Monday, April 28, 2008

Woe is Me and Other News

So far I haven't heard anything from Financial Aid and I'm always looking for new assistantships, so hopefully all will be well on the graduate school front. Please keep your fingers crossed, do a spell, pray, whatever that someone out there will say, "hey, let's give her a huge bag of hundreds!" Anyway, that's the woe is me part. Nick and I drove to Champaign-Urbana this past week and stayed over one night to find me an apartment. After two days, one of the last places we looked (naturally!) was a perfect fit. It's larger than the one we live in now; only slightly more expensive; has a balcony, a fireplace, and a bath and a half. There's even a special storage/pantry area that we can put the kitties beds and stuff so they have their own room. Oh, and the kitchen/dining area is huge. I'm very excited about my new place, though amazingly I'll miss this one. It has been my home for the past two years. Anyway, good luck to SML (you know who you are!) and thanks for the encouragement anyone who actually encouraged me. Now, I'm going to go drink a glass of wine, watch some Gilmore Girls and relax after my day of working hard.

Tuesday, April 22, 2008

Umm...

Pennsylvania primary people!! I'm very excited; although I don't really know why, cause it'll probably be a Clinton/Obama win - they're very very close in the polls. In other news, I now have an advisor so I can start picking out classes for next year! I haven't really heard anything yet about financial aid, but I'm still looking. I really don't have anything new to add or talk about except maybe that whole fundamentalist Mormon religion thing. Oh, and I read an article about an 8 year old girl who filed for divorce from her 30 year old husband. I'll try to find it; it's very depressing. Stupid religion. And ignorance. Really, it's the two combined with traditional cultural practices that people can't let go of that makes me so angry; mainly just because of situations like child marriage and genital mutilation and pedophilia. Anyway, on a happier note, I'm already one run ahead of my goal - I set a goal at Nike.com to run 10 times in four weeks. I've been doing great, and plan on beating it. Maybe. Wish me luck. And I hope you enjoyed seeing a new post. I know I do.

Thursday, April 17, 2008

It's Been Too Long

It really has been too long since I posted. I wanted to kind of get away from my complaining about dental work - though it is the one thing I dread equally to snakes! - and talk about something else. But I don't know much about baseball, football, or other sports teams or any of their prospects so I am going to have to go back to my old boring standby of women's issues/politics. Who ya gonna vote for?
Anyway, today at work my boss asked me to read a section of a book about being Muslim. There was a chapter on women and a sub chapter called Genital Mutilation. So I read the section, even though it always gives me chills to read about that topic no matter how important it is to know, and he asked for my view. I told him it's one of those necessary evils; people, even teens need to know about world/women's issues and it wasn't extremely graphic or anything. But what he was really getting at was this: Would that section be offensive to Muslims, since SOME (not all, in fact, I don't think most Islamic sects believe in it cause it's not in the Qu'ran) practice it, especially in Africa? So I re-read the section and they totally stressed the part that it wasn't a mainstream practice and I assured him that I thought it wouldn't be offensive. He's getting a second opinion. So I thought maybe you all could weigh in. I know that you haven't read the actual section, but just offhand, with my assurances that it wasn't extremely graphic or anything, do you think that kids should 1) Know about this stuff (I'm not talking kindergartners or anything, but more mature young adults) and 2) What if something MIGHT offend a certain religion - should that be taken off the shelf or not put out in the first place merely because it MIGHT offend someone of that faith or should you wait to see if there's complaints and if there ARE, should you yank it?
I'm sure I'll cover censorship and ethics and community, etc. in some of my classes next semester, but what do you think?

Wednesday, April 09, 2008

Tips on How to Lose Weight

Here's a good way to lose weight:
1. Go to the dentist and let them give you four shots to the same side of your mouth
2. Let them drill and polish and take out a filling for one tooth and put in a filling in another
3. Have dentist use nasty tasting fake cement stuff to put in temporary crown on broken tooth
4. Be terrified of losing said temporary crown and do not eat anything that is not in liquid or semi-liquid form : soup, yogurt, smoothies, nothing solid or chewy.
5. Have weird reaction to said shots and feel nauseous, dizzy, faint, and achy - too tired to eat.

By my next appointment, I should have lost about 5 pounds. I wonder if I can keep that off afterwards?