Holiday cheer?

     Whew! We're finally winding down the end of the year, and it's to sit back and consider the extremely different attitudes that people hold towards the holidays. I have a fairly relaxed view of most of the world (except when I'm driving, but that's a different story!), and when I see people rushing around, either trying to get everything done just right, or angry at the world for everything going on around them, it baffles me a bit. So to that end, here is my list of the different attitudes that people take towards the holidays:

1) Keeping up with the idea of the Jonses: Even if this person is the only one in the neighborhood to decorate, they will be the one with a display you can see from outer space. Every single thing that "should" be done around the holidays is meticulously done. Their place looks amazing, but you could use their nerves as violin strings, because they can't relax, there's just too much to be done!

Reading and languages

     When I was young, I devoured books. Put a book in front of me, and as long as I could get into the author's style of writing, the rest of the world would vanish until I finished the book. Stopping for things like eating or sleeping was just such a hassle, and I'm sure I got into trouble numerous times for staying up too late with a book under the covers. At the time, I could not understand people who didn't get into reading- I was sure something must have been direly wrong with them in order to pass up such a great experience and a chance to explore both the real world and new ones.

     Fast forward a number of years, and I start to understand those people. The first revelation that lessened my desire to read was that there are only so many ways to tell a story. I look for patterns in everything, and eventually I realized that most books can be ultimately broken down into:

• character development,
• conflict,
• solution,
• happy ending.

Happy day after....

     Being as that I have just come home from spending the day with family, and spending six hours on Saturday drawing Christmas cards,  I am going to simply give you this:

     There will be a full-length post on Wednesday to replace today's, and then the usual post schedule will resume on Friday. Hopefully by then the holiday chaos will have passed (I don't really do New Year's celebrations), and things will calm down a bit. Right before school starts up again, yay!

     Happy Holidays to you and yours. Cheers!

Faith in humanity

     As a general rule, I try to believe in the overall decency of humanity. It's not always the easiest thing to do, especially when the news is consistently full of hatred and violence, while "human interest" stories get only a brief nod on some back page, but it is possible. Most of the time it involves paying attention to the world around you, willfully looking for the little good deeds that are done, even if it's just a smile on the street or a word of encouragement to someone who's trying as hard as they can. But every now and then, the world seems to realize you need more than that, and it blindsides you with a really memorable occurrence.

     A number of months ago, Elf, a very close friend of mine, contacted me for help writing up a resumé for one of her friends who had recently lost his job. I am frequently called upon for help with writing and editing (I guess being a Linguist comes in handy sometimes, eh?), so I gave the go-ahead to send it over. In the course

Coincidence or foresight?

     This story takes place during Thanksgiving week. I was out shopping with my mom, and she needed to grab some spice for the turkey, so we pulled in to a Whole Foods somewhere in Maryland (I wasn't really paying attention to the particulars, so that's as close as you get to an accurate description). Now, the Whole Foods stores in Colorado are, for some reason, relatively small- certainly no larger than your average grocery store, and in some cases, about the size of those tiny ethnic food stores. The one in Maryland that we went to, on the other hand, you could easily clear the aisles and hold car races inside. Short ones, but still car races. The parking lot is underneath the store, and once you climb the stairs (or ride the escalator, but that seems counter-productive to me), there's a Mecca of healthy food and organic stuff laid out before you.

     The one down side to this is that if you don't know where what you're looking for is, good luck finding it. We were after juniper berries, and while it's possible that they would be in the spices aisle, we didn't see anything that clearly looked like or said "spices." I did, however, see an employee helping someone else at the end of

Time for some reconsideration.

     As a general rule, I tend to avoid talking politics. To be perfectly honest, I haven't really felt, in the past, that I was sufficiently aware of the situation to make an educated statement, so I simply listened and changed the subject. However, as I was listening to a parody of "God Bless the USA" by Lee Greenwood today, it got me to thinking. Back a couple years ago, when that version of the song came out, I liked it. It was singable, it had a good message, and quite frankly, I was relatively proud of being American. Not enough to get me kicked out of other countries for being obnoxious, but I felt that the US was in decent shape.

     Can you see where this is going? Yeah, I don't really feel that way anymore. Perhaps it was my being educated on the circumstances that exist in other countries (did you know in France, you are required to take 30 days- a month- of vacation per year? When's the last time you heard of anyone taking even close to that in

Summary of Finals weekend

     AKA: why there are no sketches today. I know, I know, it's been a couple weeks since I've actually drawn something- my fingers are going to atrophy and fall off! However, I would like to submit to you my schedule for this weekend as a valid reason why I have not been drawing. Comprehension will be facilitated by pictures, I promise!

Saturday:

• 8:00 am Wake up, bring in the paper before the neighbors steal it, lay down on the floor to read it. Fall asleep on the paper.
• 9:00 Wake up again and panic, thinking I've missed the final. Realize I have three more hours to study; try to brush up on everything at once.
• 12:00pm Have lunch in an increasingly panicked state, head to Russian final. 

Surfing and skydiving

     Oh, look, another blank page. Having spent the last week staring at an unfinished, 10-page literature paper that is due tomorrow, I hope you'll forgive me for being slightly unenthused about looking up to see another unfilled document. Fortuitously, however, this one requires neither citations, nor research, nor reading yet another dry, morbid, depressed critique on yet another societal injustice. Instead, let us consider surfing and skydiving. Random, I know, but roll with it for a moment...

     Back in 2008, my life was pretty decent. I had a solid (I thought) job, that I didn't utterly hate and allowed me to put money in the bank to save for those rainy days that came sooner than planned. I had no real ties or commitments to anything, no real debts, and few hassles. As such, I felt that there was no better time than the present to try out a few things that had been on my unwritten bucket list. During the summer, I tried out surfing at a camp in California. While I made a very good friend there, I was still pasty white girl, and the very first day saw me with severe enough sunburn that I was limping the entire week, and decided that surfing was not for me.

This, but all over. 

Papers and finals.

     It's that time of year again, when students everywhere are catapulted out of the happy complacency of knowing their daily routine, into the stark cruel reality of facing down exams and final papers. Coming back from a delightful week off, after 14 weeks of the same thing, we all realize that there are only two weeks until finals. And unfortunately, by the time you realize that, one of those weeks is gone.
 
     As someone very wise once said to me, however, college is not so much about learning things, but rather about learning how you learn things. And I know that the best way for me to get something done is to let it ferment in the back of my head. So while it may not seem like I've been doing much this week to prepare for finals, I've actually been archiving, cross-referencing, making connections, and hoarding away everything I could for the upcoming ordeal. Once the weekend hit, that's when it was time to get everything down on paper.

     So the last two days have primarily been spent trying to force three-dimensional thought patterns onto two-dimensional paper, a process I've discussed and ranted about many times before. What's more, this particular

Back into the swing of things

     When I was a teenager, I remember looking at the world and being offended at how most adults were such creatures of habit. Day in and day out, they had their routine and stuck to it, rarely changing anything or looking around at the amazing world around them (at least, from my perspective, that was the case). It looked like such a dreary, boring, grey life, and I wanted nothing to do with it.

Monday (that's me in the middle, watching)

Filler #3!

     Last filler post, honest. Technically, I did get home yesterday, but the plane should have gotten in (not sure exactly when it will, but that's time-travel writing for you) at 8:15pm, and I have to be ready for a class today, so... one more filler and back to full-length randomness this Friday, I promise.

     This is something that happened to me when I was working at a temp job for a government contractor. I didn't really have an office, per se, so they tucked me into what was basically a corner, gave me a computer and a scanner, and a couple million (ok, maybe 50) boxes of files to be scanned. Not exactly a highly

Filler #2!

     Being as that I'm still on vacation (well, I will be when you read this post), here's another random sketch from the ones that didn't make it. This was started when I was doing the post about the picture of myself on the wall- I think I was going to try to draw myself small and having an attitude, yelling at me for putting me on a box on the wall or something. For some reason, when I started drawing it tho, the picture itself wouldn't behave, and eventually turned into me sitting on a bench in a park, eating ice cream. No idea how that happened, it just didn't want to co-operate (story of my life, eh?).

Filler #1!

     As many of you know, I am on vacation from November 19th to the 27th, visiting family and friends I've not seen in about six years. Rather than just let you guys suffer from a lack of stories, however, I've dug up some older sketches that never quite made it on here, for one reason or another.

     This one was supposed to be a complaint about a particularly heinous day I had. When I woke up, it was literally freezing outside and my heater had decided not to work. When I got home, naturally, it was

Pickup Line 6

     I've heard a couple different variations of the Tennessee line, some of them repeatable in polite company, some of them not. Regardless, they're all pretty bad (is there such a thing as a good pickup line?), so here's a comeback for you, should you ever run into it.

In case of confusion...

     A friend and I were talking about being overworked recently, and a certain correlation was pointed out between being overworked and being a zombie- noticeably a lack of upper brain functions, aversion to daylight, semi-somnolent ambulatory skills, etc, etc. So if you're starting to be a little confused as to whether you are an overworked stiff or a zombie, here's a convenient flowchart for you to follow.

Brain connections

     Do you remember being in school and having to draw brainstorming clouds? You know what I mean, right, where you start with one idea, and then you have to draw lines to other ideas that connect to that one, and more that connect to those, and try to get a "good, solid set of ideas for this paper/ project/ presentation/ whatever" that the teacher wanted you to work on?

     Yeah, that. Want to know a secret? I hated those. Passionately. Not because I couldn't come up with ideas, oh no. I hated them for a couple reasons. For one, there was never enough space. If you give me a piece of paper the size of a parking lot, I might have enough space to fit in, say, three layers of concepts, but it would

Modernized adages

     In an attempt to clean up the language a little, so we don't confuse the heck out of either ourselves or foreigners trying to learn the muddled chaos that is English, I would say it's time to update our supply of adages a little bit. Let's face it, not many people go around receiving horses as gifts anymore, or picking up eggs in the morning, regardless of how many baskets are used, or that sort of thing. Instead, here are a few modernized versions:

1) Don't look a gift car under the hood:

Organization and structuring

     Taking a break from the deep, philosophical meanderings of recent posts, I'd like to say something about spring/ fall cleaning and the need for it to be done on many, many layers of life. To start with, here's a bit of background:

     I live in a nice, quiet little apartment complex in a fairly decent area. Unfortunately, it is in a no-man's land, stuck between Denver and its outlying suburbs, barely inside one district despite being 10 blocks or less from all the amenities of another one, and pretty much right on the line between two counties. For almost eight months, I have been able to work around, deal with, or ignore this, and life has gone on relatively sedately. Until my birthday last month...

     I adore my friends and family, really I do. I even love the fact that I only have one long-standing friend who lives in this state, and all the rest of them are horrible slackers, like me, when it comes to

Keeping up perceptions.

      In high school, I hung out in the band hallway. I was by no means one of the "cool" kids. My friends were the geeks, the gamers, the band and drama nerds, and the occasional choir member as well. I loved them for their quirky ideals and willingness to let the things they were passionate about overcome the need to be 'cool.' I will admit, there was a certain amount of similarity in styles of dress- after all, there was only one place for people who liked to wear all black to get clothing back then- but for the most part, they weren't concerned with the latest style, or who was more popular, or who said what to whom, etc. All-in-all, I found it a fairly decent place to be.

     One thing that constantly blew my mind, however, was that my friends could not grasp the fact that appearances affect people's opinions about you. I'm not sure why this is, since I'm sure they were aiming for the "don't mess with me" look, but there you have it. So while they teased me about wearing "normal"

Random sketch day

   Two random sketches for you, since I can't seem to get my head around drawing for the post I had prepared. That'll teach me to write 'em early!

     The first one is one I did on Thursday, when I was having an attack of the abnormals. As per usual, I followed the instructions given by my teacher for a particular assignment, and submitted it online. Once I'd finished it, I checked out what other people had done, just to be sure I was on the right track (oh come on, you know you've done that too!). Of the submissions I could see, almost all of them were these cheery, bright

Pickup Line 5

     So I've been on a bit of a rampage lately; been writing about things that have gotten me fired up or on edge. I think it's about time to raise a glass to a new week with a bit of a chuckle. I've had this one bouncing around in my head for a while, and I'm sure you can see why a word nerd like me would appreciate it.

Who studies Russian?!

     Recently, a couple classmates and I were bemoaning our obviously insane idea to study Russian, and one of my friends came up with this opinion:

     I won't deny it, I laughed for a good long time after hearing that, but the next day I got to thinking... is it really true? Keep in mind I've studied my share of languages, whether on my own or through schooling,

Realists and unrealists

    In light of my previous post, I'd like to continue taking a look at "-ists" and "-isms" in regards to world views. Specifically, for the purpose of this post, realists. More specifically, how I think that real realists are far less prevalent than they seem to be at first glance. Now, I admit that before I solidified the opinions presented in the optimism post, I, too, considered myself a realist. I tried to take life as it came to me, good and bad, and keep my expectations in the realm of the probable. However, I noticed a disturbing trend that ultimately goaded me into reconsidering my stance on life.

     More and more, when I talk to someone about -isms, the conversation goes something like this:

Thought patterns and optimism.

     They (the infamous they) say that humans are linear thinkers. And for the most part, I agree. We do tend to start with a specific thought and follow it through to the end. Of course, there is always the possibility of a couple tangents in the middle, but for the most part, thoughts and communication follow a single line.

     However, you also get those days when it seems like there is so much stuff crammed into your head, that it's impossible to find a single starting point. Everything is so interconnected that, it seems, if you open your mouth, it will get stuck, like a crowd of people trying to jam through a single door. Everything tries to get out at once, so nothing gets anywhere. What's even worse is that this chaotic tangle is usually backed by some pretty strong emotions, be they happiness, depression, anger or what have you, and this just adds to the pressure and inability to get anything out.

 

Well drat (and pickup line 4-ish)

     As usual, I have done things absolutely backwards and managed to produce absolutely nothing for several hours' worth of work. Starting last week, I brainstormed on what to rename this blog, since I'd like it to be slightly easier to remember and access. I came up with an idea I liked, I sketched a few rough drafts of the tittle page, conferred with a (real artist) friend of mine, took an idea of hers and ran with it. I spent three hours tonight playing with settings on my primitive tools that I use to get my drawings online, frustrated at how poorly they were working, but I finally made it work.

     Celebrating my triumph over minimalism and technology, I went to do the last step- that of changing the web address of said blog- only to find that every, single, possible, logical, remotely intelligent, legible, coherent iteration of the name I was thinking about... had already been taken. And most of the blogs that had claimed it have been either defunct for literally a decade, or else are empty profiles with no content. Sigh.

Pickup Lines 3

    Thankfully, I haven't heard this one just yet. It was a little difficult to draw, and probably more difficult to do but... enjoy!

Bringing sexy back... maybe.

     I recently came across (and subsequently acquired) a shirt that says, "Smart is the new dumb". I'll be honest, I got it primarily because it made me laugh, rather than as any particular societal commentary or whatnot. A few days later, however, I was having a conversation with a friend, and he offered for consideration the phrase, "Nah, in my opinion, smart girls are sexy."

     Individually, the two incidences don't really amount to much- a funny shirt and a random opinion, no worries, right? As usual, however, it got me to thinking. Let's see if my logic bears up to peer review:

How to make a stubborn person give up.

Yes, it's a long title. I have faith that you can deal with it. Moving on...

     One of my less annoying habits is that I'm pretty stubborn. I try to stay with things no matter what, sometimes even when it's neither logical nor wise to do so. However, there is one sure-fire way to make me give up on anything, and this past week has gotten me pretty close to just crawling back into bed and hibernating til Thursday. Why Thursday? Thursday is dance class, for one, which always puts me in a better mood, and, more importantly, Thursday is when I go back to the dentist to get a permanent crown put on and my last cavity filled. Remember this, it is important.

     Now, back to the giving up bit. A lot of people, if asked, would probably say the best way to make someone give up is to constantly harass and harangue them, make sure that everything goes wrong, and they can achieve nothing, right? Well, they'd be wrong. The only thing that will do for stubborn people (and admit it, if you're not a stubborn person, you at least know one, so this can be applied in everyone's life), is make them angry. The more you thwart a stubborner, the more determined they will be to find you and prove that they can overcome anything. Think about it: who triumphs in the end? The stubborn ones who don't back

Test days...

     I have a massive, massive Russian test today. Unfortunately, no matter what sort of test, trial, interview, or whatever I am facing, I only have one method of dealing with it:

A week before...                                                 The night before...                                          The entire day of...

   
Fortunately, about 99% of the time, I end up with this result:

Pickup Lines 2

     One for the guys:

     On a slightly related note, the weather is definitely starting to cool off out here in Colorado. Consequently, I'm hearing one of two things around campus:

Pickup Lines and Responses 1

     So for some reason, there have been a bunch of bad pickup lines and responses to them floating around in the back of my head for a while. Having nothing better to do, I decided to sit down and start getting them out. I don't know how frequent they will be, but here you go:

Confidence

     As I was sitting down today for my usual battle of wits against various homeworks and suchlike, I reflected briefly on my confidence in myself. Overall, I'd say I'm a fairly self-assured person, hopefully without tipping the scales too far and becoming an egotistical jerk. Most of my teachers assure me that I am making progress, and am a pretty good student. Moreover, I have a pretty high GPA (not that that's always an entirely accurate judge of progress, but it does help now and then), and do decently on tests, quizzes and papers presented to me. Thus I can safely say that, on a graph of confidence in my skills over time, most outsiders' opinion of me would be as below:

Fifty!

No no, fifty posts, not I'm fifty years old! Time flies, but thankfully not that fast.

     So I'd hoped that the fiftieth post for the blog would be a little more razzmatazz, as it were, but circumstances have come to pass to prevent that from happening. This past week was quite horrendously busy, and I was not able to get any drawing or writing done. Yesterday was my first day on the Concession Runner job, and it turned out to be a whopping 14-hour day. Suffice to day, I was not a happy camper. Getting up before the sun, driving to work in the dark, then watching the sun go down and the moon come up while you are STILL at work is no-one's idea of a good time. At least, no-one sane.

     I'm not saying it was all bad either, no no. I met some great people, enough to overshadow the awful people I met, and learned what I need to do better for the next time, so that hopefully I don't spend

Attitude

Would you believe it? Some people just think the world should be handed to them on a silver platter!

     So I was sitting around the house tonight, in that special state of bored where you have plenty to do, but don't really feel like doing any of it. I could keep working on my sewing project... or my weaving project... or keep knitting that scarf that I promised to my mom a couple years ago... or cook or clean or watch a movie or tv show or study for school, or any of a million things that I could do, but none of them really sparked my interest.

     One thing, however, that has always been an interest of mine is being part of something bigger than

Filler

Not feeling particularly anything today, so here's an old sketch I redid.

For some bizarre reason, my little sister and I were discussing hair one day, and the idea came up that perhaps individual hairs are held in place because the roots are actually hands. Each hand has to stay tightly clenched to stay in place within the pore; if it relaxes at all, it loses it's grip and the hair falls out. This would explain why some people's hair grows longer than others': their little hands are stronger and can hold on longer.

Note that I'm still not a particularly talented artist, but I feel the eye came out pretty appropriately worried. Goodness knows I'd be worried if thousands of little fists were clenched in my skin, how about you?

The ugly side of losing weight

     In today's body-obsessed society, it seems like everyone is concerned with losing weight and being thin. Fortunately, for a lot of sensible people, it's not a big thing- just that little "society voice" in the back of their head, reminding them that really, they shouldn't have that extra brownie for dessert. As long as that never gets out of hand, I think that's probably a good place to be. You can enjoy yourself and your food without guilting yourself or being overly concerned about having obsessions. Except tacos. Tacos are ok to obsess about.
     Anyway! For some reason, I've been losing weight this year. I don't have an exact number, but as of two months ago, I'd dropped thirty pounds off of my winter weight, without even really trying. Considering that I'd already come down another thirty pounds from where I'd been two years ago, I feel pretty good. I will be keeping track of it, just in case I've done something silly like picked up a resident tapeworm or something

One of THOSE people...

     You know what I'm talking about. Those people in classrooms that will always raise their hands, open their mouths, and release a simple statement or question that leaves the entire rest of the class with their mouths hanging open at the absolutely inanity of what was just said. It doesn't matter if you're in a general education class or an elite upper-division specialty class, there is always one of those.

    At first, the teacher tries to be nice. After all, it's entirely possible that no one in the class knows what Newton's Law of Gravity is about, or that 50 people who made it into college are unclear on the concept of what a noun really is. So the first couple days, possibly even weeks, you get to sit back and watch this

Job and school starting

     With the onset of both school and a new job or two, the time I have available to devote to posting and pictures is going to be rather less than before. Does that mean you get no new rants, off-the-wall explanations or pictures? No! Of course not! They might just be more compact and less ramble-y in the future. Moreover, since I'm going to try to use some of the drawings for my Russian class, as well as for here, I'm debating making the writing in my little doodles be computer text instead of hand-drawn. That way, I can devote more space to the drawing, and not have to make two copies. And, finally, you guys might be able to actually read

Internal landscape

     As I'm sure you've noticed by now, most people in the world can be classified, more or less, into the categories of "neat" or "messy". Naturally, there are gradations within these categories, but in general, people have a tendency to lean towards one side or the other. I tend to fall on the neat side; I like to keep my house in fairly good order, because if I don't, I end up misplacing things and not finding them for a few days, weeks, or years.
     What I find interesting is that, many times, I will let things slide a little bit until something inside me says, "No, no more slacking, it's time to do something about this situation!" And it's not just that way about cleaning either. I'm sure everyone can think of a time where they saw something start to get a little off-kilter, and

Too many cooks

     I recently announced to a friend that I am the queen of analogies (pictures coming soon). With that in mind, I'd like to talk a bit about relationships. Yes, I know that was terrible, but I am not the segue queen, so bear with. I didn't date in high school, which I thought was a fabulous idea at the time, I suspect, however, that combining that with my first relationship being eight years long and rather negative, I missed out on some rather formative experiences in life. 

     One of the things I am horrifically bad at is knowing when to end things. I am horrible about giving people not just second and third chances, but even 156th and 398th chances, all the while quietly sinking into the quagmire of my self-contempt and their abuse. Terrible, I know, but it stems from wanting to believe the best

Delayed

There will be a new story here eventually, I promise. Today, however, has been given over to utter relaxation, lack of worry, and eating whatever I want. Moreover, having been a lazy butt all day, I am now going to go on a walk for some fresh air and exercise. Everyone needs a day off, even when they're unemployed (a state I intend to change soon, so better get that relaxing in!). Cheers!

Bad amazement

    It is entirely possible that I had an unusual upbringing. I have come to realize, over the years, that not everyone's family would allow you to get up from the dinner table for only two things: to go to the bathroom, and to check the dictionary. Not everyone's family encouraged reading the classics at the age of 8. It is not common for families to have arguments of the etymology of words on a regular basis. Add to this the fact that I went to school for four years in a school system that was positively rigorous about spelling and grammar, and you get an idea of why my background might be slightly unusual when it comes to words.
    Regardless of these factors, however, one would still hope that the general public had managed to pick up enough basic usage of the English language to prevent me from having a permanent bruise from banging my

Cranky day

   Today is one of those days. Not necessarily a day where nothing goes right, but rather a day where nothing feels right. You wake up in a grumpy mood, and just unconsciously decide to be contrary. Nothing is right, you don't want to do anything, everything is just slightly off. Not enough to anger, just enough to miff. Or possibly tick. Definitely something that ends with "you off".
    My day started with poor sleep and crummy dreams. In them, someone I know very well was being a jerk, and, despite there being no possible way it was their fault, I still woke up feeling very put out with them.

A more serious note.

     Yesterday, for the first time in my life, I quite simply told someone that I did not want to pursue the possibility of re-opening a friendship. As simple as it seems, this was quite possibly one of the hardest thing I'd done in my life. I don't like hurting people, so I usually end up hanging around until things reach absolute breaking point, and I just walk away from it all. In this case, however, I felt it best to step up and just be honest.
    Brief background: I grew up as a military brat, so I never really had to deal with having people around who don't like how I grow and change. Every three years, there was a new batch of people, a chance to explore new things, and grow into a new person. While this does wonders for one's sense of adventure and willingness to accept different ideals, it leaves one slightly gimped in the area of how to deal with change-

Sloths etc.

     Let us consider, for a moment, the sloth. The motivation to do so will be revealed later, but for now: the sloth. A graceful creature that lives primarily in trees, with a top ground speed of 6.5 feet per minute (per wikipedia). Now imagine, for the purpose of this exercise, that some poor sloth had to have a limb amputated. Doesn't really matter which one, but luck handed this guy the short end of the stick, and now he's minus a limb. At 6.5 feet per minute, he can't exactly hop, or whatever an upside-down hop while hanging from a branch would be, because he can't move fast enough to grab the branch again before gravity presents its bill. This guy is in for some serious non-gracefulness while trying to move about in a world that is now hostile to general perambulation.

Name change... again...

An interesting fact to note, and one that is starting to become important in my life: The Social Security office has a limit on the number of cards they will issue you. You may only receive 3 within one year, or ten within your lifetime. Being as that I'm working on my fourth now, I need to watch out!

Almost a decade ago, I got my first name legally changed. As with (almost) all major life decisions, I took my time doing it to ensure I wouldn't regret it. After trying out different names to find one that fit me- a process that took over 2 years, actually- I insisted that everyone around me use the new name for a year or so, just to make sure it was the right one. I took my paperwork to the court, got my name changed, and went through all the usual processes: social security, driver's license, voter registration, and bills. At the time, it seemed a fairly easy process, probably because I lived in a town that had all of those offices at reasonable distances and locations.

Last year, I got married. Once again, I got my name changed, and had to go through the process of updating everyone else on the matter, but I had someone with me this time, and the waiting was easier. Also, the town into which I had moved had all the offices conveniently located close to each other again, so it was mostly easy drives out, medium wait times, and filing paperwork. There was a little bit of trouble with things like my passport (have you SEEN the prices for passports lately?!) and the fact that the court that had issued my carry

The temp job continues.

An opening note of caution: If you break into extravagant song and dance on a regular basis, perhaps slippers are not for you. Something, somewhere, is bound to get hit with a flying slipper.

Anyway! On to the main point!

The temp job that I've been at for what feels like a long time (but in actuality has only been the initial 3 weeks as well as this past one)... loves me. I'm not really sure I can say why, since the job is elementary at best, and tedious at worst. I am converting their filing system from one of papers stuffed into boxes in a warehouse and various people's offices to one online. As such, this requires that they give me papers, I sort them into year, name, category, vendor or whatever other criteria they desire, then scan them in. Thrilling, no?

As Eddie Izzard noted with grocery store clerks and their beeping (or non-beeping) scanners, the most excitement in my day comes when I put what appears to be a carefully de-stapled, de-paperclipped and generally loose collection of single pages into the scanner, and it decides it wants to scan them 10 at a time... or not at all. Then I get to take it all out, clear the jams, find where that particular file started, re-stack all the papers, and discover what went wrong. At first, I was very diligent in this job, however as I got through the HR department's paperwork and began on Accounting- most specifically, Accounts Payable, I began to run into something that baffled and seriously, seriously irritated me.

Reality and fantasy

When I was young, I knew I had pretty bad eyesight, but I did everything I could to get out of wearing glasses. Given that my last name starts with an A, I got lucky and was typically sitting in the front of the class, a fact that helped me cover up. I also got very good at reading the shapes of words, rather than letters themselves, a fact that still gets me into trouble now and then, especially with unusual names (example: it took me 10 years of reading the Oz books to realize the Gnome King's name was Ruggedo, not Rodrigo!). However, eventually I got caught- a teacher decided to sit the class by first names, not last, and my grades were terrible in that class until an optometrist caught me with one of those eye charts with lines instead of letters. I could tell that they were horizontal or vertical, but not where the single bar was, and failed horribly. (Also, by then, I had the letters chart memorized, but the lines one was new to me.)

Cycles

I have a bad tendency to need goals in my life. As a student, however, goals are pretty hard to come by when classes aren't in session, and while you can make random goals to get through, those don't last long around me. I made 'em, I can break 'em, because they're meaningless. And when I get to thinking like that, I fall into this pattern:



I know, I know, I'm still no artist, bear with. What makes this particular cycle a little more interesting is that I got the idea to draw this out, and that was enough to break me out. For now. It did what it was supposed to do, however, which is fill my time with something interesting. I started this at about 8pm, while staring, unmotivated, at my computer screen, and it is now 10pm.

I also, incidentally, have a desire to go Office Space on my scanner, as it decided it is smarter than I am, and I wanted only parts of that drawing scanned, rather than the whole thing. That alone took the better part of twenty minutes- trying to find what silly little setting in what drop-down was preventing me from getting the whole picture. In the end, I had to show details of the scan, and drag the selection of one small area to encompass the whole thing. It solved the problem, but also thought I wanted jpegs of the other little bits it particularly liked, so now I'm off to clean up my picture files before going to bed. Sorry for the mildly down tone of this post; blame it on a Monday and crummy scanner. Cheers!

Weather

I know I'm no artist, but here's my take on the recent weather patterns of Colorado.



Thanks, Colorado, thanks a lot. And if you intend to make beaches for yourself with all this rain... there's a good chance you'll do it, but I kind of like the rest of the US, I'd rather not have it all under water.

Update: For those of you who haven't' been there, it rains every afternoon in Hawaii. Unlike Colorado, it is usually a light rain rather than a deluge, however. I think Colorado got a little too enthusiastic.

I got a bike! (Part 2)

So I'd discovered this past month that parking near campus and walking could make for a very lengthy walk indeed, and this was without students moving back into said residential neighborhood, and the possibility of 2-6" of snow on the ground. Time to revise the plan a bit.

Being as that my college is in one of the most bike- and pedestrian-friendly cities in the US (or so I believe), I decided it was time to get a bike. Since new bikes these days start- for a cheap bike at a general store- at about $120, I decided to take my search to my old friend, Cragislist. If you don't use Craigslist, I highly, highly recommend it. Within a week, I had found a mountain bike (for snowy days on campus) for just $40. It wasn't particularly fancy, but it had the basics that I needed: two wheels, two pedals, steering and brake mechanisms and gears for going up and down hills. That's good enough for me.

I got a bike! (Part 1)

Yes, as the title explains, I have bought a bike- and that's a bicycle rather than a motorcycle this time. It is substantially cheaper that the motorcycle was, even without the whole crashing-on-the-first-drive-home thing. Anyhow! In case you don't know why I decided to do this, despite being about as athletic as a panda bear, read on. If you do know the story already, skip ahead to the next post where current events resume.

For the last two years, I have forked over $174.25 per semester for what I believed was the privilege of having a parking spot on campus, and even in the same zip code as my classes. True, it was typically on-the-street parking, I would have to drive in circles til someone pulled out or I decided yes I really could fit my Honda in that spot, and I had to walk uphill to campus just to then walk downhill to where my classes were, but still, it was fairly convenient parking. This past semester, however, taught me all I need to know about campus parking, and the process by which parking admin officials' hearts slowly turn into shriveled husks of coal rather than warm, loving flesh.

Wanting and having.

What is it about bad food that makes us want it so much? It's easy to point the finger at MSG (and believe me, I do) for making junk food so tasty, but i think there's a deeper issue here.

Since we are both currently unemployed/ out of school, my beau (I hate the word boyfriend, seriously...) and I spent the last two days together, just happy to hang out, talk, and do a little shopping. I know he's trying to do the low carb/ no carb thing, so I brought down sufficient eggs and bagels to see me through, and resigned myself to eating absolutely delicious, but bread-free meals. Don't get me wrong, I'm trying to cut down on "empty" carbs too- I now use wheat flour, whole grain crackers, and multi-grain bagels, and tried to cut superfluous sugar out of my daily diet as well, but I still have things stashed around the house should the craving hit too hard. After two days of having fruit for snacks, meat and fruit for dinner, the same plus rice for lunch, and my usual egg and bagel breakfast, however, I was seriously craving something.

On storytelling, dancing, and beds

Someone once asked me, having been subjected to probably far too many Lyssa stories, "Do you really have that many adventures in your life?!" I laughed and replied, "Probably not, but if you look at life that way, it's a lot more interesting, and you laugh a lot more!" To this day, I still believe that, which is why I'm writing these down- hopefully I can bring a chuckle to someone who needs it on a blah day. That and I'm sure many of you can relate to these stories.

That being said, on to the storytelling!

As a place to begin, I find it interesting that boring, ordinary days can be so wildly different from each other. Yesterday, after a late night performance on Friday, I wanted to do absolutely nothing, so that's what I did. My Saturday was spent sitting in front of the computer, emailing people, checking out new things, refreshing old

Update on interviewing

As mentioned in the previous post, I went out yesterday to a job interview for an IT position. "How hard could it be?", I figured, "After all, I've done IT before, it's just getting used to a new system." While I was right about that particular train of thought, I hadn't realized that my recent attempts at bettering myself had taken a toll on my ability to suck up and fit in.

Going by my usual habits, I got in to Boulder and parked about half an hour early for my interview. Unfortunately, it was incredibly hot, and the email sent to me had specified professional dress (something I intentionally own very little of), and I didn't want to hang around and get all sweaty. So I did the super-un-cool thing of arriving for an appointment more than 15 minutes in advance. The books that I'm reading at the moment are "Committed", a book that looks very chick-ish, and is about marriage, and "An Intro to Islam",

Working and descriptions

True to form, I have been too productive, and my temp job is over early. The deadline for completing everything was the end of the month, and I got it done with a week and a half to spare. Now, to some people, this is silly. They would argue that I have shot myself in the foot- after all, I could have moved more slowly, taken my time, and made bank for another week and a half. To me, though, this attitude is ridiculous. I was stuck in a windowless office, pulling staples out of papers and feeding them into a scanner for 8 hours a day, and when I ran out of papers, I got to pull more boxes of papers out of the warehouse, and sort them by year, vendor, and then date. Why would I want to prolong this? For money? I'll take my happiness, thank you.

So here I am now, out of a job 10 days early. I'm not terribly worried about this though, for two reasons. One is that, due to living off student loans, I have become very frugal, and have made enough in the 5 weeks that I did work to support myself for the entire summer. Not extravagantly, mind you, but enough to pay all my bills

Things I have learned today:

1. If you want me to go insane, put me in a menial office job with no mental stimulation or sunlight. I'll last 3 days then start losing it.
   
2. I am mildly dyslexic with numbers, and this comes out more strongly when I'm going insane.
   
3. Just because I'm good or efficient at something, doesn't mean I want to do it. Usually, I get efficient at it so it can be over with faster.
   
4. If you want something done prettily, don't ask me to do it. I'll do it the fastest way to get the most effective job done, but it won't be pretty. You want pretty, you pay me a lot more, give me sunlight, and let me move around a lot. Machine conditions result in machine work, and that includes using scissors

Just wow.

As you know, I've been trying to come to terms with the recent death of my older sister, a topic I'll get into later when I've sorted it all out, as well as returning to the workforce after an absence of two and a half years. It's not been the easiest of weeks, and I was rather looking forward to Friday and the long weekend that followed. When I woke up this morning, however, I had 2 messages on my phone from overnight (I mute my phone at night, as I cherish my sleep). One was from a friend who'd gotten the news of Suzanne rather late, and was expressing her sympathies. The other, however, is what this post is about...

The second one, from my ex, ran as follows:

"So... I was poking around the internet and saw your blog page. What I saw there I do not appreciate. Back in January you made a post reflecting on our relationship in which you dropped my name several time [sic] as

Random reflections

"Individuals aren't naturally paid-up members of the human race, except biologically. They need to be bounced around by the Brownian motion of society, which is a mechanism by which human beings constantly remind one another that they are... well... human beings." - Terry Pratchett

I'm realizing the importance of this, lately. When I was younger (and didn't date), I figured I could learn from other people's mistakes. While I do feel I learned a lot from watching my friends date, and break up, and do the same things again with someone else, I'm beginning to realize I missed out on a couple lessons.

So! Things I have learned lately:

1. I do not need to cherish my anger, and let it rule me. It was fine when I was a teenager, I'm past that now.
2. I do not need to doubt myself, second guess my choices, or look to anyone else to validate me. That being said, it is good to touch base with a good friend now and then, so they can tell you if you're being stupid.

Reflections on relationships

Been fairly quiet on the home blog-front lately, didn't figure anything was really worth posting, but I guess I was wrong. Dad has mentioned a couple times he was curious what I was thinking with the whole marriage thing (not in a bad way, mind you!), and I guess now that it's coming to a close, it's as good a time as any to reflect on it.

In short, when I met dude (now ex), we really seemed to have a lot in common. We agreed that relationships took work, life was worth living every moment of to its fullest, and there was no point in sitting on the side and letting it pass you by. He expressed interest in picking up Russian to help me out, and I admit, I'm a sucker for someone who's willing to play along with my love of languages. We went hiking with the puppy in Garden of the Gods, we would spend hours talking about things, even difficult topics like money, kids, the future, etc. I was very happy, and felt I'd really connected with someone.