I was thinking to myself, "man, why is no one posting lately?"

Then I thought that I should practice the preaching.

In a little over a month, I will be starting something new. I still don't know what it is. But I am sure I'll figure it out. I had an interview this last week with Farmers Insurance for a number of different positions, and the woman I spoke with is submitting my resume to the district manager; I should hear back within three weeks-at the latest. I applied elsewhere, but haven't heard anything yet. This isn't, obviously, the best market. Ah well.

For the second time now, even though I was supposed to get to go to Europe for graduation, I find myself faced with reality. Of course I would like to go, but 1. No one else has money or time to go with me and what's the point of going alone? and 2. My parents offered to buy me a new computer instead, and I will probably need one in two-three years.

I decided to be practical. I got a MacBook Pro. It is really pretty and of course runs great, but as with the last time I upgraded, I am having trouble letting go of my old computer :(. It was always very good to me. In addition, it is still fully capable of performing pretty much any function I actually care about (it is not a dual processor, but I really couldn't care less). It is true that the warranty will run out in July or August, but I have never had any trouble with it whatsoever. All the same, it would be prudent to upgrade when I have the opportunity; I get the feeling that I still will not have the money to get a new one, should I need to in 2-3 years.

So. Though I will miss it, I suppose I am going to sell my old computer. I will likely post a thing on eBay, but if anyone on my flist needs a computer... uh, mine is up for sale? Ask me about it or something. ^^

This semester, I am in a poetry class. I don't like poetry in general, but every now and then I can find something that is pretty neat . I hate having to do all the work in such a short time frame, but I am kind of glad that I have had some experience writing poems. I used to really have trouble with it. Randomness.

Happy Birthday Charlie (well, it's your birthday in Japan right now hehe)!!

Eric and I went in on a gift for you but we figure it will take quite a while to get there and the shipping is kind of heavy... so we could do a switch on stuff when you get back, yes??

I hope your day is going well!

Week three of Elements of Physical Geography draws to a close. You know, I really don't get most of what's going on in this class, but I am so relieved to be in this class and not in the presession class anymore.

As I was telling Eric and Elliot yesterday, I really need to get a hobby. I've been watching West Wing again lately, and I've already gotten through two whole seasons (22 one-hour episodes each season) in something like two and a half weeks. Isn't that a whole lot of sitting around and staring at the screen?

But I need an affordable hobby. Preferrably one that is free. Possibly involving some small form of activity. I am trying to be more active. Sitting around on my couch at home is not good all the time. Yet, I am always here. I did fix my bike this week, though. I replaced the old inner tube with a new one and even put it on myself. It was interesting, since I have never really done that before. I like figuring things out like that. I feel like I could be an inventor in those small moments when I can think through all the parts on the bike and an explanation isn't necessary. It's another indication that I could be doing something with my hands.

Take every aspect of your small life and perfect it. I've been wondering if I am not ambitious enough lately. Ought I stop second-guessing myself? Ought I actually go through grad school? If I could convince myself that I'm worth the trouble. So for something like 24 hours, I was considering overseas school. Wouldn't that be ideal? I really want to live overseas one time in my life. But not alone. I have already struck out on my own and I don't like it. I don't like the three-years-and-counting adjustment period it requires. When will I stop looking at it all with astonishment, with all the reassurances, "So this is my life." ?

The trouble is, I'm not patient enough for academia. I want it here and now. And I want to understand it without all the extra effort. It's like every time I take a test that I haven't studied for and just pray, pray that I'll be able to figure out the answer through some miracle of collective knowledge or gleaning something from the etymology of a word. It works sometimes. I am too concerned for my own good with the fact that in our gifts, we are not balanced. I think, well this person can make straight A's without even trying, so I should be able to. Sometimes, I feel as if the lessons of America and its freedoms, its equality require a disclaimer: but not in actuality.

Still, shouldn't we strive towards that? We are taught such valuable, rare virtues, and we are made to think that they are, in so many ways, obsolete. But if we are never told about the light outside of the cave, how will we know to keep moving forward?

Oh geez. I did it again. I always get philosophical. I should stop doing that! In other news, I might make my journal friends only if I keep getting comments from bots on my entries. Well, that's just not cool. So I hope most people are logged in most of the time.

I begin to wonder a lot lately where my friends and I will be in the coming years. Being always a nomadic family, my parents weren't able to keep many close friends, or at least stay in touch with them. It would become the kind of awkward hello and catching up if they were ever to meet up again. It's surely sad to think that time does so much as to make such close friends such complete strangers. But the bond you had will always be there, if only for you to look back on.

A year or so ago, my brother went to visit his high school best friend's parents in Albuquerque while he was there on business for Apple, and learned that Doug-a Major in the US Marine Corps- was away in Iraq on his third tour. My brother left his number with Doug's parents in case he should ever want to call him up to talk at some point. Some six months later, when Doug was back in the States for a short break from combat, he called my brother and they talked on the phone for a long time and decided to meet up when Doug got back from his fourth upcoming tour in Iraq. They had a lot in common: both the same age, both married for only a few years, and both with a one year-old daughter. My brother was also in the Marines for a time.

Recently, my brother decided to look Doug up on the internet to see when he might be coming back to the States and found out that Doug had died just a couple of weeks earlier, on May 11th.

http://www.arlingtoncemetery.net/dazembiec.htm

The Washington Post piece is well-done, I think.

I didn't really know Doug all that well, but he was my brother's closest friend for a long time, and a really decent person. It's just alarming to think that they are so alike, and that it could just as easily have been my brother instead.

I had just been thinking a few weeks earlier that I don't know anyone who has gone to Iraq, but I guess I'm wrong.

I know Doug meant a lot to my brother, and I think he was really upset that he didn't know anything about what happened. He probably would have gone to his funeral, even though it was on the opposite of the country. I guess... I never want something like that to happen to me; I don't want to miss someone's funeral that had been, at least at one time, so close to me. That kind of concept just saddens me greatly. The people that matter most to you, that care so much about you, should always be given the chance to be there to celebrate your life in the end.

lol

A guy I know from work, Leif, is starting a journal with his friends, and he asked me to help edit and market it. We talked for an hour or so yesterday about some of the steps they still need to take to get its name out there. They're working on a website right now, which is good... I'll start helping them with the graphic design of things, too, I think. They're using InDesign, but they're fairly new to it. Since I'm proficient in most Adobe programs, they asked me to give some pointers. But here is the myspace page they have in the meantime.

So if anyone feels like submitting essays or artwork, I am certain they would appreciate it.

Things aren't too bad lately, I guess. I've got things all worked out to stay in Lincoln this summer, in an apartment I'm renting from Elliot's family. It's fairly affordable, and I've worked out a pretty nice budget for everything.

I'll also be taking classes so I can finish my degree on time, and working an internship at the Prairie Schooner. I applied for UCARE in February and finally received word back that I will be receiving it! This means that I will be getting paid something like $8/hr. for my work at PS.

After this summer, I will have 6 classes left. That's not so bad, I guess. I just wish they offered more in the way of religious studies classes from semester to semester. It makes it difficult to finish my minor.

So I've been contemplating my next steps past graduation. It seems as though I might have an in at the University Press with this internship at PS, so there is a possibility I will be able to find a position there at some point. I am not all too concerned about where I end up, though, so I might be leaving Nebraska... wherever there's work, right?

I keep getting the "You're going to Graduate School, right?" question. *sigh* I think I might be worn out already, lol. I don't think I'm even prepared to pay off the rather bloated loan I am using to pay for my undergraduate schooling... So. Well I don't know.

Happy Birthday reishka!

Happy Birthday starnik!

w00!

I hope today is festive!

It's weird how you think you've learned the lessons already, when they'll just come back to trip you up once again.

There's a sadness there, in the pulling away of a family, when I finally realize that instead of a daughter, I've slowly become an equal. And it's growing up, right? It's when I finally stop relying on them, falling back on them to comfort me, and I acknowledge the mutual need for comfort and sanctuary. We lead seperate lives; our days no longer intersect, and I'll no longer sit with you in the evening and wind down with you, I won't tell you the little things that irk me. Those times? Those were the times that made it home for me. I'm afraid I don't know yet how to make any other place my home. I am thankful for the perspective, to have come to learn about my parents as people, more than just their duties to guard and guide, but I sometimes wish I could still believe they're unflappable and unaffected. Would it be better to avoid this gradually-developed awareness of their mortality?

I suppose... why prepare for something that you can't even handle, should it come to pass? Does knowing mean you're giving up part of your childlike ignorance?

I want to make it clear. The meeting this Friday about what happened? I refuse to attend unless everyone involved with the convention comes. Because this whole situation affects them all and not just those currently involved in this argument.

Ahhh.

2 down, 3 to go.

Yay for writing my four-page paper in an hour and 40 minutes.

(As opposed to the five-page paper that took me 3 hours and 21 minutes to write the night before.)

Dude, this is just...

priceless.

Happy Birthday arydrall!

Another Sunday dawns. I haven't gotten a single thing finished for my classes.

I am thinking about the paper I have to write on Buddha. It is one of the few papers I will enjoy writing. I don't mind explicating my knowledge of religion.

Buddha's thoughts are quite interesting...

There is a legend that when Siddhatta Gotama was still young, his father had taken him to watch the ceremonial ploughing of the fields that took place before planting the next year's crop. Gotama was left alone under a rose-apple tree, since all the men of the area took place in the ploughing. Gotama watched as the young grass was torn up and all the insects and eggs they had laid in the shoots were destroyed. Gotama looked on with sadness, feeling for the grass, empathy akin to what one might feel for his own family. Gotama was sorrowful; but suddenly, a feeling of pure joy arose in him. He was outside of his own body, in a short moment of exstasis. This was Gotama's first indication of a world outside of that which he was born into.

I found myself wondering about the joy Gotama felt. The empathy he had for the grass was born of his selflessness. He was happy that he might feel such compassion for something that he had no prior or future relation with. It freed him, if only momentarily.

This is... the ideal humanity, I think. If we are only to feel for others that same compassion, without condition, we are to make their lives, and our own, easier. There is something weighted about a conditional empathy, for both persons.

I never understood the carelessness of people who might look past complete strangers without thought. It was not the carelessness that mystified me, but the ability to be so careless. But I suppose it is easy to maintain some semblance of the world, your own personal experience, set aside from reality. But your own personal experience should change. It should be constantly added to, with new and insightful thoughts and experiences. And if you are only to push through your own small worldview, you might begin to see how blind you were before. If only for the advancement of yourself, is it not, then, sensible to consider others? As you validate another's existence by acknowledging him/her, you enhance the quality of his/her life and also your own.

If you can feel this compassion for others, you can experience the exstasis. You can take joy in simply feeling. As we are given this unique ability, we should fulfill its purpose.

Happy Birthday iscaneus!

Even though it'll be a long day, and maybe somewhat stressful, I hope you'll have some time to just stop and enjoy it. It's your special uhh... birthday, after all! (22 on the 22nd)

<3<3<3

HAY GUYS, WARNING!

lol

Yeah, we're in Omaha, and there's a tornado warning. hehehe

We're eating steak, mashed potatoes, mushrooms, and asparagus in the laundry room of Jon's Dad's very...lush home. lols

And Jon is humming the Communist national anthem...

So. There was a tornado warning yesterday, too, whilst anime club was in session. So, for reference, you don't want to get stuck with a bunch of crazy otaku during inclement weather. Because... lol. But we were hardcore. We continued to watch anime while the tornado...worked itself out?

Yeah.

Uh...anyway. Probably should get off the computer now. hehe. ^^

"...imagine us, for we won't really exist if you don't. Against the tyranny of time and politics, imagine us the way we sometimes didn't dare to imagine ourselves: in our most private and secret moments, in the most extraordinarily ordinary instances of life, listening to music, falling in love, walking down the shady streets..."

Can't we all be prophets?

"The gunfire around us makes it hard to hear. But the human voice is
different from other sounds. It can be heard over noises that bury
everything else. Even when it is not shouting. Even if it's just a
whisper. Even the lowest whisper can be heard - over armies - when
it's telling the truth."

It's idealistic. But if you have that charismatic personality, maybe you can make a difference. If you want it enough, you will ache to see its endpoint but you won't give up even in your dying moment. You will make it anything other than a quiet moment to yourself.

Every child is born with the strength to believe in humanity. It is chipped away as he/she grows older. Only those who are truly strong can retain this faith even through the turmoil, all the macabre. Isn't it a sad moment when we learn to stop being vulnerable? That first time we're hurt, and we learn not to trust so readily. Isn't it such a disappointment that we have to grow up? We are so much more than just taken advantage of. It's an injury that will never heal unless we can forgive and truly forget. Putting up these defenses, we are not saying, "you can't hurt me anymore," but "you hurt me and I'm still hurting."

It may be best to do things for the right reason, but I can't completely disdain any means to a good end. Maybe this means I believe it's in the destination and not the journey. I'm shamefully impatient that way. And then missing it when it's done and over.

I used to think my grandfather was weak. He won't say anything, he won't stick up for himself. His sister has wronged him so many times. And now she's forcing the sale of land that's been in the family for more than 100 years, land that their mother hoped would become a heritage. He's still just as cordial and concerned about her as he's always been, and not hung up on all her stupid indiscretions. I kept thinking he should have said something long ago, that he should never have let himself become a doormat. But no matter how many times she messes up, he'll still be a brother to her. And I admire him now. You can't make people realize their mistakes. You can't make people rectify them. You can only decide how you'll react to these mistakes. My grandfather is not a doormat. There's a big difference between letting people push you down and down until you can't get back up and picking yourself back up off the ground, dusting yourself off when something goes awry. Maybe she'll never understand that. But why does it really matter?

Happy Birthday vertigoxd!