Good morning!

Good morning sun. I am a bird. Wearing a brown polyester shirt.

Doesn't Ben Folds just make you smile with the opening lyrics to Still Fighting It? I like waking up to this song.

This break has been the most relaxing one yet. I feel like a recluse sometimes, but my brother, his girlfriend, and I have torn through a season and a half of Big Band Theory, some Heroes, Up in the Air, and Sherlock Holmes. I feel like part of my brain is turning into mush. And I still need to find those papers for defensive driving. But right now, I'm pretending that I am in a resort where I have no responsibilities or life outside of fantasy. Perhaps not the smartest idea, but I feel so peaceful. Okay, so the masseuse told me that I was a three hour project, but I'm feeling better. And last night, I had an epiphany. I have this manicure set that opens up like a petal and reveals about ten tools that look slightly frightening in their power and use.

(now I'm listening to Priscilla Ahn's Dream)

Anyways, frightening tools. I had figured out how to use them all but one. So I took a shower, and then used this new scrub I had gotten at Crabtree and Evelyn. I sat down and scratched my toe, and easily, my callus sort just sluffed off. I then used my new callus sluffer as it was the only part of my manicure set I hadn't lost to sluff off some calluses. My feet are so smooth right now. Sorry to disgust you world, but I have not had smooth feet in quite a while, and now they are just dancing for joy.

(now I am listening to Joshua Radin's Star Mile)

Thank you friend for showing me Joshua Radin. You're following. I guess I haven't posted in two weeks, but I got a journal for Christmas, so I had been putting most of my musings in that. If I can call them musings.

I had a very frustrating dream. I was trying to pack to get on a plane. It was one, my flight was at three... in Dallas. I had to find obscure items like headlamps and sheet music, and this list was several pages long. After some frazzled yelling with parents and myself that resulted in most of the bag being packed, it was 3:20. Argh. I just wasted a ton of money. Then my alarm rang. Thank goodness. I had an excuse to get out of bed.

Good morning sun!

Finals are over! Now what do I do?

I finished with finals today! It was freeing, but now it just feels so strange. Everyone is just studying downstairs. I've forgotten how boring I've been this last week. I spent my afternoon waiting in the music building for a conference that got cancelled, and then reading/waiting/napping in Starbucks for a dinner that didn't happen. This was completely fine, but it's been such a strange day in which not much happened.

Okay, so the weather was gorgeous. And we got to have a picnic which was wonderful. And I'm reading Gilead which a friend suggested I read, and I'm rather enjoying it. And my copy of Unseen Academicals came in the mail from Amazon. I accidentally ordered the British edition! How great is that? I'm quite stoked. I also turned in my application and deposit for the Baylor in Oxford program this summer. I get to take Oxford Christians in Oxford. hehe... this is what I've been wanting my whole life! I also met the two of the professors that are going on the trip. Dr. Hanks told me that if I dressed like I did today, he would love to walk the streets of Oxford with me. I guess I did look a bit eccentric today with a bright, red, and poofy red halter dress over a ruffly blue plaid dress, with knee high argyle socks, converse with pink and green van shoelaces, and a giant blue striped floppy sun hat. The last day of finals with the sun outside deserves a funky outfit.

I also got to watch Sabrina with a good friend who also finished her final! She had never seen it before. I just love that movie. Audrey Hepburn manages to have all the class in the world while still demonstrating the real emotions of teenage angst and lost love. She's so real and melodramatic that it's hilarious, but you love her all the more because of it. Everyone has hidden in some tree overlooking some indoor tennis court in her life. Everyone has longed for someone that doesn't even know she exists. But Sabrina takes that invisible persona, changes her song from the overly glamourous and garish "Isn't it Romantic?" to the love song of an accordion off the streets of Parish, and takes Long Island by storm by her effervescent style, grace, and light heart. Like Linus Larrabee says, "You've been a breath of fresh air coming through this stuffy old house." What a wonderful movie. I think it's my favorite, at least for today.

I also got to watch some Big Bang Theory.

So, today was more relaxing and delightful than I thought it was now that I look at in retrospect. I just feel a little bit out of place not studying or practicing any more. But I don't have anything to practice, and I have nothing to study. I'll get back into a regular routine once I get back into the house, but this is my first day to relax, and it has been good, even if a bit slow. Thank you, internet for absorbing my boring rants about my day.

I can go to sleep now with no worry about the following day.

Instead of feeling weird about this, I'm going to try to enjoy this. But I love schedules and knowing what is going to happen, and then those plans and schedules going according to plan. So, my room is a total disaster right now. But it doesn't mean that my life can't be organized, even if I was late to rehearsal last week and forgot my music for the performance...

But finals are over. I have a fresh, clean plate that no mold from my dorm can attack. I swear, mold grows so much faster in here than in real life. We had to throw away our fridges. I am now afraid of tiny fridges. And I have not eaten a banana in 3 months. That's just not right. I've had at least a banana every week if not every day for my entire life. My nick name in elementary school was Janna Banana. I would hit Zach on the head with the eraser of my pencil because he would chant it and get the whole class to chime in.

So, basically, I'm a hypocrite when it comes to organization.

Good night, world!

Hello world!

I should be studying for music theory right now, but I need to cleanse myself a little bit first. I love Sundays. I know that I have already discussed said topic in here before, but Sundays are just so lovely. It was 66 degrees outside! In December! It's been cold and rainy and depressing for as long as I can remember... well, I don't have a very good memory, so maybe it was sunny last week and I just had completely forgotten such an event occurred.

Lunch was great today. We ended up discussing religion: is a community essential for faith? Let's think about it.

I'm having a hard time trying to present both sides. I'll just share my own opinion then because that's the only thing I can actually put to words without tainting it with my own bias, but it already is entirely biased. Also, I wrote a little bit of my final on this. So, Aristotle says that it is impossible to reach eudaimonia without true friends, correct me if I'm wrong. Maybe I should cite it just in case. Oh no! I didn't annotate the 8th book. It's in there, trust me. And I know that Aristotle isn't always right, especially with his physics, but that's so true. What's the point in beauty if there's no one you can share it with? What's the purpose in enjoying food if you can't eat it with someone sitting across from you? And how can you check yourself if you're growing without any friends to keep you on the right track? (listening to Priscilla Ahn right now. I love happy music) Oh! Right! Symphonies, quartets, collaborations are so much fun to watch. And how can a musician become great if he never has a teacher? Newton stood on the shoulders of giants. People make the word work and there's no way we could enjoy our lives without have companionship or love or friendship. I can't imagine a faith without community. It's not just for the rituals or the communion with tasty bread or for the golden stars on your sunday school chart, but a community/church/family seems essential to knowing God. After all, how is possible to search for the entire truth when you only have one dismally limited perspective? Even if you read everything, you still read it with your own vision of the text, but being able to argue or listen with another live human being is so much more enlightening. You can't ignore a friend who's telling you that you've been an idiot, but it's very easy to ignore a book sitting on a shelf. Don't get me wrong, books are awesome. I love reading. But with only reading or some possibly inexistent relationship with some "God," how can you grow as a human being? How can you help others without ever being helped or seeing love in action? How can you grasp or refute ideas without hearing them argued at your face?

Okay, so maybe everyone's journey is different. But I don't feel that Christianity is something as simple as "it's just you and God." Maybe that could be the very core, but I feel like that's not what it truly is. I mean, that could be one vision of it. But there is so much more. There are interconnected relationships everywhere, and you can't discount the power of relationships that form the core of one person's idea. Tradition kept the Hebrews waiting for God.

Hmm, I don't really know anything about this. Plus, I got distracted and spent ten minutes popping some bubble wrap with some fellow hall mates. Why is bubble wrap so satisfying? I shall never know. I hope it isn't something Freudian. Well, he didn't have bubble wrap, so he can never psychoanalyze my sick pleasure with bubble wrap. I used to overuse the word fettish all the time without knowing the sexual connotation of it. Someone eventually told me.

I used to think all SUVs were Suburbans.

I used to think the alphabet was a progression from lower case a, capital B, then a strange 3 humped character, then a 4 humped character... and so on and so forth.

I used to think that kissing was sex.

I guess everyone has his or her misunderstandings. I was just a particularly naive child. I've always jumped to conclusions that make sense to me before I know they're true. Hmm, I wonder what strange misconceptions that I have now that I will look back on in ten years and think how naive and stupid I was.

But I guess scientific theories can be like that in general. We have to come up with some model of understanding some concept, even if the metaphor doesn't completely describe the concept in its entirety. We learn through lies. Atoms don't actually look like Lewis models, but the models help us wrap our heads around the concept. (I'm listening to Sufjan Steven's Black Hawk War, and I really like writing to this.) Because we can't completely understand in atom in its infinitesimal beauty. We just have to try and understand our own view of it, and combine it with a couple of quantum models, some van der waal action, and perhaps we can grab a small piece of what it truly is. Maybe that's what art does. It grabs something beyond the surface value. And music tries to model feelings into sound. How cool is that? It's still hard to wrap my mind around how music manages to depict emotions so nakedly and beautifully clothed at the same time. It can physically move your soul as well as your body. Who knows from whence music came, but it feels like it's the soul speaking. Maybe writing with words does a little bit of that. Ooh, Dear Mr. Supercomputer steals a little bit from Philip Glass's Einstein on the Beach. Well, I guess it isn't really stealing since it's just counting numbers. You can't copyright counting. I personally enjoy Sufjan Stevens more. I know Philip Glass is awesome, but he's not quite as accessible, and Sufjan Stevens likes to play with rhythm more. I love duples on triples and syncopation and all that jazz. Well, I know I'm going to hate it in Musicianship three when I'm going to have to clap it out, but I'll remind myself to try and keep the joy in it. I'll think of Gobbledigook by Sigur Ros.

Maybe I should start listening to the words of songs more. I listen to songs at least hundreds of times before I even hear the words sometimes, especially if I like the music. It's just so easy to get lost in the music, and then the next time you listen to pay attention to the bass, and then some random percussion you had never realized was there before.

I'm not trying to be like "ooh, i like music, therefore i'm cool, and i have better taste than most people on the internet." I just am appreciating music with my words for a little bit.

I love clair de lune. I think my mom used to play it when she was pregnant with me, because it makes me want to curl up into fetal position.

On and Eric Whitacre. Mmmmm. The concert choir sang water night, which was awesome, and then the a cappella choir sang lux aurumque, which was freaking amazing. I was so excited. It just fills up your soul at some points.

Oh! I got to lend out some books today. It was so nice. But my friends saw my twilight books hiding on an upper shelf... I guess I should donate them or something. I don't know what to do with them. I don't really want any little tweenager to read them and have false hopes like I did. But there's also the very core of me that would cringe if I saw a book burn or be ripped to shreds in a trash can. I mean, they're still words on paper. I love fire, but I can't imagine seeing the edges of a book shrivel up, their words to lose their value forever. Fahrenheit 451 made me cry. So sad. Maybe it's because I've read Fahrenheit 451 that I'm so biased. Or because the book burnings made me want to read Harry Potter even more. In general, burning books, censorship, and suppression of free speech isn't a good idea. It just is like using antibacterial soap every day instead of just scrubbing normally to keep the hands healthy. Because somebody and some words will slip through the cracks, and the harder you try to crack it down, the stronger it will grow, like a giant mutant germ that will take over everyone. Anywho, oppression isn't good. As someone in my euro class in high school once stated "Rape is bad... most of the time." This is in an understatement.

I wore a hat again today. It was so nice. I hadn't worn a hat or a cute dress in the past week. Studying had completely absorbed my life. It took away my personality and everything.

Oh! Band practice is starting up again this Wednesday. It turns out that we were all just a bit busy during the school year.

I am looking forward to this break that starts in 14 hours. mmmmm. I'll get to write, practice, read, play with the band, and work in a flower shop! It's like my own personal heaven. I mean, I'll miss everyone here. And I love college. I get to do many of those things, but it hasn't been of my own accord for a while. I get to make my own impetus now. I can write for as long as I would like to, I finally get to read whole novels in one sitting, and I'll be able to just sit down and smell flowers if I would like to.

But tying the whole blog together, I guess it's more about the people than the actions. Because no matter how much I will enjoy the stuff I'm doing over Christmas, I will enjoy it much more because of the people. And I will miss everyone hear, but the distance will make me realize how valuable my friends are.

So, I'll enjoy practicing with my band, making centerpieces with people for people, and writing in some sort of communication with the outside world, even if no one is reading. I still would be very impressed if anyone managed to hack through all this unorganized mess of writing. Maybe I should try writing to some sort of form or theme.

Anywho, good night!

Finals, Camilla, flowers, shops, dresses, future, individualism, purpose, stress, practice, and happiness

I have not blogged in so long. Well, I guess it wasn't possible for me to write everyday this last week. Today was my final for ancient great texts. I have never studied so hard for anything in my life before. I reread most of augustine's confessions, the aeneid, and nicomachean ethics in a week and two days. For me, that's impressive. But I felt prepared! And I spent the hour before the test reading and talking to some friends about Camilla's awesomeness and vanity for going into battle with one breast bared. She's the Achilles of feminity! And one friend commented how she ended up dying because she was shopping: she saw an outfit she really wanted, so she just risked her life to kill for it. Anywho, she ended up being on the short answer questions on the final. And I just wrote with gusto about her awesomeness and her vanity. Even though I have had a few mental breakdowns, I think it was worth it. Even if I don't get an A on this final, it was worth it to put all that I had into something. I hate feeling as if I only put half of my effort into something and always knowing that I could have done better. But I tried my hardest on this one, and even if I fail it, that's okay. Well, I would probably break down in tears thinking of the days I avoided people, blogging, practicing, and life in general for something that I didn't succeed in. But I would like to think that I would still be happy.

Oh! I get to work at the flower shop next Thursday! They said I would start out copying centerpieces and that it doesn't pay much, but I am uber excited. I've gone to this place weekly (or biweekly depending on my time management habits of that week) for about two years, and I just love the atmosphere. Not only are the flowers delicious to smell and precious to behold with the eyes, but the people are so genuinely wonderful and the shop is in this old silo with the most adorable porch. The ceiling is draped with whimsical vines. They only just abandoned the old cash register that made a legitimate ding when it opened. I would teach violin lessons across the street, feel slightly inadequate about my abilities as a teacher, and then I would enter the flower shop. Life is good. There are flowers. And pretty shops. And wonderful people. And then I would buy a rose or a small arrangement, and then I would give it to someone random like Katy or for someone's birthday. They gave me some pink spray roses for free last week to take to my violin student's recital! She had requested to have flowers thrown at her as if she were a ice princess fairy. There are some bequests that cannot be denied. I hope I can help people fulfill dreams even during my short time helping out at the flower shop.

I love the movie Stranger than Fiction. How great would it be to start a bakery! There's just something about small shops that cater to your heart's deepest needs for chocolate chip cookies, peonies, hot chocolate, fantasy novels, and comfortable chairs that beg to be filled the entire day. Shops just invite you into their world. It's like the shop owner is providing xenia to whomever walks in. Isn't that a beautiful concept? Giving a home to any person who walks in off of the street to be taken care of for a while. It's better than an amusement park, but you don't have to pay to enter. Some friends and I have bounced around ideas where we could have a giant old house with different rooms partitioned to be a bookstore, tea shop, bakery, flower shop, and a stage where young blossoming musicians could demonstrate their work to appreciate people on certain nights. And Thursday, there would be Texas Hold'em. I need a tribute to the Java Hut. I went there three times a week, and yet, it closed. Saddest moment of my life. But I bought a chair from the Java Hut on its last day of business. It's so comfortable. It leans back perfectly from my secretary desk in a way that I can fall into the pillows on my bed and stretch my arms back to reach out for starts and stuff them back into my mouth like truffles of joy and happiness.

Modcloth has the most amazing dresses. But the descriptions are even more delicious. I feel like part of the reason part of me is willing to spend sixty bucks on a dress is because the descriptions make me feel like a disney princess. I rarely actually buy anything, but online shopping is so much more fun than real shopping. Hmm, this is in contrast to what I posed earlier. I like shopping in real life for stuff that I like to experience (not just look at.) What's fun about ordering online flowers in a box? I'm looking forward to next Thursday. I normally don't use emoticons, but I need to employ one as of now and break my precedent. :-) Are you supposed to punctuate an emoticon?

Hehe, this is the wrong one, but here's one xkcd that only has a slight similarity to this disjointed blog: http://www.xkcd.com/380/

But here's the one that also poses the question of how to punctuate an emoticon: http://xkcd.com/541/

I wonder what am I going to be doing in ten years. Will I still be in school, sitting at my laptop listening to Obadiah Parker while blogging nonsensically about nothing with the greatest thing to be looking forward to a flower shop?

I wonder.

What if I owned some marvelous shop?

What if I were an absent-minded professor?

Or if I just played in a quartet or in an orchestra?

Or maybe something like the Blue Man Group.

Maybe I would completely deny everything that I am right now and would be climbing the corporate ladder. Do CEOs dream of being CEOs? I mean, there's nothing wrong for the corporate ladder. It's just that it's not for me. I like doing nothing too much. And I like buildings that have feelings and people that are real that I can help. I like individuals, and much of a giant business is looking out for the giant business. It's like Plato's Republic, the state becomes more important than the individual. And I know it's mainly just a metaphor for the human soul, but isn't the individual more important than the whole community? I guess that's not really a practical view. After all, that view doesn't really work for the healthcare system right now. Hmm. Well, I don't know that much about healthcare other than what I hear in my house, so I'm not really informed enough by objective facts in order to form my own cohesive opinion on the matter. I'm just a wishy-washy thing floating around in the great sea of humanity hoping that it's special in some strange way.

It's so easy to get lost. Every so often, I just have a moment of total breakdown of my view of life. You know those moments when it seems as if you've messed up everything and that you'll amount to nothing and that the very breath that you're taking right now is not only contributing to the heat death of the universe but it's also stealing precious oxygen away from more precious creatures than you like ticks and spiders? Well, those don't happen too often and they don't last for too long, but sometimes they hit for very small moments that are completely disconnected from the rest of my human experience. But what if it's like the Douglas Adam's machine in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy that shows you exactly how small and insignificant you are? What if my moments of disparity are reality? Of course, that's a pointless way to live. What's the point of living as if everything is pointless? Then there's not point. And I'm not redundant. Redundant.

There's got to be a point. I want to believe so hard that there's a point. However, I can I know for absolute certainty and have a deep noesis that there is a point, a purpose, a goal, a telos, some great epiphany that tells me in the sky that I was created to make sandwiches or something like that. Well, I guess waiting for something like that needs to be active. After, it's not as if I'm just at the brink of the beginning of my life and I just need to wait for it to start. My life is now. I'm not waiting for a husband or a job or that. I should be living right now and trying to make the best of the world that is around me in this very moment.

How does blogging help the world? Well, I think I'm mainly just helping myself right now. This protects what little sanity I have left. I went so long without writing that I just had a small laughing/ (maybe crying?) fit in the cafeteria last night about my gtx final. But it's all fine now. Now I can expose my soul to the entire cyber world. Who knows. Maybe this is a horrible idea. Maybe some future employer will take a look at this and think what a horribly vulgar and ineloquent writer I am. Dear reader, you must take this in context. This is the messy brown dregs being dragged from the teapot that is my mind.

What's the difference between a mind and a brain anyways? I would like to know more about that. I heard on NPR all things considered the other night that reading and practicing strengthens the white matter in your brain. Yay! That's mostly what I have been doing for the past two weeks. Well, this whole last semester. I don't have that much busy work, reading and practicing have taken over most of my spare time. I need to emotion again. I apologize. :) I like it! There's something refreshing about just playing scales in a room by yourself. There's nobody watching or listening. It's just scales. All that matters is the beauty of the tone and the perfection of the technique and the precision of the pitch. Hmm. At first it was annoying, but I like it now. I probably don't do it as much as I should. Didn't Heifetz practice something like one or two hours of scales or something every day? It's like math: it's not complicated, it's just perfect, and within the rules, you can create something beautiful. And reading. Hmm. How wonderful and easy is it to just slip into another world and escape all of your worries? Escapism is so nice. And since it can also be classified as studying, I don't feel guilty about separating myself from the rest of the world. Sometimes I just feel like being antisocial. I guess that's also a practice thing. I've been antisocial this last week, so now it feels like a natural habit.

It's like Aristotle's happiness! It's a habit that one can make. It's not just something that naturally effervesces from one moment of wishing for happiness. Apparently, I didn't mention enough about the active quality of happiness in my last paper for great texts, and that is part of the reason I didn't get an a. Which is fine. But I used the action word as much as I could in my final today. Or yesterday. What time does it stop being night and start being morning? Sunrise? Okay, today.

I should probably go to sleep. But this is such wonderful release. I feel some muscles in my back begin to relax.

Sleepytime. Itunes shuffle went to Pride and Prejudice soundtrack.

Good night, interblag!

Snow, stuffing, and chocolate chip pancakes

I am looking forward to the promised snow tomorrow! Can there be anything more exciting than snow in Texas? No. End of question. We only get snow every other year, and normally on spring holidays like Valentine's Day and Easter (which doesn't even make sense.) But now it's the Christmas season! I know it's only December 3rd, but it's full scale Christmas in my heart. I just had the most wonderful brunch in Collins this morning. We get there right before the change for lunch, so I got a chocolate chip pancake, and then stuffing and sweet potatoes only half an hour later. I know it's kind of cheating to just wait it out and get two meals, but it's such a delightful time to get to just eat and talk for an hour and a half. It was our last brunch together. :'( But there will be other brunches and lunches and great big suppers.

Eating together is just a wonderful way to be together.

But, weird thought. If I were an alien or a robot that didn't eat or excrete anything, which activity would I find more disgusting? Because eating to an outsider would seem pretty darn disgusting. Remember in the Bicentennial Man (the book by Isaac Asimov, not the movie) when Andrew Martin gets surgery just so he can eat? It seems totally pointless, because he doesn't need the nutrients. Yet, that act of partaking of the same food made him feel like he was apart of society. In that pivotal moment when he takes a bite from an apple (I might be mixing up Asimov stories), everyone seems to believe that he is human. Maybe it's the act of taking something in common into your body. It's unifying. We put the same things in our mouths, therefore, we are becoming more the same. Not in a sexual way. Just in a nutritious way. And when our bellies are full, there seems to be nothing of want in the world, or at least in our tiny microcosm. We can just discuss whatever without ever having to move. Now that we've taken some of the same things into our body, our common tie lets us move on to other topics of great or little importance.

Which reminds me, I need to study for musicianship. Have a lovely day, interblag!

4 am heart to hearts

Hello again!

I just had the most lovely lunch outdoors despite the chilly weather. It feels like Christmas! I said Merry Christmas to someone today without thinking about it, and I have now realized I can proclaim this greeting with full force. I guess I could say "Happy Advent!" but I think baptist population of my school would be thoroughly befuddled. So Merry Christmas it is.

Hmm. . . I love Christmas. Everything just smells better. And the cold (well, the quick spurts of cold between days of 80 degrees) reminds you to stay inside and perhaps read a good book and settle in with some hot chocolate or tea. And I love wearing big knitted sweaters that engulf my entire body with warmth.

Last night I huddled myself up in a snuggie and a blanket on my back, and I sat cross-legged while doing homework in my own little bubble of warmth. It was delicious, beautiful to behold. And then I went downstairs at 1:30 in my snuggie and robe (two very different items of apparel. Don't discount the power of a snuggie). Surprisingly enough, my friends were still up and we talked until 4 about the most sleepoverish things: if a girl can ask out a guy, how guys read the slightest inclination or smile of a girl as devoted interest, and how awkward silences just aren't awkward anymore past 3 o'clock in the morning. Which is true. I feel sleep deprivation has about the same effect as alcohol in loosening the tongue and relaxing conversation. Because the best heart-to-hearts always seem to happen past bedtime. And even though this resulted in a lesser amount of sleep and perhaps a much tireder week ahead of me, I'm glad I got to have heart-to-hearts that deepen friendships made in college to last for years to come. As long as I get all of my work done, one of my favorite things to do is just to talk with people. I would much rather sit on a couch and drink tea with someone than go to a party. Does that make me a boring person? I never got how parties are that much fun. Maybe if you know everyone there and it breaks up into smaller bits of conversation, but constant dancing and deafening noise and obnoxious drunks that disrupt conversation? I applaud those who enjoy such an environment for emotional stamina, but I would much rather be lazy and uninteresting and talk about nothing for hours on end with good friends.

So, other than procrastinating on life and preparing for my next class, the point of this entry is to appreciate those friends that spend time and words to share with one another. Thank you friends. If I had a kitchen and the right supplies, I would bake you banana nut muffins. Alas, this may have to wait until the weekend.

Someone made brownies for my piano class this morning. Best piano class ever. Those brownies were delicious.

Peace!

Time, God, and Disco Balls

Hello again!

It's been a long monday. I have two math problems left that are stumping me, so I thought the best way to overcome this problem would be to procrastinate and blog. Perhaps this cleansing of my spirit will free my brain of the casual worries of the day, and I'll suddenly be able to see the Matrix. Who knows! I may be able to bend a spoon with my mind eventually.

Nah.

I'm not quite that vain. Only marginally so.

Blergh.

This morning seems like ages ago, but Thanksgiving passed by in an unnoticeable blur. Time likes to play funny tricks on us. We used to have this book called "300 good, clean, jokes" that we would recite over and over again in our family. None of them were very good, but they were easily memorizable and touched the corniness in our hearts that came from our grandmother from Iowa. She says it was a corny state. Let me try to recount it to you in an even unfunnier fashion, but I promise it relates to the topic, so just bear with me for a moment. http://xkcd.com/365/

A man went to his doctor and asked how could he make his life longer. The doctor replied that he should get uncomfortable twin beds instead of a queen with his wife, never go on vacations, and try to stay away from any exciting foods. The man believed him but questioned how leading such a miserable life would make his life that much longer. The doctor quickly stated, "Of course it won't make your life longer! It will just make it seem like it lasts forever."

Another example: a fun class seems to last for 15 minutes while a boring one has the power to slow down the second hand that will never reach the bell until you fall asleep.

And yet, xkcd provides another lovely example to demonstrate the relativity of one person's experience of time to another person's.

http://xkcd.com/505/

Well, I guess the person who is placing all of the rocks is practically God, and the infinite time and space really beats any finite amount of time into milliseconds by comparison. But still.

Time is funny. I know this has not been the most intellectually stimulating musing on the nature of time, but these are my thoughts as of now. Perhaps I will never be able to return to my homework, and I will write here forever and ever. Poor reader. You know, you don't have any obligation to read this. Of course, I don't mind if you do. But the main reason I have started this is because I do not have one of those fancy astronaut pens that write upside down, and I don't like the desk I have, and I hate writing in my lap. The paper gets all flimsy and wavy. This is the easiest way of performing my own mental yoga or ear wax cleaning.

Who is God anyways?

I guess it could be possible for there to be no god at all. We all just feel the need to blame all of the things that don't make sense on some distant deity that takes responsibility for our universe. Or we just need someone to talk to at night without people thinking we're talking to ourselves. Or we need some political rallying point by believing in something in common. And religion makes us feel safer most of the time. The church has been a political, education, religious, social, intellectual, and artistic institution in years past and today. (Thank you Mrs. Harrell for giving us such an easy form to analyze institutions. PERSIA may be one of the most helpful mnemonic devices I ever learned in my secondary education.) We have always needed religious institutions, even if they may screw up sometimes with the Spanish Inquisition and the Children's Crusade. We can't deny that the church hasn't been helpful. I know I have only mentioned Christiany things so far. I would cite other examples, but I really don't know as much as I should about many religions. I wouldn't want to make an assumption about something I know nothing about.

Right, back to the random question.

Who is God?

People believe in him. That gives him power. Belief is a huge power that can wreck or save lives. I was searching for a study that Yale did that showed AIDS victims with a strong belief in some God created more t cells, but I accidentally stumbled upon this: http://www.healself.org/AIDS,HIV.html

ouch. I know this happens, but it wasn't what I was expecting and it just kind of hit me. Do people really believe in the laying of hands? Well, of course they do. Sorry, silly question. But why do they? Is there some evidence beyond placebo and random chance that it actually works? If someone out there would like to argue this with me, I would love to have a discussion. I would love to be able to understand what makes people who believe this tick.

I personally feel that it's easy to get caught up in a belief that isn't all of truth. Well, it's impossible to know all of truth, right? You can't know every tiny little thing about God/logos/truth or whatever we're calling it. So if you proclaim your own tiny vision of God as the greatest and that no other vision of God could have merit, you could be losing a greater perspective of all of reality. I hope this is clear. I could go into my disco ball of truth metaphor that I stole from Mr. Hollis, but I will save that for another day. Good night, interblag! http://xkcd.com/181/

Nursing Home Church

Hello again!

I know it's soon to return to the computer, but I'm procrastinating my Sunday to make it last as long as possible. You see, Sunday is my favorite day of the week. It's an entire day set aside for relaxing. I can spend the entire afternoon in my room and not be considered antisocial. Just contemplative or religious. But I'm not really religious. I just like my quiet time and the opportunity to give life to a new blog while listening to the Pride and Prejudice soundtrack. It just makes me feel like writing, although typing on a mac keyboard isn't quite the same as putting quill to an ink well and then to a bit of parchment. It's much easier. Maybe that's why people were more elegant and refined in ages past. Not only could only the educated upper class have opportunity to write leisurely, but also, it took forever to get a single word on a page. In the movie Becoming Jane, it shows Anne Hathaway/Jane literally cutting out the words from the page. It was cutting and pasting without the control (or command) x and v. The labor intensive words gave the writer more time to think about if she really wanted to write that word down. Well, since many writers like Wordsworth and Dickens were paid by the word, maybe not so much. It didn't encourage them to be stingier with precious words, but rather to use longer words that blended together in one pen stroke of cursive.

I just exploit words beyond their proper stretchiness and lessen their value each time I use a word. I apologize to the dictionary. Words have power, and I am using them to no purpose but the betterment of my own mind. How selfish of me.

Enough Pride and Prejudice. It's making me feel guilty of my own inadequacy.

Oh right! The title of my blog!

I love Sundays. I had the most fantastic morning. I was feeling rather blargh this morning when I got up. I ran out of shampoo in the shower, and I had skipped a shower yesterday, so I was in desperate need of clean hair, so I poured all the water in my bottle of Pert. The dregs worked and my hair is relatively oil and dirt free. Okay, so imagine, scrambling Janna, barely awake, can't find clothes. I end up putting on two dresses on top of each other and these tights that make my belly pooch out in an awkward fashion because I accidentally got a size too small. I didn't realize until afterwards that the dress underneath made a huge poofy skirt that belongs to an age where bustles and big butts were the height of fashion.

I arrive at the nursing home with dripping wet (not sure if it's clean yet or not) hair that goes to my nose because I haven't cut my bangs since summer. I just sit in the parking lot for about two minutes just staring forward at the ladybug on my windshield. Why am I here? Am I awake or in a dream? My dream had frankly been disturbing. I can't remember half of it, but it made me feel extremely awkward. Eventually, I get the gumption to stumble out of the car to grab my violin and wire stand. I walk in while Lisa is already playing the piano. Oh, I'm late. Those two minutes of nothingness perhaps weren't the smartest idea. But we fall right into routine. I unpack my violin and set up my stand and start along with some hymns. It took me a few phrases to realize I was in the wrong key on the first hymn. But eventually, I settle in. And we get to play "His Eye is On the Sparrow!" It's one of my faves. I'm a sucker for old hymns. We're doing part writing with root position bass in music theory right now, and it's fascinating to see it in action for centuries in hymnals. It distracts me from the sermon sometime. Anywho, my mind finally clears, and I thoroughly enjoyed myself playing music that didn't require sitting on the edge of my seat to see if I have the same bowings as the concertmaster or counting like I'm the count from sesame street. After the church service with sermon and communion, everyone was a dear as always. Mr. Mass gave me a pack of gum. He wouldn't let me give it back, so as Dr. Harvey told me, I thanked him profusely and treasured it in my case. I'm chewing some right now. Thank you, Mr. Mass if somehow you're out there. Another lady gave me a peck on the cheek thanking me for playing. Those are the people for whom I want to play. That was an awkward avoidance of ending a sentence with a preposition. Next time I'll just quote Winston Churchill and say this about such a silly rule: "This is the sort of errant pedantry up with which I will not put."

Case in point: old people are awesome. I love how they always make my day even though they have had much tougher lives than I have. The people at Ridgecrest are so sweet and make me feel like the greatest violinist ever. But they just enjoy the old hymns just as much as I do. So, we can share a moment of mutual appreciation.

I can't wait to be an awesome old person. I mean, I can wait. I will live my life and enjoy each moment, but I'll enjoy the moments when I'm old, too. Having grey hair sounds like it would be fun. And I could do pretty much whatever and no one would care because I would be an elder to be respected. I would be so much wiser. My wrinkles would immediately tell people if I were a happy or sad person. Hopefully, I'll have laugh wrinkles. And I could tell crazy stories about I walked to school uphill both ways, even if in reality my mom never let me walk to school no matter how much I begged.

But I can still be crazy now and no one scoffs too much at my hooliganism. I had no idea that was a real word, but spellcheck just verified its existence. Hoozah!

Hooligans and old people reminds me of the sigur ros video for Hoppipolla. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_EyI4p0yjDQ

Such a wonderful video.

Something I had never realized: they're all play fighting in a graveyard. Morbid much? Is it playing around imminent death? Mocking the power of death with the binding force of love and teamwork? Or maybe we're all to be reminded that death is nearby as we live our lives, so might as well carpe diem and defeat all of our enemies that we're afraid, to jump in all the puddles we can, and love as much as we can. I like that last idea. I always extrapolate beyond the meaning of the actual work, so it's probably not right.

You know how in Spanish literature everyone always dies in the end? I refused to believe this in my junior spanish class. I would translate the stories rather loosely without looking up words, and in my translations, the characters would always have a happy ending, but the rest of the table would quickly put me down saying that the main character had died a brutal death by murder of his exwife or something like that. So, extrapolating is not always good.

Like in xkcd.

http://xkcd.com/605/

hehe.

I love fallacial logic.

Okay, and my favorite joke today in Terry Pratchett's Unseen Academicals.

So, Fassel is trying to explain the Bonk School (which mocks Freud) to Miss Healstether.

"They are the ones who go on about what happens if ladies don't get enough mutton, and they say cigars are --"

"That is a fallacy!"

hehe.

I love dirty puns. Thank you Terry Pratchett for continuing to write despite your early onset alzheimers. You rock.

Okay, I'm done procrastinating for now.

But it's Sunday. And it's raining. Therefore, I am perfectly justified in curling up on the couch with a book and a cup of tea.

Enjoy your Sunday evening, world!

Introduction

Hello new world!
This may seem a bit corny, but I really don't care. This is a fresh page. You know that delicious scent that a new leather journal has as soon as you open to the middle and thrust your nose in so you can fully drink in the opportunity to make some wrinkly pages? Well, this may not be encased in all five senses, but I hope I can fully relate the nakedness of my sentiments as I can on paper that hides beneath my bed. As of now, there is no point, no telos to this blog other than to rid my soul of the worries that cling to it so parasitically. I must admit that I am a bit selfish to want to toss my nuisances into the outer reaches of interblag! But I hope that I will not destroy too many lives or desires.
Let me rid this page of some white space by being self-deprecating and egotistical at the same time. I deserve nothing. I have been spoon fed everything from the very moment of my birth. I never even talked until I was three when I was given speech therapy because my family could read my thoughts and got me everything I had a vague inclination of wanting. I have never had a real job or any moment when I truly had to worry about where my next meal would come from. I have never had to overexert myself in any classes or teams. Other than some horrible disability at obeying social norms, everything is relatively easy as long as I have had enough sleep.
As a college freshman, however, I do not get enough sleep. Who can say no to a tea party until three o'clock in the morning to write papers and take the occasional break watching the censored count from sesame street? Or procrastinating the writing of said paper in order to investigate who is trying to kill you in the Assassins game by interrogating the entire boys dormitory next door.
So, time management is not one of my strengths.
Nor is tact.
I managed to make numerous bad puns at a visitation service for my best friends' grandmother (the friends are triplets).

"Let's get out of here, it's too hot with so many bodies."

"Where should I put my purse?"
"Anywhere! As long as you don't put it in the casket. Granny might run away with it."

"Why did they put so much make-up on her?"
"At least they didn't load on the fake eyelashes and bimbo lipstick. It would be a pity to be called a slut among such a crowd."

And these are not funny! It is just my horrible way with dealing with death. I can't cry at serious things. I just laugh and belittle the sincere mourning and grief of others. I only cry when I haven't had enough sleep or I make some silly error like forgetting to turn on the grill.

I like to diagnose myself with silly psychoses. I have always wanted to get psychotherapy. Lying down on a couch and telling some old man with a funny beard all of my problems sounds like heaven. Perhaps I just like to rant and talk. There's probably nothing wrong with me, but I have always hoped that I am special in a special way.

I even wanted braces. But my teeth were too perfect. I know I would have hated them if I ever had to wear them, but there was always a slight twinge of jealousy of my friends that got to change the color of their teeth from green to a beautiful iridescent pink. It was a whole new way to change your look!

I also wanted glasses. Then, I read Harry Potter in the dark with a flashlight every night in fourth grade until two in the morning. I got my glasses eventually. Then I lost them every day in seventh grade from total embarrassment. I would carry them in a case on top of all my books and only put them on when I had to for class. I could never recognize anyone's face, so I kept my head down to save any embarrassment of snubbing the few friends I had. I always managed to drop them amongst the sea of scary faceless tweenagers, so every day, I would go the office and ask for my glasses which had always managed to be found. Dang it. I could never lose those things. They're still in my bathroom drawer.

Middle school was one of those places that make hell seem like a pleasant visit.
Our cafeteria had three levels. The top level was for the popular kids, the middle for the cliquish kids who had managed to find a close group of friends, and the bottom level was for the nerds, geeks, emos, and the kids that just didn't care about the social pyramid. I spent most of my time on the bottom level. We had a close group we called the Triangle. I would go to the library (which conveniently was also a shortcut that bypassed the lunch crowd) on the way to lunch each day and pick up a new book. I won't pretend to be awesome. It was mainly Redwall, Tamora Pierce, and some The Cat Who . . . sniffed glue or something like that. We would read our books while we ate. We donated our leftover dimes towards a community pot where we could collect our change and buy something exciting like a honey bun and share it. The Triangle was a sophisticated politea. In 8th grade when Jessica Simpson's cousin moved away and I occupied her vacant chair on the middle level for a month. Man, that was true power hunger.

Enough about middle school.

If you have managed to read thus far in the post, I am quite impressed and slightly confused by your disturbing persistence. I am making no coherent argument, nor am I typing with any form in mind.

Hmm, I guess everything has a form, even if it is free form. I am following most rules of grammar and sentence structure. Okay, so it is not the greatest, but at least it is not Stephanie Meyers. Sorry Twilight fans. She has no concept of the subjunctive tense. Tell me if I forgot to use it, but I am not a published writer! Please, woman, have some standards for the tweenager to live up to!

Ooh, this is fun. We can have a stereotypical rant about Twilight. Somehow, this does fit into my autobiographical narrative.

I have a confession. I went through a Twilight phase. My cousin had a friend who made thousands of dollars off of her Twilight fan site. Thus, he became a fan. And he lent me the first two books which I devoured in two nights. As a sixteen year old thirsty for emotional fulfillment, it is easy to fall into the ploy of the madlib that the characterless Bella was. Or perhaps as a stupid sixteen year old that had never been kissed. I heard someone describe Twilight as emotional porn. And that's exactly what it is. Middle aged men who have never gotten any watch real porn, while sappy tweenage/teenage girls who have never had a real boyfriend read Twilight. It's a filler that replaces something missing in their life. Later that year, I got a boyfriend who turned out to be nothing like Edward Cullen and I broke up with him after three months. I still nursed a soft spot for Twilight and idealistic vampires until I reread the books in a different light. Freed from the constraints of immature emotional needs, I saw how silly I was to fall under the spell of such a shoddily constructed novel preaching abstinence and meaninglessness without boys. Argh. That's a really low blow, Stephanie Meyer. Teaching young girls to need emotionally messed up boys and yet never to have sex with them. Nasty. Low. Blow.

Then I saw the movie, laughed my head off, and put it all in the past. Through my stupidity I have grown stronger.

Where does this put us in the autobiographical narrative? Oh yeah, senioritis in high school. I finally did not care about societal norms, boys, or fashion sense anymore. I began to rock the summer dresses, argyle socks, and poofy hair while all the girls around me wore jeans, school shirts, and blonde, straightened hair. I even began to eat lunch outside and do a bit of lightsaber fighting and hackey sacking. I ruled the UIL Academic tournaments and thoroughly enjoyed my AP classes. Senior year was not too bad.

My strange nerd persona has done fairly well in college so far. At least, as long as I stay in the honors college and music school circles. More honors. I think I freak out the music school kids every so often with my really bad jokes and sorely lacking knowledge of classical musicians.

But hey, images aren't supposed to matter that much, are they?

But they do. We watched High Fidelity last night. John Cusak's character Rob Gourdon expounded upon how it doesn't matter what you're like, but what you like. I came into college liking xkcd, the ocarina of time, and Dr. Horrible's Sing-a-Long Blog. I can make conversation fairly easily in the guys' honors dorm. I'm practically male in my taste in nerdiness with my two brothers' upbringing. Thank you, brothers. You may not have prepared me for middle school, but college I can handle.

I guess you're fairly brought up to speed on my life thus far. In late entries, I'll try to stick to more form and deeper ideas. But that's my life (social and intellectual) in a nutshell...er...blog entry...

Peace out!