Self Declared Mandatory Update

I'm taking an English class (Writing and Communities) and a Philosophy class (Philosophy and Current Issues) at the moment.  And I decided to take up a hobby too (spinning).  And I'm reading through A Song of Fire and Ice.  Oh yeah, AND planning a wedding.

Pictured: My Summer

I don't recommend that.  EVER.  If you come to a fork in the road, choose one tine, or the other.  Don't smash them together into one bastardized eating utensil.  It makes for a very, very hectic summer.

Pic unrelated, but I ALWAYS wanted to see one of these

Philosophy has been incredibly underwhelming.  From 5:30 PM to 9:20 PM (yes, FOUR hours) every Tuesday and Thursday, you can find me sitting in a classroom, sandwiched between Alien and Captain Planet, wishing I was anywhere but there.  In class, we cover the readings we were supposed to read for homework.  The whole place is full of sheeple:  Going with the flow, and silent as the grave.  Until we talk about marijuana of course. 

 Everyone has an opinion about marijuana

Wedding planning has been a roller coaster of cake tasting, decision making, and budget breaking insanity.  Thank God for my mother.  She's become MORE invaluable (if such a thing is possible) by coming up with ideas, booking venues, and sharing inspiration, free time, and free SPACE (I certainly don't have room to grow fifty plants for centerpieces)  We've got just over a month now so things are speeding up, but the ride is a fun one to be certain.

Pictured: Mom's back deck

I don't know WHY I decided to take up spinning... A cunning saleslady at the Siouxland Renaissance Festival taught me how to spin wool into single-ply yarn.  Being a knitter, I was THRILLED to learn the new trade, and spent eleven dollars (of money I didn't truly have) on a spindle.  Knitting Mama gave me some spare combed top (wool prepared for spinning) for free, which didn't help curb the habit at all.

 

With this simple device, I shall turn fibers
everywhere into delicious bundles of knitted objects.

Antler (Earring's roommate) was getting all fired up about a certain HBO series that was based on a certain book series which he and his friends in western Nebraska seem to worship.  So I picked up the first book from the Library.  Truth be told, George R. R. Martin is a FANTASTIC writer, he just spices things up with a bit more sex than I care for in my reading.  That being said, he has a real knack for speaking as other characters, and drawing you into the world he created in his story.  So if you're 14 + and you can handle the occasional sex scene, I'd recommend it.

If everyone ELSE gets a picture I suppose Mr. Martin can too

Finally, we come to my English class.  Suffice to say, I can not believe how well the class, and our teacher EFR, has gelled in three weeks.  I'd say more, but I just poured my heart out into my contemplative response (we have ten journal pages due every Monday), so you'll get more on that later.

So go out, pick up a new hobby, read a book, or at VERY least, enjoy the weather =)

The Five-Week Summer Session of DOOM

This morning may have been my worst in personal recorded history.  And I'm not just saying that because this is the only bad day I've recorded in my personal history, though that is also true.  I'm taking an English class (which is now officially my major) with a very interesting classroom setting.  Our teacher (who would be reviled to hear me call her as much) is pursuing a dialectic form of teaching; allowing spoken thoughts to coincide and create new meanings for the larger academic conversation.  For now, let us call her Blam-o.

Blam-o knows what's what in the world.  She wants to make the world a better place.  She's a self proclaimed book nerd.  She plants flowers.  She's up to date on current events.  She writes daily.  She's recently taken up restoring old furniture.  She bakes cookies to share with her seemingly run-down neighborhood.  She's not afraid to tell it like it is.  She has exploded into my life, and she's likely to see over half her students drown in her sink-or-swim method of teaching.

I'm one of the drowning members.  Notice I say drownING.  I'm not dead yet.  But I've never felt so lost, so in over my head, or so alienated by the fourth day of class.  Sure it's a five-week session, and when the standard semester is sixteen weeks, I guess the stress gets condensed down as well.  But my three-week session of Short Stories with Dr. Cubs (a huge fan of baseball) never felt this rushed, this stressful, this time consuming.  Granted, it was a literature course, and Blam-o teaches writing.  Actually, Writing and Communities, so there's this whole happy-lovey feeling prociding over the classroom.  Because we're a *gushing* COOOMUUUU-NITYYYYY!

I'm not being that fair to Blam-o.  My first impression of her was actually quite positive.  She's an unmarried mother of three, asks us to call her by her first name, libertarian (without shoving it down your throat), fun to listen to, easy to talk with, and thrilled to be teaching this class.  My opinion has unfairly turned sour since I haven't been paying attention to the schedule.  Blam-o thinks that sending reminders takes away from our autonomy as scholars (you won't catch her DEAD calling us students) and as a result I've missed two reading assignments, and one full length project proposal.  And since she doesn't take late work, I don't know if I should bother with it.  Would it be more responsible of me to write out the proposal instead of shunning it since the grade will be meaningless?  Maybe so, but I have ten pages to write in my inquiry notebook and a first draft of a 5-7 page paper on a research project (that I started an hour ago) due on Monday.  What's the point of writing a project proposal I know she approves of, especially when I'm not getting points for it?

I've already come to terms with the fact that I HAVE no free time for the next four weeks.  Reading my novels from the library, playing Minecraft, Terraria, or StumbleUpon flash games, watching Outlaw Star with Alien, spending time with Earrings and his girlfriend: NONE of this can be happening if I'm hoping to pass English.  And the wedding planning train is chugging along at full speed, so I'm going to be forced to do that on top of this.  Oh well.  My life with Alien is more important than an English grade.  Sorry, Blam-o.

Alien and I are taking a philosophy course on Tuesdays and Thursdays.  It's called Philosophy and Current Issues.  We're cramming homosexuality, egoism, and why-religion-doesn't-matter into our class today.  Next week we're talking about abortion, and the week after that, we're dealing with animal rights.  I'm a little ticked that Christianity is being slapped in as an afterthought in hopes of making "us religious types" shut up.  And why do abortion and animal rights get equal time?

The world may never know.

I'm torn now.  Yesterday I would have just taken a nap in hopes of sleeping some stress off, but I'm too worked up to do that now.  And my conscious telling me to work on my paper is eating me alive.  I suppose I'll keep reading for my paper then.

If I'm alive in four weeks, I'll get back to you.

EDIT:  I did live.  And I actually got A's in the Philosophy and the English classes.  I'm chalking it up to fairies and divine intervention.  There's no way it could have happened otherwise.