Blog 70

For the students of next quarter, I urge you to stay on top of your assignments. The grading is straightforward and the amount of assignments mean that loosing easy points can hurt your grade. First and foremost, do all of your blogs. It’s extremely difficult to sit down every night and do them, especially on the weekends. This is what I struggled with most. Instead, it helps to sit down and work ahead when you can.

            You write the majority of your papers through the blogging process, and when I sat down to write the actually draft, I found it was easy when I had completed the blogs on the subjects and difficult when I didn’t.  

            The theme of my section was science fiction. I came into the class loving it and the best part of it was watching primary sources and using them as evidence for the Analytical Research Paper. I urge you to appreciate that you get to watch television in place of reading books. It takes an hour an night, yet reading would usually require more than this, so don’t take it for granted.

            I came into the class with writing skills geared towards my major, Biology. I could write scientific responses and lab reports but struggled with properly formatted and grammatically correct English writing. During the course of the class, the tools were presented to me to get better at writing in general. You’ll write a lot, and this can be annoying if you don’t enjoy it, but it really does make writing easier and more efficient.

Blog 69

For all intensive purposes, this is my last blog! I wish that I would’ve had time to do them all by the deadlines, but that’s what extra credit it for, right? The horrible thing, I can’t think of anything to blog about.

Right now, I’m sitting in my living room, Biology session completed, food cooked and eaten, and siblings on the sofa behind me. They’re watching Nickelodeon, a show that I’ve just been informed in called Victorious. It lacks dimension. I miss the shows of the nineties; I feel like they held more entertainment value and had generally more substantial values.

My friends and I loved Hey, Arnold!, Courage the Cowardly Dog, The Wild Thorn berries, and others. My cousin is obsessed with Adventure Time, while I miss the Smurfs. My favorite was Rocky and Bullwinkle, a throwback to the times when we were still terrified of the Soviets and patriotic propaganda came to us in the form of cartoons. The villains speak Russian and the good guys always fight them on some sort of principle.

I also appreciate Disney movies, the animated kind that were pieces of art and didn’t subscribe to the new Pixar 3-D junk. Don’t get me wrong, early Pixar drew me in, but I miss the good old days of simple drawings that were animated to captivate us. Every screen shot in Bambi is a painting, and each one of those movies had soul.

The good news is that the oldies are coming out on DVD, so I can choose to be old-fashioned if I wish. 

Blog 68

My boyfriend and I have the oddest conversations:

A: “Jewthyphro ~ An extremely [academically oriented] or [booksmart] Jew.

Origins ~ It is a malapropism of "[Euthyphro]", a friend of Socrates' who studied at the [Lyceum] and is generally portrayed as a scholarly figure in keeping with his status in the work as a contemporary and friend of [Socrates]. He claims to have a very broad and deep knowledge of all things pious and impious; which in the specific context means "all things religious and nonreligious". He speaks with Socrates in the first section of Plato's "[The Last Days of Socrates]"

B: * Ostentatiously [Jewish] Friend * ~ So I was reading this book the other day; Fyodor Dostoevsky; Crime and Punishment, have you ever read it? No? Ok, well it's interesting, it really displays the feelings of alienation and stultifyingly ineffective governing in Russia at the time; and at the same time that it serves as excellent and startlingly accurate political commentary, it's also an astonishingly insightful work on how the conscience of man acts on him. You see the real punishment isn't what the government deals him, the real punishment is dealt to Raskolnikov by himself as he agonizes and suffers endless pain over his own guilt.

* Incredulous * ~ . . . Alright Jewthyphro, go talk to Socrates for awhile, maybe he'll understand what you're talking about.”

A: What is the point of this; do you need it for a project or something?

B: No, it just kind of sprung out of nowhere.

A: … <3 

Blog 67: Females Should Really Read this One

               I’ve decided to dedicate an entire blog to my Easton visit on Saturday. My boyfriend was meeting up with some old friends at Easton to throw a surprise party for his friend at his dad’s pub there. His junky car was being shady, so I decided to drive him there as it’s only 30 minutes from his home and I needed to get some shopping done.

               We got there early and parked, moseyed around the mall until he needed to meet up with his friends. We parted ways until the dinner was over, which was a HUGE mistake. I walked around the mall, visiting several stores in search of a birthday gift for his 6 year old sister. I made a purchase, bought a pretzel and decided to kill some time in Barnes and Nobles. Whilst there, I looked for Sarah Palin’s new book, more to flip through it than to buy it.

               A man followed me into a corner of the store, I had been keeping an eye on him and assumed that he was looking for a book. He turned and looked at me, then asked me if I was there alone. Shocked, I said no, pushed past him and left the store. He followed me out. I sat next to a family at a table by the crowded fountain plaza, not looking back. They were confused and surprised but responded to my prompts about the weather. After an hour or so, they left and I had no idea if the guy could still see me or even if he was following me. I sat in the crowd for another two hours, knowing that I was in a public place, but terrified to leave or go back to the store and inform them, to find a police officer. I was having a silent anxiety attack  and couldn’t function. Eventually, boyfriend’s party was over and I told him to come and get me. After he came, we rounded a corner and I changed my sweatshirt. He accompanied me through to my car, I took down my OSU parking pass from my visor and we got out of there. I took a convoluted way back to his house and was comfortable that no one followed us.

               I wasn’t able to explain what happened until after the fact, although he could tell something was wrong and did as I said. I wish I was able to think and take the measures necessary to get a police man, but there wasn’t any in sight and I was frozen with fear. I was having an anxiety attack and couldn’t function beyond the instinctual things that I did. After the fact, I don’t remember any identifying details about the guy.

               I’m glad that I was able to take the measures that I did to say safe. I attribute it to the paranoid teachings of my mercenary father from when I was little. He was always thinking of these sort of things and repeating them. Thinking back about what I did wrong, I don’t remember any other female in that whole mall that was alone. They were all travelling in groups, with friends or moms. I should’ve had someone go with me.

               The cautionary point: DO NOT GO TO THE MALL ALONE. There are evil people everywhere, and safety is as important in the suburban mall as it is in a big city. 

               I never did get to preview that Sarah Palin book. 

Blog 66

               I’m procrastinating. I need to get in the shower and get on the road to go to this poster session ordeal. The problem isn’t laziness; it is how soft this blanket is and the half cup of coffee that I haven’t gotten a chance to finish.

                I feel the need to blog about my weekend, as it was eventful.

               Friday night, Julia and I met up and decided to have a girl’s night out. She loves Karate Coyote so we headed to Kobo for their concert. With her little sister in tow, we arrived and found out that it was a 21 and up event. Allie, her sister is 17. Somehow, Julie managed to talk the guy into letting us in. She didn’t flirt, she just reasoned with him and we ended up sitting by the bar and watching the opener with red Xs on both our hands to prevent us from purchasing alcohol. After a trip to the bathroom, I discovered (quite accidently) that the guy used a washable marker. We didn’t buy booze, but did laugh at the situation. The concert was great. We saw a bunch of hipsters.

               Afterwards, we went to a hookah lounge, something that I was very reluctant about. I’m and asthmatic, tried it once, didn’t inhale, and decided that I would never try it again. I don’t need anything junking up my lungs, and the atmospheric haze was enough to do so. It grossed me out.

               I got home at 3am and left home at 7am for work. I opened and closed the business day and then raided the company fridge for leftovers. I drove my boyfriend to Easton because his car has been shady, and stayed to shop. I spent yesterday doing chores and getting things done.  

Blog 65

This morning I woke up on time, got dressed, washed my face, put socks on, and then climbed back into bed and slept through all 3 of my lectures until 1pm. I just can’t shake this exhaustion, so I figured I’d be ohkay if I skipped a day of classes. Nothing is due, there are no quizzes, and my attendances are under check. Then I woke up and realized that five percent of my Biology grade is in the RPAC today from 4:30-6pm in the form of a poster session. This wouldn’t be much of an inconvenience if I lived on campus, but this means that I have to change out of my PJs and drive my tired body to campus.

After I knock that off my list, I plan on coming home and crawling back into my PJs. It’s just one of those days. There’s laundry to be done, and homework to be completed. I think I’ll make lasagna for the family when they get home and complete as much work on my project as I can.

Some days, I just want to be home, to lounge around in sweatpants, to set up camp in the living room and just be comfortable. I’m not at all a shut-in; there are often times that I don’t come home for a weekend and do all that I need to do get done by running about and getting errands done.

I guess that sometimes I just need to home and cocooned in my comforter. 

Blog 64

 I’m parked in front of my television and crying. (I decided to sit in front of the TV in a nest of blankets and knock out the rest of this Blog Project) It happens to me all of the time. I see a television program and something about it makes me well up. While I have been able to isolate this to moments when I am alone and it hasn’t become a problem that I can’t suppress while watching movies in public, it’s still fairly embarrassing to be sitting on the sofa at home watching a 16 and Pregnant and having your sister’s friends walk in and ask you why you’re blogging.

If you’ve read my blog on babies, you’ll understand that I cry whenever one of those irresponsible teens pops out a baby and finally realizes the gravity of what they’ve done.

The oddity to it is that in ‘real life’ I’m not an emotional person. I’m not a cold lump of stone, I just do not usually express what I’m feeling. I rarely ever sob unless I’m watching a TV show or movie. I don’t understand why.

For example, the show just changed to Tyra. I don’t watch this on a regular basis, and I don’t know much about it. Today’s talk-show topic is on things that people do around their children. There’s a crazy lady that thinks lounging around her kids naked all day is a teaching mechanism. It creeped me out and I got emotional and cried. Until it becomes a real issue, I’m going to embrace it as safe emotional release.