I was flipping through some channels, and found The Royal Tenebaums on Comedy Central. I kept it on in the background while I went about my evening. It's supposed to be a funny movie, but it made me think of a lot.
Anyway, life is pretty good. I'm going to dive into attempt #2 for my driver's license on Saturday, and this time hopefully I won't be so ... forgetful.
31 May 2007
26 May 2007
Driving, etc.
I was going to get a driver's license in Virginia this weekend, so I drove to NOVA yesterday. I got up nice and early this morning to go get in line at the DMV only to discover that I'd left my driver's license in my purse, which was back at my apartment. So, I grumbled a bit and drove back to the apartment. I grabbed the driver's license, put it back in my wallet where it belongs, used the bathroom, and headed out to the DMV (one slightly closer than the one near the parentals.)
I got there, pulled out my wallet, and ... my license wasn't there. I looked all over my car, went through my purse, took every last item out of my wallet, and no luck.
So, I drove back to my apartment yet again, and tore the whole place apart looking for it.
No luck.
I started really worrying about what I was going to do - it wasn't as though I could just replace it from out of state, and how was I going to get a new one if I didn't have an old one to turn in?
I went to use the bathroom again, and there it was, on the floor. It had fallen out of my wallet earlier.
Sigh.
By then it was way too late to go back out to the DMV (it closes at 12 on Saturdays), so I just resigned myself to going next week or the week after.
The irony here is that I actually would have been fine without having an old one to turn in. I finally looked at the FORM for getting a new VA license (not just a replacement), and there's a place to just say that the old (possibly out of state) one got lost.
...Yeah....
Anyway, it's been a long day. Tomorrow should be better, though. I actually did enjoy all the driving today; I got to go through DC and got to know the area around my apartment a bit more. I'm just continually amazed at my ability to be so absentminded about some things...meh. I guess we all do that every now and then, right?
I got there, pulled out my wallet, and ... my license wasn't there. I looked all over my car, went through my purse, took every last item out of my wallet, and no luck.
So, I drove back to my apartment yet again, and tore the whole place apart looking for it.
No luck.
I started really worrying about what I was going to do - it wasn't as though I could just replace it from out of state, and how was I going to get a new one if I didn't have an old one to turn in?
I went to use the bathroom again, and there it was, on the floor. It had fallen out of my wallet earlier.
Sigh.
By then it was way too late to go back out to the DMV (it closes at 12 on Saturdays), so I just resigned myself to going next week or the week after.
The irony here is that I actually would have been fine without having an old one to turn in. I finally looked at the FORM for getting a new VA license (not just a replacement), and there's a place to just say that the old (possibly out of state) one got lost.
...Yeah....
Anyway, it's been a long day. Tomorrow should be better, though. I actually did enjoy all the driving today; I got to go through DC and got to know the area around my apartment a bit more. I'm just continually amazed at my ability to be so absentminded about some things...meh. I guess we all do that every now and then, right?
20 May 2007
Decks And Things
So, the past few days have been really hectic but really good.
I'd like to thank everyone who's either offered to help me move, or has helped me move, or has stored some of my stuff...you people are simply wonderful, and help make the big scary world a bit smaller and more personable.
Today itself was a pretty low key day. I got up and went to Mass at one of my favorite churches ever - the building itself is beautiful and I really like the "feel" of the community there. The priests usually give pretty insightful homilies. The homily today was about waiting (as in, the Apostles' waiting from the Ascention till Pentecost to find out what exactly they were supposed to be up to.) Fr. pointed out that waiting is usually a good thing, because sometimes when we're forced into longing we end up refining our longing - we figure out what we actually want or what actually makes sense to do.
That has a really good application to my life right now. I decided to promise myself that I'm not going to get into another relationship for (at least) a couple months, for a lot of reasons that are probably blatantly evident to most people who read this.
After Mass, I came back here and proceeded to nearly burn the apartment down. Actually, it wasn't as bad as it could've been (no smoke alarm this time) but I did make a hell of a lot of smoke and apparently one of my neighbors could smell it, too. It turns out that making lasagna in a pan that is simply too small is actually a worse idea than one might think - the lasagna itself actually turned out damn good, but it bubbled over and made a hell of a mess in the oven.
So, I dealt with that and then ran some errands. I watched a few episodes of Reno911 with a friend of mine that I hadn't seen in awhile, which was really good. Reno911 is hilarious and I enjoyed the break from online company... Then Kathryn called and I talked to her on the phone for a LONG TIME. We talked about a few different options for my annual "trip to Dayton" weekend, and caught up on life. Then I ate dinner, and did some reading, and here I am...
If you haven't noticed, I'm really enjoying just living what at least feels like a normal life. Bye bye CMU stress, at least for a few months. Yay!
I'd like to thank everyone who's either offered to help me move, or has helped me move, or has stored some of my stuff...you people are simply wonderful, and help make the big scary world a bit smaller and more personable.
Today itself was a pretty low key day. I got up and went to Mass at one of my favorite churches ever - the building itself is beautiful and I really like the "feel" of the community there. The priests usually give pretty insightful homilies. The homily today was about waiting (as in, the Apostles' waiting from the Ascention till Pentecost to find out what exactly they were supposed to be up to.) Fr. pointed out that waiting is usually a good thing, because sometimes when we're forced into longing we end up refining our longing - we figure out what we actually want or what actually makes sense to do.
That has a really good application to my life right now. I decided to promise myself that I'm not going to get into another relationship for (at least) a couple months, for a lot of reasons that are probably blatantly evident to most people who read this.
After Mass, I came back here and proceeded to nearly burn the apartment down. Actually, it wasn't as bad as it could've been (no smoke alarm this time) but I did make a hell of a lot of smoke and apparently one of my neighbors could smell it, too. It turns out that making lasagna in a pan that is simply too small is actually a worse idea than one might think - the lasagna itself actually turned out damn good, but it bubbled over and made a hell of a mess in the oven.
So, I dealt with that and then ran some errands. I watched a few episodes of Reno911 with a friend of mine that I hadn't seen in awhile, which was really good. Reno911 is hilarious and I enjoyed the break from online company... Then Kathryn called and I talked to her on the phone for a LONG TIME. We talked about a few different options for my annual "trip to Dayton" weekend, and caught up on life. Then I ate dinner, and did some reading, and here I am...
If you haven't noticed, I'm really enjoying just living what at least feels like a normal life. Bye bye CMU stress, at least for a few months. Yay!
17 May 2007
Sleep
Well, I missed sunrise this morning, and it probably would have been a beautiful morning, too.
Oh, well. My alarm went off. I rolled over. Two hours later, I was up.
It's been a good trip. Yesterday some sufer dudes offered to teach me how to surf (I was mildly tempted to go for it, until they started asking things like where I was staying and for how long, and then I stopped talking to them...)
Today the weather was flawless, and I spent all morning and most of the afternoon on the beach. Right now I'm just laying around before heading out for some dinner.
I made some promises to myself this morning.
It's going to be a good summer.
Oh, well. My alarm went off. I rolled over. Two hours later, I was up.
It's been a good trip. Yesterday some sufer dudes offered to teach me how to surf (I was mildly tempted to go for it, until they started asking things like where I was staying and for how long, and then I stopped talking to them...)
Today the weather was flawless, and I spent all morning and most of the afternoon on the beach. Right now I'm just laying around before heading out for some dinner.
I made some promises to myself this morning.
It's going to be a good summer.
16 May 2007
Sunrise
I'd intended to get up this morning in time to watch the sunrise.
I had a hard time sleeping last night, so waking up this morning wasn't an issue. I got down to the beach with plenty of time to spare, and scanned the horizon - nothing but solid clouds. There was absolutely no way to watch the sun come up.
It was okay, though. I stood there and watched the sky lighten, and walked along the shore. I got breakfast, and then headed back to the beach. I came back inside for lunch and to make/receive a couple phone calls for some research I'm doing in the fall, and took a short nap.
I had some strange dreams. The only one I remember involves me going into a bathroom, and lifting up the toilet cover, and seeing a bunch of grey shirts in the toilet. There was another one where a bunch of characters from a movie were telling me things as peope in my life (as in, the characters represented real people in my life). I don't remember what they said, though.
Finally, I went back to the beach (Oh, yeah. I'm sunburned - regardless of how religiously I reapplied the damn sunblock. At least it means a nice tan in a week or so, right? :-P) Anyway, I finished reading a book called "The Great Divorce" by C.S. Lewis. It was all about good, and evil, and love, and pity, and how so often "love" is used to describe something that's actually really selfish and not loving, and how "pity" is used by some people to blackmail truly happy, loving, people into not being happy.
Honestly, the book was a bit depressing. It made some really good points, and I think most people (myself included) could find a bit of themselves in it. The hardest part for me to swallow was how the book was all about weakness - pointing out the totally depraved nature of humans, and discussing the - oh.
I was about to rail on a bit about how the book talked about all of these ways to identify love from not-love, but not how to fix those weaknesses in ourselves, but the fixing was actually what the whole book was about. All that any of the characters had to do was swallow their pride a bit and say "Oh, yeah. I wanna be happy too. Me too, please? Maybe I was wrong, but that's okay - happiness is worth it. Let's just love and be happy and flowers and rainbows and bunnies!"
(Plot spoiler coming)
But most of the characters didn't take it. They didn't like the idea of not being needed, not being "necessary", not being "meaningful", not being "right", having to put aside some pride, and so they chose to step away from peace, and happiness, and love. There's an obvious religion thing here, but again, it's something that can be applied to not religion, also. ...I guess in the long run, all of the heavy thinking just comes down to the simple fact that most people will probably be happier when they care the least about what they mean to people.
This is of course ironic, because I think we'd all agree that those we like and respect the most (that mean the most to us) are definitely those who spend the least energy doing things just to please others. (What they do certainly does bring a lot of happiness to people around them, but it's for those OTHER reasons...)
Anyway...it's all pretty sensible; I also think it's one of those things that's much easier to write and think about than it is to actually do.
I had a hard time sleeping last night, so waking up this morning wasn't an issue. I got down to the beach with plenty of time to spare, and scanned the horizon - nothing but solid clouds. There was absolutely no way to watch the sun come up.
It was okay, though. I stood there and watched the sky lighten, and walked along the shore. I got breakfast, and then headed back to the beach. I came back inside for lunch and to make/receive a couple phone calls for some research I'm doing in the fall, and took a short nap.
I had some strange dreams. The only one I remember involves me going into a bathroom, and lifting up the toilet cover, and seeing a bunch of grey shirts in the toilet. There was another one where a bunch of characters from a movie were telling me things as peope in my life (as in, the characters represented real people in my life). I don't remember what they said, though.
Finally, I went back to the beach (Oh, yeah. I'm sunburned - regardless of how religiously I reapplied the damn sunblock. At least it means a nice tan in a week or so, right? :-P) Anyway, I finished reading a book called "The Great Divorce" by C.S. Lewis. It was all about good, and evil, and love, and pity, and how so often "love" is used to describe something that's actually really selfish and not loving, and how "pity" is used by some people to blackmail truly happy, loving, people into not being happy.
Honestly, the book was a bit depressing. It made some really good points, and I think most people (myself included) could find a bit of themselves in it. The hardest part for me to swallow was how the book was all about weakness - pointing out the totally depraved nature of humans, and discussing the - oh.
I was about to rail on a bit about how the book talked about all of these ways to identify love from not-love, but not how to fix those weaknesses in ourselves, but the fixing was actually what the whole book was about. All that any of the characters had to do was swallow their pride a bit and say "Oh, yeah. I wanna be happy too. Me too, please? Maybe I was wrong, but that's okay - happiness is worth it. Let's just love and be happy and flowers and rainbows and bunnies!"
(Plot spoiler coming)
But most of the characters didn't take it. They didn't like the idea of not being needed, not being "necessary", not being "meaningful", not being "right", having to put aside some pride, and so they chose to step away from peace, and happiness, and love. There's an obvious religion thing here, but again, it's something that can be applied to not religion, also. ...I guess in the long run, all of the heavy thinking just comes down to the simple fact that most people will probably be happier when they care the least about what they mean to people.
This is of course ironic, because I think we'd all agree that those we like and respect the most (that mean the most to us) are definitely those who spend the least energy doing things just to please others. (What they do certainly does bring a lot of happiness to people around them, but it's for those OTHER reasons...)
Anyway...it's all pretty sensible; I also think it's one of those things that's much easier to write and think about than it is to actually do.
15 May 2007
Sweetness, Literally
It's funny (but probably a universally shared feeling) how many memories, or how much feeling, or how much significance can be associated with one single piece of furniture.
My parents have a really nice bar. I'm not talking about the booze inside (although that's okay too, I guess), I'm talking about the bar itself. It's made out of some kind of heavy wood with a rich finish. On the right is a cabinet with glass panels, all the better to display the (seemingly, to a 6-year old) infinite varieties of glasses inside.
On the left is a smaller cabinet with a solid wood door, and above it is a drawer. The drawer is full of napkins, glass stirring rods, coasters, and plastic stirring sticks from all sorts of exotic places (Australia, Hong Kong, Hawaii, LA, London, Tokyo...) that my Dad's visited over the years.
When I was younger, though, the most important things stored in that drawer were the peanuts. I don't mean peanuts bought from a store and kept there for the social events and cocktails; I mean peanuts in blue and red foil pouches, some with stripes, some with solid colors, all with a fancy looking logo of some sort.
Yes, I'm talking about the little bags of peanuts handed out on airplanes.
Dad has always travelled a LOT. Not only that, Dad has always disliked peanuts. Thus, whenever he came home from one of his many trips, he'd have a whole handful of those amazing little bags. He'd put them in the drawer of the bar while he was unpacking, and every now and then Mom would let me rummage around and pull out one or two pouches as a treat.
As time went by, I developed certain preferences. Delta peanuts were the "best" (meaning only that the pouches had the coolest design) and Continental peanuts were the "worst" (ugliest pouches ever). More important, though, was the distinction of "salted roasted" vs "honey roasted."
"Salted roasted" peanuts were okay. Peanuts are pretty good no matter what, and the shiny pouches were pretty neat, and they were always a reminded of Dad...but "honey roasted" peanuts were Special. They were a perfect balance of sweet and salt, peanut and honey, all in one perfect little bundle. In some ways, being able to pull open the drawer and poke around inside for any new arrivals helped make it okay that Dad was gone so much. (Not that we had an unhappy family dynamic or anything like that - Dad has always been a wonderful father...but we still missed him, and it was fun to have something, however silly to look forward to.)
Of course, the joy was not to last. Somewhere along the line, airlines had to start watching costs and one of the VERY FIRST casualties was the wonderful snack known as "honey roasted peanuts." I remember being sorely disappointed that by the time I was flying regularly, airlines simply didn't have "honey roasteds" anymore...if they had peanuts at all, they were just salted.
Over the years, the bar tradition fell away. Dad would just hand the peanuts directly to me and Mom, and I graudally forgot the days of pulling open the drawer and peeking inside.
Yesterday and this morning I fell into the same sort of funk I'd fallen into right before leaving for Phoenix last year. What, exactly, the hell did I think I was doing, especially with so many friends and my parents to hang out with in DC...?!
My flight out of Dulles left at 7:10. I was pretty groggy, so I fell asleep right after we boarded. The flight was nearly empty (everyone had a row to themselves, if they wanted it) and I was stretched out with my head on a window. I woke up about an hour later to find that the stewardess had come by with snacks, and left some on the tray table nearest the aisle for me.
I noticed that there were some peanuts, and tore open the pouch to enjoy some salty goodness. Sometime between opening the pouch and getting the first few to my mouth, I snapped out of my daze enough to realize that... Sweet Jeusus, THESE ARE HONEY ROASTED!!! I leaned back contentedly, full of memories and happiness. The stewardess came back by with some coffee for me, and I flipped open a book I bought yesterday and dove in feeling much much more confident about what I'm doing for myself with this trip.
Yeah. I do need the time to myself. Yesterday I found myself upset all over again about so many of the same things from recently - last night I found myself feeding a lot of the same old weaknesses, resentments, and insecurities. (Let me say also that they weren't actually directly boy-related - it was some of the other things.) It wasn't nearly as bad as it had been, and I was able to snap out of it, and one of my friends was really there for me - but yeah, I do need to sort things out. I need to get to know myself, to get to know loneliness again. I don't mean that in a self-pitying sense, just that I need to get away from this tendency to surround myself with people (particularly boyfriends) in such a steady stream that I lose sight of what I actually feel, and think, and value - and that I lose sight of friends, and what friendship is, and what I want to be able to give to the people in my life.
So, right now I'm in Tampa. My flight to Ft. Lauderdale leaves in about an hour and I half, and I'm psyched. It's going to be a good trip.
I also realized that I seem to have a tendency of taking these trips to places my grandfather really loved - the southwest last year, this particular part of Florida this year - if I keep it up, next year I'm headed for California.
Sweet.
My parents have a really nice bar. I'm not talking about the booze inside (although that's okay too, I guess), I'm talking about the bar itself. It's made out of some kind of heavy wood with a rich finish. On the right is a cabinet with glass panels, all the better to display the (seemingly, to a 6-year old) infinite varieties of glasses inside.
On the left is a smaller cabinet with a solid wood door, and above it is a drawer. The drawer is full of napkins, glass stirring rods, coasters, and plastic stirring sticks from all sorts of exotic places (Australia, Hong Kong, Hawaii, LA, London, Tokyo...) that my Dad's visited over the years.
When I was younger, though, the most important things stored in that drawer were the peanuts. I don't mean peanuts bought from a store and kept there for the social events and cocktails; I mean peanuts in blue and red foil pouches, some with stripes, some with solid colors, all with a fancy looking logo of some sort.
Yes, I'm talking about the little bags of peanuts handed out on airplanes.
Dad has always travelled a LOT. Not only that, Dad has always disliked peanuts. Thus, whenever he came home from one of his many trips, he'd have a whole handful of those amazing little bags. He'd put them in the drawer of the bar while he was unpacking, and every now and then Mom would let me rummage around and pull out one or two pouches as a treat.
As time went by, I developed certain preferences. Delta peanuts were the "best" (meaning only that the pouches had the coolest design) and Continental peanuts were the "worst" (ugliest pouches ever). More important, though, was the distinction of "salted roasted" vs "honey roasted."
"Salted roasted" peanuts were okay. Peanuts are pretty good no matter what, and the shiny pouches were pretty neat, and they were always a reminded of Dad...but "honey roasted" peanuts were Special. They were a perfect balance of sweet and salt, peanut and honey, all in one perfect little bundle. In some ways, being able to pull open the drawer and poke around inside for any new arrivals helped make it okay that Dad was gone so much. (Not that we had an unhappy family dynamic or anything like that - Dad has always been a wonderful father...but we still missed him, and it was fun to have something, however silly to look forward to.)
Of course, the joy was not to last. Somewhere along the line, airlines had to start watching costs and one of the VERY FIRST casualties was the wonderful snack known as "honey roasted peanuts." I remember being sorely disappointed that by the time I was flying regularly, airlines simply didn't have "honey roasteds" anymore...if they had peanuts at all, they were just salted.
Over the years, the bar tradition fell away. Dad would just hand the peanuts directly to me and Mom, and I graudally forgot the days of pulling open the drawer and peeking inside.
Yesterday and this morning I fell into the same sort of funk I'd fallen into right before leaving for Phoenix last year. What, exactly, the hell did I think I was doing, especially with so many friends and my parents to hang out with in DC...?!
My flight out of Dulles left at 7:10. I was pretty groggy, so I fell asleep right after we boarded. The flight was nearly empty (everyone had a row to themselves, if they wanted it) and I was stretched out with my head on a window. I woke up about an hour later to find that the stewardess had come by with snacks, and left some on the tray table nearest the aisle for me.
I noticed that there were some peanuts, and tore open the pouch to enjoy some salty goodness. Sometime between opening the pouch and getting the first few to my mouth, I snapped out of my daze enough to realize that... Sweet Jeusus, THESE ARE HONEY ROASTED!!! I leaned back contentedly, full of memories and happiness. The stewardess came back by with some coffee for me, and I flipped open a book I bought yesterday and dove in feeling much much more confident about what I'm doing for myself with this trip.
Yeah. I do need the time to myself. Yesterday I found myself upset all over again about so many of the same things from recently - last night I found myself feeding a lot of the same old weaknesses, resentments, and insecurities. (Let me say also that they weren't actually directly boy-related - it was some of the other things.) It wasn't nearly as bad as it had been, and I was able to snap out of it, and one of my friends was really there for me - but yeah, I do need to sort things out. I need to get to know myself, to get to know loneliness again. I don't mean that in a self-pitying sense, just that I need to get away from this tendency to surround myself with people (particularly boyfriends) in such a steady stream that I lose sight of what I actually feel, and think, and value - and that I lose sight of friends, and what friendship is, and what I want to be able to give to the people in my life.
So, right now I'm in Tampa. My flight to Ft. Lauderdale leaves in about an hour and I half, and I'm psyched. It's going to be a good trip.
I also realized that I seem to have a tendency of taking these trips to places my grandfather really loved - the southwest last year, this particular part of Florida this year - if I keep it up, next year I'm headed for California.
Sweet.
14 May 2007
Out of Body Experience
For some reason, I feel the urge to write about something that happened a good 6 and a half years ago.
When I first started to date Matt freshman year of high school, we'd meet up on Saturday mornings at the gym on base. My parents found out, of course, but it was an okay system for awhile.
The first time I met him wasn't a weekend, it was some weekday afternoon. I'd bought a pack of gum at one of the vending machines and was walking around waiting for him. He finally showed up, on the lower level in the corridor outside of the basketball court. I gave him a hug, feeling excited and nervous and scared and tense and happy all at once. We turned to walk down towards the locker rooms, and
All of a sudden I was looking at my back, and in front of me I saw him with his arm around me. I couldn't believe that someone had their arm around me, wanted to be close to me, wanted me to be his! It was too much to handle, so I just - didn't, and let my body go ahead of me.
A split second later, I snapped out of it because I wanted to see how it felt to have his arm around me, and I couldn't tell what it was like from four steps back.
Fuck, that was six and a half years ago. I remember when I was 10, I'd think about how I couldn't remember things from six and a half years ago. It doesn't feel like six and a half years, and at the same time, it seems like immeasurably longer. I almost want to see Matt again, to hug him and see if he remembers those days, see if it feels that recent and far away to him, too.
I feel old, and not as ready for life as I should be. I'm more mature than I used to be, but in some ways I miss the old, naive, me. It's hard to explain, I guess.
In spite of all that, I'd never want to actually go back. High school was rough enough the first time around, etc. Some lessons I don't want to learn twice.
When I first started to date Matt freshman year of high school, we'd meet up on Saturday mornings at the gym on base. My parents found out, of course, but it was an okay system for awhile.
The first time I met him wasn't a weekend, it was some weekday afternoon. I'd bought a pack of gum at one of the vending machines and was walking around waiting for him. He finally showed up, on the lower level in the corridor outside of the basketball court. I gave him a hug, feeling excited and nervous and scared and tense and happy all at once. We turned to walk down towards the locker rooms, and
All of a sudden I was looking at my back, and in front of me I saw him with his arm around me. I couldn't believe that someone had their arm around me, wanted to be close to me, wanted me to be his! It was too much to handle, so I just - didn't, and let my body go ahead of me.
A split second later, I snapped out of it because I wanted to see how it felt to have his arm around me, and I couldn't tell what it was like from four steps back.
Fuck, that was six and a half years ago. I remember when I was 10, I'd think about how I couldn't remember things from six and a half years ago. It doesn't feel like six and a half years, and at the same time, it seems like immeasurably longer. I almost want to see Matt again, to hug him and see if he remembers those days, see if it feels that recent and far away to him, too.
I feel old, and not as ready for life as I should be. I'm more mature than I used to be, but in some ways I miss the old, naive, me. It's hard to explain, I guess.
In spite of all that, I'd never want to actually go back. High school was rough enough the first time around, etc. Some lessons I don't want to learn twice.
13 May 2007
Good Ole Family Time
Today was an amazing day.
I woke up at about 1000 from Mom asking me if I wanted to go get breakfast with her and Dad. I threw on some clothes and we headed over to Wegman's. Nominally Wegman's is a grocery store but they have a coffee bar and some take out food areas (I don't care what anyone says, suburbia has its definite strong points)...
Anyway, we got some food, and sat around talking for awhile. Then Dad and I picked out a prime rib to fix tonight for a Mother's Day dinner.
We came home and I just layed around reading for awhile, and then requested my last final exam. (It's a take home, but we only get it for 24 hours, so we have to e-mail the professor asking for it.) The professor sent me the exam and I proceeded to ignore it, and instead did some more reading and took a nap. When I woke up I put in about an hour's work of worth and then helped Dad cook dinner. I made pasta and sauteed a bunch of vegetables, and made some salad...thankfully Dad stopped trying to make me set the table years ago.
Dinner was good, too. The prime rib turned out perfectly...mmm. Mom and Dad let me have wine with them, which was something new...Dad would only let me have one glass though, since I don't have my essay done yet and I need to finish up tonight. (He wasn't impressed when I told him that graph theory homework always went better with a drink or two, but layed off when I told him I got A's on all the homeworks...)
So, we finished up eating, and then Dad and I cleaned up, and now I'm stretched out on the sofa in the living room listening to music (mmmmm Elton John) and working up the interest level to finish writing about the UN and International Organizations.
Overall, today was a completely normal day, and really that's what made it so awesome. Everyone was in such a good mood; I had a really good talk with my brother last night; I'm nearly done with the semester...these are the things I try to hold dear and look back on when things get hectic and unfun.
Summer is nearly here. 6 more pages and I'm golden...eeeee!!!
I woke up at about 1000 from Mom asking me if I wanted to go get breakfast with her and Dad. I threw on some clothes and we headed over to Wegman's. Nominally Wegman's is a grocery store but they have a coffee bar and some take out food areas (I don't care what anyone says, suburbia has its definite strong points)...
Anyway, we got some food, and sat around talking for awhile. Then Dad and I picked out a prime rib to fix tonight for a Mother's Day dinner.
We came home and I just layed around reading for awhile, and then requested my last final exam. (It's a take home, but we only get it for 24 hours, so we have to e-mail the professor asking for it.) The professor sent me the exam and I proceeded to ignore it, and instead did some more reading and took a nap. When I woke up I put in about an hour's work of worth and then helped Dad cook dinner. I made pasta and sauteed a bunch of vegetables, and made some salad...thankfully Dad stopped trying to make me set the table years ago.
Dinner was good, too. The prime rib turned out perfectly...mmm. Mom and Dad let me have wine with them, which was something new...Dad would only let me have one glass though, since I don't have my essay done yet and I need to finish up tonight. (He wasn't impressed when I told him that graph theory homework always went better with a drink or two, but layed off when I told him I got A's on all the homeworks...)
So, we finished up eating, and then Dad and I cleaned up, and now I'm stretched out on the sofa in the living room listening to music (mmmmm Elton John) and working up the interest level to finish writing about the UN and International Organizations.
Overall, today was a completely normal day, and really that's what made it so awesome. Everyone was in such a good mood; I had a really good talk with my brother last night; I'm nearly done with the semester...these are the things I try to hold dear and look back on when things get hectic and unfun.
Summer is nearly here. 6 more pages and I'm golden...eeeee!!!
10 May 2007
Sigh
Once again, I flamed out.
It shouldn't have been a hard exam.
I've been saying that all semester.
I'm really upset right now, and almost to that "paranoid about everything and everyone" stage, just from being so oversensitive and strung out on stress - school stress and people/friend stress. I'm learning a lot of interesting lessons about friendship...
At the same time, I'm learning from the past...there are some mistakes I'm not repeating right now, involving the way I tend to perceive people close to me when I'm feeling like this.
It's a small victory, but right now I'll take it.
It shouldn't have been a hard exam.
I've been saying that all semester.
I'm really upset right now, and almost to that "paranoid about everything and everyone" stage, just from being so oversensitive and strung out on stress - school stress and people/friend stress. I'm learning a lot of interesting lessons about friendship...
At the same time, I'm learning from the past...there are some mistakes I'm not repeating right now, involving the way I tend to perceive people close to me when I'm feeling like this.
It's a small victory, but right now I'll take it.
Over Soon
I have one final this morning from 0830-1130, and then an essay (which I haven't started yet) due at 2200. Then packing tomorrow and going home Saturday.
I'm ready to go home. I'm ready to be done. It's been hard, too hard, to juggle things this semester. My grades haven't ended up where I want them, and I have a bad feeling about this final, also. I'm tired of feeling like I'm not there for the people who need me, and not able to perform in classes. I'm not sure how things ended up feeling that like, but I can't do it again.
I am a good person. I hate feeling like I always let people down.
I'm ready to go home. I'm ready to be done. It's been hard, too hard, to juggle things this semester. My grades haven't ended up where I want them, and I have a bad feeling about this final, also. I'm tired of feeling like I'm not there for the people who need me, and not able to perform in classes. I'm not sure how things ended up feeling that like, but I can't do it again.
I am a good person. I hate feeling like I always let people down.
04 May 2007
Pride
Whew.
My last project of the semester is finished. (Okay, I have to pretty up the code a bit, but it's all there, and it all WORKS, and that makes me a happy, happy girl.)
While working through it, though, I re-learned a lesson that I seem to have learned so many times before.
My biggest character flaw is definitely my unfailing tendency to always think that I'm absolutely correct in my hunches/intuition/approach to code/math/interpersonal situations, etc, and not to realize when I might not actually know or understand entirely what's going on.
I spent almost an entire day debugging one tiny error I'd made in my code, something that could have been fixed easily by
a) Me sitting down and going back through the project description, and thinking through what each of the components were actually doing.
b) Me being more objective in my debugging.
Without getting too technical here, I was writing a really basic web proxy - basically a middleman between a normal web browser and a server (the thing that stores all the content you see when you access a web page, for example.) When I was trying to get it working, I thought that my proxy had to remove some headers that the server sends back. The headers needed to be there, though, because the client (web browser) needed them - more importantly, the client was removing the headers itself; the fact that I was removing them meant that the client was stripping out all the actual file content.
This would have been a pretty easy error to catch, had it not been embedded in a couple other errors I was making. I tried to debug what was happening - of course, I approached doing that by playing around with CMU's test driver code. This has usually worked for me in the past, but in this case it made things infinitely more difficult since I thought I understood what the drivers were doing, but I was a little bit wrong - wrong enough that I totally misled myself about what I was doing for a good 10 hours or so. I didn't know the driver language (Perl) that well, but I assumed I was competent enough to follow the code...and so it went.
When I finally caught the bug and fixed it, I promised myself that I'd be more careful about just going with the first assumption that popped into my head.
Then I proceeded to repeat the same mistake again today. I was on the last part of the assignment, which was writing a data structure to store the recently accessed web pages. I kept on getting an error on the last test in the code, and automatically assumed it had something to do with some signals that the server was sending back to my proxy. One of my friends was keeping me company at the time and suggested I check the data structure, since the driver code was testing primarily just the data structure at that point. I just said "No, I think it's this other thing..." and kept on for another couple hours.
I finally caught that bug too, and guess what? It was in the data structure. I didn't even catch it at first; my friend saw it almost immediately when I headed to that section of the code, though.
It's frustrating...it's really true that I am my own worst enemy sometimes. If I could put my pride aside just every now and then, I could save myself SO MUCH stress and frustration when it comes to things like these projects. I could have been done with this project last night and had time to really enjoy today (the end of the semester, and ECE day) if I could just have taken a few steps outside of my own stubborn mindset.
I hope I figure out how to get myself away from doing this, at least so much, because I don't want to keep doing this to myself for the rest of my life.
My last project of the semester is finished. (Okay, I have to pretty up the code a bit, but it's all there, and it all WORKS, and that makes me a happy, happy girl.)
While working through it, though, I re-learned a lesson that I seem to have learned so many times before.
My biggest character flaw is definitely my unfailing tendency to always think that I'm absolutely correct in my hunches/intuition/approach to code/math/interpersonal situations, etc, and not to realize when I might not actually know or understand entirely what's going on.
I spent almost an entire day debugging one tiny error I'd made in my code, something that could have been fixed easily by
a) Me sitting down and going back through the project description, and thinking through what each of the components were actually doing.
b) Me being more objective in my debugging.
Without getting too technical here, I was writing a really basic web proxy - basically a middleman between a normal web browser and a server (the thing that stores all the content you see when you access a web page, for example.) When I was trying to get it working, I thought that my proxy had to remove some headers that the server sends back. The headers needed to be there, though, because the client (web browser) needed them - more importantly, the client was removing the headers itself; the fact that I was removing them meant that the client was stripping out all the actual file content.
This would have been a pretty easy error to catch, had it not been embedded in a couple other errors I was making. I tried to debug what was happening - of course, I approached doing that by playing around with CMU's test driver code. This has usually worked for me in the past, but in this case it made things infinitely more difficult since I thought I understood what the drivers were doing, but I was a little bit wrong - wrong enough that I totally misled myself about what I was doing for a good 10 hours or so. I didn't know the driver language (Perl) that well, but I assumed I was competent enough to follow the code...and so it went.
When I finally caught the bug and fixed it, I promised myself that I'd be more careful about just going with the first assumption that popped into my head.
Then I proceeded to repeat the same mistake again today. I was on the last part of the assignment, which was writing a data structure to store the recently accessed web pages. I kept on getting an error on the last test in the code, and automatically assumed it had something to do with some signals that the server was sending back to my proxy. One of my friends was keeping me company at the time and suggested I check the data structure, since the driver code was testing primarily just the data structure at that point. I just said "No, I think it's this other thing..." and kept on for another couple hours.
I finally caught that bug too, and guess what? It was in the data structure. I didn't even catch it at first; my friend saw it almost immediately when I headed to that section of the code, though.
It's frustrating...it's really true that I am my own worst enemy sometimes. If I could put my pride aside just every now and then, I could save myself SO MUCH stress and frustration when it comes to things like these projects. I could have been done with this project last night and had time to really enjoy today (the end of the semester, and ECE day) if I could just have taken a few steps outside of my own stubborn mindset.
I hope I figure out how to get myself away from doing this, at least so much, because I don't want to keep doing this to myself for the rest of my life.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)