Excitement

I am pretty excited for the future. I am hoping to get a research grant over the summer and I am teaching next year at a University! I feel good. I have to do two more finals, that part is not so cool. I did pretty well on my art final. I chose to do a master copy of Raphaels' St. George and the Dragon. I picked it because I love the name George, enjoy dragons and all that lore, and Raphael is one of my favorite ninja turtles. I didn't feel the need to explain all that while I was being critiqued but I do like my line of reasoning. I am childish but in a fun way I hope. I have not been up to much in particular. It is Cinco de Mayo but we are broke until Friday and we need to pay rent. Kevin is as great as ever. I am really unsure what to blog about at this time; I just thought maybe I should write something since it's been awhile. I will bitch for a little bit I guess- why can't men be shot down and still act like men? They are all nice to you and flirt and act like your friend, then they find out that you have a boyfriend and they turn into complete jerks. I can't believe the thought about whether they may get laid or not actually impacts their actions so damn much. I try to be nice to everyone whether I am getting something or not but not everyone is so. I do not like friendships of convenience, I always wind up being the one used and taken for granted. I tried to be friends with this one chick and she was kinda cool but the only time she would call me to hang out was when she needed something. And when we did hang out all she could do was play with her baby, not that that's a bad thing but why invite someone over at all if your going to completely ignore them? I do not do friendships of convenience anymore, I want to be friends with people that are excited to hang out with me just because rather than just because I can help them out. It was pretty lame altogether. Totally thought the last friend I had was cool until she treated me the way everyone else did besides using me. I hate to be underestimated and have had to deal with it my entire life. Even now I deal with it and I just don't think it is worth trying to prove myself to stuck up bitches anymore. I am glad to be graduating from the grad program soon. I know who I am and I am a blunt and aggressive woman. I just go for it and live as best I know how. I feel sorry for those stagnant ponds called people that cover a smaller circle of area and just let their lives grow over with stank moss water and gnats. I prefer to compare my life to an awesome river rapids ride. We go fast, there may be some rocks but there are also some nice calm areas and beauty all around. Fuck 'em if they can't take a joke and if they can take a joke, they may be friend-worthy. New friends that are excited to hang out with you for the sake of your company are the best kinds of friends. Case closed :)

This is the End...

My only friend, the end. I am glad that the end of the semester is nearing. I have enjoyed my classes but I have found that the most pleasurable one has been Drawing 1. Unfortunately, I will not be able to take any classes for fun next Fall or Spring and cannot pursue this further in the academy. It has been so much fun learning how to carve a figure out of shades of gray or create movement just through the shape of your lines. I will miss this class. Luckily, I have the tools to continue it in what little free time I have at some point. I have also started trying to bead again. It came back to me instantly how to plan the design for names, flowers and other shapes and figures but to my dismay my needle and nylon thread were very uncooperative. I was a little disappointed but I know I do not even have the time to start or finish such projects. I have had an increase in energy during the day through my morning jogs which is fun but hard. Unfortunately, I do not channel the excess in the right directions. I don't know if anyone listens to the Doors, you may have recognized my opening statement if you do. I will close with the same, a personal favorite of mine. "You've got the guns but we've got the numbers, we're gonna win yeah we're takin over, Come on!!!"

Jogging Around Cole Park

It is beautiful jogging around Cole Park in the morning. I went Monday at 7am (Oh my gosh I was up and active) but it was awesome. The ground was fresh, the ocean was calm as though resting from a busy night, and the sky was a mirror of the ocean. The blues and purples reflected back so perfectly I could only tell the dividing line in the horizon, between Earth and Sky, by the slight but discernible light of the sun. Here I will list a series of things I saw this Wednesday morning and think about whether these things are alive or dead:
The dried blackened banana peel
The fuzzy caterpillar
The steep 45 degree hill
The gradual writhing snake of a hill
The City park truck
The amphitheatre
The ambling sidewalk by the road
The shambling sidewalk by the sea
The people drifting around
The people secretly eating in their car
The people jogging around me
My red running shoes
My heart pumping furiously up the writhing hill
My legs leaping joyously down the 45 degree angle hill
My weary feet
The mullet fish jumping
The flock of seagulls nesting
The empty skateboard park
The headless toad body
The copse of trees where I found a headless toad body
The people driving by on Shoreline
The white whale, possibly Moby's cousin, that is now a child's plaything
The green green lush grass
The dusty brown dirt
Several park benches
The pier

I don't know what any of these things mean to you but they were interesting items to me. Life is a journey and everything you see has some value or meaning. Maybe my red shoes were dead but my feet were indeed alive within them.

Spring Break in a Vacation Town...

Damn it all- I had a fairly long post going and suddenly it all vanished! And I am back to an empty page that merely suggests for me to repopulate with words, witticisms, and whatever else that may flow from my mind vomit and onto the page. You poor reader you! I had a really good spring break, just enough spring and maybe could use a few more days break! Today was Kevin's day off of work so we walked down to McGee beach with the dogs. Kevin and I played catch and I played fetch with Tharnsby. I am a little sunburned but I don't mind. I went swimming and it was awesome. I can't help but think that no matter how old or young you are everyone plays in the ocean the same way. We splash into and tumble around in the waves. I love the ocean and I know the few rules of the ocean if there are any. Swim with the tide if your caught in a rip tide, wear sunscreen, sand WILL get everywhere, and last but not least if you feel something don't freak out. If you feel something and you know it's alive- don't freak out; if you feel something alive and it hurts- don't freak out until it hurts a lot or you see blood. You probably just pissed off a crab- oh and that reminds me of another rule, don't reach out and pick stuff up that you don't know what it is...Anyway, crabs only hurt a pinch. So what do you do if you live in a vacation town that people come to in order to get away from stuff, just act like your on vacation too. The seafood is good and the beach is even better.

Oh Woe...

So I was pretty amped to go see the Slackers this past Monday but it was all for nothing. I did not get to go. I was a little sad but I am hopeful that they will come back. They have to come back! I really enjoyed their music, I remember the first time I heard them. It was on a Hellcat Record Give Em the Boot comp 3. The song was called "Watch This" and it was so pretty. I have two of their other cd's but neither of them have this song on it. Unfortunately, I also lost that comp too so I have no access to it at all. I can watch it on Youtube now so that is kinda cool but there's nothin' like having the actual cd you can jam in your car or around the house. I think I was at a party at my friend Ragans' house when my (still, 10 years later) best friend Charity came over and she had brought it with her. We had so much fun that night and many after that too. Ragan's house was usually a great place to hang out at, even after Paulyo, Matt and me wrecked his car. paulyo ran a stop sign and we were side swiped. Poor Ragan I bought him a Hot Wheels toy to try and make him feel better but it only made him laugh then go quiet. I think it was not nearly so consoling as I had hoped it would be, but many bottles and beers later his apartment's stayed great party spots. The Slackers will always remind me of a lot of old times, both good and bad but always worth remembering. I have noticed the last couple of blogs I posted say something about living. I hope that I have lived life to the fullest. I know I have pushed it to the edge on several occasions. But sometimes I worry that I will never grow up and since I am already 28 (gasp!) it may be too late for me too. I get excited about silly things and still jump up and down. But sometimes I act childish too and get down and out. I am usually immersed in a reading and it is hard to come up for air and life after so much reading. Thank goodness Kevin has the patience of a saint! He is actually named after a saint, I didn't know there was even a saint named Kevin but the Catholics seem to have a Saint for everything! I have found some consolation in the Bloom reading, after she said she didn't have a real job until she was thirty something. What a relief! I just sit around reading and trying to write, so maybe I am capable of writing something enticing and interesting too! Well, that's my blah blah blahg for today...

Concerts and other things...

I realized after I published my last blog that I should have titled it something else! My goal really is to stop saving junk and save only good things; but there is a fine line huh? The eye of the beholder and all that. I am going to go to a concert tonight- I am excited! The Slackers are playing at Theo's and I get to write a review of it for this new online website my361online.com that one of my friends is forming. It should be awesome! I love the Slackers, it is a great mix of reggae and ska and punk. Look at me, writing about them already! Should save that for the website...anyway, I can't get the concept of saving out of my head. I don't know why I have kept so much clutter, all that it really does is collect dirt. I think that most of the things have some sort of meaning to me, either they were gifts or they were antiques or something along those lines. I have a bookmark made out of bone from occupied Japan that is pretty cool; but I also have a Halloween owl beanie baby. I guess I will embrace the clutter because I don't know what I would do without it. It does provide a lot of various sundry items to draw for art. It makes it a little interesting I guess. I claim that most of my stuff is probably junk but I was almost robbed the other day and I am positive I would have been upset if they had succeeded. But we lucked out and they ran away when they realized someone was home. Tharnsby has scared away another burglar too, we were asleep at the time and didn't even realize that is what happened until the next morning. Kevin and I just told her to shut up it was late! Poor dog! She got much love though after we realized what happened. On the note of being robbed, Kevin and I are looking for a new place to live- obviously. Our landlord does rent to own stuff too and so we are looking at buying a home now rather then rent. It just makes more fiscal sense. LOL- I used fiscal in a sentence. I am soooo not that responsible but I have always wanted my own home. And bills and rent always get paid no matter what so I know we wouldn't be foreclosed on ever. I think I am just rambling on now, clearing my head a little. It would be crazy to own our own home, but super awesome too! Well, c'est la vie for now...gotta go do some living :) 

When I stopped saving

It all began with stickers. I collected and saved hundreds of stickers when I was a girl. Lisa Frank was my goal but any kind would do. I collected and saved all sorts of crap. I collected rocks. I collected books (and still do) and I have collected and saved too many clothes, shoes, bracelets by the thousand, necklaces. I always went by what my mom had taught me- save it because you may need it later. This led to a weird habit of mine that turned rather wasteful once I was out in the world on my own. I would save bits of food in the fridge for months and not eat it always saying, I am saving that for this meal of such and such. I was single, living alone, with a fridge full of spoiled food that I kept saving. I never even really made the connections that link it back to my mom. We had to save everything when we were growing up because we were fairly poor and couldn't afford another of anything. It was really interesting to me to figure out where this habit came from and when I recognized it I always thought "How weird, I want this now but I am saving it for something." I had two sisters so they always got their preference whereas I got what was leftover, or handed down. When I lived alone I didn't notice this habit. After over a year of living with Kevin, I guess I save things for him. As a single woman it led to rotten vegetables in my fridge and the stereotypical month old Chinese food in a carton populating my fridge. I am trying to break this habit of saving, except for my books, and get in the habit of living. I want to use everything just to buy it again. How capitalistic it sounds all written out like that but really what am I saving for if it is just going bad or collecting dust? I do not have an overabundance of space in which to put said saved things, but I have taken instead to the habit of what I call gluing (but the rest of America terms scrapbooking.) Yes I am a scrapbooker. After a lifetime of saving for who knows what, a lot of my memories from pictures and old party hats to the Buick emblem and more have been collected and glued into a (several) book of memories. These are worth saving. But it is hard to muster through it all, one easily gets lost in the pile of "(s)crap" and joy and sadness abound at the returning of my mind to that moment at New Years Eve or the time I got my Buick stuck in a muddy ditch with my best friend and a 30 pack. There are not truthfully alot of pictures in my scrapbooks. I prefer old ticket stubs and autographs, crazy wrapping paper and things like that that will stand out in my memory. I have thought about collecting movie stub tickets as I love to go to the movies but I don't know where to begin. I re-collect mentally all the different movies I have seen who I was with and when. These are good memories, worth saving.

And then there was Zumba...

I have never been a real big fan organized aerobics. I preferred to look silly in the safety of my own home doing the occasional work ot video there. I would (and still do) go to the gym every Sunday and do my regular workout with weights and a lot of cardio- but on Wednesday's and Saturday's...I get my zumba on! It is impossible not to smile while you are sweating your ass off. You get to pretend your dancing (it doesn't matter how well you actually dance) and shake your groove thang while working out. This is perfect, especially for South Texas where salsa and samba and all those other sexy dance that people are semi-familiar with- all those get combined with hip hop and other fast rythms and it is just fun! I wish everyone in Corpus could have free access to these classes and then maybe we wouldn't be such an obese city. I know it may sound silly or idealistic- nobody likes to go to the gym, but they love going to eat greasy Mexican food and pizza. I guess this doesn't really bother me personally except for all the bad press about how fat we are when not all of us fat with diabetes. It does bother me though when a fat person complains about their weight and sedentary lifestyle and does absolutely Nothing to change it. Oh well, I guess, it's not me (hopefully) that's going to die of a coronary at 30, it's the fat whiners!

What am I doing?

I recently made a FaceBook page for myself. It is an interesting site to say the least, it works to connect you with all the people my friends know and a few extras. This can be both good and bad. I only want to talk to people I know on FB but many seem to use it for finding new friends. I always reflect back to something I saw on the Daily Show when I think of FB...one of the pundits said "I have 3,000 friends and no one to hang out with." I think that is true, FB may be increasing interconnectivity between people but it doesn't increase human interaction which is what people really need. On campus students run around with their cell phones firmly clutched in their sweaty palms feverishly texting someone in the distance rather than look up and examine the world around them or (dare I say it) meet someone new and hang out with them face to face. They use their cell phones as a shield against communication while using their cell phones as a form of communication. The awkwardness of this does not escape me but it is true none the less.

My first blah-g

So this is my first blogging experience. I do not really know what to say, I am just releasing words out into cyberspace. I hope they find a good home. I think I will just insert a quick quote from someone that encapsulated my feelings best about blogs: “People have often described me as a blogger. I generally shy away from the term because, to me, bloggers are boring, self obsessed narcissists who use their website mainly as a means to discuss the inconsequential minutiae of their day to day lives.” (Anonymous writer) but now that I have said that, or rather someone has said it for me, I will close with a more interesting take on the blog: “I believe the term “blog” means more than an online journal. I believe a blog is a conversation. People go to blogs to read AND write, not just consume.” (Michael Arrington) I hope that this is at least an interesting blog...