On Cinderella's Life Lessons

Now, I can go on and on in these blogs about the little things I've been doing this summer like playing video games, or knitting, or reading Harry Potter on the treadmill, or doing whatever else I fill my time up with these days, but it all boils down to me trying really really really hard to ignore the fact I'm no longer a teenager and that I have to do grown-up things. This task has been made much easier by the fact that I couldn't find a job anywhere near-by that didn't mind hiring a girl who has never used a cash register in her life for only three months, and that I decided not to take any summer classes (due to the fact I wanted to find a full-time job).

However, today I did have to do some grown-up things like accepting financial aid so I can go to school this year (they should really change the "accept all" button to "click here to add thousands of dollars to your already sizable debt!") and registering for tests I need to take to get into the teaching program at Western.

This got me thinking about a few things, mostly concerning becoming an adult. Well, at least in age anyway. With my Disney obsession, dressing up in costumes, playing with toys , and making up imaginary worlds to write about points something different. But my point is that it does seem like the reasons little kids want to be grown-ups aren't really good reasons at all. With every additional bit of freedom you get as an adult, you get a multiple amount of that of responsibility attached to it. It's like an equation. With F=freedoms and R=responsibilities F*10=OMG R?! Like, yay! I get to drive! But oh yeah, you get to deal with running errands, putting in gas, thinking about car insurance, and the odd car accident here and there. Or, yay! I get to go to college and live on my own! But, oh yeah, you have to come up with want you want to do with your life, deal with mounting debt and/or getting a job to pay for college, finding a place to live, and everything else that comes with college and living on your own.

Then again, there is one other thing I thought about. As a kid, it seems like we're bombarded with this notion of having dreams. Adults always ask little kids what they want to be when they grow up (and mostly you get answers like princesses or ballerinas. Or maybe those are the answers I got because I always asked the four-year-olds in the ballet class I helped with). Cinderella teaches us that a "dream is a wish your heart makes" and whatnot. However, what's interesting about becoming an adult is that those dreams can become goals. Since I've been a little kid, I've wanted to travel and explore the world, and live somewhere completely different for a while. Now that I'm older, I've got a plan in place and a goal I'm working towards to get that dream. So maybe we have to deal with paying bills and college loans, but to think back to that little girl and her dreams being able to tell her that as an adult you can make that happen? Well, maybe this grown-up thing isn't so bad after all.

On Cityscapes and Straightening Up

Hello again internet! I come to you anew, back from the great beyond! Or, you know, Bellingham. I left last Thursday to spend a few days with Chelsea, and then my family came up on Saturday so we could spend a few days in these house/cabin things on Mt.Baker. For some odd reason I straightened my hair twice during this trip, and I took a picture of the second time when I was at the house/cabin thing. So you get this odd myspace-esque picture of me taking a photo in a bathroom mirror XD (and don't ask me what I'm doing with my face because I do not know).

Thursday was mostly me getting to Bellingham, and then going out for Thai food once I got there. Although when we got back to her apartment, Chelsea and I were approached by these two somewhat shady guys who kept telling bad jokes and then tried to get us to buy magazines from them. In the parking lot. Because the intelligent thing to do with your credit card number is to give it to random guys in the parking lot. Of course Chelsea was no help whatsoever in trying to get away, so I had to tell this weird (but mostly true) story about how my Grandfather sells Kirby vacuum cleaners in Montana after they said something about how other salesmen sell crap like Kirby vacuums. Then we watched North and South which is ten kinds of awesome, and nine of them have to do with the fact Richard Armitage is gorgeous.

Friday we walked around Fairhaven which resulted in us painting pottery, and eating gelato, cupcakes, and gluten free pizza. At the pottery place I painted one of those tea-for-one sets with a cityscape in front of a sun set on the tea cup, the night sky on the tea pot, then the moon on the knob of the top of the pot. I'm pretty excited to see how it turned out, but since they said it wouldn't be ready until after I left Bellingham Chelsea said she would pick it up and bring it to me later.

When I was with my family I read a lot in between the family games, walking on easy forest trails by really pretty rivers, and trips to used bookstores in Bellingham. I brought two books with me, but I also ended up buying eight books (five of them were used!). Out of those ten books I read three of them (Will Grayson Will Grayson by John Green and David Levithan, City of Bones by Cassandra Clare, and Little Brother by Cory Doctorow).

As a side note I've also been trying to write more lately. For the past few nights I've just been writing whatever I feel like in this notebook. I've (poorly) translated random quotes into Japanese, wrote down my own thoughts about myself and life in general, and wrote random bits of stories I've been working on and bits of ones I hadn't thought of until I started writing it down in that notebook. It's been nice to just write again.

Also, I think I might start a craft blog. I created one here on blogger ages ago, and I thought it might be nice to chronicle the things I've been making (mostly crochet and my attempts to learn how to knit). I might post a link to that if I ever actually do it. As a parting gift, here's a crappy webcam photo of an elf I started today. I'm quite proud of the ears.

Thoughts on School and Summer

Well, here we are again. It's been... three months since I've posted last? Awesome.

In the past three months I've done a ridiculous number of things that I really should have blogged about while they happened but now I don't know where to start on any of it. I finished my first year of college, got an A in a class I thought I would barely get a B in, went on a few trips with friends, climbed through a forest of trees and fallen down logs, experienced more car trouble in the month of May than I have since I've started driving (although, it wasn't my car), learned to knit, turned 20...

See? Too many things. However, last year young adult author Maureen Johnson started this thing called BEDA (Blog Every Day in April), but for 2010 she's moved it to August. I didn't participate last year, but I have decided I'm going to do it this year so I'm sure I'll have a chance to catch up on some of these stories. Until then, know that in the past month I've really done nothing but play video games, knit, read, write, and watch Avatar:The Last Airbender.

To make up for lack of "interestingness" in this post, here's some pretty pictures of fireworks from the 4th of July:

New Home ^_^

As you can see, since you've made your way over here, my blog has a new home. And I gave it a new name :) So update your bookmarks and whatnot (if you had the old one bookmarked) because I'm going to be here for a while. Hopefully.

My weekend was fantastic :D On Fridays I'm done with classes at noon, and it was also really nice last Friday, so I was trying to figure out what I was going to do on a sunny Friday afternoon. What I ended up doing may surprise you (especially if you're aware of my dislike of pretty much all activities involving water). I went kayaking!! Apparently my university owns this part of the lake near my school and rents out kayaks and sail boats super cheap to students. So I rented a $3 kayak and went kayaking on the lake with Cali, Toby, and Jamie. And I really really really want to go again. We're hoping to go every Friday, although this Friday I'm not sure if I'll be able to. We'll see. I'm really excited for when it gets warmer and even sunnier. Yay for Spring ^_^

Then Saturday I went downtown for lunch with Ben and some Japanese exchange students, and then headed to the mall with Erika and Ben. I didn't really get anything I was hoping to get (aka sunglasses and leggings) but I did get random snacks, $1 potted plant kits, and a DVD copy of Anastasia. I'm probably going to kill these plans, but hopefully I won't :D I have plenty of seeds to keep trying, but I don't have much faith in the $1 seeds anyway. Saturday night was filled with hot chocolate, charades, and a nerd-tastic conversation that was mostly about Mac vs PC.

Sunday can be characterized by me drowning in homework and eating food when necessary. Today was similar, except it also involved going to class. I have a feeling the rest of the week is going to be identical to today, but maybe I can fit in some video game or crocheting time? Meh. Which reminds me, would anyone be interested in seeing stuff I'm crocheting?

Oh! And I filled out my census form today :D SUPER exciting! Here's a crappy web cam photo commemorating the occasion :D
Current Music: Delete You- ALL CAPS (which you should TOTALLY buy at dftba.com)
Currently reading: 100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez, and King Henry the IV, Part One by William Shakespeare

Soverignty is the Jesus squirrel* of the political world

The title of this post is something I wrote in my political science notes today.

Epic Win <^_^>

As a side note, why is it that wasabi is MOST AWESOME when you've put far too much on it and you feel like your head is about to explode?  I mean, it's awesome when you've put a good amount on your sushi and it gives it that crazy kick.  But it's definitely most awesome at face-melting levels.  Or maybe that's just me. We went out for sushi for dinner tonight, which is why I bring this up, but I always do this on my first piece of sushi. Still, yummmmmm.

Oh! And I made a blogspot.  Actually, I made another one. I have about three blogspot blogs because I like creating blogs and giving them random titles.  So we'll see if I actually move to one of those in the near future.  However, today is not that day.  Perhaps tomorrow.

*There is definitely a joke behind this title so I will explain.  On an average Sunday morning in Sunday school the teacher is doing a lesson on God's creatures and is trying to get the kids to guess what various animals are.  Attempting to get them to guess "squirrel" she describes a bushy tail, how it gathers nuts and hides them during the spring so it can eat during the winter, and other squirrel-worthy qualities.  However, none of the kids would say anything.  In fact, they all looked very confused and the teacher could not figure out why none of the students knew it was a squirrel. Finally, one little girl speaks up and says, "Well, I know the answer is Jesus**, but it sure sounds like a squirrel to me."

**Note for the note: for any non-Sunday school kids out there the answer is always Jesus.  If you ever go to any type of Bible study/Sunday school/church activity and they call on you, just say Jesus. 9 times out of 10 you'll be right.  And that 10th one you might be able to fudge it a bit to work anyway.

Sad stories of the death of kings

Yet again, my post title comes from the good ol' bard himself. Although, the last time I posted it was still winter quarter! How fast time goes by... Since I've last posted I finished up winter quarter (in which I got straight A's, YES!), went to New York City (on my own!), and started up a new quarter. Another Easter came and went, and I've played entirely way too many video games. I'm also considering moving my blog over to blogger. I had also considered doing BEDA (Blog Every Day in April). But since Maureen Johnson decided to move it to August, I think I will wait until August as well.

Mostly I'm posting as I don't really feel like diving into my political science reading quite yet, but I don't really have much to say. My classes are going well enough, and it hasn't been raining ALL day. I am getting a little sick of the raining-in-the-morning-but-then-getting-really-nice-in-the-afternoon thing. Can I have spring now please?

Then again, I suppose I could tell the story Eddie the Eggroll and his traumatic plunge to death, but I fell like this is beyond my narrative powers. Dangling inside jokes, however, is apparently not.

Oh! If you're interested, here's my Spring Quarter 2010 schedule :) HNRS 121 is political science, and ENG 214 is introduction to Shakespeare(yay!) (which, by the way, go until 2). AUAP is the classroom volunteering I do with the Japanese exchange student program here at Western.

	Monday	Tuesday	Wednes	Thursday	Friday
9	HNRS 106	HNRS 106		HNRS 106	HNRS 106
10			AUAP	AUAP	AUAP
11	JAPN 203	JAPN 203	JAPN 203		JAPN 203
12	HNRS 121	ENG 214	HNRS 121	ENG 214
1
2

Let him smell his way to Dover

I've spent the past few days trying to read as much King Lear as possible (which is where the title is taken from),  catching up on sleep, going to class, and attempting to get as much work done as possible (I know, fascinating).  However, the last item on the list really hasn't happened today.  I got out of class around 11:30 (Japanese is my last class of the day, and although it's supposed to end around noon we get out early a lot) and ended up doing nothing for a really long time.  I exercised for a bit, read some blogs on the internet, and watched the episode of Chuck that aired last Monday.  I later met with an adviser for one of the majors I'm planning on doing though, so I suppose that was productive.

As a side note, I think I freak out advisers a little.  I usually go in with a specific plan, and one or two very specific questions that I couldn't figure out myself.  They always seem a little confused as to why I'm not still asking them questions that require long, nebulous answers.

Anyway, after that Jamie asked if I wanted to go to the arboretum. Of course it was raining (I think I've only ever gone hiking in the arboretum when it was raining) but it was still fun.  I mean, if you consider trying to climb up steep muddy hills fun (which I do).  When we got to the watchtower we had an interesting philosophical discussion.  I love that tall buildings.  There is something about a tall building that looks over a city or a town that lends itself to a discussion about life and the way things are and could be.

We talked about the amount of people we meet, and the people we'll never meet.  I mean, there's so many people on the planet, but how many people will we really encounter?  How many people will we call acquaintances?  Friends?  Best friends?  Lovers?  What is it about the people that come into our lives that make us spend our time on them?  The psychology class I took last year would tell you it's about proximity and similarity, which I suppose is part of it.  Would I be friends with some of these people if I didn't live in the dorm I do, or took the classes I do?  Maybe, but maybe not.  While this is true, I feel like there's another aspect to it all.  Maybe it's part of my own personal philosophy on life that everything happens for a reason.

Anyway, I thought it was an interesting discussion and I thought I would share it with you (whoever is reading this).  Anyone have any thoughts on the matter?  Leave a comment if you do ^_^ Speaking of comments, I think if you're reading this you should leave questions.  I would like to blog more, but I really don't know what to blog about.  It can be like formspring!  Really, it'll be fun :D

Oh! As a side note, my roommate has a blog now :D  I need to ask her for the link, and I've also promised to assist her in the aesthetics, but I think it's fun she got one.