Wednesday, December 22, 2010

First Non-School Related Blog, a.k.a "I don't want to get robbed at Target"

Hello Readers!  (I'm making a HUGE assumption with that plural, lol.)

Today I am overwhelmed with the urge to write, and I'm pretty sure it is completely influenced by hormones.  As per usual with anything that I write, I will look back on this post in a few days and think, "silence is golden, I shouldn't have said that...that makes me seem [dumb, impulsive, offensive, etc.]."  Yet at this moment, I am not deterred.

Today is Wednesday and Christmas will occur on this coming Saturday.  I intended to go to Target today to find something for my husband.  He has gotten me a few things, but I have gotten nothing for him.  He fully expects to get nothing, and I would like to defy his expectations, but there are a few problems that will forseeably prevent me from accomplishing my goal, and that is what I will discuss in this blog post.  These problems are as follows:

1.  I slept until noon.
You may be confused as to how this is a problem.  Allow me to explain.  During my early teen years, I developed a taste for extreme sleep.  This continued into my twenties and only recently have I become able to cope with only seven to eight hours of sleep.  While still living with my parents, if I chose to sleep until noon, I did so knowing that I would be plagued with mother-induced guilt for the rest of the day.  "You're so lazy," she would tell me.  "Why don't you get up earlier and be more productive?"  To give her what-for, I would wake up at a reasonable hour the following day, say nine a.m., and spend the day being even less productive than the previous day by watching copious amounts of television and refusing to shower or brush my teeth.  Clearly, I thought, this will show my mother that the amount of sleep gotten each session or the hour of awakening has nothing to do with the amount of production achieved in a day.  In reality, this did not work and my mother still saw me as very lazy.  So, to this day, if I sleep in later than I intend to, I feel terrible about myself for the rest of the day and attempt to achieve nothing at all.  Instead I am content to wallow in my guilt and think about how I am doing my teeth a major disservice by allowing acid-producing bacteria to hang out and destroy their enamel.  Thanks Mom!

2.  It is gross outside.
Yesterday was the first day of winter and the highest temperature I saw displayed on my car's panel was 79 degrees.  Seriously???  A cold front is expected Friday night, but until then, it will be warm and disgustingly humid.  Right now, as I sit indoors, I feel as though I just showered and did not dry myself well.  There is a film of moisture on my skin.  I can feel it in my hair and even in my lungs.  It is gross.  There is no better word to describe it, and if the grossness is this evident inside of my climate-controlled home, I shudder to think of what it is like outside.  So I won't be going out.

3.  People are getting robbed at Target.
It is Christmas time, and lots of people are out shopping.  Actually, this reason is a combination of a few things, the most important being that people are getting robbed at Target.  There is also the road and in-store traffic to consider.  If I were to venture out, I imagine my trip going something like this:  I shower and put on makeup.  As soon as I walk outside, all of my makeup melts off of my face and my hair suddenly feels like I washed it with honey and didn't rinse well (see #2).  I get in my car and head to Target, narrowly escaping several accidents in which people that don't normally drive much, but have to get out and get gifts, drift into my lane and force me into oncoming traffic, pull out in front of me and make me rear end them, or just plow directly into my car because they aren't paying attention, jamming to Christmas music, messing with children, etc.  By the time I get to Target, I have a white knuckle grip on the steering wheel and I refuse to go over 45 mph at all.  I park 4 miles away from the store in the only available parking space, which is between two other poorly parked cars that are sure to scrape or slam into mine as they back out while I am shopping.  I hike into the store and find some jogging pants for my sweet husband.  Two miles in to my hike back to the car, I am robbed by a man with a knife or a gun, and this causes me to release bladder and bowels to defend myself.  This, I think, is really smart because while I may be stripped of my money and my jogging pants, I am pretty sure no one wants to rape or kidnap and girl covered in pee and crap.  I call the police and they take my statement and description of the attacker.  They seem unenthused about catching this person, and I am sure it is only because they are certainly overwhelmed with so many outside of Target robberies this week.  I drive my scraped up car home, now daring that woman in the minivan to pull  out in front of me or that granny to drift over into my lane.  Flash forward to Saturday:  I open my gifts, with which I am quite pleased, and my husband opens his jogging pants.  He feigns delight, but he will always remember the day that his poor, simple wife got him that awful present for Christmas.  It will be that moment that finally brings about his decision to divorce me and find someone that is truly deserving of his awesomeness.  Flash forward a few years later:  I live in a box on the side of the highway and I spend my days yelling at traffic.  I still sleep until noon.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why I am not going to Target today.

Wednesday, December 15, 2010

Hello Unit 10, So Nice To See You!

 What advice would you now give to someone writing his/her first scientific paper?

Good question.  Most importantly, I would say don't overthink it, keep your research organized, and don't be afraid...it's just writing.
         What areas do you feel you strengthened in the past 10 weeks?
I'm not sure, really.  I don't know that I've made any huge improvements. 
         What areas do you feel still need improvement in regards to writing?
In high school, mainly for standardized tests, we were taught how to write 5 paragraph essays, and I've noticed that it has been difficult for me to break away from that mold.  Professor Barb suggested on my final paper that I could have made another paragraph about the opposing view.  I did consider this, but as it didn't fit into the 5 paragraph mold, I didn't do it and it cost me points.  I need to remember that not everything has to be a 5 paragraph essay.
         Any final thoughts or statements to make before we wrap up?
This has been kind of fun, and I'm very glad that it is over now.  I wish that I could have attended seminar with Professor Barb and the rest of the class, but that day did not work with my schedule.  I enjoyed Professor Zang's seminars, though.  I think that I will continue to post to this blog, though the tone will probably change as I do, since I'm not necessarily posting for credit any longer.

Friday, December 10, 2010

Don't know what to talk about today.

I looked at the blog suggestions or whatever they are on the course page, but honestly, I'm kind of tired of talking about/thinking about my paper.  At the same time, I need to blog for credit but I cannot think of anything I want to write about at the moment.  I don't have to work this weekend, so I get to be one of those "it is Friday...woo hoo!" people that normally make me want to punch them in the jeans.  Mostly, I am pretty excited about the weekend.  I do have quite a bit of school-related work to do, though.  Oh, and I just found out that I didn't make the score required to skip other assignments and seminar on the prequiz for my A&P II class.  That's a bummer.  This is the first time that I haven't scored high enough, excluding that one time that I took the dang quiz and it never reported (or I guess, saved) my score.  I am really curious to see what the correct answers were because I remember being really unsure on a couple of questions, but not as many as I missed.  Sure, it is possible that I did get them wrong, but each week the instructor posts something about how a question or two on the prequiz were invalid for some reason.  Of course, we don't hear about this until the unit is over...I'm really looking forward to the course/instructor review for that class.  I will have a lot to say about it in general, not much of it very good or nice.  Not for this class, though.  This class has been great.

Wednesday, December 1, 2010

Winding Down the Term!!

Today begins week 8 of this term and I couldn't be happier!  This term has been especially difficult for me, with taking A&P II along with this Comp II class.  There has been a lot of work to do every week and I will admit that I haven't done my best this time around.  I let easy points slip away by posting late or incompletely to discussion boards.  My only excuse for this is that I just didn't want to do it when I need to.  Tomorrow I will be working on finalizng my paper.  I ended up really pleased with my first draft and I got some good feedback on where I could improve the paper from my classmates and teacher.  Right now I don't think that creating the final draft will be that hard, but once I'm knee-deep into it tomorrow, I will probably change my tune.