This is fantastic.
Dang, this is my 997th post. I'd better keep an eye out for the 1000th.
-Laurel
4.28.2007
!
Oh my gosh, Invisible Children's movie screening and "Displace Me" trip got the Alfie for Best Educational Program on Campus!
::laughs:: And Anna and I were both there, but neither of us went up, 'cause I did the original showing at IV, and Anna and I ran the benefit dinner, but Mechele and Conrado and Kelly had done all the work for the screening and trip, which'd actually gotten the award, so we didn't know what to do, and I stood up to go eventually 'cause all of them are at the "Displace Me" right now, but no one saw me, so the people presenting the award just took it, but...
...but hey. Cool.
-Laurel
::laughs:: And Anna and I were both there, but neither of us went up, 'cause I did the original showing at IV, and Anna and I ran the benefit dinner, but Mechele and Conrado and Kelly had done all the work for the screening and trip, which'd actually gotten the award, so we didn't know what to do, and I stood up to go eventually 'cause all of them are at the "Displace Me" right now, but no one saw me, so the people presenting the award just took it, but...
...but hey. Cool.
-Laurel
4.22.2007
Six-Minute Post
I am thesing, which is the verb I've coined (unless someone else did and I missed it) that means "to write a thesis." Unfortunately, I haven't found a better way to spell the infinitive form than "these," which is of course already a word.
Because I have a heck of a lot of thesing to do before the due date tomorrow afternoon, today I conceded that the best way to do this, despite its being a little unhealthy, was to go get myself a fair amount of food (since I'll be up a long time and I get hungry) and a lot of gum (since, though doubtless Freud would cluck his tongue and label me orally-fixated, things will go better if I can keep something in my mouth during this process). So I'm chewing cinnamon gum and have things like trail mix, chicken pasta-roni, and Erica's chai tea at the ready.
I'm working on it. It's going, but it's going really slowly. But maybe it'll really be over by tomorrow--at which point I can start my final paper for Parenting Seminar. Ruddy.
-Laurel
Because I have a heck of a lot of thesing to do before the due date tomorrow afternoon, today I conceded that the best way to do this, despite its being a little unhealthy, was to go get myself a fair amount of food (since I'll be up a long time and I get hungry) and a lot of gum (since, though doubtless Freud would cluck his tongue and label me orally-fixated, things will go better if I can keep something in my mouth during this process). So I'm chewing cinnamon gum and have things like trail mix, chicken pasta-roni, and Erica's chai tea at the ready.
I'm working on it. It's going, but it's going really slowly. But maybe it'll really be over by tomorrow--at which point I can start my final paper for Parenting Seminar. Ruddy.
-Laurel
4.08.2007
Another open letter
Dear Body,
The busiest week of the month: the thesis rough draft supposedly due, various things for classes, the honors banquet, ushering for stuff, the Relay for Life on Friday. And you decided to go ahead and pick up the Alfred Plague, laying me flat on Easter.
You had better be acting under direct orders, if you know what I mean.
-Laurel
The busiest week of the month: the thesis rough draft supposedly due, various things for classes, the honors banquet, ushering for stuff, the Relay for Life on Friday. And you decided to go ahead and pick up the Alfred Plague, laying me flat on Easter.
You had better be acting under direct orders, if you know what I mean.
-Laurel
4.04.2007
I really am sorry. Like, really.
Okay, it's like this:
As most of you from IV will remember, there're a lot of false e-mails being forwarded around that involve Christianity in some way, documented as fake on websites like snopes.com. Go there if someone sends you a petition about some horrid thing we're supposed to try to stop, or even if there's some other kind of story you're supposed to pass along for everyone's edification. More often than not, there's nothing to them.
That said, if you decide to report back to the person that sent it to you and tell them it's not real, watch how you do it. A friend of mine from home sent me a petition against a supposed Christian moral outrage, and when I checked it, it was false. So I replied and told her where I'd checked it, and added at the end a pretty bitter comment about the way the writers had set it up, since in my opinion, there was some blatant spiritual blackmail involved (it's petty and immature to say things like "if you don't have the four minutes to do this, don't complain when God doesn't have four minutes for you," and it's flat-out cruel to imply that not signing a petition is tantamount to denying Christ, which will get you denied by Him).
Only it turns out that I didn't make it clear enough that I was faulting the writers, and not her. She took it--and I can see how my phrasing was ambiguous enough for it--as a slam on both her intelligence and her faith, as though her passing it on was symptomatic of weakness in both areas. And since she's the wife of a guy who studied to become a pastor, it would've been doubly bad if that's how I'd meant it. So she, naturally, gave me a long paragraph in reply, clearly very hurt and also perceptibly angry, letting me know civilly but unmistakeably that gentleness and mercy are also part of Christianity, and as far as she could tell, I was in violation of both. Though that's heavily summarized, it's the gist.
Fair enough. As far as gentleness goes, especially, she's probably right, even taking into account that I hadn't meant it for her.
But I don't understand it. As far as I've ever known, I'm fairly self-aware. I know what I tend to do. I find a lot of humor in my own inconsistency. But I apparently have very little sense of how things sound in my head as opposed to aloud, because over and over I get myself into trouble this way, probably half a dozen times this semester alone (this seems to have been an especially-bad year for it, and I can't figure out why). I try really hard for precision, I read everything over, and still I invariably screw something up. So I go to the other extreme in poetry class, picking poems for workshop that I think run the risk of being cliched or unclear when read, only to be told they're practically flawless, and then I look like I'm trying to show off or something. It drives me crazy.
So look, I'm sorry for all the times I've been a jerk without really meaning to. I am trying to be more precise. Apparently I have a lot of work to do on it, still.
-Laurel
As most of you from IV will remember, there're a lot of false e-mails being forwarded around that involve Christianity in some way, documented as fake on websites like snopes.com. Go there if someone sends you a petition about some horrid thing we're supposed to try to stop, or even if there's some other kind of story you're supposed to pass along for everyone's edification. More often than not, there's nothing to them.
That said, if you decide to report back to the person that sent it to you and tell them it's not real, watch how you do it. A friend of mine from home sent me a petition against a supposed Christian moral outrage, and when I checked it, it was false. So I replied and told her where I'd checked it, and added at the end a pretty bitter comment about the way the writers had set it up, since in my opinion, there was some blatant spiritual blackmail involved (it's petty and immature to say things like "if you don't have the four minutes to do this, don't complain when God doesn't have four minutes for you," and it's flat-out cruel to imply that not signing a petition is tantamount to denying Christ, which will get you denied by Him).
Only it turns out that I didn't make it clear enough that I was faulting the writers, and not her. She took it--and I can see how my phrasing was ambiguous enough for it--as a slam on both her intelligence and her faith, as though her passing it on was symptomatic of weakness in both areas. And since she's the wife of a guy who studied to become a pastor, it would've been doubly bad if that's how I'd meant it. So she, naturally, gave me a long paragraph in reply, clearly very hurt and also perceptibly angry, letting me know civilly but unmistakeably that gentleness and mercy are also part of Christianity, and as far as she could tell, I was in violation of both. Though that's heavily summarized, it's the gist.
Fair enough. As far as gentleness goes, especially, she's probably right, even taking into account that I hadn't meant it for her.
But I don't understand it. As far as I've ever known, I'm fairly self-aware. I know what I tend to do. I find a lot of humor in my own inconsistency. But I apparently have very little sense of how things sound in my head as opposed to aloud, because over and over I get myself into trouble this way, probably half a dozen times this semester alone (this seems to have been an especially-bad year for it, and I can't figure out why). I try really hard for precision, I read everything over, and still I invariably screw something up. So I go to the other extreme in poetry class, picking poems for workshop that I think run the risk of being cliched or unclear when read, only to be told they're practically flawless, and then I look like I'm trying to show off or something. It drives me crazy.
So look, I'm sorry for all the times I've been a jerk without really meaning to. I am trying to be more precise. Apparently I have a lot of work to do on it, still.
-Laurel