So today I signed up for my classes for next semester...

and here's what I've got as of right now:

1. Cross Cultural Psychology
2. The Making of the Modern Self (a philosophy class)
3. Russian Lit--The Great Works in Translation
4. Muslims in Western Europe (for my Religion requirement)
5. Elementary Danish

I was really upset because the Hans Christian Anderson class I wanted to take was not listed!! I have emailed the program to inquire about this because that was one of the classes I was most looking forward to. I am really excited about the Making of the Modern Self Class. Hopefully the psych class won't be too bad. (I sort of need it to graduate, anyway, and it would be kind of lame taking "Cross-cultural" psych in America. Plus the Developmental Disorders class I was interested in is at 8:30 AM... and it's likely that I'll have to commute 45 minutes to get to school, so that's just not going to happen.) Also--the Gender, Body, and Sexuality class unfortunately was at the same time as the Making of the Modern Self class, so that sucked. I also want to look into the Food, Film, and Fiction class... that sounds delightful.

So I'm really excited to go to Denmark, but it kind of sucks that I didn't go last semester when I was in my funk. (Yeah, just take a look at my blog entries from last semester, and you'll see what I mean. I don't know if I was depressed per se, but something was "off" to say the least.) Now housing next year is so much more complicated.

but I don't even like raisins...

There was a raisin on my shoe when I took it off just now.
I do not know how it got there.
I don't even remember encountering any raisins today.

I needs me some culture

The other day, I realized that I have not been out of North or South Carolina in 7 years... and that was for a funeral, so that doesn't really count. Outside of my trip to California at age 3, I have not even been further West than about Asheville, NC. Sad.

Man, I can't wait to go to Denmark this fall.

V-day Especial

Hello everyone. So when I was procrastinating last night, I compiled the single best line for Valentine's day from each of the songs I played on my radio show... and it goes something like this:

"would you go along with someone like me?"
"I think I'm in love, but it makes me kinda nervous to say so"
"If you find yourself caught in love, say a prayer to the man above"
"fruit always tastes much sweeter when I'm with you"
"whenever I'm alone with you, you make me feel like I am home again"
"all I do is sleep all day and think of you"
"I'm a high school lover, and you're my favorite flavor"
"Oh my lover for the first time in my life, my eyes can see"
"love is a tired symphony you hum when you're awake"
"you left a lovestain on my heart"
"If music is my lover, you are just a tease"
"hey, lloyd, I'm ready to be heartbroken"
"touch me, baby, tainted love"
"I need a lover with soul power"

all this dust

So I was wondering how it is that everything gets so dusty. Where the heck does it come from anyway? As I was pondering this mystery of life, I drew a squiggly design across the black background of my computer screen. Mere seconds after I did this, I actually watched a piece of dust get sucked onto my computer screen.

I feel like this should be a metaphor for something. All this dust. I mean there's dust on all of my things--my speakers, my picture frames, my dresser, my phone, my computer, etc. Dust is a part of our lives, and the thing is... we really can't stop it from coming. All we can really do is move it around. Displace it. Pull out the Swiffer, perhaps. But it will come back. It always does.

laundry day.

Some weeks after doing laundry, I realize that I
only wore one color scheme all week.

What if...

we only responded to questions with magic 8 ball answers like:
"Better not tell you now"
"Without a doubt"
"Signs point to yes"
"As I see it, yes"
"Outlook not so good"

and my favorite:
"Concentrate and ask again"

on the way home tonight

I noticed that they replaced the old marque on scales "fine art" center. (darn it, I just spent like 10 minutes trying to find the right spelling for that word, but I'm still unsure... you know--those giant signs where you have to stick the letters on one by one). Instead of the good old fashioned magnetic letters (always amusing when letters are missing or backwards), they now have this electronic one with red words that scroll across the screen, and I don't like it. I feel like something is lost with all this technology. So yeah, I was walking by that tonight on the way home from my radio show, when I realized that it displays the time... down to the second! As you walk by, you can literally see the seconds ticking away up there in bright red letters, and the funny thing is, I found myself actually walking faster as I stared at this exhibition of passing time. It was as if I could see my life flying by.

strange and unsettling happenings

last night someone broke into three cars in our parking lot, and today our fire alarm went off for the first time in two years. What the heck? Hopefully theives will see my car and assume that there's nothing valuable in it, and if they do break in, well screw them because my interior lights don't even work, so they will not be able to see anything. so ha! I've been thinking about whether or not I have any valuables in my car, and I can only think of the cd player we had installed.

Other than that, I have these things in my car:
-5 packs of fruit snacks (stolen from home as I walked out the door),
-a large package of napkins (just in case of a spill or a runny nose... who knows how they go there in the first place),
-old directions to venues and the like,
-a bag of cracker jacks left over from the summer (just in case I find myself trapped in my car and am on the verge of starvation),
-and about 6 happy meal toys in the in the back seat leftover from my fast food-eating days.

So unless that ninja turtle on a motorcycle is worth money, I don't think it'd be worth it to break into my car. (apart from said cd player/radio).

On a more positive note, they had something called a crunchy peanut butter bannana bagel at Panera today. I got two, and now I am thrilled about breakfast tomorrow.

I think I'll start assigning numbers to my dream entries... we'll say this is number 4. (4 iskind of arbitrary though.)

Last night I dreamed that everyone walked backwards.


I wonder what that symbolizes. Do I wish I could go back in time? Am I frustrated that life is moving too fast?

http://www.pifmagazine.com/SID/413/

"As soon as I knew that I would be all right, I was sure that I was dead and didn't know it. I moved through the days like a severed head that finishes a sentence. I waited for the moment that would snap me out of my seeming life."

-Amy Hempel

more confessions

sometimes I put my music on shuffle, and I'm pleasantly surprised
sometimes at night I like to just ride my bike around campus once
sometimes I picture what my life would be like with you
sometimes I wish things would just be simple again
sometimes awful things come out of my mouth
sometimes I worry about the state of my soul
sometimes I think about eating chicken
sometimes I am the biggest hypocrite
sometimes I still misspell "definitely"
sometimes I take chances
sometimes I miss you
sometimes I'm lonely
sometimes I look back with regret
sometimes I wake myself up laughing
sometimes I don't know what's true anymore
sometimes I am glad you can't read my mind
sometimes I wish everything were in black in white
sometimes I fancy myself the author of a brilliant novel
sometimes I wish I were still a kid so I could roll down a hill again
sometimes I can be content just sitting in bed and staring blankly into space

so this is the new year...

and I DO feel a bit different, thank you Ben Gibbard.

OK so maybe I don't feel different (differently?), but I'm going to try to adjust my attitude to be a more positive person. I guess nobody likes Debbie Downer even though I get a strange kick out of being pessimistic. It's almost as if it's ok to be pessimistic if you're joking around, but it's not ok if you're serious about it. I really do have some good feelings about this year though. I mean people are getting back from being abroad, I'm going abroad next fall (woo hoo!), I've developed a pretty comfortable routine, etc.

We had to take the Myers Briggs Personality test for RA purposes, and I was an INFJ again... though not strong on the last letter. I seem to flip flop between J and P. I always get a kick out of reading the descriptions though.

"idealistic, complex, and deep"
"deeply committed to their values"
"private, even mysterous"
"quietly forceful"
"Though INFJ's are usually reserved, they don't hesitate to assert themselves when their values are violated"
"The are lyoal to people and institutions that exemplify their values but have little interest in those that do not"
"report that they do not date much"
"may haave high expectations for self"
"may need to compromise to meet professor's expectations"

silent confessions

some things I couldn't tell you:

I still have dreams about you sometimes even though I told myself I got over you last summer.

I looked through all 158 picture of you and your girlfriend even though I haven't talked to you in a year and a half.

I knew this would happen when you gushed to me about her after that first night you spent together. Don't you get it? The beauty of your writing coincides with your anger, your despair, and your desire for something better. I haven't heard you complain in months. I haven't heard you at all. You've stopped writing all-together.


things I don't even want to hear:

you gave college too much credit. you still don't know what you're going to do with your life, and guess what... you still don't have a boyfriend. (and you're not even sure you want one anymore.) If you were a boy, you wouldn't want to date you either.

home hasn't been the same since high school. you don't recognize half the people at church. no one even knows who you are when you come home. people can't hid their dissaproval at choosing to be an English major. You see through that subtle head shake and know they're thinking but you had so much potential.

your father resembles your grandfather more every day.

you're putting up a front... only which one is it? is this all a bunch of "creative writing" or is it the truth?


___________________________________________
I'm frightened of what these words might bring,
but it's important for me to remember these things.

Have you ever taken a look at the books on the shelf at the coffee shop on campus?

we've got The Canadians
The Essential Fat Gram Counter for Ethnic Dining
The Rhetoric of Sexuality and the Literature of the French Renaissance
The Best Short Plays 1982-1983
Alaska Cruises and orts of Call
Memoirs of Medieval Women
and my personal favorite: Help for Shy People

I just don't even know what to make of this.

in 2 weeks I'll be in bed... hibernating for a good 36 hours straight

I am unsure if I should be thankful that there are only two weeks or if I should be terrified that I only have two weeks left with which to complete my growing mountain of work.
I keep thinking to myself only two weeks left! The end is so close! But then I realize crap the end is so close. I'll never finish it all. It's a conflict really.

Food has become a burden... that's when you know it's bad. I get frustrated that I have to schedule time in for eating when I could be doing other things. speaking of...

hot pursuit

So I've had these odd dreams the last two consecutive nights.

Thursday night: that woman from the CSI episode on cults (we watched it in my religious cults and sects class a while back) and I were running away (presumably from a cult we had joined). We had to run through dense woods and through many abandoned houses and barns while these people were running after us. Right when we would think we had successfully ditched them by hiding in a barn or in the woods, these zombie like creatures would come out of hiding and chase us and try to kill us. (Yes... the cult members had turned into zombies of some sort). It was pretty disturbing.

Friday night: I was in a hospital, and I was being chases again, but the circumstances had changed. This time I was running away from Edward Norton for some reason. It was bizarre... towards the beginning of the dream, there was a table with three books on it: The Red Dragon, Hanibal, and Silence of the Lambs, so I guess that's where Edward Norton comes from, but he was the bad guy, and he was creepy. You would think you'd be safe in a hospital (and you'd think I'd want to run toward Edward Norton and wrap my arms around him), but it was anything but safe. It was a frantic chase up and down deserted hosptial floors and in and out of rooms. One door opened to a huge, strange gymnasium sort of room with a sort of an obstacle course. I climbed to the top so that I could at least see Edward coming, but instead of Edward Norton, all of the sudden Andrew Martin (who lives with me in the Eco house) opened the door and started chasing me. Luckily, for some reason, Erin Evans (my boss at the bookstore) saw it all happening and yelled at him saying he was fired. (I think she got him confused with Steve who did work at the bookstore last year because Andrew definitely doesn't.) Yeah... that was about when I woke up.

more with studying abroad

My latest fling = Copenhagen. I stumbled across this website a few weeks ago actually, but it has really started to catch my attention. OK, so it doesn't look like the classes would be a breeze at all, but they do look interesting/intriguing for sure. You basically have to pick a focus program and then you get to add electives of your choice. I think I'd go with the Psychology program--the specialty is about childhood disorders and about child psychology in general, which I think would be great if I decide I want to go into education or be a school psychologist. The class requires 50-60 hours of fieldwork, which is overwhealming, but would be very rewarding. Basically all day Thursdays, I'd be working directly with kids. They've also got some cool-sounding lit classes: Kierkengaard: Philosophy and Meaning in Life, The Making of the Modern Self, Hans Christian Anderson and the Danish Golden Age. The first two classes are also philosophy classes which would be so great since I've been wanting to take more philosophy classes anyway. Yes, so I think I'm going to really try to go there. The question now is: should I take Italian this spring just in case Copenhagen doesn't work out? I don't know. If I don't take it, I definitely won't be able to go to Venice with Wake. I just don't know if that'd be the right program for me though. I really would like to meet people from other schools and to have more options as far as classes go. So we'll see.

I have this great story to tell you about a pair of shoes, but I will leave that for another day. I need to get down to some paper-writing now.

exhibit B

exhibit B
Originally uploaded by kowars4.

written on a bathroom wall
(please read entry from 11/4 for more info)

Do you believe in signs?

So for the past two weeks, I've really been trying to decide about whether or not I will go abroad next fall. If you had asked me three years ago if I planned to study abroad in college, I would have surely answered with an emphatic "yes!" but it's so late in the game now that it's serioulsy a pain in the butt to find the write program. Then I found out the English dept. is going to Venice, and I thought huh... maybe it'll be Venice, then. So I decided to look for signs because as you probably know, I am horrible at making decisions. Really, it's bad, and I'm sort of embarrassed about it because it's not like I don't have opinions or goals. I just always wish I could see ahead to learn which option will turn out to be better. It's so hard when you don't know who you'd end up living with over there, you know? Yes... so back to the signs. Here goes nothing:

Exihibit A:
ok, so I happened to be sitting in the international/travel section in Borders, so this may not exactly be too crazy, but these two people proceeded to talk about Venice for like 30 minutes right in front of me. Interesting, but like I said, some skeptics may claim that the likelihood that something like that would happen increased dramatically since I was in that section. So, I wasn't sure what to make of that and just noted it.

Exhibit B:
please see the picture that hopefully I uploaded correctly to my blog. (wow, this will be the first picture!)
yes, I saw this written on a bathroom wall. The quote is crazy enough as it is, but then there was my name at the bottom of it. Now if that isn't a sign, what is?!

Additionally, I would have to take summer school in order to knock out my remaining divisionals, and I thought this would stop me from going abroad, but I was complaining to Shelia Lockheart of the Religion dept., and she told me I could stay in one of the guest rooms in her house over the summer. wow and wow. Some people are just so nice it makes me wonder if there is something wrong or different about them for being so nice or if there is something wrong about everyone else.

Yes, so I think I am meant to go abroad. Now the question will just be... where? and how the heck am I going to pay for it?