of Modern Sexuality by Christopher Ryan 8/21 k
The History of Latin America: Collision of Cultures by Marshall C. Eakin 8/25
Shaman's Crossing by Robin Hobb 8/25 k
Forest Mage by Robin Hobb 9/1 k
Renegade's Magic by Robin Hobb 9/16 k
Classroom Management for Middle and High School Teachers by Emmer 9/17
Classroom Instruction that Works by Marzano 9/19
Modern Arabic Literature by Paul Starkey 9/25
How Languages are Learned by Lightbrown and Spada 10/2
Supporting the Literacy Development of English Learners by Young and Hadaway 10/14
Introduccion a la literatura latinoamericana 10/18
The Venture of Islam Volume 1: The Classical Age of Islam by Hodgson 10/24
El Espejo Enterrado by Carlos Fuentes 11/2
Machine of Death by North, et al. 11/3
Shadowmarch by Tad Williams 11/11
Shawodplay by Tad Williams 11/19
Shadowrise by Tad Williams 11/28
La breve y maravillosa vida de Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz 12/4
Shadowheart by Tad Williams 12/10
Perdido Street Station by China Melville 12/15 k
Girl Power: the 90s Revolution in Music by Marisa Meltzer 12/16 k
Bite Me: A Love Story by Christopher Moore 12/21 k
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Philip K Dick 12/25
What-the-Dickens: The Story of a Rogue Tooth Fairy by Gregory Maguire 12/26 k

Summaries:

7 books in Spanish
14 non-fiction
a fuckton of sci-fi and fantasy
19 books read via kindle

Goals for 2011:
I'd like to keep up with reading books in Spanish. I think 9 is a good goal (this year's goal was 6, so goal surpassed). Also, especially with my Arabic CSET coming up, I'd like to read at least a couple books in Arabic. Inspired by io9's Blogging the Hugos series, I want to start reading through novels that have won the Hugo Award because I think that will be an interesting exercise in being well-read in sci-fi.

In which my mental state is again considered

2010-11-13T19:25:00.001-08:00

I don't feel totally well.

Mostly, I feel fine. The weekends and the slow times are when I feel less than okay. When there's nothing to do it makes my brain spin around itself like so much string on a yo-yo. I feel like I should be doing things. Like I should have people to do things with. Inevitably, I don't. I remain unsure as to whether this is because I am bad at dealing with people or because other people are not awesome. Getting out of Redlands seems to help. I visited a friend two weekends ago, and that was good. I felt okay last week. This weekend, less so. Is this what depression feels like?

I've been feeling bad physically, as well. It's like dizzy headaches and feeling off balance. Vertigo, I suppose? I haven't really had this problem since my first year in college. The source thereof remains unknown. Last time I had serious bouts of dizziness, I discovered that eating and sleeping helped a certain extent. I've been eating well and sleeping sufficient, so...anxiety? Who knows. I would be more inclined to brush it off, but all week I've just been kind of fucked up. I know this probably is dismissable evidence to other people, but I've been falling off my unicycle all week. And at times when one does not fall off one's unicycle: like riding in a straight line on a flat surface. That isn't supposed to happen. So I wonder if that's just related to the dizzy headaches or symptomatic of larger illness (or they are both symptomatic of larger illness). Too bad my health insurance doesn't kick in til January. Right now, kind of everything hurts.

In other topics, I'm about 2/3 through the class part of my teaching credential. Not super sure how useful it's been so far, but whatever. Student teaching is in February. I expect to be teaching English for that in some capacity, because I did not get my shit together for other credential tests in time for the student teaching deadline. I'm retaking the section of Spanish that I failed in January, and hopefully I'll pass it this time (I only failed by 4%, such a close game). The Arabic test isn't until May, which is unfortunate. I'm thinking of taking social sciences in March. Beyond that, I have no fucking clue. I just hope I can get a job.

I feel incapable of relaxing. I wonder if that will go away. I always feel like I have more I should be doing. When I try to relax, I am usually dissatisfied with it for any number of reasons. Whatever.

In which the consumer ethics are considered

2010-08-08T20:11:00.000-07:00

So I read recently that Target donated $150,000 to Tom Emmer, who is running for governor of Minnesota. It bothers me that corporations can donate money directly to candidates now, which is another topic for another time, but what really bothers me in this case is that said gubernatorial candidate is for the execution of homosexual people. He is not simply interested in denying them the right to marry each other, but he flat out wants them to not exist. That is completely reprehensible.

I understand that $150,000 is of hardly any consequence to a huge company like Target, but that amount could mean a lot in a state gubernatorial race, especially for a relatively small state like Minnesota (small relative to California, I mean).

So here I am gonna say, Target, you need to fucking pay attention. I shop at Target as the alternative to Walmart. Walmart and the way it conducts itself irritate me. You are supposed to be the better company. Your wikipedia page goes on about all your "philanthropic" work, but I think this has the potential to get a lot more publicity than anything else.

I feel like it is important to "vote with your dollar" since there is not really a better alternative to getting one's message across to corporations. So I am thinking it's time to boycott Target. Is one person going to make a difference? Probably not. I can hope that other people will take action too. But at least I feel good that a company that I help support is in turn supporting someone who things homosexual people should be executed.

On the other hand, I kind of want to justify shopping at Target. They apparently do a lot of other good things, it's convenient, it's inexpensive, etc. But I am not sure I can really rationalize that.

I just hope that Amazon isn't doing anything sketchy or I am really going to have a hard time buying things.

In which things are quoted

2010-06-21T14:07:00.000-07:00

me: I can't wait to be a crazy spanish teacher or whatever

kira: haha yeah you should like never make the kids do their work just give them interesting lectures about life

those are the best subs

kira: its basically a class long stand up comedy routine with a philosophical twist

me: well that is kind of my forte

kira: i know thats why i think you would be the shit at it

Quoted for the vote of confidence.

On roving memorials

2010-04-23T19:43:00.001-07:00

There is an odd trend that I've noticed since being back in the so-called "Inland Empire." I'm not sure if it is because I am driving a lot more (as opposed to spacing out on public transit for my commutes) or because I have left the shores of heathen-ville, but I am seeing more and more cars with decals proclaiming their remembrance of deceased individuals. In case you haven't seen these things, here's a picture that I found that represents this trend.

Of course my perplexity here is with the living, not the dead. I do not understand the impetus to turn one's vehicle into some sort of roving memorial. It also brings up an issue of scope. What exactly is in loving memory of said dead person? The car itself? Why dedicate a car to a dead person? Did you build it specifically for them? I doubt it. I know this is a semantic question for the phrase "in memory of X" overall, and not just on cars. But when you put it on a car, that's what I think of. I do not think this is an unreasonable assessment. My second quandary is why one would want to be constantly reminded that someone you love has suffered, in many cases it seems to be untimely, death? How many times a day do you head out to the car? At least two, I would guess. I feel like it would be hard to cope to be constantly reminded.

To be frank, I suppose the heart of this issue is that our society is largely uncomfortable with the dead and dying. The dead are generally sent to cemeteries to be buried, where we may choose to visit them on our own schedules, rather than be jarred out of the business of day-to-day rigmarole to contemplate the ephemeral nature of life, perhaps acutely felt while driving.

Unfortunately, there is no way to broach this topic with society at large without sounding like an insensitive asshole.

On the use of "roil"

2010-04-06T23:02:00.000-07:00

This week I have heard more than one newscast state that the Catholic church is "roiling" in scandal. I find this usage odd. I think the only other time I've seen this word is in cookbooks, as in "bring to a roiling boil." However, CNN uses it as such, "As the priest abuse scandal continues to roil Europe, a growing chorus of American Catholics pressed the Vatican to adopt the same reforms that the U.S. Catholic Church did in 2002..."

Being the savvy sort of bitch that I am, I checked it out on Merriam-Webster, but I didn't find it particularly informative. No etymology was listed. I would expect to hear that the Catholic church is, perhaps, embroiled, in a scandal, but why is it roiling? And even though embroil and roil seem like they share a morpheme, that doesn't really make sense because then you would have em+b+roil, which is clearly bullshit.

So what is up with roil? I still have no clue, but now I'm going to be watching the news for other instances of this weird-ass verb.

This Must Be the Place

2010-04-05T17:32:00.000-07:00

I have recently come to the conclusion that whatever I do with my life, there is only the smallest probability that I will ever feel satisfied. No matter how cool my job is, no matter how smart and attractive my significant other is, no matter how many friends invite me to hang out on the weekend and no matter how many tricks I can do on my unicycle I am not certain that I am ever going to be content. This problem has been difficult to identify because throughout my life I have had many reasons to be discontented, to look forward to the next. But I think I have reached the point where I should be reasonably satisfied with what it is and not keep saying "but I'm going to be doing X soon," whenever someone asks me what I'm doing. I recently articulated this life plan to my dad, "Work this shit job for a couple years, unicycle for Cirque du Soleil, then get my Ph.D." When I think about it, I'm sure when I'm in the circus I'll be like "yeah, I'm a professional unicyclist, but I'm getting ready for my Phd." And I'll constantly complain that there are no intellectuals around. And then when I do my PhD I'll be like "This is boring as fuck compared to being in the circus."

The secondary problem is that recognizing a lack of satisfaction does not automatically make me satisfied. It just makes me realize that I have a fucking problem. I don't really know from where this problem stems. Maybe it's just that I can imagine doing so much awesome shit and I know I'll never be able to do it all/have it all at once? Maybe I need prescription medication for my brain and this is actually a symptom of a larger psychological issue? I have no fucking idea.

By rights, I should be reasonably happy right now. Even though I am living in my dad's house, I have a decent if boring job, the immediate prospect of a more decent, probably-still-as-boring job, circus all afternoon and books to read, etc. I have a social life like never before. But all I think about is how I could be teaching english abroad or getting graduate degrees or whatever. Actually, it's not that I'm unhappy, but life never quite reaches that level of awesomeness that I expect it to.

On Space Junk; Guns!

2010-04-05T17:03:00.000-07:00

On Space Junk
Today I considered what sort of jobs might be required in the future. I mean this in a generalized way, not in the What The Fuck Am I Doing With My Life way that is so frequently discussed here. The impetus for this consideration was the most recent Science in Action podcast from the BBC. They had a guest who was talking about all the debris we are accumulating around the planet--old satellites, space stations, et cetera--and how we need to start now with a method to get it out of the air before it really becomes a problem. Since I was listening to this at work, the time of day when my thoughts wander freely while my fingers do the work (the typing work, you perverts), I then imagined some years in the future when the earth is essentially surrounded by a giant wall of space junk. The Great Wall of Space Junk, if you will. This limits our space travel, even though we have the technology to reach space, since governments and private corporations (probably more private corporations by now, I am thinking) don't want to damage the still-expensive-to-produce equiptment by trying to get them through the Great Wall. As such, a new sort of freelancer develops to get rid of all the junk. It would pay a lot because it would be really dangerous. These Space Junkers (or Junkers, I guess they would be called) would have to fly large enough ships to haul the junk, but small enough so that they could manouver. The Junkers would, presumably, be paid by volume of junk moved. So they'd have to either incinerate it, or maybe be short-sighted and pile it up on some other planet, or the moon. I think that could be a good anime.

On Guns!
My friends invited to me to go shoot guns! with them on Saturday, so despite reservations about shooting things, I went along. I ended up declining to shoot at all, as it really didn't appeal to me. As such, I ended up standing around in the desert for several hours, taking pictures of other people shooting guns! and getting a sunburn. I fail to grasp the entertainment value in shooting up empty liquour bottles and an old TV. I guess I'm just too much of a pacifist, or something. Since we were out in the desert, I wanted to go see the dinosaurs and eat at the Wheel Inn, but unfortunately, I couldn't muster up enough enthusiasm from the group to do so. Pretty fucking lame, if you ask me. At least I got a few pictures of the desert.

Deciding is Always So Hard

2010-01-15T10:08:00.000-08:00

I have been thinking, as of course I always am, about What I Am Doing With My Life. I've applied for a few jobs: language analyst for the NSA, which would mean moving to maryland; and Staff Services Analyst (a position that encompasses many different jobs) with the state of California, which would mean staying in San Bernardino County. And as ever I am on the horns of dilemma. I am fucking loving being back in the circus. Like, it's the thing that was missing from my life the last 5 or whatever years while I was in college. So even though I am no great fan of Redlands, I am starting to feel like I would be willing to stay just to do circus for the rest of time. However, if I stay in Redlands, working for the state, doubtless I would not be doing language-based work, which I also put a lot of value in. I feel like I'm stuck asking myself "What's more important: The life of the mind? Or the physical arts that I take so much joy from?"

In some ways, I might feel comfortable staying put. I have proven to myself over the last year that I can maintain my studies even without school. On the other hand, I had barely touched my unicycle over the last three years when I was busy wtih school and work. And I know that it was upsetting me to not be doing anything circus-y. So I'm asking myself, if I were to move to Maryland, would I be able to keep it up? Would I be satisfied enough doing Arabic and whatever for the government? Would I be more satisfied doing a job like that than whatever job I could get with the state of California while staying here in the circus. Because in the end aren't all desk jobs still just desk jobs and maybe it wouldn't matter anyway?

At the moment, I kind of feel like whichever one calls me back first is the one that I'll go with. And I really think that right now, I'm leaning towards staying in Redlands. I just know it's going to be a hard to feel 100% right in any decision.

Enough speculation, let's talk about what's awesome! In my ongoing quest to expand my repitoire of unicycle-based jump rope tricks, I got my friend Tanner involved for some two person tricks yesterday. We tried jumping side by side with each of us turning one side of the rope, which I think went pretty well. More sweet ass unicycle tricks to come. And eventually I'm going to make a damn video, but it's so hard to remember.

In which the attributes of good friends are considered

2010-01-03T11:18:00.000-08:00

I've been thinking a lot lately about the sort of attributes I need in friends/boyfriends. This is largely precipitated by having basically no friends in Redlands (goddamn this town) and that when I do meet people, even people who are pretty cool, I don't always feel like I want to hang out with them and do whatever friends do together.

Consideration One: I am interesting. I went through a period in my early college years when I thought I was a really boring person, and that's why I wasn't going out or making any friends. I think this is largely related to the fact that I was at the heart of Mormonia: BYU. And I am not the sort of person that fits the mormon mold. But I have a lot of varied interests and I want people who can keep up with that. I have also realized that I like to go out, but I also like to stay in. I'm not all one or the other. Again, being at BYU kind of set my normality meter to wonky because people at BYU are constantly running around trying to act interesting to cover up the fact that many of them are hollow people.

Consideratoin Two: What I need from potential friends. One of the most important things is that I want to talk to people who can keep the conversation rolling all day long. I have met too many people who, after the preliminary topics are exhausted, refuse to continue into the world of fantastical, speculative, crazy, intellectual, what-have-you types of conversation that keep us entertained all day. Those people who I can do this with make me happy. But there is nothing more disappointing than meeting someone who seems cool, and then the conversation falls flat after 30 minutes and you're left staring at each other wondering how much more time you can realistically fill that way. Hand in hand with that, is I want friends who have at least some common interest so that we can talk about linguistics, the middle east, circus arts, sci-fi/fantasy books or whatever. Because that is awesome, it also helps keep conversation going. I also need a person who is willing to go on spontaneous adventures. Now that I have the super freedom of not being in school (or work, but...you know eventually there will be work) I want to fucking do things. So sometimes I'll think, it would be cool to go to the beach (or whatever, depending on the locale) right now. I want someone who will be like "alright, let's do it." But someone who is also willing to just chill sometimes. This may be one of the most stringent requests, as I have discovered that many people do not want to do any damn thing. I can understand if someone is busy, but if you're not, there's kind of no reason.

In conclusion, I want to meet my match. If I'm the president of crazy land, I'm saying that we need a prime minister.

State of the Madness, Books of the Year

2009-12-30T20:17:00.001-08:00

I haven't consulted a doctor or anything, but I may be dying from boredom. The last two months have reminded me why I don't like being in Redlands. There isn't really anything to do, not really any people in the 20-30 set (for the most part) and I pretty much have no friends. There hasn't been any circus practice to entertain me for the last couple weeks and I am snapping from the boredom and restlessnes.

Otherwise, I have applied to be a language analyst at the NSA, and I hope they get back to me soon. This would involve moving to Maryland, which I am, at this point, pretty okay with. To this end, i've been brushing up on Persian; I claimed to know it (they have a scale for self-reporting, but I still said I know some), so I don't want to make a total fool of myself. And I've made a head start on learning some more media arabic vocab.

I really wish I had some New Year's plans, but I don't. I know I want to drink myself into oblivion, to symbolicly obliterate the shithole that this past year has been. My current conundrum: wine or vodka? I'll have to decide soon, in any case.

And the moment you have all been waiting for, the list of Books I Read in 2009. I'm assuming I won't read anymore between now and the New Year. (listed is the title, author and date that I finished it)

Lost in a Good Book - Jasper Fforde
The Well of Lost Plots - Jasper Fforde 1/11
Neverwhere - Neil Gaiman 1/18
Islamic Historiagraphy - Chase Robinson 1/18
Something Rotten - Jasper Fforde 1/30
First Among Sequels - Jasper Fforde 2/9
Coraline - Neil Gaiman 2/11
New Reference Grammar of Modern Spanish 2/26
The Princess Bride - WIlliam Goldman 2/27
The Stepford Wives - Ira Levin3/9
A Room with a View - E.M. Forster 3/14
One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest -Ken Kesey 3/22
The Golden Trade of the Moors - E.W. Bovil 4/5
Oryx and Crake - Margaret Atwood 4/7
The Scandals of Translation: Towards and Ethics of Difference - Lawrence Venuti 4/19
Malinche (Spanish edition) -Laura Esquivel 5/11
Stardust (Spanish edition) -Neil Gaiman 5/27
Empires of the World: a Language History of the World -Nicholas Ostler 5/28
This Side of Paradise -F. Scott Fitzgerald 5/31
The Purity Myth: How America's Obsession with Virginity is Hurting Young Women -Jessica Valenti 6/1
The Robber Bride - Margaret Atwood 6/7
Quiverfull: Inside the Christian Patriarchy Movement -Kathyrn Joyce 6/22
Anansi Boys: A novel -Neil Gaimna 6/25
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Ston (Arabic edition) 6/25
American Gods -Neil Gaiman 7/11
Female Chauvinist Pigs -Ariel Levy 7/15
Assassin's Apprentice -Robin Hobb 7/22
Royal Assassin -Robin Hobb 7/30
Assassin's Quest -Robin Hob 8/9
The Mystery of Edwin Drood -Charles Dickens 8/13
Ship of Magic -Robin Hobb 8/31
Mad Ship -Robin Hobb 9/16
El Laberinto de la Soledad y Otras Obras -Octavio Paz 9/22
Ship of Destiny -Robin Hobb 9/27
The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power -Jeff Sharlet 10/3
Fool's Errand -Robin Hobb 10/17
Golden Fool -Robin Hobb 10/24
Fool's Fate -Robin Hobb 10/27
The Magicians -Lev Grossman 11/16
From Eve to Dawn, a History of Women in the World Volume I: Origins: from Prehistory to the First Millennium -Marilyn French 11/7
Lost Boy -Brent Jeffs 11/8
Favorite Wife -Susan Ray Schmidt 11/14
Interworld -Neil Gaiman 11/16
Year of the Flood: A Novel -Margaret Atwood 11/21
Shattered Dreams -Irene Spencer 11/24
A History of Iran: Empire of the Mind -Michael Axworthy 12/7
The Shia Revival: How Conflicts within Islam Will Shape the Future -Vali Nasr 12/12
Harry Potter and the chamber of Secrets (Arabic Editionh) 12/14
Hidden Iran: Paradox and Power in the Islamic Republic -Ray Takeyh 12/21
The Blind Assassin: A Novel -Margaret Atwood 12/28

So these were the goals I set at the beginning of the year:
* 5 books in Spanish
* 4 banned books
* 4 books in Arabic
* 3 linguistics books
* 3 history books
* Read fiction from 3 authors that I haven't read before

In the end, I read 3 books in Spanish (and I'm halfway through Wicked: Memorias de una Bruja Mala), 2 in Arabic, I think one or two banned books, 2--arguably 3--linguistics books and 3 (4 depending on how you count) history books. That is better than I thought I did compared to my goals, so yay.

Trends: There was a lot of fantasy, largely in thanks to the Realm of the Elderlings series (all that Robin hobb). That is a testament to great marketing. I downloaded the first book for my Kindle because it was free, and then I bought EIGHT MORE books. So, good job, publishing house. I also took a pretty big interest in feminism, which is pretty new. A lot of books about fringe religious shit, both from a journalistic/research standpoint and in memoirs (FLDS memoirs, got kind of on a streak there).

Goals for 2010

2009-12-13T22:27:00.001-08:00

I am aware that there are still two weeks left for 2009, but I am pretty ready to put this year behind me and I already have thoughts about next year. I am going to refer to my intentions for next year as "goals" rather than "resolutions" because when people set resolutions, they tend to not be serious, and New Year's resolutions have the connotation of something that you don't actually do. Without further ado, my goals for 2010. (oh-ten? twenty ten? ten? one-oh? How will we call this year?)

Arabic. I need to keep up on what I already know plus I want to work on reading faster and learning more words for reading the news. This will probably mean reading several books, keeping up on the news and possibly memorizing all the words in "1000 words of media arabic"
Spanish. Generally keeping up on it, and I want to expand my vocabulary.
Farsi. If I feel like I'm keeping up on my Arabic and Spanish, I need to get that party started again.
Juggling. By the end of the year, I intend to be able to juggle 5 balls. Maybe more. Like 7.
Unicycling. Firstly, get my skills back up to where they were. After that, work on wheel walking and expand my jump roping into double dutch, assuming I can get some competent assistants.
Reading. I think I'm going to set my goal at 50 books again for this year, since that seems like the amount I can read without reading to the exclusion of other activities (I'll post how this year's reading has gone soon). Also, 4 books in Arabic, 6 in Spanish and I'm not going to make any genre specific numbers because I never know which way my reading tastes will go over the year.
Apply to grad school. Even if I'm not totally sure I want to go, I at least need to get in some apps so I have the option. This would be applying to start fall 2011.
Get a real job. Seriously, I need a proper job.

Not a Diet Blog

2009-11-16T10:26:00.000-08:00

Driving to Redlands from Seattle, my dad expressed his concern over my weight. I am aware that I'm overweight (how could I not be?) and I'm pretty much okay with it. My dad decided that being fat is both harmful to my health and essentially said that I'm eating myself to death and that being fat is just like being an alcoholic. And that he wants to help.

Expert negotiator that I am, I made the deal that I would work on my weight, as long as I didn't have to get any sass mouth about my short "boy" hair.

The thing is, I'll quietly change my eating habits, to an extent, but I don't want to fucking hear about dieting all the damn time. I feel like, having agreed to lose weight, I shouldn't be subjected to endless, unsolicited advice. My dad, apparently, disagrees.

Yesterday my dad told me that I should try to eat less bread and I about flipped my shit. My philosophy is that healthy eating includes eating foods that you like. For me, yes, this includes bread. I am eating so much less food and I have to hear about how I ate two fucking bread rolls with my dinner (of a hamburger--no bun--and steamed broccoli). Just because my dad is the King of Dieting doesn't mean I want to join the court.

I'm not really sure how to broach the subject of "let's not talk about it already" with my dad because he's going to be a pouting pony about it. It's like, gratitude or no deal.

Life Goals

2009-11-10T11:59:00.000-08:00

I hope that, one day, I can have an epitaph this awesome/unintentionally hilarious.

From a product discription

The Poll Hat (shown on left) is the first commercially available hat designed and manufactured specifically for manipulation. It was designed by the hat maestro, Nils Poll ("the fastest juggler in Scandinavia"), and is manufactured in Denmark.

What It Is

2009-11-08T09:29:00.001-08:00

So I've been in California sunshine-land for a week now, which is pretty weird since it seems like I've done kind of a lot for it just being a week. One of the first things I did was paint my room; it's now a honeydew green sort of color. I have been meaning to take a picture, but I have to do it at night, otherwise my room is backlit like so much amateur photography.

I went to circus practice all week and I was surprised by the number of people who remembered me. Juggling has been the most fun so far, but I've also been to teeterboard, which has been overrun by young people. When I was in teeterboard, it was mostly adults, so I don't really know what happened, but it's one of many things letting me know that I am now old (in circus at least). Also, the kids in teeterboard keep texting and shit between turns, which I find objectionable. You can't tell me texting is more interesting than fucking teeterboard. I've also been showing up to cradle, but have so far been unable to do much. I lack the strength to even climb up to the damn thing, so I've mostly just been spotting.

On Friday I went to a cake decorating class. It's a four week class, but this first one was pretty boring. It had an infomercial-like quality to it, since you have to get all of your own decorating tools. This explained why it was so cheap to sign up for the class (only $22!). Naturally, I decided that I should just go all out and I bought the biggest, most absurd cake decorating kit I could find. So now I have about 18 tips, a number of bags, spatulas and more fondant tools than I know what to do with, but I figure now I'm set for a lifetime of decorating. For each of the other 3 classes, it's a bring-your-own-cake (BYOC) affair. You have to bring your own icing as well. Fortunately, I fucking love baking cakes, and have already picked out a bunch of recipies I want to do. I think this week I'll be starting with a sour cream poppy seed cake with white chocolate buttercream. I'll hopefully post a picture of it one I decorate it.

Being unemployed as I am, I've been reading a lot. This week I read The Magicians by Lev Grossman, which is about a 17 year old boy who ends up going to a 5 year magic college and then he and his friends find the secret to travelling between worlds and end up in ~~Narnia~~ Fillory. I read a few reviews about it after the fact and there seems to be some contention about whether Grossman was lampooning the genre or what. I, however, doubt that is was necessarily satirical. At this point, it's basically impossible to write a fantasy book without taking some cues from current fantasy lit, so I think he's just providing a nod to the exisiting works. I'd also argue that it's a more adult take on some of those themes. I just started reading Lost Boy by Brent Jeffs, to feed my voyeuristic obsession with the FLDS. I have like 5 books on my Amazon wishlist that are FLDS memoirs, and I'm not really sure why it's so fascinating, but it is.

Brown Bear runs away

2009-10-20T12:27:00.000-07:00

I feel like a bear waking up after hibernation.

Despite a lot of negative feelings and associations that I still harbor with Redlands, I am starting to look forward to the trip. In an effort to stay positive, I will list some things I am pleased about.

Circus. Fuck yeah, circus! This is probably the best part; getting back to my roots, if you will. The last few months I'd been having dreams about circus. I really missed it. I'm planning to jump in on juggling, teeterboard and cradle.
Not paying the bills. I've been in a cash flow frenzy since March, essentially. As some know, nothing I've tried has worked out. So my dad is taking me in and I will only have minimal bills to think about
Not stressing about finding a job. This goes with not paying the bills, but there is also feeling like a professional failure.
Reevaluation. I am going to rethink what I want to do. I am still really interested in translation and interpreting, but I may wait on it.
Just living. I think I am going to get some 9-5 desk monkey job that pays the bills and that I don't hate, and just enjoy all that not-at-work time.
No more retail. My last day is saturday. Finalllyyyyyyyy

Moving and Dreaming

2009-10-15T12:55:00.000-07:00

After a lot of thinking, I am starting to feel a bit better. I have shifted my perspective on the whole situation. It's obvious to me that Ian and I still have a lot of feelings for each other, so I feel like now I am moving more for my inability to get a job and be an adult. We will both be working on ourselves.

Since I am moving, I have found a bunch of random stuff (as one does). I found a too-soon aborted dream diary. This one is pretty weird. I wrote the day, but not the year. I'm guessing it's 2005:

7/2 night
I was engaged to be married--to Matt Guidry. I was making preparations in a little house/shack in the middle of the desert next to a dusty hi-way. I had doubts about it, and specifically remember saying, 'Does anyone else find it odd taht I'm marrying Matt?' The wedding was in December, but the dream was in the present.
Then I dreamt that telemarketers kept calling me cell and waking me up--at 1 am. I cut a deal with a girl who was forcing me to buy from a Brasilian restaurant that I'd buy extra vegetables if she took me off the list.

I won't try to dissect what the hell this dream meant, except that I was getting a lot of random cell phone calls at the time. I thought it was amusing and shareable.

Now, as to things I have found.
These are doodles from Elisa. Also from about 2004

And then this is a picture of me all dressed up for Kelly and Ben's wedding. So, also 2005 on this.
Finding old things is always so interesting.

Trying Not to Think About IT

2009-10-14T11:37:00.000-07:00

aka Breakup FAQ

It's been about 36 hours since Ian decided to break up with me. I've hit most of the Kubler Ross stages of grief in the meantime, except, of course, acceptance. It is a pretty surreal experience and I am sort of having a hard time believing it. Just when I thought things could not actually get any worse, they did. This is the worst.

When Ian first broke the news I was under the impression that it was mostly about another woman, his coworker. However, from the conversation we had last night, I have learned that she's not so much a cause as, perhaps a symptom. Ian came home last night, leaned down to take off his boots and just started crying. He said he spent all day thinking about how much I must hate him. Then I cried too. We cried and talked for about an hour and a half. I told him that I had been happy, even though other things hadn't been going right for me, I didn't see why he felt the need to do this and please just put it all back. I came to understand that his actions didn't stem from any dislike of me, but from a sharp sense of self-loathing. He said that all his life he was always the one who was stupid and no one liked, and he felt like he was, to an extent, just treating me the same way. He also didn't want me to feel held back in terms of career goals, etc. Hearing all this and watching him cry just made everything harder. It's easier to just be mad. Now I am even more conflicted since this is obviously not a breakup from a lack of love.

This morning he told me that after this conversation, he realized just how much I had cared. I just wish he had realized it sooner. Right now I hope that maybe after I go abroad, I'll move back to Seattle for grad school and maybe we can take it slow and help him work through some of these issues. I know in some ways, this is a naive outlook, but it's all I've got at the moment. Ian said he wouldn't discount the possibility.

I love being in Seattle, and I'm really sad that this could be a permanent move. The question that some people have asked is, "Why are you leaving, it was your apartment in the first place?" This is true. I was planning to go abroad in January to teach English anyway. However, the original plan was to leave all my shit and the cats with Ian, but now I am going to be moving to Redlands and staying at my dad's house in the meantime. My dad is flying up on the 29th and we are going to hitch a trailer to my Camaro to haul my stuff back.

In some ways, I feel like I am less limited now. I am going to apply to more grad schools, and I don't have to worry about how long I am abroad. On the other hand, I am so sad that I feel like I will never be able to live properly again. I feel like Ian was trying to do that trick where you pull out a tablecloth from under a bunch of crystal and dishes. Except it all is broken. I am basically crying about something every 20 minutes. I can't think about anything without being upset. Doing things that would normally involve routine interaction between us (e.g. Ian leaving for work) seem to be the most upsetting. I also have zero appetite, a pounding headache and keep hoping that I can sleep it away. But of course, I woke up this morning and everything was still there.

In conclusion, this is the stupidest breakup ever.

Please enjoy this video offering

a man a plan a canal panama

2009-09-02T10:40:00.000-07:00

Since my last posting, I've still been on the "nothing is working out" path, both failing my most recent attempt at the Spanish interpreting test and not being able to get a new job. In light of this, I decided that I needed a new plan, since I am obviously not going to pass this stupid test anytime soon. Without further ado, new plan:

Reapply for grad school for next fall
Teach English in Egypt for about 6 months starting in january
Get accepted to grad school (one hopes)
profit.

Or something along those lines. I was reluctant to consider another try at grad school mostly because I feel like I haven't done anything to distinguish myself in the intervening time so why both again until I do something? Except that I can't seem to do anything, so I was in a bit of a failure loop. I am seriously regretting not applying to more graduate programs last year because I probably would have at least gotten into the UW arabic MA, had I applied. At the time though, I had ruled it would be stupid to stay at UW, but I have since reevaluated this position. This time I am going to apply to Berkeley (again), U of Washington and the Monterry Institute (For MA translation and interpreting). I am hoping that with some more international experience under my belt, I'll have better luck. And even if I don't get in again, by next spring I'll be able to retake the contract linguist test for the FBI, which I suppose I will pass with studying and being in Egypt, and I will probably try for medical interpreting in Arabic as well, but we'll see.

I am excited to go to Egypt. This is going to get me out of my pessimistic rut of the moment. I'll be taking a TEFL (teaching english as a foreign language) course this month and then looking for a job. I've been having fun planning out the trip and things I need to do to get ready; I like making lists and planning. I intend to be better prepared then last time I went. For one, I already have a nice camera. Also, I'm really hoping I can get something in Alexandria rather than Cairo. Cairo is cool, but I think it would be pretty sweet to be on the coast. I'm also hoping to do a little extra traveling about while I'm in that area of the world, since last time I didn't really go anywhere (no money, you see). My current, tentative plan is to fly to Spain after my teaching term is up. I was looking at some 5 day Mediterranean cruises that go out of Barcelona and that seemed like it could be pretty awesome. I was also contemplating taking the train up from Barcelona to Paris and then flying back from Paris, but the Eurorail is a little more expensive than I thought it might be. So, we'll see.

In other topics, I am really getting interested in sewing. I've made three skirts so far and they have been well received. I have fabric and such for two more projects and soon I will have a sweet skirt-based wardrobe.

In any case, I just hope some things can start working out for me now.

On Death

2009-07-25T13:05:00.000-07:00

Sometimes while letting the mind wander I am seized with thoughts about death. Since renouncing Mormonism, I have found it difficult to anticipate that there is anything after this life. No one recalls what happened before they were born. It's not that it was painful or lonely, just that it wasn't. In thinking, I must imagine that death feels (or non-feels) the same way. But sometimes it's just too sad to consider. The idea of continued life resonates with everyone, but I simply can't accept it.

So occasionally I'll get to thinking about it, mostly in the languid place of the mind when falling asleep, and it depresses me. Just thinking that everything I've done or will do will be gone. People I love will be gone. Everything I cared about, it just won't matter. On the one hand, this makes me want to enjoy what I have more, but it's just an unbearable thought to truly face up to one's mortality as such.

In the end, I suppose the heat death of the universe will ruin us all.

In Which the Best Laid Plans Go Awry

2009-07-08T13:35:00.000-07:00

I have a lot of ideas about what I want to do with my life. For many of those ideas, I have made, and in some cases, carried out, plans to achieve these goals. Unfortunately, despite my best efforts, nothing is working out. In the interest of self pity, let's recap:

Did not get accepted to grad school
Did not pass the Arabic test to be a contract linguist
Applied to and interviewed for a number of jobs for which I was qualified, but did not get the jobs OR found out that the job was something sketchy/something I didn't want to do.
Did not pass the medical interpreters test for Spanish.
I can retake the Arabic test...in a year. I can retake the Spanish test whenever the state decides they can fit me in.

As I have already said to a number of people, I feel like I am doing everything possible and still coming up short. The only good-ish things of the moment are that I will probably be starting a new job (bad part: it's to be a mall security guard) that's full time. Also good-ish, I signed up for a Spanish class at the Seattle Language Academy, which seemed good except that I signed up for the highest level class and that was apparently not high enough. I was going to cancel the class (and take the 50% hit on the refund) but the nice people there said I could transfer the money paid into private lessons, which is something I never would have paid for on my own--because they're $45/hr--but I'm glad to be doing anyway. So, starting those tomorrow.

I've become distressed with how bad I'm getting at Arabic, so I've been trying to review vocabulary every day, so I can stop forgetting things. I've also started in on the second Harry Potter book translated into Arabic--I finally finished the first last month. Remembering the old vocabulary is highly frustrating and I really need to make sure I keep up with it this time. Once I finish reviewing, I haven't decided if I want to start in on medical vocabulary, with the goal of doing medical interpreting, or start on media vocabulary, which will be more useful generally and I need to know it for when I finally take that FBI test again.

I can't figure out what my current plan is. Probably because I anticipate that it's going to change at any time now. In theory I'll probaby end up working as a security guard at least through christmas. I can save up some money. If I don't pass my Spanish test the second time, I think I am going to plan on going to Ecuador or such to teach English for 6 months or so. Then maybe applying for grad school again. Probably at the Monterey Institute, but possibly at Georgetown. I'm feeling a bit gun-shy about applying to school again because I haven't really done anything to distinguish myself since I graduated that would make me a better candidate. Ideally, I want to pass the medical test for Spanish and Arabic and then apply to the MI because then I will be a very boss candidate for the Masters in Translation and Interpreting. But at this point, any fucking thing could happen so, like I said, I'm hesitant to plan too far out.

In non-linguistic news, I've become rather obsessed with cooking. My current idea has been to cook in bulk and freeze things so that I don't have to cook so often. Plus it's been getting hot in the afternoons and that makes me want to stay out of the kitchen. I successfully made marinara sauce and meatballs and froze those up last weekend. Yesterday I tried to make pumpkin ravioli, but it was not a success. Today's plan includes vegetarian chili. Luckily it has been pretty cool outside the last few days, so cooking isn't making me sweat to death. I also ordered 5 or so cookbooks, having found everything good on the internet already. Topcis include: curry, bread, pasta, soup and burgers. So I should be able to get a lot of good eats out of that.

On Harry Potter; Family (and other) Prayer

2009-05-14T17:54:00.000-07:00

On Harry Potter
I believe I have now related my thoughts about Harry Potter to a number of people, but now I'm going to lay it down for the whole internet. I've almost finished reading the Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone in Arabic. I first read this book when I was around 12, before it was a craze and I found it moderately entertaining (why do I always want to spell that word 'intertaining' anymore?) but nothing to write home about. Reading it again as an adult has given me some new perspectives on it. Before I get the "but it's a KIDS' book!" let me just say, I know that, but I still find these ideas to be relevant.

Harry Potter has spent his entire young life with his aunt, uncle and cousin, who all seem keen to ignore him. From the first few chapters of the book, we find that they talk to him as little as possible. You would expect his speech development to be delayed, or for him to at least be lacking some forms of socialization. Hand in hand with this, is that he lives in an essentially abusive environment. He lives in a closet, for fuck's sake. He probably has never heard a word of encouragement in his entire life. Why haven't any of his school teachers asked him about it? You'd think someone would look into that. Maybe a friend's parent? I say: the system is failing him.

My second major problem with this is, as the product of a fairly abusive homelife, how in the world does he go from zero to awesome by the time he gets to school? He should have some self esteem issues, not be the swaggering jock that he is, deciding he's allowed to roam around the school all night and not get in trouble. He would still be dealing with some issues. Rather, he appears to be 100% well adjusted to boarding school life. He appears confident and well liked. Again, not what I would expect to happen to someone within days after leaving his abusive home life. Why isn't he haunted by his childhood? I didn't spend my childhood in a closet (okay, I did sometimes hide, but that's a lot different), or have my parents die and I still have a lot of hangups and moments where I just can't. let. shit. go. So what is the deal with Harry Potter, super wizard? His behaviour is not reasonable.

On Family Prayer
I was considering today the remarkably passive aggresive nature of public prayer. Mormons are encouraged to pray pretty much all the fucking time. They are encouraged to pray with their family (morning and evening prayers being an ideal), before meals and at church services (before and after each section. OH the praying!). These are just the public instances of prayer. I think one is always supposed to have a prayful heart, or something like that. In any case, I mostly want to consider public prayer. Since we know prayer doesn't work (sorry: spoiler alert, I guess), we have to consider other functions. Sure, one is basing community building on ritual, but I think there is another, more obnoxious basis to this: being passive aggressive. Let's make up a compltely fictional example that could never be taken from anything I have ever experienced. Say that in a family of people, the parents have spent the entire day bickering. The topic of bickering doesn't matter. Kids are on high alert trying to stay out of it. At the end of the day, before everyone goes to bed, someone decides that it's time for family prayer. Everyone gathers up and bows down. Say one of the parents prays. Something like "Dear Heavenly Father, please help us to have compassion for each other, help us open our hearts and let them not be hardened. Fill our home with a spirit of peace." And you know, other prayer cliches. But this isn't a plea to god to "help" everyone stop being such an asshole, it's a direct call to action to the people around you to stop being such an asshole. Realistically, you can do this with any topic. Obviously, not everything has to be passive aggressive, like "please help the kids do well in finals" or something, although you could take it as "maybe if you would study sometimes." But there are definitely ways in which it is pretty damn passive aggressive.

April Fools: Why I am not a fan

2009-04-01T10:30:00.001-07:00

April fool's day kind of annoys the hell out of me.

Some things end up being funny. The Consumerist amused me and google is always quite funny. These things are good becuase it is clear that they are jokes.

Some things are obvious jokes but are still quite annoying. Such as jezebel.com disabling comments for the day. The commenting is the best part.

Other things are simply in bad taste. When it comes to the internet, I have a hard time distinguishing reality from photoshop/hoaxes to being with. April Fool's just makes me confused. I just want to have a normal day.

encore une fois

2009-03-13T14:36:00.000-07:00

Today was my last day of class as an undergraduate. It was only one class and all we did was watch a movie, but still that's it. This morning I got on the bus and sat down and I almost started crying. I just feel really overwhelmed with being done with school and having to start Adult Life or whatever the hell one does. I feel like school is all I know how to do because it's really what you do for your whole life, to a certain point. I like the idea that I devote the bulk of my time to learning things, but now I'm going to have to do something that makes money (or enough money anyway) and learn things in my spare time. The thing that I'm not sad about is no longer have to center my study on required classes or doing things to get a grade, which, as we know, is much different than doing things to learn them.

Here are my current job potential things:

an agent at Farmers Insurance. While this has the greatest potential for economic prosperity it also has the greatest potential for failure. I have my third interview on monday in which I will a) present a marketing strategy and b) give them money for my licensing classes/test. The only problem I see with this is generating enough clients to get going. It sounded like they were going to be more supportive so I'm feeling more reluctant than I was at first. After your test you have to sell 40 or so policies within 3 months before you become a full agent. At which point you get salary pay + commission for the first two years. I am concerned about the gap in between those two.
I am still working on my Spanish medical interpreter certification. I sent in the form/money for the spoken test and I expect that will be in a month or two (hopefully two). The annoying this is that I'll have to drive down to Olympia for it. Ah well. The translation agency that I've been planning to work for is still willing to take me after I certify, so I have that going for me.
About a year ago I put in an application for a contract linguist for the FBI. Yesterdy they decided to call me back. They left a message and we're playing phonetag, but I'm really curious to know what they want.
I still don't know if I'll be doing the MLIS program. I won't hear til April and I'm not sure how (if at all) I'll be integrating that into a work schedule--hopefully it will be the online program though. I kind of wish I knew already so I could make a more informed decision.

I still have two finals to take (Persian and Andalusian lit), so school isn't totally over yet. My dad is going to be here in two weeks to bring up my car (trans am!). After finals week I know I'm taking at least two weeks of vacation. I asked for two weeks off work (because yes, I still work there for now) and even if I quit right away, my licensing exam isn't until mid April. In the meantime, I'm going to keep going with a lot of Spanish studying, hopefully work on Arabic too. I really want to start learning Hindi but I think i should probably wait.

Today in anecdotes:
On wednesday I was taking the bus for my interview and I spotted a dude carring a boquet of roses and a 12 pack of Coke (i almost wrote "12 pack of cock"--that would have been the more interesting story). I found this amusing so I guess I was looking at him for longer than one should look at people on the bus. So then he kept looking at me and looking at me and it was freaking me the fuck out. He was looking at me like he might want to say something, like he knew me maybe. I thought about if he looked like anyone I know, and the only person I could think of was the british guy I dated when I was 14 (classy but true). This of course seemed quite unlikely. In any case, when I got off the bus I ran away. Conclusion: I will be glad to have a car because I won't have strange people looking at me or talking to me--that happens too.

A continuing series on things I find to be stupid

2009-03-03T17:47:00.000-08:00

Here is the description of a DVD from Netflix.

Lovers of the Arctic Circle

The moment they meet, 8-year-olds Ana and Otta know they have a special connection. After all, their names are both palindromes--spelled the same whether they're read forward or backward--and each has a parent looking for a mate. But when their families finaly meld, the two children, now young adults realize that they, too, may share a romantic destiny.

So what is wrong with this, you may ask (other than the suggestion of step-incest)? My problem is that there are apparently enough people out there who do not understand what a fucking palindrome is. Way to appeal to the lowest common denominator.

I know, it seems kind of stupid. but hey, I can rant about whatever I want on the internet.

The coast is clear

2009-02-27T19:43:00.000-08:00

I decided to get out a Spanish textbook to see if I could find any useful vocabulary lists to busy myself with (yay for not doing textbook buyback), and I was met with this amusing passage, translated for the reader's benefit:

Medieval Minstrels

Imagine that you live in a small town in the north of Spain in the 11th Century. You don't have TV, or radio, newspapers, the internet, and printing doesn't even exist. The few books that there are were written by hand and are the property of a few elites: namely the members of the clergy, some nobles, rabbis and Jewish scholars.

What I find amusing about this passage is that one should specifically envision Northern Spain. And there is direct mention of Jews and indirect mention of Christians ("the church"). So, what about the Muslims? Here's a map of the Iberian peninsula at the time

Notice that the greater part of the peninsula is al-andalus...you know, the Muslim part. That's okay spanish textbook, it's cool to quietly leave out an awesome part of Spainish history and keep pretending that Christians were the only people to ever be in charge of Spain (duh, it's spain!). This is especially ironic considering that minstrels are most likely a concept taken from the Andalusian courts.

In conclusion, way to be an ass.

Vince Offer Captions

2009-01-22T18:15:00.000-08:00

A forum I'm on has a caption contest and I like mine too much not to put it here.

I picked two quotes from the actual shamwow commercial and made it into a sexual joke for maximum comedic effect. The science of internet humor: i is doing it.

On my mind

2009-01-18T13:13:00.001-08:00

The new year seems to have started out okay. I've had two weeks of class this quarter already so that means it's 1/5th over. This week I discovered that I only had to do one more credit hour to graduate, so I quickly signed up for an independent study which means: graduating in march! and also graduating before I turn 23. Somehow, that means everthing.

Other thoughts in no real order

We got a george foreman grill and it can make waffles. Last week was kebab- and waffle-filled
I've been greatly enjoying the Thursday Next series by jasper Fforde. Oddly, of 5 books, 4 are available on the Kindle. The 4th book is not. This is greatly annoying.
I called in sick to work today. My voice is all stupid. As a sales person, I will not be taken seriously if my voice is fading in and out. Sorry, coworkers.
My dad bought a car from my neighbor for me. I owe him some money for it, but he is driving it up to seattle in march for me. It's a trans am.
I have some good designs for making clothes and I'm hoping they will work out. I want to make some stuff that I can wear to my (new, future, awesome, theoretical) job
I have no idea where to look for a new job, and my advisor at school was not helpful on this front.

books for 2009

2008-12-31T10:28:00.000-08:00

Rather than make a new year's resolution, I'm making new year's reading goals.

5 books in Spanish
4 banned books
4 books in Arabic
3 linguistics books
3 history books
Read 50 books total
Read fiction from 3 authors that I haven't read before

And because I can, here is a list of all the books I readin 2008.
1. The End of Faith - Sam Harris
2. Lamb - Christopher Moore
3. The Yacoubian Building - al-Aswany
4. The Republican War on Science - Christopher Moony
5. No God But God: Egypt and the Triumph of Islam - Genivie Abdo
6. A New Introduction to Islam - Daniel Brown
7. What Went Wrong - Bernard Lewis
8. Neuromancer - William Gibson
9. Mirror Mirror - Gregory Maguire
10. Count Zero - William Gibson
11. Shadowplay - Tad Williams
12. Shadowmarch - Tad Williams
13. Bloodsucking Fiends - Christopher Moore
14. The Stupidest Angel - Christopher Moore
15. Mona Lisa Overdrive - William Gibson
16. You Suck - Christopher Moore
17. Stardust - Niel Gaiman
18. Island of the Sequined Love Nun - Christopher Moore
19. Freedom for the Thought that We Hate - Lewis
20. Fluke - Christopher Moore
21. The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove - Christopher Moore
22. Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom - Corey Doctorow
23. Practical Demonkeeping - Christopher Moore
24. A Game of Thrones - George RR Martin
25. A Clash of Kings - George RR Martin
26. A Storm of Swords - George RR Martin
27. The Translator's Handbook - Sofer
28. A Feast for Crows - George RR Martin
30. Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers - Mary Roach
31. Sock - Penn Jillette
32. Wicked - Gregory Maguire
33. Son of a Witch - Gregory Maguire
34. A Lion Among Men - Gregory Maguire
35. The Age of American Unreason - Susan Jacoby
36. Letter to a Christian Nation - Sam Harris
37. The Professor and the Madman - Simon Winchester
38. The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
39. What's the Matter with Kansas - Thomas Frank
40. The Dragon in the Sea - Frank Herbert
41. The Eyre Affair - Jasper Fforde
42. Bonk: The curious coupling of science and sex - Mary Roach

lunchtime

2008-12-10T16:42:00.000-08:00

I met Ian to get some lunch today and the following conversation took place on our way out of the bookstore.

me: what should we eat?
ian: babies!
me: we don't have any babies...
ian: we can fix that
me: ...you'll have to make do with eggs.

as we exited the store, some activist guy trying to get donations accosts us,
activist guy: you two look like people who want to help babies
me: no, we want to eat them!

We thought it was pretty funny.

2008-12-03T15:07:00.000-08:00

A list of (previously) banned books that I want to read:

1001 Arabian Nights
Catcher in the Rye (despite having read a bunch of salinger, i haven't read this one
The Satanic Verses
As I Lay Dying
Doctor Zhivago
Lady Chatterley's Lover

I think part of my reading goals for next year is going to read some banned books. Mostly for the sake of awesomeness. Looking at some banned book lists, it turns out I've read a lot of such books already

2008-10-19T22:20:00.000-07:00

Today at work a man comes into the store, approaches me and shoves his wrist in my face. "Do you have a battery for this watch?" He says. "uhhhh......," I reply.

Why would you even ask someone that? As though I am familiar with every watch in production and have memorized the batteries. I sent him across the way to a jewelery store that does watch battery replacements.

Weird people!

2008-09-17T11:09:00.000-07:00

good news, everyone! I passed the Persian test so I'll be taking second year this year. All my studying was not in vain, so this pleases me.

The best part is that this makes my earliest class at 11:30. yesssssss

Sewing Day

2008-09-16T20:40:00.000-07:00

Today I managed to finish two sewing projects. Pictures ensue

This is a tote bag.

And these are pillows

Today!

2008-09-03T09:24:00.000-07:00

My Persian test is today at 2. The moment of truth when I find out if a summer's worth of studying is enough for me to skip out on first year Persian and pass go straight to second year. Well I won't get the results right away, but you can more or less tell if you failed miserably right then.

Will there ever be a time when mormon songs are completely gone from my brain? Sometimes these things just pop into my brain and I have no idea why.

Godhood is blond, full of blinking

2008-09-02T14:51:00.001-07:00

There are a lot of things I could say about this hilarious/awesome/ridiculous video, but I think i'll let the video speak for itself. Note: I don't know who made this video, I just stumbled on it. Also, just about everything in the cartoon part were things I've heard in church before.

2008-08-25T17:27:00.001-07:00

I'm trying to avoid eating foods with high fructose corn syrup, but it's nearly impossible. even whole grain Wheat Thins has it. Come on, wheat thins. Seriously?

Impulse Day

2008-08-14T18:34:00.000-07:00

Today I bought a sewing machine. I'd been turning the idea around in my mind for some time now in only the most cursory of ways, but today I decided to look into it. This morning I consulted the internets and then decided to actually go to a store and see what was what, as I lack experience in this area. It was actually quite helpful. The whole time the sales clerk was helping me I was thinking "Is this how I sound at work?" because if so, I sound like a stammering idiot with an agenda. But then, you can't kidd a kidder, and I know how the mind of a sales person turns. I also learned that sales people make good customers, probably because we know that the base item is not the whole thing that you need. I also bought an assortment of pins, needles, threads and the like. Unfortunately, the neighboring fabric store was closed due to some plumbing mishap so any real project must wait. I am anticipating making some seriously boss threads at the first oppurtinity though. I tried to mend the inseam of some pants, but I think they were too worn to really fix, so good practice. I'm mostly just glad that I didn't get frustrated and give up before I even got started. The initial needle-threading process was difficult.

I've also been doing a lot of cooking and baking lately. I've been trying out a variety of foods and mostly just seeing what I can do. Eating can become tedious. For the most part, the stuff I've been making has been very successful. Last week I made some very delicious zuccinni bread and I also made some good straganoff recently.

Up til recently, I've had little interest in such feats of domesticity; however I think I've decided that such feats are 1) practical 2) entertaining and that I like to be able to do things myself. If children in vietnam and ecuador can make shirts and they can be resold to me for $40 each, I'm sure I can do it too. I'm really on a "do it myself" kick lately. I also think that I was initially reluctant to cook, sew, etc because it seemed extremely required when growing up mormon. Of course, there's also the matter of taste and creativity. When the adult ladies around you are going to monthly meetings and making stuff like this (thanks random people found via google) , there's little motivation, in my mind, to pursue it. But then again, I always have found greater enjoyment in doing something because I like it, rather than acting in accordance with the hive mind.

Persian Test looms large in the future. I am taking it on september third. I'm on chapter 21 of 25, so the plan is to finish out the book within the week. At such time I'll have all the vocabulary down and then a wholesale review of grammar will commence. I've been giving grammar the short end of the stick because I know it takes less time. Vocabulary is easy but time consuming. Why can't I do both at once? None can say. My main motivation at the moment is that if I don't pass, next year will be very fucking boring becuase I'll still be in first year persian after studying it so much. Easy A's and such, but still...boring.

And that's the state of things! Just have to get through August now and then it will be school again in no time.

No Cake for Us

2008-07-30T23:57:00.000-07:00

I was totally excited to bake a cake right fucking now, just because I felt like it. Then we went to the store and it was closed because they're putting up some display. Now how can I bake a cake! baawwwwww

Huey

2008-07-22T20:29:00.001-07:00

This is our new kitten. She's 2 months old and her name is Huey.

Why John McCain Is a Fuckwit

2008-07-17T15:46:00.001-07:00

To preface this, John McCain was born in 1936, thus making him 72 years old. He served in congress from 1982-2000; 18 years. And this is not his first time making a bid at the presidency. So that just makes this all the more insulting.

This clip is provided by Planned Parenthood and it shows an exchange between McCain and someone at a press conference asking him a question. McCain is asked what his opinion is in regards to drugs like Viagra being covered by health insurance, but birth control is not covered to such an extent. McCain responds, "I don't know enough about it to give you an informed answer." So being 72 years old and spending nearly TWENTY YEARS in congress, a place in which you VOTED about issues pertaining to birth control and you CAN'T FORM A RESPONSE ABOUT THE ISSUE. ARE YOU FUCKING JOKING? That pisses me off IMMENSELY. He's just trying to avoid the issue. and it's fucking ridiculous.

GRE scores

2008-07-09T16:27:00.001-07:00

verbal: 640
math: 670

confusion at doing better on the math than the verbal: 780

2008-07-08T10:39:00.001-07:00

No I did not! Thanks for that great tip, Amazon.

wtf?

2008-07-07T12:10:00.000-07:00

I dreamed that I was studying Persian in France, I guess I was taking a class. In my dream I spoke (badly) in both persian and french.

2008-06-25T00:28:00.000-07:00

Big Top Pee-Wee may very well be the BEST MOVIE EVAR.

2008-06-20T03:06:00.000-07:00

Somehow, whenever Ian overcomes insomnia I become plagued by it.

2008-06-19T12:11:00.000-07:00

Listening to The Pretenders makes me feel all emotional sometimes.

2008-06-18T00:10:00.000-07:00

I took 18 credits this quarter, 8 of which were advanced Arabic, and I got a 3.82. I win at school.

2008-06-16T08:47:00.000-07:00

I dreamed that I was chilling with Mia and some younger brother who only exists in the dreamworld. And something about unicycling....I think I was subbing for someone giving unicycling lessons. I asked what I was supposed to teach for the day and the other girl said it was "going backwards."

2008-06-14T10:37:00.000-07:00

I don't think I can tolerate hearing about people graduating today. It's going to be hard to get through work with all the "I need a camera to give to my child for graduation" and/or "I need a camera to take photos of my child's graduation."

Why don't I get to graduate =(

2008-06-11T16:48:00.000-07:00

today's lesson: noodles cooked in a crockpot will disintegrate.

2008-06-07T08:18:00.000-07:00

Big thanks to our district manager who mandated weekly meetings for the entire month of june. Yes it's true, that means I have to be at work at 9am today after closing last night (and not falling asleep til 2). not only is there a meeting, but I get to go back in at 3 and work til close. My day is shot.

2008-06-06T15:14:00.000-07:00

Verb root: رهب

base meaning: to fear, be afraid

related meanings via derivation: to intimidate, terrorism, dreadful, monk/nun, to alarm, solemn or grave

rainwater drips through a crack in the sea

2008-06-05T15:38:00.000-07:00

As I have no finals this quarter, my spring term is done. I'm in that post-term slump where I'm saying "what now?" When you feel like you should do something cool but you don't. I'm sad that my Arabic class is over. I liked a lot of the people in that class and it was a lot of fun. Most of them are graduating and there isn't any 4th year class outside of just taking literature/special studies elective stuff. So I'm kind of bummed out. Not to mention the weather isn't exactly celebrating the summer around hereI came home and read some BBC Arabic. Enjoy some words:

Nourishment غذاء

to take fire, ignite, burn وقد

to advocate, support تعهد

Back to playing Patapon, the best PSP game ever and then going to work.

A real blog entry

2008-06-01T15:19:00.001-07:00

School for this year is nearly over. This week will be the last one and then I have 17 or so weeks of glorious vacation. Of course I'll be working 35 hours a week...that still counts as vacation in my opinion. I don't have any finals this quarter. Things left to do:

~~finish Arabic media chapter 1 & 2 review (due Weds)~~
~~write 2 page morphology paper on Arabic clitics~~
~~give Arabic presentation (Tues)~~
~~study for morph test (Weds)~~

I've been pretending that I'm already finished with school for the last few weeks, so that's not making this process any easier. I wish I were graduating this quarter, but I still have about 30 credits worth of in-major work to finish, plus I want to take 3rd year french. This last year of school will facilitate my transition to grad school really well. I'll be taking 3rd year french (in sha'allah) because French is my research language for a masters in Comparative NE studies. It's either that or German. And I also want to take a year of Farsi, which doubles as credits towards NELC electives and as my secondary NE language for my masters. This summer I'm planning to study persian on my own and i will theoretically test into second year, but we'll see how that goes.

I reactivated my facebook this week. I knew I would probably regret this decision (and Ian reminded me of this), but I did it anyway. I find facebook upsetting for a number of reasons, specifically, it serves as a ridiculous reminder that some people I once considered good friends don't want to talk to me anymore. One friend from high school emailed me a little while back and I responded saying that I was glad to hear from her and start talking to people again (because, to be fair, I fell off the planet for a while). She never wrote back. This sounds kind of petty and I can't really figure out where this feeling stems from, since I am fairly antisocial. I guess I just like to know that on some level, people still like me even if we don't talk a whole lot.

I've also started studying for the GRE, and I have to say that REA's study guide has proved the most useful. I started out with Kaplan, only to learn that it was about as useless as an umbrella in the sahara and just as condescending as Princeton review (which lead me to buy kaplan in the first place). The math is coming back to me fairly well, despite the fact that I haven't done any non-retail related math since AP calc. However, the retail math does actually help a lot in relation to the percentage problems. "I just sold a canvas print, that's a 5% bonus" or "I've sold $4900 in cameras and lenses this month and I'm at 6% service plans, how many more plans do I need to sell to hit my sales goals?"

In the meantime, enjoy a duck in the designated smoking area.

2008-05-17T10:59:00.000-07:00

I just signed up for the GRE. I'm not looking forward to it.

2008-05-12T11:16:00.001-07:00

As of yesterday, I'm 22.

Cooking things: chicken and dumplings

2008-04-28T17:53:00.001-07:00

I got a crockpot last week and I've only made two things in it so far, but I love cooking with it. So now, posting the recipe for personal convenience and because I want to.

Crockpot Chicken and Dumplings, adapted from this recipe (that was pretty boring initially).

5 medium red potatoes
4 carrots
1 thing (chunk? head?) of broccoli
as much frozen corn as appropriate
1/4 of an onion
3/4 pound of chicken or so
2 cans condensed cream of chicken soup
2 cups water
16 oz (possibly more) refrigerated biscuts
1 tsp pepper
1 tbs chicken boullion
a bit of garlic

chop up everything that needs chopping and put it in the pot, vegetables on the bottom. add in the soup, water and spices and cook on low for 5 hours. Stir it up and add chunks of biscut dough on the top, enough to cover the soupy part. Cook on high for another half hour.

The version I made had way too much pepper, so this recipe reflects that. I think some cumin would have been a good addition, but I didn't have any.

Finished product:

snow

2008-04-18T15:34:00.001-07:00

it's fucking snowing again.

what the fuck.

Things of Great Annoyance and Things of the Good

2008-04-10T22:48:00.000-07:00

Today on campus I passed two people with a giant sign board. I figured it was some club so I turned as I passed it to see what it was. And, to my displeasure, it was a picture of an aborted fetus about 2'x3' (maybe bigger) prominently displayed among other small pictures and a sign saying something like "Does this change you opinion of abortion?" or something equally inane. I was about 80% ready to give these fuckheads a piece of my mind but I decided not to bitch them out. Probably better that way, but I'm still going to rant here. Do they think that any woman wants, really wants to abort her baby. Even when a child is "unwanted" it's not because she wakes up one morning and says "I feel like killing something that never had a chance, I'm going out for some unprotected intercourse right away." Getting an abortion, I imagine (and have been informed) is traumatic and painful enough and I don't think anyone takes that kind of decision lightly. so WHY do these asshats feel the need to display a huge, disgusting poster of disheveled, bloody baby pieces to remind us that not only are you a cold-blooded killer, but you're going to hell if you do it. So a big FUCK YOU, University of Washington anti-women's rights sign bearers of the day. You almost made me vomit and you wish to condemn women everywhere, that is if you can't chain them to the stove in a life of domestic servitude. Good one.
(the rest of these are much minor rants) Co-workers not showing up for their shift and other irresponsible transgressions. Tuesday I was supposed to close with one of our newer coworkers. I got in at 5, as was he supposed to, and the two openers decided it would be cool to leave before the other guy showed up. Their reassurance "There's a mid." The mid-shift worker is also NEW. So naturally, 5:30 rolls around and he's not there. Not only that, but this guy doesn't even have a number I can call. The new guy stays til 9, which is better than nothing but I sitll had to keep an eye on him. So fuck you too, former co-worker!
Bus etiquette. When you get on the bus move to the back! Especially in the morning when it gets really full. Don't get on the bus and then stand there right where you got on. This is a major peeve of mine and indeed a GREAT ANNOYANCE

I think that's it...for now!

So to balance that out I suppose it must be THINGS OF THE GOOD

Tomorrow I'm going to take photos of the cherry blossoms on campus, for there are many and my camera is nice.
My Arabic teacher is hilarious. However, I don't think I can really describe it
I ordered a crock pot and intend to make delicious meals as soon as it gets here
I'm going to start going to the farmers market for buying as much of my groceries as possible.
It's payday.
I already have my writing class presentation out of the way for the quarter. And it was good.

2008-03-29T13:04:00.000-07:00

In an amazing turn of events, I've been getting more weekend days off at work. And weekend days off is equivalent to actually having a whole day off, unlike having a school day where there is no work.

2008-03-27T08:54:00.000-07:00

So I think I have an ear infection as mucus has steadily been oozing out my ears all morning. I didn't even know you could do that. What the hell?

I can say gross shit like that since no one reads this.

***and then an update

I then went to the doctor. Turns out my eardrum has a fucking hole in it. Apparently this will heal on its own but my doctor did give me antibiotics. In the meantime, the two monthish long cold marches on.

my mind works in strange ways

2008-03-17T14:24:00.000-07:00

my mom sent me an easter basket

Good Heavens, Ms. Sacamoto!

2008-03-14T10:40:00.000-07:00

I had a random guy on the bus philosophizing at me the other day and he said that I had a smile like Malcolm X. Weird.

I don't see it.

deeper

2008-03-03T14:22:00.000-08:00

It's too easy to get lost inside
to look inward
and to hide.

part 30 (or so) in a series on Lindsey's anti-social tendencies

At the cusp of a wave of introverted/anti-sociality. Except 'cusp of a wave' implies an immediate breaking point, which is likely not the case. It's different this time. I'm not depressed or unstable, just don't wanna talk. Cut myself off from instant message, never call anyone. I get coffee with Kira on a near-weekly basis and that's about it.

Perhaps this is not a move of an inherently anti-social nature rather a change in the medium. The last few years, my contact with people has been almost exclusively internet based. Maybe for fear of committment to people who I know I'll probably just fall out of touch with anyway. Maybe because I know that I can't will myself into social engagements on any kind of regular basis.

I'm plenty chatty with my coworkers, but I hardly talk to anyone at school. I chat a bit with the people in my arabic class. I don't like talking to people in linguistics because I assume they're all assholes based on the way they interact in class. I tend to have one person that I can be snarky with but the rest of them annoy the piss out of me. It's odd.

I felt anxious today and I didn't know why.

This discussion is always the same.

Back to the Future Confusion

2008-02-24T10:15:00.000-08:00

I watched all three parts of the Back to the Future series of movies over the last week and it left me with a burning question: How do Marty and the Doc ever meet in the first place? Obviously their lives become intertwined with all the time travel. We see Doc meet Marty for the first time in 1955 when Doc is 1955-Doc and Marty is 1985-Marty, but when does Marty first meet Doc? What is the nature of their relationship such that Marty is the first person to witness time travel? Or that Marty can just wander into Doc's house? Despite three movies of wandering back and forth over a 130 year period Spielberg gives no insight into this relationship. Some possibilities posed by me:

Marty works for the Doc (this is perhaps the least likely since Marty shows little to no scientific acumen)
They are somehow related or Doc is a family friend.
Doc contacted Marty sometime in the 80's either on pretense of work or whatever. Probably not "Hey Marty, you don't know me, but I met you in 1955!"
Fate brings them together in some manner.

There doesn't seem to be much evidence for any of these hypotheses, but it's something that certainly bothered me throughout the series.

In other news, I got a fancy new computer this week. It's a desktop and Ian made it custom for me. =)

Registration for spring quarter is next week and I'm planning to take 3rd year Arabic, Media Arabic, sociolinguistics, and writing. I still have to take a writing class which is pretty dumb since I've taken several in my college existance and I took 2 AP writing/lit classes in high school. Oh well. It looks like the textbooks for it are graphic novels, which is strange but possibly good. I remain somewhat undecided on this account.

The 888 Challenge

2008-02-08T21:52:00.000-08:00

I had the plan to read a book a week outside of school reading this year. so far it's going...okay. I've read three, so not stellar I guess. But I saw on Library Thing the 888 Challenge which sounds cool. Basically you read 8 books in 8 categories in 2008. That's a lot of books but I want to at least try. So here are my prospective reads for the year and I'll add more as I think of them. And I'll put the date next to something when I finish it.

History
1. A Brief History of Canada Roger Riendeau
2. India: A History John Keay
3. Spain: A History
4. The Aztecs (Peoples of America) M. E. Smith
5. Druids
6.
7.
8.

Middle/Near East
1. A New Introduction to Islam Daniel Brown 2/29
2. No God but God: Egypt and the Triumph of Islam Geneive Abdo 2/22
3. Reading Lolita in Tehran Azar Nafis
4. What Went Wrong: The Clash Between Islam and Modernity in the Middle East Bernard Lewis 3/5
5.
6.
7.
8.

Current Events
1. The End of Faith Sam Harris 1/11
2. The Republican War on Science Christopher Mooney 2/17
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.

Fiction
1. The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf Mona Khaf
2. Desert Solitaire Edward Abbey
3. Giraffe Ledgard, J. M.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.

Nabakov --because I have a bunch of Nabakov that I want to read and that I have not read!
1. The Gift
2. The Eye
3. Look at the Harlequins
4. Pale Fire
5.
6.
7.
8. Vera (Mrs. Vladimir Nabakov) Stacy Schiff

Foreign fiction: in translation or in the language (so far it's all Egyptian...)
1. The Yacoubian Building Al Aswany 2/6
2. Palace Walk Naguib Mahfouz
3. Palace of Desire Naguib Mahfouz
4. Sugar Street Naguib Mahfouz
5.
6.
7.
8.

Linguistics
1. The Language Instinct Steven Pinker
2. Kant and the Platypus Umbert Eco
3. Language and the Internet David Crystal
4. The Linguistics Wars Randy Allen Harris
5. The Rise and Fall of Languages R. M. W. Dixon
6. Spanglish: The Making of a New American Language Ilan Stavans
7. In Search of the Indo-Europeans Mallory, J. P.
8. Language in Thought and Action Hayakawa and Hayakawa

Lite Reading (fiction and non-fiction)/misc
1. Lamb Christopher Moore 1/20
2. The Professor and the Madman Simon Winchester
3. Neuromancer William Gibson 3/16
4. Mirror Mirror Gregory Maguire 3/22
5. Count Zero William Gibson 3/26
6. Shadowplay Tad Williams 5/7
7.
8.

2007-12-06T20:49:00.000-08:00

Every day it gets harder for me to tell what on the internet is a joke and what is for real
http://www.wallbike.com/oddsnends/bananaguard.html

Literature, Atheists, and Jesus-lovers

2007-12-05T20:36:00.000-08:00

Browsing around the Intertubes, as I do, I've come upon more than one discussion lately about Christians going crazy over the new movie adaptation of Pullman's The Golden Compass. What boggles the mind is not that the Jesus-lovers feel that their feet are being stopmed on, since it seems to me that no amount of room is enough as long as there are people who disagree with them (that's another story), but that they're going bat-shit crazy over it now. I understand that a movie can call attention to a story in a bigger way than most books can, but this book was first published in 1995. It was winning awards at least by 1997, which is when my copy is from and it heralds some awards. This conclusion that I want to draw is that Christians don't actually read.* Just to be inflammatory I could go ahead and say that it seems they don't even read their bible that closely, but I think I'll skip that argument. Anyway, here's the description from some facebook group telling us about why we shouldn't see this movie:

Name: "Do NOT support "The Golden Compass"
Type: Entertainment & Arts - Movies
Description:
THE GOLDEN COMPASS, a new movie targeted at children, will be released
December 7, 2007. This movie is based on a the first book of a trilogy
by atheist Philip Pullman. In the final book a boy and girl kill God
so they can do as they please. Pullman left little doubt about his
intentions when he said in a 2003 interview that "My books are about
killing God."
The movie is a watered down version of the first book and is designed
to be very attractive in the hope unsuspecting parents will take their
children to see the the movie and that the children will want the
books for Christmas.
The movie has a well known cast, including Nicole Kidman, Daniel Craig,
and Sam Elliott. It will probably b advertised extensively, so it is
crucial that we get the word out to warn people to avoid this movie.

Having read this series twice, and the second time was just earlier this year, I feel pretty safe in saying that whoever wrote this just heard a few tidbits about the movie and then wrote this. Let's disect it

Pullman is an atheist: true, but to be honest this has little bearing on the actual story. In fact, even though the main characters, Lyra and Will, set out to "kill god," or The Authority as he's called in the books, they actually end up playing the roles of Adam and Eve later. There's even some speculation on the afterlife, so it's obviously not interfering with his fiction. Asimov was essentially an atheist but I don't see anyone going "Don't ever read Nemesis because Asimov was an atheist and scientist!"

Spoiler Alert***
Will and Lyra "kill God so they can do as they please:" Again, whoever wrote this either hasn't read the story or read it and didn't get it at all. Lyra hears bits and pieces about her father working on some way to kill The Authority and later her best friend dies and so she decides to find some way to save him from it. After an arduous quest, she makes her way to the land of the dead and finds him. She and Will create a way for the souls to become part of the flow of the universe, and, if I recall correctly, inadvertently kill The Authority at another point in the story.

"My books are about killing god:" Yeah, I mean on one level they are, but Pullman says that they're also very much a coming of age tale in this interview, and I would expect that quote had some context with it. I get the feeling that Christians don't read, and then someone brings up some "god hating book [they] heard about" and everyone goes "oh no! I must hide my eyes and protect my childruns!"

This story is "designed to be very attractive in the hope unsuspecting parents will take their children to see the the movie and that the children will want the books for Christmas:" If you're not going to let your children read this or see the movie then you might as well bar them from Harry Potter (which I don't like, but at least I've read it and have an informed opinion), A Wrinkle in Time, Wicked, Dune (because Bene Gesserits and Mentants are probably just as bad as witches and atheists!), The Crucible, and many other good books in existence.

I can understand wanting to shelter your kid from drugs, foul language, unpleasant experiences and maybe even sex, but not exposing children to literature and alternate viewpoints is just asking for them to grow up to be ignorant, intolerant tools. And if you're going to criticize something at least do a little research.

*disclaimer: I know that not christians are the same, some of them probably read and are educated.

2007-11-29T19:52:00.000-08:00

I deactivated my facebook! I've never actually heard of anyone doing that before. There are better ways to keep in touch than constantly being alerted to the innane details of people I don't even like that much. If you want to keep in touch with a person, just fucking talk to them or send email or something.

2007-11-28T14:18:00.000-08:00

I've recently become obsessed with wanting to learn Farsi. The thought of being able to translate Arabic and Farsi is pretty freaking awesome. I hope they offer first year intensive over the summer, if not I'll just pick up some books and learn it myself. I wish I'd had the presense of mind to take it this quarter but I think it would have interfered with classes I have to take anyway. I was looking at some textbooks at the school bookstore today and the one the school uses seems pretty weak (I mean, I thought the Arabic books were bad o.0) but I might give it a go or see what I can find on the intertubes. If I start learning now, by the end of my masters I can reasonbly have 4 years of farsi under my belt, which would be pretty good coupled with the 6/7 or so of Arabic.

hell yeah.

Retail Slave, you have no soul!

2007-11-24T23:04:00.000-08:00

Day two of Post-Thanksgiving shopocalypse:

I have no soul.

First thing this morning I sold a guy a bunch of crap that he didn't want (but I mean, you NEED a memory card and batteries to run your camera, and why are you buying your wife a $99 camera, doesn't she deserve better?). I could tell he didn't want it, but he bought it, damn it. As it happens, he overcame my sales mojo and returned it later, but I'm doing this all the time. I've given my service plan pitch so many times that I have it's echoing through my mind; deja vu on every sale while supplies last! The problem is that as much as I hate my job, I seem to be good at it. I've been number three in sales volume the last two days (not counting all the things I special ordered, about $3000) and almost all of my sales were "quality." No boxes here. But somewhere between qualifying questions and detailing club card rewards, I fucking lost it. My mouth and hands are moving but there's nothing left of me anymore.

I hate sales.

I like the money that it gets me though. Any other job in the mall is just going to be $8/hr. I probably averaged at least $13/hr the last two days. Probably more. I'm going to email this lady who offered to help me get a job translating for the city after new years. But I don't think I'm going to make it through Christmas. If this is day two, and my manager assures me that this kind of foot traffic is going to be the norm from December 10th on, I may not see my 22nd birthday. Aside from the soulless camera touting, the mall is full of crazy people. I had three come in today. One woman was pissed that her photos were not done in 15 minutes--who does anything faster than an hour? I told her they might be done sooner. Then a guy who said he ordered a clock and an 8x10" of him and his girlfriend (I couldn't believe he had a girlfriend) came running in mad about how he send out to get a photo clock done several months ago but never heard back and he wants it right-fucking-now. I couldn't find a record of it so I didn't really know what to do and he starts telling me that he'll tell everyone to never come here. So he tells a woman at the counter "don't come here! they stole tons of my money!" and she--hero of the day-- says "don't talk to me." and asks me how I deal with the crazies. Right after we are flooded with crazy people (they all came in at once today), Nick--that's right, our favourite undiagnosed manic depressive coworker--storms out shouting "That's it, I'm going home now!" when he was schedule to close. He wouldn't say what was wrong. The store was full of people. Way to have good timing! Luckily (sorta) he came back 15 minutes later. But what is this guy's problem? I'm probably going equally as nuts but part of the job is keeping it inside for later. How many fucking times does he have to throw a fit/storm out/yell at coworkers before he gets fired! If I did that, I'd probably be at least written up. This guy gets away with so much shit and only receives a slap on the hand. Get another job if you want to bitch and moan, man. Retail is not the place.

A Challenger Appears

2007-11-24T09:53:00.001-08:00

So, "black friday" yesterday and naturally I had to work. I was surprised at how much I sold--about $2600, plus another $400 or so from a special order I did. Of 6 camera sales, 5 had service plans which means i am a fast-talking champion. I really don't know how i got so good at this job. I don't know shit about cameras, and I don't even like sales. My dad always thinks it's funny that I'm so good at a job that I don't like, to which he then added "I wonder what you'll be like when you actually find something that you enjoy!"

Anyway, just had to brag about that for a moment. Back into hiding I go.

2007-11-08T08:05:00.001-08:00

I spend a lot of time wondering about reality.