More good thoughts please...

A good friend of mine found out this weekend that her step-daughter was murdered in southern Mexico while living there fighting for a cause that she believed in. Please send your good thoughts to the E's. I'm still a little upset right now. I didn't know Sally personally but what I knew of her she was a very intelligent, bold, loving person. She fought for what was right in all things. Here's the link carried by the AP be warned that there is a scary looking picture of the man. This link is a blogspot writer who has a more in depth story of Sally as well as a picture of Sally in Mexico.

Another A, John Frusciante, and A Random Question...

A full week after taking the first test my psych. teacher got our grades back to us. The grades are curved so I ended up with a high A instead of a low B. Woo Hoo!!! So far so good on the school front. Dirty supports my need of plenty of time to study and I'm working on introducing the home chores in with the school stuff. It's nice getting staight As though and it's hard to integrate the daily chores.

In other news I'm completely obsessed with John Frusicante. I don't have a website for him because his doesn't seem to be working right now. So there's a video from youtube where I've added about 100 videos of John or the RHCP because I love them too. When I got to go to a RHCP show a few years ago I was mainly going to see John. I believe he is one of the best guitar players of "my" generation.

That my is in quotation marks because well he's 9 years older than me and therefore more part of my sister's generation than my own. I've gotten confused with the lettering of the generations but I think I am technically a Y and yet I think I identify with the Xs even though I was more of a tween (that wasn't a vocabulary term when I was a "tween").

Anyway, I have another test tomorrow. I'm not too worried about it but I still need to reread my study guide a few more times and make sure I know the differences between conlict, functionalist, and interactionist perspectives.

Random question...when people say they read Nietzsche do they actually do it like, "I was bored so I pulled out my copy of Nietzsche to read."? Some of my friends think that I read "heavy content" books because I read classics like Tolstoy and Austen.

Good Thoughts...

Today I wore a necklace in honor of my good friend and her flight to freedom. I don't normally wear many necklaces, but I'm going to more often when I can. Send your good thoughts/prayers/whatever you call them her way. :D

First A...

I had my first test today. I was most worried about this test because the professor has such a low pass rate for his tests. I love the age of the scantron!!! I took my test between 11-12:20 this morning and even with the three 2-3 part essay questions my professor was able to have my grades posted by 2 p.m. when I got home and immediately got online to see if my grade was posted. That was never the case the first time I went to college. Scantrons came about when I was in jr. high and were more prevalent in high school. Some of my college professors used them but mainly they used essays (yikes!!!).

I felt good about the test after I finished it. I couldn't really imagine not doing well and getting a bad grade. I felt like the answers were coming to me and, even though I was worried about jinxing myself, I thought most of my answers were right. I scored 91 out of 100!!!! Not only that but this professor gives supplemental quizzes. If you miss them you can't get the points and it isn't counted against you, but if you take them you get 2 points for every correct answer. The quizzes are his answer to extra credit. I took the quiz and got 14 points which count toward my test points. So I end up with over 100% for the class. I was so excited I did Gob's chicken dance.

Buckled down...

I did much better this week keeping on task and studying. I still had to take breaks every now and then but tried to take breaks from types of studying instead of breaks from studying all together. If I got sick of reading I would write out main points that I needed to study. If I got sick of writing out the study guides I would go online and do practice tests. I felt like I was pretty productive school-wise this week.

I did go out last night with a few of my good friends. We went to The Royale. I was hoping to try one of their burgers because they are allegedly one of the best in St. Louis, but while making dinner for the boys I ended up eating a bowl of Thai Chicken Curry Soup. It's a soup that I tried once and love. I need to find a recipe because they don't always have it at Schnucks. Anyway, after eating the soup I wasn't really hungry. I did have one of their drinks called The Subcontinental. It is the first drink on this list. When I ordered it I thought is sounded refreshing because of the fresh cucumber juice. Indeed it was and apparently that is how it is described on the above list.

I had a lot of fun visiting with some of my mom friends who I hadn't seen for a few weeks. It's been hard not seeing them a few times every week. We were all just catching up. I was hoping for some effective "peer workshopping". My friends came through and RE ended up editing my essay (yes I'm kind of a dork and brought a copy of it with me) right there at the table while we ate our shared appetizers and sipped our drinks.

Around 10 p.m. they have a DJ come in and the table that we were sitting at, which if you look at The Royale website above you can see it all the way in the back corner, is where the DJ sets up. So we moved to a different table and stayed until about 11:15 p.m. when AR said she had to go. RE was her ride and DR is pregnant and not drinking. So that was the end of the night. Dirty was surprised when I was home by 11:30 p.m. Apparently this is much earlier than my typical staying out time, but AR and RE both have young kids and AR also has a cold. It was a really nice time and unfortunately I'm kind of paying for it today. I haven't had much of an appetite and I just feel really tired.

My essay which is due this week is pretty much finished except for a few things I need to change. I have two tests this week. I'm not too worried about my Psychology test but am extremely worried about my Biology test. I really have to work on my Biology studying from now until Thursday. I have to go. Dirty has chosen Waterworld for movie night. UGH!!!

Editing Day in class...

I guess that a lot of my "peers" felt that they had been screwed by their peer workshop groups as well. In the time that we were given today our instructor, the lovely Mrs. W, took as many of us seperately out into the hall and looked at our papers scanning them and giving us suggestions. My paper didn't have a whole lot that she commented on negatively. There was one paragraph that she said could use more of my thoughts and feelings, but that was out of five pages. The parts that I was questioning keeping in she validated and said that they fit into the story and helped support some other part. So there isn't too much in the way of revision that I have to do which is nice. I need to add a bit to one paragraph and clean some places up a little but other than that I didn't have many foreign marks on my paper. YAY!!!!

So I totally got screwed...

Yesterday in my Comp. II course we had peer workshops to get feedback on our recall essay outlines. I was with two other girls. One of the girls is from Africa. Her outline wasn't really an outline but more each point that she was going to hit on. I could tell the direction of her story and see that it was personal. Just the outline proved to be a very moving story about how coming to America has been a diverse learning experience, everything she overcame just to get her driver's license, and the events that led up to getting her license. The only problem is that she's pretty shy and not confident about her English vocabulary. So she did give some feedback but it wasn't to my outline.

The other girl came with a half-sheet typed outline of what is supposed to be a five page paper. Her subject was going to college, she said, because at this point in her life it's the only thing she's really learned from. I read what she wanted the content of her paper to be and it was, basically (not easy to do with the minimal amount of effort she put into it), going to college is hard. The reasons she gave for it being hard was not knowing where her classes were, not knowing where the gym was, and not knowing where the bus stop was. Then her second grouping of information was that she learned a lot by going to college. Her reasons were that she took a campus tour, she learned where her classes were, she found out where the gym was, and she found the bus stop. Her conclusion...College isn't so hard and she's made friends. After reading this I looked up and she asked, "Do you think I have enough for a five page paper?" I said, "Um no?!?!? I think you're going to need to really expand on your experience." So then she asked, "Like what?" I asked,"Was this really the hardest part about going to college? What about enrolling, registering, figuring that whole process out? You didn't have any problems with that?" I spent 45 minutes basically writing an outline for her while the African girl and I brainstormed what she could write about and what she may have learned by going to college. AND I WAS WORRIED ABOUT TAKING COMP II WHEN I SERIOUSLY DOUBT THIS GIRL IS ACTUALLY LITERATE!!!!!!

At the end of the class, which my instructor had to leave early because of a meeting, I went up to her and asked if she could tell me where the writing lab is. I proceeded to tell her that I did not get ANY feedback from my group and that I spent most of the time we had writing an outline for one of my partners. She replied that she had overheard a lot of that and that I wouldn't have to work with these same people again. She said that one the things she like about community college is the diversity in the types of people that attend and one of the things that can be a problem about community college is the diversity in where the people are when the come to community college. She said that if, because of peer editing, I don't get enough feedback and she grades my paper and I don't do well that I can talk with her about it. She can help me edit at that point and I can revise and turn it in again. I still plan on going to the Student Success Center and talk to the folks in the Writing Lab and get a little help from them for my paper.

I decided to write about going to my 10 year class reunion. I've been writing all afternoon, haven't even gotten to the actual reunion in my paper and I'm already nearing the end of page 3. I'm guessing I'm going to be able to take a lot of the stuff out about certain persons that I came into contact at the actual reunion. Otherwise, I could probably end up with a novelette.

So I should be doing homework...

However the boys have way too much energy after eating dinner. Dirty is gone for the MS 150. He'll be home in a couple of hours. He raised $700 towards the fight against MS.

I've been home with the boys alone all weekend. I haven't gotten any homework done. Well that's not true. I've read maybe four paragraphs of psychology and partially finished brainstorming for my comp. II course recall essay. I'm starting to understand why parents/adults push high school graduates to finish college while they still have no kids. My house was a mess. I spent about an hour today catching up on some of the cleaning. The cat litter, for instance, was starting to knock people unconscious when they would walk through the door. We were losing minutes lying on the floor trying to regain our composure. The bathroom was my own personal shame when Dirty's friend, BB, came over before they left for Columbia and used the bathroom while Dirty packed up. The bathroom hadn't been touched all week and was smelly and splattered with toothpaste. It was pretty embarrassing. Then I go look at my friend's 365 day portrait project to find this. I was so grateful that she only took a picture of the shower curtain.

I've watched four movies this weekend. A local blogger turned me onto illegal tv show and movie sites. I watched Juno (loved it), Lars and the Real Girl (loved it), Dan in Real Life (loved it), and 27 Dresses (it was alright for a chick flick). Finding free entertainment was nice and slightly titillating since it was illegal. I've also been watching tv shows that way too. Not so helpful on the finishing homework front but old habits die hard.

I've learned some new tricks and hopefully when you click on the hyperlinks they will open in a new window. I was told that it's too much of a bother to hit the back button and blog savvy folks will just move onto something else. This way instead of moving the mouse up to the back button you can move it to the "X" close window button. I'm wondering now that I wrote that though if it has something to do with the differences between MACs and PCs. Feel free to let me know and I apologize if I've offended with my naivete.

I am having a real issue with needing pockets. Sometimes I wear pants or a jacket and can keep my cell phone in them or keys or whatever. But a lot of the time I wear skirts or don't feel like having the bulk in my pockets. I've decided after many months of consideration that I am going to become "the lady who always wears an apron in her house" lady. I like having the easy access pockets and the keeping the front of my clothes clean aspect would also be nice. My only problem is that my one and only apron is not cute. It's navy canvas and boring, boring, boring. I want some old school style aprons. I saw an episode of Sex and the City where Charlotte was making her first Shabbat dinner. Carrie, Miranda and Charlotte were all wearing extremely cute stylish aprons. I either need to figure out how to sew and make my own or find someone else who does. I don't know why women stopped wearing them. It's not like they aren't functional...like gloves or hats.