Cumulation

Lately I've been thinking that my body holds a grudge against me. It's either that or it's lazy and wants to get everything over with at the same time. I only get sick about once a year, sometimes twice, and always around the same time. Last year it went for broke and I had a cold for three weeks and a small dose of pink eye that went away in roughly 24 hours. This year though, my body decided that just wasn't good enough. This time not only do I have congestion as per usual, I'm not sure if it's allergies or a cold yet, but I'm leaning towards cold, there's a cough too. But in addition to this I got a raging case of pink eye from who knows where, it's not like I hang around people with pink eye, I hate it, and some nice throbbing pain all along my left jawline up to my temple that gets poignantly worse when I blow my nose or dare to bend over. My mom suspects this is an infection of some sort, so I get to to to the doctor tomorrow. I'm sure it'll be really fun too.
Me: "Hello, Doctor, nice to see you again so soon. You know how last time I came it was for a physical and I was in perfect health?"
Doctor: "Yeah..."
Me: "Not so much this time. What do you have for throbbing pain in my face and nasty goo pouring out of my nose and eye?"
Doctor: "There's an app for that."

We are not amused. Just for once, can I get sick like a normal person? Or even just one illness at a time, that would be nice. I do not need a side order of pink eye every time I get sick, thanks. And keep your rotten whatever-it-is infection. The upside to this is that my dad still had some medication from the last time he had pink eye, so I used that and it made my eye stop covering itself with goo and generally throwing a tantrum. The medicine mixed with some rinsing my eye with salt water really made it a lot better. Now can I have something to fix everything else? Please and thank you.

Post Grad

This movie came out a while ago, I know, but I just saw it. My verdict?

BULL.

At first it was doing just fine following the whole "I graduated but now I can't get a job, so now what?" thread but then it kind of careened off a cliff. She works for so long to get a job period, never mind getting the one she wanted and then the writers totally toss it out of the nearest window. Maybe if it weren't for the fact that the main character has MY DEGREE and MY DREAM JOB, but I think it was just ridiculous. Hey, guess what chick, you've got a job. Not just any job either. THE JOB. Your dream job, my dream job, the job you went to school for and worked to get, remember? And you take off to go chasing after some guy you just decided you liked five minutes ago? I don't even know what the point of the movie was at all. It sure wasn't "work for your dreams" or something like that since she throws away her career and her future thirty seconds after getting everything. Might have been something about family, but they were ridiculous and last I checked having an income and a place to live is important, not deciding to drop everything and fly to New York on a whim and throw all your work down the toilet and salute it as it circles the drain. If they wanted to create a sympathetic character they suck at their job. Perhaps they wished to convey the message that success means nothing when you're alone and lonely and sitting on an inflatable couch in a pool, but if that was the case there was a lot lost in translation. I had no reason to care whether or not she ended up with the nice guy/guy next door/childhood friend who's been in love with her for years, whichever cliche we wish him to be guy because there was so little chemistry between them to work with. He obviously likes her, but she's too busy trying to decide what the plotline is to figure out she's supposed to like him back until nearly the very end of the movie. It would have had far greater emotional impact if they had managed that at least.

So my verdict still remains: BULL. Get back to me when you've figured out what it's really like to graduate and have all your hard work flushed down the toilet because no one will hire you. No number of Eskimo Pies, or whatever the crap that ice cream bar was she kept going on about, will fix that.

Back from the Dead

Lately DC Comics has been bringing everybody back from the dead, usually after killing them off a short time before, though lately they've gotten into this irritating habit of bringing back people who have been gone for years and no one was upset about it. Take Jason Todd for instance. He was killed of in the 90's after readers voted for him to die. Why bring back someone like that? Granted, now he's older, but that doesn't mean he's any better. Same goes for Stephanie Brown, A.K.A Spoiler A.K.A. Robin, who died during a giant gang war that she started. I didn't like her then and I don't really like her now as Batgirl. Who said I wanted that annoying girl to come back from the dead? Bringing Batman back, fine, I'm more than OK with that, but Stephanie? No. We didn't need that boomerang dude back either, send him back. Maybe they' just got too excited with the whole black rings thing they've got going on and now they just want to bring back every dead hero they can think of. Not OK, DC, not OK.

You didn't tell me you could write like that

I'm a fan of Dave Barry and an almost fan of John Connolly. It's safe to say I'm a fan of Dave Barry, because I've been reading his work since middle school and I really like it. He's one of the funniest writers I've ever found and his stuff is great and I've read tons of it. John Connolly I can't say I'm a true fan of, I think, because I've only read one and a half of his books and I don't think that counts when he's written six or seven of them or something. See? I don't even know how many books he's written. What kind of a fan does that make me? Anyway, what I've read I've really liked so I'm likely to read more and become a real fan, not the one and a half book "I'm casually interested" fan. But the thing that I found interesting today while I was busy reading John Connolly's book, The Gates, is that it really isn't much like his other book I read, The Book of Lost Things. They're both really good and I really like them both, but while The Gates is funny the majority of the time and is intended to be, The Book of Lost Things was largely serious and made you think deep thoughts in a great way. I loved that about it. Now, Dave Barry writes hilarious things all the time and that's why I've always loved his work. But after September 11 he wrote an article about it that was very serious and was some of his best work I've ever read. So both authors have proved they can write both very good serious material and very good humorous material. So I was wondering to myself as I was laughing at Connolly's book describing the demon of stale biscuits and crackers, which is better: to read something serious by an author that's very good and then read something equally good by them that's very funny and be pleasantly surprised at how good they are at being funny when you didn't know they could be or the other way around. Maybe one isn't better than the other, but I wonder. Which is more fun or more satisfying as a reader? Either one has an impact on you because you weren't expecting it, but it's an interesting thought because other authors I've read, Tolkien for instance, only wrote one particular kind of thing so you have no idea just how funny Tolkien could really be or if C.S. Lewis could write science fiction. Maybe they couldn't and that's why they didn't, I don't know. But there's something about an author giving you that happy surprise with their work that I really like. Obviously both Barry and Connolly have proved they're capable of writing whatever they like but naturally chose one or the other for certain reasons. Dave Barry happens to like writing humor, so he does. I have no idea why Connolly writes what he does because I haven't actually joined the "I'm a fan" club yet, but when the bandwagon drives by again I'll jump on. So, I'll just leave this fun thought to be chewed on for now, since I'm not too worried about finding an answer. I just like contemplating it. Good to be pleasantly surprised, whatever the case.

Never Forget

There seems to be this poetic mantra people have for 9/11, either "never forget" or "always remember" or some variation on the two. There are editorials saying it's time to move on, heal, forget, whatever. Well, maybe they've moved on, but the rest of us are having a little trouble. It's hard to say what it is that makes it so hard to let go of 9/11: maybe it's the fact that we're still fighting in the middle east, or because it took so long to build the memorial or just the simple fact that it was civilians that paid the price this time. Whatever it is, we're not letting go any time soon. And as for "never forget" how could I? I remember perfectly where I was and what I was doing when I found out about the WTC, as does everyone else. Psychology calls it a flashbulb memory. Beyond that, my whole world got turned on its head and suddenly words like "terrorist" got shoved into the everyday vernacular. I'd never heard of terrorists and I couldn't have found Afghanistan on a map. And, however it may sound, all this wrecked my childhood. My childhood, adulthood, all of the above. I was fourteen when this mess started, so it's safe to say I really grew up with all of this and it's a lousy way to pave the way to adulthood. At least people know how police officers and firefighters have always been the selfless heroic people that they are, but thanks to 9/11 they proved it in an incredible way. Innocent people died that day because some crazy loons from a country I'd never heard of wanted to prove some sort of point about capitalism or something. As if flying planes into buildings is going to make people sympathize with you. My life continues to be made miserable and difficult, people die, and everything is a mess because of this one act by a small group of horrible people who seemed to think that just because they were willing to die thousands more should have to as well. They never did anything to offend these Jihadists and neither did I. So, they can take their precious cause and shove it. Fact is, I'm not interested. You don't murder innocents and wreck my life and expect me to sympathize with anything, I don't care what it is. So, I'm still angry. Thanks for the offer, but I won't move on, I won't forget, I won't let it go. I don't care if that makes me petty or anything else. As far as I'm concerned, terrorism is one of the highest forms of cowardice and I'm not letting it go. What I will do is remember the courage, sacrifice, and lives lost because of all this. I'll never forget that.

The End of all Things

Well, I decided a while ago that I would do this when everything was done, so here I am a week after the fact finally getting down to it.
Last week I graduated college with my very own bachelor's degree and I think I should make a tally of things like I did after my huge entomology project. It puts things in perspective nicely and I like that. So, it is as follows:
I graduated precisely six years and one month from the day I arrived on Rexburg to start college.
All told, I completed 12 semesters, and about 4 1/2 years of actual time in school and 150 credits. -_-'
I lived in three apartments and one house and had a total of roughly 45 roommates, including people I lived with more than once, they got counted twice. :P
I slipped on the ice and fell about four or five times, a feat in and of itself, considering most people did it more often or broke bones in the process.
It has been twenty years since I started my education, beginning with preschool.
I have now attended six schools in two states and have endured temperatures ranging from -20 degrees to 116 degrees. I have endured rain, snow, sleet, hail, thunderstorms, floods, snowstorms, blizzards, ice, and mud. I've been sunburned and walked through knee-deep snow and had ice form on my eyelashes and my legs go numb from cold.
I have had the best roommates and some less than the best.
I have had the best professors and the best college experience I could have had.
I have learned many, many things, but I think the most important is this: everything happens for a reason and it will work out alright in the end.

So farewell childhood I'm now off to explore the real world and kick it in the face.

Oh, you don't say

I was looking at the calendar yesterday and came to an interesting realization: school ends next Friday. I don't know when or how this happened, I know it didn't ask my permission to close the gap so quickly like this. After all, if school ends next week that means that graduation is a week after that and after that, I'm done. If that's not a scary thought, nothing is.
Uh-oh. That's all I've got to say about that.