language

Greetings all. I hope you all had a good weekend. I had a pretty good one. I was excited on Sunday when I realized the test I hadn't studied yet for was not, in fact, this Monday (today). It is actually next Monday. I can goof off for a whole nother week! I got most of my homework done over the weekend though. I have some drawings due tomorrow I have to work on tonight, but at least I started it. It should only take me a few hours tonight. It was such a lovely weekend.... I miss it already.

I was Silent Hill on Saturday with my man. I don't actually like scary movies, but I've played the game, and he wanted to see it. I tried to explain to him that a game is a totally different entity from a movie. I can pause a game when I get scared or turn it off or wait for daylight to play it. I can't turn off a movie in the theater when I get scared. (LibrarianVJ should not fall for the trick that it's an "adventure" movie. Don't let your man try to trick you with that one again!)

I've made a big decision over the weekend. I think I'm going to pursue a Bachelor of Arts degree instead of a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree. The upside is that I should be done in (I'm guessing) 5 quarters. The downside is that I have to take a foreign language. It'll be French since I took that in college. 4 quarters of a language. gag me. The Fine Arts would have taken a little over two years!

caught up & stressed out

Well I wrote my paper and for nearly 14 hours I have enjoyed the feeling of being all caught up. It is of course a temporary feeling because I am in classes today and am getting new homework assignments. C'est la vie. That's life.

I am feeling a bit stressed today about a second issue though. I'm not complaining, but I am stessing a bit. I love my current job. I work 20 hours a week doing cool things. I design logos, letterheads, signage and wall displays. awesome. And when I'm not busy at work, no one cares if I'm on the internet or checking my email. However, I need a second job for the summer... preferably an internship doing graphic design. My number one prority is to KEEP my current job because it's awesome. But I think I may have a solid line on an internship working in the graphic production department of a MAJOR publishing company. It would be a great opportunity if for no other reason than to have their heavy-hitter name written on my resume. BUT they are asking that I work 30-40 a week. I want this job, but not at the expense of my current one. I need to talk to my current boss today and see if he's willing to be flexible with my summer hours. If I can get him to cut my hours to 15 and let me work until 6pm, I think I swing both jobs. I'll talk with my boss when I go into work later today. I hope this goes well.

I'm getting a stress headache.

behind on my homework

I hate being in this situation. I have homeword due tomorrow that I haven't started yet. It's not a big, big assignment but it should take a few hours to do. I just want to go home after a day of work and classes and goof off. Is that too much to ask?! I should have done this stupid thing over the weekend. It's not stupid; I just wish I'd done it early.

organic is in fact a good idea

So for my pursuasive speech/paper, I have chosen to try to pursuade my audience to buy organic produce. (I'm not asking them to go whole hog on the organic thing. This is a baby step in the right direction.) I chose this topic because I didn't really know anything about the subject. I figured it would be interesting enough research, and if I could convince myself, maybe I'll be able to convice others.

I have to say that my research really has opened my eyes. I think I'm going to try to by more organic type stuff. Now due to the fact that money is in question, I won't be able to blindly shop at more expesive stores and such. Hopefully though I can try to start a little better. Over the last year, I've been embracing the idea of buying stuff with few chemicals whenever possible anyway. Let me give you an example: I like to buy pancake mix. You can get one that says "just add water," but it has a laundry list of ingredients you can't pronounce. OR for less money you can buy the box that has you add milk and an egg. It's has a much, much shorter list of those chemical words you can't pronounce. Who doesn't have one egg floating around the kitchen anyway.

In a pure coincidence, I also visited an area natural foods store. Some work friends asked if I'd like to make a smoothie run, and of course I said yes. Who can resist a good smoothie on a warm day? Not me. Well my friend took me to a nearby natural foods store, where I purchased an all organic smoothie. The store was very nice and had a "friendly" feeling. I'm thinking I'll check out the store this weekend for my grocery run. I'm sure it will be too expensive to get everything there, but I thought I'd make a small trip to check it out.

a lot on my plate

I am really looking forward to summer, but there is just so much I have to do in the mean time! First of all classes and homework are really cutting into my "me" time. Plus I have to make some appointments to meet with people. I need to get my major and class schedule finalized. Since I am creating my own degree, I need to decide what classes I want to take, which department I want to be associated with, plus I need 4 people to agree with my course of action. I've spoken with two advisors already.

My first decision is this. Do I want a B.F.A. or a B.A. Bachelor of Fine Arts or Bachelor of Arts. Sounds like the same thing, but it's not my friends. The B.F.A. will take 2 years and has to be mostly studio classes - all of my general stuff would be done though. Studios are a lot of work but more fun. Now the B.A. would be 1.5 years of classes. I could take almost anything I want, BUT I'd need 4 quarters of a language! It's been 10 years since I took a language. So here's the question: IS IT WORTH THE LANGUAGE TO BE DONE A QUARTER OR TWO EARLY? Let's all remember too that college language is a lot more advanced than my little high school experience. C's do get degrees though.... I don't know what to do....

PLUS, I've started my summer job search. I figure all the good jobs are taken early so I didn't want to wait. I will still be working 20 hours a week at my current job, but I want to pick up another 20 hours a week somewhere else. I've updated my resume, and I have a really solid lead on a part-time job/internship with McGraw Hill publishing. There's a career fair Next Wednesday that I'm hoping to get some more leads on, too.

that sick feeling & republicans

I skipped my persuasive writing class on Monday... Man, oh, man do I wish I'd skipped today's instead. At the end of the term, I'm going to have to give a persuasive speech to the class. Fine, I understand; it was on the syllabus. Today though, the t.a. had us get up and give impromptu speeches on general topics so we could get used to getting up in front of the class. WHAT! I hate that. I hate it, hate, hate, hate it. Not only did I have to get up in front of everyone, but I felt unprepared as well. I had to give a 1-2 minute persuasive speech on the topic of trying to get everyone in the room to "buckle up their seat belt every time they get in the car." The topic was fine enough. It could have been worse, I could have drawn persuade the class "to eat tofu" or "buy Nascar tickets." I just hate that sick feeling I get when I stand in front of people to give a speech. I tried to give myself a little pep talk, but I found my heart was just racing while I was up there. Before I began I took a deep breath and told myself to relax, but it didn't slow the chest pounding down any. Bleh. I hate giving speeches.

(To Paul: Let's try to watch what we say about democrats now. In case you forgot, I'm one. We may or may not be flaky, but at least we try to see the world from more than one perspective. I don't make comments about republicans hiding behind the shield of religion as they try to take away my civil liberties, now do I... No, I don't.)

Wow, my blog got controversial all of a sudden. Please know that I don't mean any offense to anyone. I usually keep my political feeling to myself unless provoked.

take a trip

I know it is safe to write this because my mom doesn't turn on her computer much any more. The odds are clearly in my favor that she'll never see this... Even if she did I practically said all this to her over the phone anyways...

She just frustrates me sometimes. I know I can be flaky, and I know exactly which parent gave me that quality. (I define flaky, as a adjective describing a person who has positive intentions with zero follow through, yet the zero follow through doesn't actually bug you that much because they are soo positive about it. Does that make sense?) She told me she was coming the weekend after my first week of classes to visit me. She never shows, and I get no phone call. Then this weekend she calls and asks if I'm coming to Easter. Well, I have a paper due the day after Easter so I know I will want the day to start/finish/whatever it. She sounds all disappointed like I let her down and tries to guilt me a little about it. Then she gets all excited and says she'll bring Easter to my house! (In type it's a little hard to express how excited this thought made her. Her voice went up in an epiphany type way....) I know she thought this would make it easy for me, but having an apartment full of guests for the day does not actually free up my day to write. In fact it would mean I'd be spending Saturday cleaning instead of writing too. So then her voice sounded all sad. Her disappoint was clear. I felt like I let her down or something. Mom's are great at guilt trips, man.

weekend update

Why is it that as soon as I have homework I really don't want to do, I start thinking about all the household chores I should be doing? At least the house gets a little cleaner on a Saturday afternoon... No progress on the homework though. My goal is not to be doing it at midnight on Sunday...

are you tired too?

As much as I'm loving daylight savings time. I feel so tired this week. I'm going to bed earlier and earlier. I got a solid 8 hours last night and feel a little druggy today. Of course I just got out of the most boring class ever. That could have something to do with it I suppose. At least I got out early so I could update this blog and write some email. So it could be worse. Truly though it can always get worse.

After work tonight I am going to go to the campus library. I need to figure out how to find books and journal articles for my persuasive paper due in two weeks. I'm just going to go and fall on the mercy of the librarian at the information desk. I haven't had a research paper since I was a freshman. And I think we all know how long ago that was for me. If I have to I'll ask Librarianvj, but I want to at least TRY to get the information on my own first.

mining for gold

OH, my GOD! I'm sitting in my photoshop class and this guy across from me can't get his finger out of his nose. He's been mining for gold the whole class! Oh, he's trying to be subtle, but it's so obvious he's picking! I am so grossed out right now. You'd think by this time he'd either find what he's looking for or give up!

nice breezes and black thumbs

I love this time of year! I love the buds on the trees. Tulip are my favorite flowers and should be making their appearance soon. AND I love changing the clocks! While I'm certainly not a fan of losing an hour of sleep, I love the longer, sunshiny days. It just seems like you have more time to do things and don't feel so trapped in the house. Running an errand at 7pm in the winter is a chore, but in the summer it's no big deal. I love opening the windows and letting fresh air in the house. (Brian who has allergic phobias about spring wants all the windows shut so this makes for many disagreements in our house. I open windows and he walks around shutting them so them I have to open them again. It's a vicious cycle, really.)

I got some plants from Lowe's, I'm going to try not to kill. I have about a 50% success rate with new plants so keep your fingers crossed for me. I bought some different varieties so I hope they are hearty enough to survive living at my house.

I'm going to go now. I plan to do all my homework during class and I need to set up so my prof doesn't get suspicious...