The Filibuster Check-in

07:52 am

Am I always this whiny? Or do I normally just journal all my whiny-ness and spare you guys? Good grief, I need to find my journal because not having it is driving me crazy, even though I haven't written in it since like April, I need it to be findable for my sanity.

This weekend was weird, I went into it with no plans aside from going to Leah's grad party. Then I was asked to sing at church and found out Dad was going up north this weekend. Okay, those I can deal with, I mean I'm always the last person to find out my parent's plans for the fam, so that was normal, and if I think of singing in church as helping the congregation learn a new song and not singing in church than I can breathe and act normally.

Then at noon on Friday I found out that my grandmother, her friend, and my "Aunt" Schneedy (sp?) were going to be visiting for the weekend and that Dad was taking Mom up north with him. This means I needed to clean up and prepare to host three guests before they arrived at 2pm. Then the refrigerator ice-maker thing broke and began leaking at an alarming rate, no seriously this started almost exactly after I hung up from learning about Grandma from Mom. So I called my dad and shut off the water to the house until he could come home and fix it, it took like an hour alone to mop up the puddle that had formed.

Being a host for everyone was weird, especially because when my mom told me I kind of assumed that Ryan wouldn't be there, so when I made supper I was freaking out about having made too much, but then he came home and was around to eat. I didn't realize it until later, but I think the reason I was expecting him not to be there is because Mom specifically told me I would have to play host and she was sorry, so I subconsciously thought I was the oldest who would be around. Later I realized that Mom told me to host not because I was the oldest, but because especially with Grandma I was the most capable of hosting to her standards. I don't know if it's Ryan or just a guy thing as a whole, because I think Dad's the same way, but there are some unwritten rules about hosting that you just intrinsically know, or I thought you just intrinsically knew. Like when you're hosting someone, their entertainment and pass-times are your responsibility, you can't just disappear for hours and hours. This is part of the reason I wasn't able to go to Leah's graduation party.

This always happens to me, I get in a groove and write way more than I need to so I run out of time and when I get back I've gotten all the ran out of me so I don't feel like finishing.

To sum up (TL;DR):

I had to host my grandmother, great aunt, and their friend this weekend when my parents were up north.

I sang in church this weekend.

I realized this weekend that I've basically seen what my future very could well be... I could turn into my Aunt Schneed.

I also realized that sometime my grandmother's comments or attitude annoy me, but ultimately my love for her is the undertone of all my interactions with her, which is the difference between my interactions with her and others I love that sometimes get on my nerves, and my interaction with/opinion of those that simply irritate me.

02:33 pm - What my fights tell me about myself

I love my little sister, but she and I sometimes have a hard time living together. We're the worst roommates (trust me we went through that for several years) and even living in the same house produces the occasional full-out yelling match because certain parts of our personalities clash.

For example when we shared a room the problem was always about our stuff and our messes. When it came time to clean our room each week I was willing to clean what I deemed my messes,and sometimes I'd clean more universal or communal messes, but I refused to clean up my little sister's stuff. This became a problem when she routinely forgot the things were hers and denied that she had created the mess or any of it belonged to her, it was during one of these battles that I realized I could literally scratch someone and produce blood. Some of you out there might think, like I often did, that she was doing this because she wouldn't take responsibility for her mess, I've come to realize over the years that these fights were a matter of two stubborn people who vehemently disagree, I knew the mess was hers and she just as strongly didn't.

We've just had another of these fights, this one over a box of clothing and such that I've been holding in my room for over a year but that isn't mine. Exacerbating the problem is my older sister who went through the box and claimed everything she wanted, not necessarily everything that was hers, she left what she didn't want behind. My older sisters have always been more fashionable than myself and for reasons to be explained I have often taken clothing they didn't want but this was clothing I did not want and that wasn't mine so I didn't feel a right to get rid of it. Anyway of the items my little sister claimed several tank-tops were mine (I only own two tank-tops currently, both are athletic tops and both are currently accounted for in my room), as well as several items that may have looked like mine but I knew weren't. A shirt we'd all have that I 'd known I'd gotten rid of years earlier, a powderpuff fan shirt for my team (mine has a real # on it not Caitlin's #1 fan) and the only thing she was correct about, a swimming sweatshirt that in my defense my older sister ruined without my permission.

To me these things were obviously not mine because I had memories associated with my sisters owning them and none of myself with them. That's when I realized that although I strongly associate objects and clothing with memories, my little sister doesn't, which is also why I'm currently fighting my own pack-rat tendencies and losing, which is why I know I need to get rid of some clothes but I've only managed to get rid of things that are now too small for me (which means mainly pants because although I went up one size in bottoms last summer, I'm the same t-shirt size I've been since 7th grade.) My little sister doesn't associate things with memories at all, she associates people with memories (I think) which is why I'm the one who has a 7 year old ticket collection, not her.

It's weird because this is a trait that I don't share with anyone in my nuclear family, and motivations are probably not shared by my extended family either. My grandmother, who is the worst pack-rat of us all, I believe keeps things because they're still useful and she doesn't want to waste them, I fight that a little (I have folders full of scrap paper and try to use the ends of notebooks before I buy new ones) but my problem's root can be explained by another anecdote, one that shows particularly how alone in this I feel because it shows that my mother, whom I usually relate to the most, doesn't understand this either. Mom andI got into a conversation about what to do with my graduation cards (most of this is pretty paraphrased):

Mom: You know you've written all your thank you notes and it's been a year, let's gather up your graduation cards and throw them out.
Me: I don't want to throw them out, I want to keep them.
Mom: Why?
Me: I'm thinking about taping them to my wall.
Mom: Why? they're just cards?
Me: It's proof that people love me.
mom: (gives me weird look) What are you talking about, of course people love you.

At which point I realized that my mom wasn't going to understand me so I just dropped the conversation, but a couple nights later I used the end of a roll of double stick tape to start. My one real strength in life is in people, I'm not a great diver, I quit softball when I was getting good, I stink at artistic things and my voice and clarinet skills are only really mediocre, but I really get people (this is one thing my mom and I have in common, I learned from the best) I love people, but this skill isn't something that can usually be quantified, you just have to trust yourself and trust that others like you as much as you think. Anyway my graduation party was perhaps one of the two things I've experienced that have really felt like a culmination of being a people person and have really made me feel loved (my surprise b-day party this year being the other, I felt so overwhelmingly loved.) Anyway those cards are quantitative proof of people's love for me. They sent me their hard earned money (Which having worked for 2 years in HS means so much to me) they took their precious time to pick out a card for me and they wrote me these wonderful messages and I look at them and think: look the storsveds, and the maythews, and all these people who are relatives however distant, or who I've never even really met took their time to write these for me and make me part of their lives .

So yeah that's some semi-angsty drabble about me.

Much love,
Caitlin

07:47 pm

This is relatively boring so none of you have to read it!

What we have here is the top 106 books most often marked as "unread" by LibraryThing’s users. As in, they sit on the shelf to make you look smart or well-rounded. Bold the ones you've read.

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Anna Karenina
Crime and Punishment
Catch-22
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Wuthering Heights
The Silmarillion
Life of Pi : a novel
The Name of the Rose
Don Quixote
Moby Dick
Ulysses
Madame Bovary
The Odyssey
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Eyre
The Tale of Two Cities
The Brothers Karamazov
Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies
War and Peace
Vanity Fair
The Time Traveler’s Wife (it was awful and so disappointing though)
The Iliad
Emma
The Blind Assassin
The Kite Runner
Mrs. Dalloway
Great Expectations
American Gods
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Atlas Shrugged
Reading Lolita in Tehran : a memoir in books
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlesex
Quicksilver
Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West
The Canterbury Tales (I was forced to read most of this one in school, it's such a dirty book!)
The Historian : a novel
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Love in the Time of Cholera
Brave New World
The Fountainhead
Foucault’s Pendulum
Middlemarch
Frankenstein
The Count of Monte Cristo (abridged and unabridged at seperate times in my life, I annotated the unabridged version!)
Dracula
A Clockwork Orange
Anansi Boys
The Once and Future King
The Grapes of Wrath (there are several books on this list I've read a piece of, but this one I literally read the first half before I couldn't handle it anymore, so I thought it deserved mention)
The Poisonwood Bible : a novel
1984
Angels & Demons
The Inferno
The Satanic Verses
Sense and Sensibility
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Mansfield Park
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
To the Lighthouse
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Oliver Twist
Gulliver’s Travels
Les Misérables
The Corrections
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Dune
The Prince
The Sound and the Fury
Angela’s Ashes : a memoir
The God of Small Things
A People’s History of the United States : 1492-present
Cryptonomicon
Neverwhere
A Confederacy of Dunces
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Dubliners
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Beloved
Slaughterhouse-five
The Scarlet Letter
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
The Mists of Avalon
Oryx and Crake : a novel
Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion
Lolita
Persuasion
Northanger Abbey
The Catcher in the Rye
On the Road
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakonomics : a rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance : an inquiry into values
The Aeneid
Watership Down
Gravity’s Rainbow
The Hobbit
In Cold Blood : a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences
White Teeth
Treasure Island
David Copperfield
The Three Musketeers

02:39 am - Midnight Movies

So I've been mentioning for weeks how my little sister and I were going to see the midnight showing of The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, as many of you know. Yesterday I bought my tickets ( I tried to buy them on Monday and the kid working didn't know enough about it to sell them to me)what I didn't know then was that my little sister had NHS induction tonight and a homework assignment which of course culminated in her falling asleep on the family room carpet and refusing to wake up. Dad and I went together instead, which wasn't horrible, I refuse to go to movies alone and I really love seeing them with anyone in my family so it wasn't like I was embarrassed, but at the same time I much rather would've gone with my little sister too at a different time, I don't care if I'd have had to wait until it came out on video (okay maybe I'd care about that because I'd most likely be in TX) my intentions were not to see the movie at midnight but to see it with Renee.

But on from that, nothing can change it now, my opinion of the movie just now after seeing it without any time for digestion follows:

A quick disclaimer, I haven't read the book in years so I'll not be judging its faithfulness to the book also this is your spoiler alert.

The movie started very nicely, a little confusing for a bit but I believe that's what the filmmakers intended. In the beginning I have to admit that I was beginning to agree with Maren about Caspian being attractive (I quickly discovered that he's one of the legolas "only attractive when he's pretty-boyed-up" types, thus at the beginning and end of the movie I can agree with Maren and in the entire middle where he trys and fails to pull of the ruggedly handsome look, a la Viggo Mortensen as Aragorn, my original opinion rings true and he is so not attractive) Sorry guys, had to throw that in there.

This movie is much darker than the first Narnia movie, this is apparent not only in the many many night time scenes and shadowy shots, but also in the tone. The girls sitting behind me actually speculated at one point whether or not Peter had decapitated someone in battle or merely knocked their helmet off. Treachery abounds, and there is an incredibly scary (to me a chicken at 1:30 am) scene in the middle where there's some temptation from hell type allegory going on. More battle scenes including one that leaves us with a gas-chamber in the holocaust esque imagery is particularily disturbing, as well as some very underhanded treachery on the part of more than one telmaran (I'm not sure if that's the right spelling so forgive me.)

This is very stream of conscious so I apologize for that.

Whoever writes the dialog between the siblings is A) a genius and/or B) has several siblings of their own. The chemistry between the children also helped us to unquestionably believe them as siblings and co-rulers. I love that they showed how much Edmund has grown up and also that Peter finally had to face the "I'm the oldest so I know best" fault he's been toting around since the first movie. I also admired the way that the filmmaker/screenwriter began to lay the groundwork for our understanding of what happens to Susan and why she turns away and decides it all never happened. Also they very clearly establish who won't be in the further movies and who will (i.e. Peter and Susan are out until the last battle.) Last but not least I love love love Georgie Henley, she is absolutely adorable and I would love to someday meet her. She does an amazing job as Lucy, her lines are perfectly written for her, yes but the facial expressions she holds in a few scenes are so perfect it's clear she has an older sister (who in fact played the older version of Lucy in the first film.) I think I will also have to keep my eye on the young actor who plays Edmund, he's shown some nice growth, not only in his character, but in the ability to portray Edmund, although maybe it's an easier Edmund for him to play.

On to what I didn't like:
basically there were small things that I was skeptical about and I absolutely hated the super scary white witch temptation scene and if I reread the book and it's not there I'll be pissed that they put it in, but perhaps my biggest pet peeve is in the whole Susan/Caspian thing they fabricated for their own devious purposes. So Caspian is a little older in the movie than in the book, this doesn't work in a few places (I mean are you really that dense Caspian?) but in other spots, namely the battle scenes, it makes his actions much more believable. If they raised his age for ease in shooting Voyage and more realistic battle scenes I'd be okay, but then they have to throw in this whole "Caspian is infatuated with Susan" thing and really I could've mostly ignored it, I mean it did give Georgie Henley some of her best lines ("Maybe I'll understand when I'm older"-Lucy "I don't think I want to understand"-Edmund) but come on people, you don't need to cheapen these books like that, there doesn't need to be romance they can stand independently from that and I cannot ignore a blatant kiss and the whole "It wouldn't have worked out between us anyway" scene at the end. URGH! (Also is lucy supposed to look like she's wearing way too much eyeliner basically the entire film?)

so yeah, I love the screenplay, there were some great lines, except for some scenes and things someone along the way decided to add. overall it was quite nice; the things I thought would bother me from the previews did not and it really makes me want to reread Prince Caspian again and then The Horse and His Boy just for good measure 'cause that's my favorite.

Current Mood: midnight showing = 3am bedtime

12:37 pm - Strange dreams (do they run in the family?)

so not to jump on the Vanasse Family bandwagon and post about dreams a few days after Ryan did, but at least Jason will mildly understand this post.

I've been having strange dreams lately, not in a bad/scary way but more in a "Where did that come from?" way. Two Examples:

Monday morning (I always have the weird ones right before I have to wkae up and go to class so I can't continue them if they get cut off) I dreamed that Tommy (my Lechner brother) visited me in Minnesota over the summer and he asked me where Minneapolis/St. Paul was on a map so I pulled out my MN map but instead of the Minnesota I know it was the silhouette of MN over a vast blue expanse with little islands of land. and M/SP was randomly in like the middle of the state on the biggest of the islands circled in yellow (think near Lake Itasca.) I remember being all like "Minnesota doesn't have that many lakes!" and "Minneapolis isn't supposed to be there" then I remember being cognizant enough of the fact that I was dreaming to think that all I needed to do was get up and look at the map on my dorm room door to confirm the fact that my dream map was wrong.

Sorry if that's confusing, I'm not very good at explaining dreams.

So the second dream I had this morning and it's actually not all that weird for me except for who was in it.

It was set in Japan (I assume because there were Bento boxes) or somewhere similar (i.e. Caitlin's dream Japan that is actually not very like Japan) There was this girl who was sort-of being courted by two guys, one of whom was (I think) a fisherman's son. Anyway she prefered the fisherman's son and wanted to go to this dance/thing that would be coming up with him, but he had to ask her or something (because she didn't think he liked her?, I don't know) anyway it came down to this thing where he gave her a bento box which was like the equivalent of asking her and so she was all excited, but while the other suitor was around he stole that bento box and hid it. This was significant because I guess she somehow had to have the bento box in order to go to the dance with the fisherman's son (I don't know why it was a dream, perhaps she had to give it back to him?) Anyway instead of admiting she'd lost his bento box she ended up going to the dance/banquet thing with the mean jerk guy (which both guys apparently took as her overall choice although she only asked him out of obligation, actually I think that's why she needed the box, the 2nd guy was pressuring her to go with him and she was going to be all "no I've already agreed to go with so and so" but she couldn't find the box to prove it and there may have been some parental pressuring in there but if so I don't remember now.) Anyway so then if flash forwarded to like a few months later and guy #2 was trying to be all friendly with the girl but she just kept giving him the cold shoulder (at this point she still didn't know what he'd done, but I did and he was such a jerk!) at the same time she kept trying to be friends with/maintain a friendship with/apologize to the fisherman's son who was giving her the cold shoulder. Anyway this is about the time I woke up (if I go into anymore detail I'll have no hope of you understanding)

So the weird thing about this dream is that at the end I woke up and realized that Andy was the Fisherman's son. I don't know if I knew this during the dream but in a Sassy-girl-esque (he's playing a character in a folk tale) type way. Or if I just assigned him to that character upon waking up because I imagine Andy doesn't forgive easily (In fact I can imagine him saying "my good opinion once lost is lost forever" Mr. Darcy Style except that I cannot imagine Andy would ever quote Pride and Prejudice.) But it was a weird realization.

For clarification: I was in the first dream, I was not in the second except as an observer.

Current Mood: weird

12:37 am - Visiting CRHS

so I'm thinking about visiting teachers before the week is over, do any of you know the official policy on visitors and what I need to do? Also would any of you like to come with me, I have to visit Mr. Timm to show off my communist party shirt, other than that I was thinking I'd talk to some english teachers and visit band. I think band may be the only class I visit during an actual class, I don't want to bother kids who're learning! But for sure I also have to visit Mr. Meyer because I want a copy of the procreation program he let us use and I think he'd know how I could snatch one. Anyway just thought I'd ask you all. sorry for the rambling, thats me for you.

-me

09:32 am - What's so wrong with using the Library?

Apparently with the popularity of netflix it was only a matter of time before it happened; a book version:

http://www.bookswim.com/how.html

the service mails you x amount of books at a time (depending on your plan) and you mail them back when you're done and get a new book, and if you fall in love with a book you can purchase it (presumably at full price) instead of returning it. Explain to me how this is in any way better than the library (which is free and mine at least allows 100 items to be checked out at once.) Okay I understand, these books are shipped to our home and you don't have to pay late fees, but honestly it's not that hard to go to the library everyonce in a while and with online renewal and the 3 week check out period I don't think I've ever amassed more than 14.99 in late fees in one month. Unlike Netflix which offers incredible variety in obscure of foreign movies, (by the way my library also has many good classic movies to rent for 3 wks for free) this site seems to offer (upon my browsing) a variety lesser than or equal to that of my library.

I do acknowledge that not all libraries are the same and maybe for some people this site allows them something better than their library , but comparing it to mine, or even to my College library which fiction wise has a very small collection, it seems a paltry attempt to play off of our current forgetfulness of our local resources.

Current Mood: weirded out!

04:41 pm - Homesickness, Camping out, and corps escorts

so, just to sate the curiosity of all of you who want to know what it's like for me in TX I thought I'd update.

This week has been a bit crazy, mainly because my dorm has been collectively camping out for tickets to the BIG A&M vs. t.u. game (pull is this coming Monday, the game is Black Friday.) This means exactly what it sounds like, we set up a tent outside Kyle Field where we have at least one person staying 24/7. There are a ton of other groups also camping out ( I have a picture but I've forgotten how to put pictures on lj so any help would be welcomed, or I could just put it on my facebook.) So no one misses class or whatever else they have to do our dorm has a system of shifts. A sign-up is posted and everyone in the dorm has the opportunity to sign up for the shifts they want or not to sign up at all. Most shifts are an hour to 2 hours but evenings are all night shifts. I've fulfilled 3 shifts already this week, all on my own and usually napping, but tonight Melissa, Jessica, and I as well as anyone else who wants to visit us will be taking the all night shift. I expect very little sleep to actually happen. Disney movies/chick flicks are planned as well as an appearance by the toaster that may or may not reside in my dorm room ceiling. There are lights on at night, outlets, and tons of other people so it's really quite safe, and thanks to a futon mattress and many many sleeping bags out tent is pretty comfy too.

Wednesday was pretty fun, although over booked for me. My pre-vet society meeting, a trip to Outback with my ANSC 107 class, and a seminar on desserts to make in the microwave of your dorm room run by my Lechner mom and her roommate all overlapped. Forced to choose I went to the pre-vet meeting and found out that 10, actually a maximum of 10 (so it could be less) are all the out-of-state students that can be admitted to the TAMU Vet School each year. Thankfully I have the U of M vet school too, I pity the poor Maine residents who have no vet school in their home state. After that Melissa and I (who attend pre-vet society together) continued what is fast becoming a tradition (actually considering we've now done it 3 times and we're Aggies it is a tradition) of calling a Corps escort to walk us home.

"What?" you ask, "What is a Corps escort and why would you need one?" A corps escort is a service provided by the Corps of Cadets on campus to female students. We can call a number handily printed on the backs of our ID cards (ID Card = your life) and get a corps guy to come walk us from almost anywhere on Campus to almost anywhere on campus at anytime of the day/night. This does not translate to a date service, so I don't want to hear it. Anyway usually I'm at my dorm 11-1 at night and don't leave after that so I don't need an escort because on central campus I feel pretty safe. But the Vet med building (which they won't actually pick you up from but we take the secret tunnel to a library and they pick us up there) is on west campus which is totally harmless in the day time but kind of creepy and full of shadows/lacking in people at night. Also it's kind of fun to meet all the different kinds of Fish who have joined the corps and ask them about all the crazy corps stuff they have to do (we actually did get a sophomore once so it is possible, but highly unlikely.)

So every Wednesday Melissa and I call one. The guy we got this time was nice, albeit a little late in getting us, poor guy he got stuck behind a train and got horribly lost on west campus. It was fun talking to him though, he's a physics major because he "just gets it" and he's one of the corps members who does want to go into the military (not all of them do.) So basically it was worth waiting.

Thursday was not my best day of the week, I was doing fine and everything was great but then one of my activities (Thursdays are always my busiest days) got cancelled and so I called home. For those of you who don't know my little sister, Renee, was in the section swim meet yesterday, so I called to find out how it was going. She did awesome, but the thing is that after talking to my family I had the first big bout of homesickness I've had since the MN state fair. All week has been a bit hard because of sections and me not being there to see them, but when I'm with friends and doing things I'm o.k., but Thursday I ended up spending an hour in my room just missing my family. It was really tough listening to how well my little sister did and knowing not only was I not there to support her, but I won't be home until December 13 so yeah, I miss my family.

Otherwise I'm pretty excited about spending the night camping out with my friends. I have my suspicions that it'll be a lot like a slumberless party. Also my computer should be arriving any day now so theoretically I'll update more often, but that's unlikely.

Sorry for the overall rambliness of this post, but you know me, the run-on queen.

Sending good thoughts to all of you.

-C.V.

Current Mood: yay for camping with friends!

02:05 am - Help please?

Hey, someone on one of the LJ communities I'm in asked for the following:

"3)Recommendations for cafes in the Minneapolis (preferably close to downtown) area. You know, good pastries, good coffee and tea.

4) Recommendations for good book/literary discussion clubs around Minneapolis. I have very few people I can talk book to, and none of them I ever see offline."

And seeing as I'm in Texas I think those of you at the U of M are far more qualified to answer this than me. Any suggestions?

06:04 pm

it's amazing, after almost a year of silence, once again I'm posting. Soon enough (when I get my computer) I may start updating this with tales from TX and all but for now I just wanted to recommend this website:

www.freerice.com

you can simultaneously expand your vocabulary, donate rice to third world countries, and get addicted to testing your awesomeness.

11:33 pm

I officially love people, thay made my Monday-like Monday good again.

Current Mood: check out my hot new icon!

05:23 pm - Best Buy anyone?

So I've mentioned to Mom this year when the subject of "day-after-Thanksgiving-Day" shopping and sales has come up that I've always thought it would be kind of cool (in a geeky sort of way, like going to a midnight showing of Star Wars) to go to Best Buy the night before and camp out so we could be basically first in line. Being the amazing parent that she is and always looking for good deals on electronics she's actually pretty open to this idea and willing to help plan it. Anyway I'd like to know if any of you would like to join me? we have a very small (two person) tent and lots of heavy duty sleeping bags and camping mats, but most likely if enough of you came with we';d stay up the whole time and play Risk, other games, or do homework around my camping lantern. Anyway, is anyone up for some crazy-geeky-line waiting? (Hey at least it's not as bad as starting to wait Wednesday night for the Friday release of PS 3.)

If interested leave a comment, e-mail, call, or just talk to me. It would be the riverdale Best Buy, not the northtown one, because the Riverdale one is near my house and consequently near food and warmth deliveries.

Up for sume fun!

Lalaith

Current Mood: I know, I'm pretty weird...

05:29 pm - by the way...

Thanksgiving is at my house this year so if any of you don't have places to go for whateve reason you're invited.

10:29 pm - *unintentionally listening to Aaron Sorkin dribble*

You know what a lot of pople don't really understand? Marriage isn't really about love, it wasn't really until recently that love became significant in people's understanding of marriage. If love was all marriage needed then the divorce rate wouldn't be nearly as high as it is, it's unfortunate. Someone once asked what the use of preserving marriage was if by the looks of divorce and non-married-but-living-together statistics it had already been ruined, they had a relatively valid point. I am constantly in conflict with those who think marriage is about love, it shouldn't really be, why do you think our divorce rate is so high after all?



feel free to comment angrily or not so with your opinion.

EDIT: I just re-read this and realized that it sounds like I think all love within a marriage is wrong, which is not the case. It's okay to have love in marriage, but you shouldn't get married just because you love someone (in my opinion) marriage is so much more than that. Anyway, sorry about that.

02:32 am - For pookie:

The books are described as "a trilogy in five parts", having been described as a trilogy on the release of the third book, and then a "trilogy in four parts" on the release of the fourth book. The US edition of the fifth book was originally released with the legend "The fifth book in the increasingly inaccurately named Hitchhiker's Trilogy" on the cover. Subsequent re-releases of the other novels bore the legend "The [first, second, third, fourth] in the increasingly inaccurately named Hitchhiker's trilogy."...It was not truly clear that the series was over (since it was already a trilogy with five books) until Adams died of a heart attack at age 49 in 2001.

(from wikipedia)

10:58 pm - Motion Investigation lab

I think Pookie needs this:

Hypotheses:

As the angle of the ramp increases the acceleration of the ball rolling down the incline will be greater.

As the distance between the photogates increases the acceleration of the ball rolling down the incline will remain constant.

As the starting point approaches the photogate the acceleration of the ball rolling down the incline will remain constant.

As the mass of the ball increases the acceleration of the ball rolling down the incline will remain constant.


Starting point
Procedure:
1. set up ramp with group specified controls. also set up photo gates with computer. Measure distance between the photogates.

2. Measure desired distance from photogate. Start with 5 cm.

3. let the ball row three times consecutively. Record the data.

4. calculate acceleration:
a = (v^2-vknot^2)/2x

5. Repeat steps 1-4 four times, increasing the distance from the photogate by 5 cm each time (so at 10 cm, 15 cm,20 cm,& 25 cm)

edit: It's not even Monday the 16th yet, but for some reason 2 and a half hours ago when I posted this it dated it for 1 something am tomorrow. BAH!

10:56 pm

I don't know what's wrong with my computer and l/j but that last post was at like 8:30 pm on october 15th

10:24 pm - (from Pyro)

HowManyOfMe.com

There are: 0 people with my name in the U.S.A. How many have your name?

10:23 pm - Oh my word!

Guess what? While waiting to take the SAT this morning (we waited a half-hour seriously people.) I wrote a poem, and it actually rhymes! See if you can decipher what I'm trying to say:

My Time Machine

Everything mattered as I drank the first glass
you sat there with me and we spoke of the past

with each new glass, things slowed until
time no longer mattered; now it was still

and you and I sat, drinking together
no care for our families, our jobs, or the weather

I drink to you, and you drink to I
as still here we sit, the world passing us by



so what do you all think? You'll never guess what inspired it...

toodles,

Cat

edit: should I change that last line to "life passing us by"???

Current Mood: physics stress; pouring out

04:33 pm - so I went to the library today...

... and after paying off my fines, browsing the shelves very very briefly and checking out some listening-to material I saw this on the way out:

Manga and Japanese Calligraphy Program

learn how to draw a manga character and write some Japanese words using calligraphy.

Crooked Lake Library

2 part program (attend both days)

4-5pm Tuesday, October, 17 & 24


So who wants to go with me??

take that Pookie!

Current Mood: content