My Father's Logic

"The ants are moving sand grains, in futile attempts to compensate for man's extreme shifting of the earth, which collectively cause the axis to wobble."

"Do you ever wonder what happens to the hair in the shower? Well the eco system benefits from it in that the little fry of the river make the hair that comes out of the water treatment their home, and it protects them from predators just as birds use the hair to make their nests in the land side of recycling."

"The world is doomed or destined to commit the same mistakes due to neglect of research of those same mistakes, and blind to admit it."

- Miguel Marroquin

The Good Old Days

I hate money. I hate things. I hate paying money for things.

I want a job, a car, and a home.

Wouldn't it be great if we were back in the old days?

*Cue dramatic Pride & Prejudice soundtrack*

We get hitched in some country church--my now husband escorts me out and into our mode of transportation (we'll say a car, because horses and carriages are nice, but they smell and you can't take them on the highway). He makes me cover my eyes so as not to spoil the surprise, and then after a excited car ride... "We're here," he says. I've got one hand over my eyes and the other is reaching for my guide. He walks me to the front yard and says "Open your eyes." There stands a small white house surrounded by large oak trees. I think they have to be at least 200 years-old to be so grand.

"I found this great piece of the hillside that no one has claimed, and I built this home just for the two of us." I gush with pride as I look into the eyes of the man that is my husband. The entrance is quaint. A small wood stove sits in the corner, surrounded by a rocking chair for me, and a large reclining chair for the mister. The kitchen has all of the amenities of daily living: a sink, surrounded by stone counters, with a window looking out to the back of the house, and up the hill; a stove over the fire, with logs split for kindling; an open brick oven that should hold at least four pies at a time.

We will be comfortable here. We have everything we need to live a good life. No mortgage payments, no utility bills.

OKAY. Let's be honest. It's 2009, nearly 2010.

In reality, whether I rent or own, I will have to pay for a place to live. I will have to pay to keep the water on and the electricity flowing. I will most likely want the nicest place I can afford based on an approved mortgage amount. Everyone wants granite countertops and stainless steel appliances... OH, and heaven forbid there is not a dishwasher in the kitchen. What ever happened to dish soap and a sponge?

I like the old days where you didn't have to buy a piece of land or a house. You went out and found a good piece of land, built your own damn house on it, and made a living by providing yourself with food and shelter, and you didn't expect anyone to finance it for you.

I don't have your answers

You don't really know what you want
if you did, you'd probably have it
there's heaven climbing down the stairs
you're looking through the window pane

If I beg for you to find what you're looking for
will you find it?
I can make it easy and just walk away

If you're looking for the stars to explain
what's on your mind
I'll leave your love to go find its own way

Roommates

So after a whole school year without a roommate, I am now living with two roommates. Two male roommates. Yeah, that's right.

I thought, "What the heck. It's a cheap place to live, I have my own room. This won't be bad."

I was right. It's fucking awesome.

Roommate number one: Owns the house. He's a carpenter, works all day. Funny as hell. He's a neat freak, but I can handle that.

Roommate number two: Drinks all day. And by all day, I mean after lunch time (when he wakes up) until about now, 1am.

Both of my roommates own guns. Shotguns, assault rifles, handguns--you name it, they have it. After being friends with a bunch of cops, this is not troublesome.

Endless entertainment.

My Life is Average

So pretty much everyone knows about www.fmylife.com, just look at all your friends' facebook statuses, usually followed by "FML."

Now watch for "MLIA" after their status. My Life is Average is the opposite of F*** My Life, and maybe even more entertaining.

My favorite today:

"Today, I went to open a packet of Splenda. I noticed a line indicating where you should open the packet. I opened it from the other side. Splenda still came out. MLIA."


Genius.

Taking on Water

On a sailboat I am
slowly floating nowhere
lost the memories of
where I am and why

Black ocean churning
a million stars are burning
planetariums were
right About the sky

Once upon a day
I set off on a journey
wishing on the wind
to take me far from home
now I'm on the waves
and I'm taking on water
hard to see
I won't always be alone

There was a time
when August sun was high
and centered on me
but it dipped behind my back
and settled down
I Used to square it with the land
used to size it in my hand
but it fell
behind the line
that leads to sky

Once upon a day
I set off on a journey
wishing on the wind
take me far from home
now I'm on the waves
and I'm taking on water
hard to see
I won't always be alone

Inside this storm
whipping in the wind
my sail is torn
in other words
the ends
I met are not my own

Hard to see
I won't always be alone

On a sail boat I am
slowly floating nowhere
hoping someday
I'll wash upon
someone else's shore





I want to marry John Mayer's songwriting.

Mazdaspeed 3

If you are going to buy a car---this is the car to buy. It's expensive, maybe. But holy crap! This thing flies! I drove it yesterday after a brief recollection of how to drive a stick. I've only driven one twice before. Its kind of like forgetting someone's name when you've been introduced to that person a couple of times--embarrassing! But once you start having fun, who cares! This car is amazing to drive. I'm addicted to it. Go drive it.

Lots of torque, handles like a dream.... not so good on wet pavement, but who cares. I love it.

Oh No!! What do I do?!

Sad news.

The Mitsubishi is dying. Transmission is leaking oil. Drove it two hours from home back to GAC praying that we would make it. Checked oil when I got into the parking lot. Dang it. Needs another quart. This stuff isn't cheap, either. 7$ a quart. Takes 9 quarts to fill 'er up. 

I'm now thinking that maybe I should pay off the car and trade it in, hoping the dealership will not notice the leak, and if it continues to leak, hope they don't notice that going from 1st to 2nd gear feels like whiplash. 

Jason told me that I should sell it to some sucker high school kid who knows next to nothing about cars. 

I'm considering it.

Adventures of the Week.

Yesterday I went to the grocery store for the first time in a couple of months. Yikes! That's what happens when you have a cafeteria account to spend.

Anyway, I just wanted to post it, because I love grocery shopping, dang it.

I think it must be some kind of basic human instinct, gathering food, that is. I did not have to climb a tree to get those bananas, though. I just had to... migrate... over to the local market place. So there's some instinct in there, I guess.

Hooray for alfalfa sprouts and bananas!

Second Adventure of the week:

I house-sat for Jason this week. So. Much. Fun.

Walking the dog in the rain... eh... not so much. Mac is a german shepherd who is accustomed to going for a 3 mile run every day. Let's just say that we did not go for a 3 mile run in the rain. He is my favorite between him and Jason. Ha!

Well. Those are my adventures for the week. Back to Red Wing today for a free brake inspection courtesy of my daddy. And today is his birthday! He turns 52. Old man! In three years he can get the senior discount at the movie theater... hahaha!

Okay. Bye.

I Am an Impatient Being

I want it all, and I want it now.

I want to be done with this week so I can start the weekend.

I will dread the following week, and look forward to the next weekend.

I want to be done with this month, so we can get on to next month, already!

I want to be done with this school year and start summer!

I can't wait for summer to be over so that it is fall.

I can't wait for school to be completely done with so I can start my career.

I can't wait to start my career so that I can enjoy life.

I can't wait to have a career because that means I'm going somewhere.

I want to have money saved up so I can retire and finally be done with my career.

I want to have a life free of work and responsibilities and full of joy.

I want to be young enough to enjoy life free of obstacles!

I don't want to be old.

I don't want to be unhappily married.

I don't want to pick the wrong career.

I don't want to be bored with my life.

I don't want to die someday.

I don't want to.

I want it all, but I don't want ALL of it.

I Had a Dream

One of my new favorite tunes by one of my new favorite artists on YouTube. Who needs iTunes when you have YouTube. I mean, really.

Five Random Things I Can't Say to Someone's Face

1) Stop pretending you care about what that person is saying.. you're just waiting to hear your own voice.
2) Please, please, please... take your fucking depression medication! I'm tired of this!
3) DO NOT yell or scream when I'm driving! What the hell is wrong with you!?
4) The toilet has a fucking handle. Flush it.
5) How the hell do you get hammered tonight and wake up for an 8am exam tomorrow and ace it?

Introduction to Analysis of the Heart

I wish I could write a book on the heart. A math-based logic of the heart, to be specific.

Well, the perceived problem is that our heart contains elements that mostly don't make any logical sense and can't be quantified or qualified. If we could quantify or qualify the elements of the heart, then the mind can pose questions in hopes of seeking a rational answer.

If I were to tell you that I think that heart can be quantified or categorized, or otherwise examined in a logic unique to the science of mathematics, you would probably call me crazy.

But as a math major, I'm learning new things every day, and sometimes those things don't even make sense. But someone wrote a proof, proving an otherwise ridiculous claim to be true, so we should believe it, I suppose.

My first claim: The heart is made up of an infinite number of feelings/characteristics.

The most common idea or word associated with the heart and its use in the non-biological sense is love. Now, we can make this a philosophical question and ask "What does love mean?" but for the sake of my argument, suppose that love is anything you can use in a sentence that makes grammatical sense. I love coffee; I love my mother--two very distinct entities on their own, but both are true of me. So what does this say about the heart?

I propose that the heart is made up of an infinite number of divisions, and these divisions make up a whole. How is that possible? How can an infinite number of items add up together to equal one thing? Well, it's a mathematical idea that has been around for years. Suppose you have a tape measure. A standard tape measure probably reads to 1/16 of an inch. You've got hash marks at 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, 1/6, and you could keep dividing that ONE inch into millions and millions of fractions--an infinite number of times! Scientists are measuring at nano-levels, but there are smaller units than nano, an infinite number of smaller units. So as a summary, 1 inch = an infinite number of units all added together. Not very logical sounding, is it? How does one quantify infinity and then assume it equals one?

Okay, enough of the math lesson... how does this apply to loving my mother and loving my morning coffee and all this schmutz about the heart? Well, I think that the heart has an infinite number of ways that it can love, or hate, or feel pity, or feel embarrassed, or feel sad, or feel angry. We can love watching Star Wars, but we don't love watching movies like we love our family. We can feel bad for the bunny we ran over last night (or maybe not...), but we can feel bad for the kid whose mom is on drugs. It doesn't make those two situations equal to each other.

Feelings lie on more of a continuum, I think. The heart doesn't operate at one level. Man, would that suck! Like my heater/ac fan in my car -- always on high or always on low, there is no middle ground. How would you like to scream "OH MY GOD I LOVE THIS AIR FRESHNER!!!!" just as loud and as exstatically as you would if your best friend told you he/she was getting married. "OH MY GOD I'M SO EFFING HAPPY FOR YOU!!!" Talk about embarrassing. Good thing we've got some dials on this heart thing...

Therefore, the heart = 1inch. Or something like that.

Summer is...

... going to be interesting, I think.

Woah! March slipped through my fingers; April almost scraped by without a new post.

Research in June and July = $1,200 minus rent for June, July, August = $0.

Awesome.

In other news/thoughts, I have decided to become a sheep herder. Just kidding, but it sounds like fun, right? I thought so, too. Wow, I can all ready tell that this post is going to be extremely sporadic. That's what happens when you try to sit down and write something after two months of it being in the KitchenAid mixer of a mind that I have.

Well, let's address the first part of this post. For the first 8 weeks of summer I'm going to be gathering information for a literary review of educational psychology research as it pertains to learning with computers. Basically a big paper about all the papers that have been written on our research topic... and I get paid to do that. Nice.

I have (hopefully) found a place to live. This lady in Mankato has a brand new house and rents out the extra bedroom since her son is in college (and is graduating this year). I saw it today and instantly loved it. Very nice. I also have my own bathroom. That has never happened even once in my life. It will be a tough transition back to the dorm next fall, me thinks.

Besides finishing up the semester, finding a place to live, etc., I am also looking for a job. Still. I feel like it never ends. I will find one, I hope, I hope, I hope.

I think that is all for now.

Soul

I consider myself a pretty guarded person when it comes to emotions.

A lot of people complain... a lot. Complaining drives me nuts. I hate hearing it come out of the same person's mouth every day. Maybe it's not necessarily the complaining that I dislike, but usually the content of the complaint is 99% avoidable, unimportant, or just dumb. I don't like to be around Debbie-downer or Mr. Cynic. I just don't.

Then there is me. I don't like complainers, so I try to never complain. I don't like telling people what is going on inside of my head for fear of what they would think. I'm miss positive-always-smile-and-say-hi.

I was recently talking to a friend I about his problems with women. His parents divorced when he was in high school, he's had his fair share of girlfriends since then--from cheaters to fbuddies to one that he was engaged to in the past year. Here he was all this time, pouring his heart and mind out in front of me, and I wanted so much to just tell him what I've been through and come to his level of sharing...

But I couldn't. I guess maybe I don't know how to do it? I want to have conversations about emotions. What makes me cry, what makes me angry... what makes me come alive inside.

I swear I'm human.

I swear.

Why the Earth is Tilted

I like to think that the past can teach you a lot of things about the people and places that glued it all together--like how you can only remember your family vacation to the lake because you ate slime off the bottom of the lake after your brother pushed you in. (Of course you love him just the same... and maybe even more because you got even with a splash from the canoe paddle on a frosty morning).

People. Places.

Unfortunately people can be ugly on the inside. They can do things and say things that indicate otherwise... but most people are pretty ugly on the inside. This is my opinion, of course. It's my blog, okay?

So what to do... what to do with all that ugly shit that happened... let me dwell on it....doh! wait! You're not supposed to dwell on it, I guess... well damn.. now what?

What if you don't have a choice?
What if something happens and you have to tell someone about it?
Don't you have to dwell on it as they play a game of 20 questions with you?
So many questions.
How do I stop being defensive when I feel like I'm repeating myself over and over again until you finally say "I don't understand."

Well no shit, Sherlock! I knew you wouldn't understand, but I wanted you to know...

I just wanted you to know.
I don't want to hide anymore.
You said I was hiding.
Well my heart is wide open
'cause I took the hinges off the door...

Because you asked me to.
You asked me to.

Chilton's Total Car Care - Troubleshooting

Well, I was going through my car's repair manual to figure out how to take apart the dash, and started reading through the trouble-shooting section since I had the book out. This one made me laugh:

Vehicle vibrates when driven

a) Check the road surface. Roads which have rough or uneven surfaces may cause unusual vibrations.

Well, duh, right? Apparently there is a large enough percentage of people who need to hear this straight from the experts.

That is all.

Constantly Amazed by How Much and How Often I Forget What I Was Just Thinking About Five Minutes Ago

Well, on Friday afternoon I drove to my brother's to babysit the kiddos while he and his lady went to look for a new apartment. The night before, I removed the faceplate from the stereo because, blast it, some punks have been stealing radios from vehicles in the increasingly shady city of Red Wing, MN. Well, as I began my journey (7 minutes into it, to be exact), I noticed that I had no radio to which I could lend my ears and mind! How tragic! Being a strict follower of the no-back-tracking rule, I continued driving, thinking I would find other things to do.

Now, from Red Wing to Brooklyn Park, it is about 1 hr 30 min if one obeys all posted traffic signs. Make that 1 hr 9 min for the notorious lead-foot-driver-who-aces-every-road-side-meeting-with-local-government-officers-regardless-of-the-offense. Speeding or not, it is a long-ass time to sit in silence. So what did I do? I thought.

Oh sweet Jesus. Like a woman needs extra time to let her mind wander.

Well, this post will be my best attempt to regurgitate what I was thinking during that drive. While thinking about what I was thinking about, I find that it is very difficult to recall thoughts from stream of consciousness! Here is my best effort:

Gosh these roads are dumb. Why can't there be straight-away roads that go from town to town? 61, 316, 61, 494, 94, 35E, 694. LAME. At least I get to go to Starbucks today.

Why, for the love of Peter, Paul, and Mary, (Note: not the Bible characters), do people practically drive on the shoulder when they can't see the lines on the road because of snow. So a trail is blazed through the snow and you find your self plodding along on the rumble strips instead of between the two lines.

I want a farmhouse. I really don't want a barn or silo or any crops. I just want a big old house with a huge yard and lots of old trees.

I can't believe my brother wants Grandma's house. Eugh.... (European form of "ugh") After Grandma passed, he immediately told mom that he wanted it. Oh good God. That house will have to be torn down, the pole shed will have to be torn down, the two out-buildings will have to be torn down... all that scrap metal sold off... and then you'll have to build a new house!

Now that we're dealing with all of the logistics that go along with the death of a family member, mom and dad have decided to have their will drawn up. They want to name me as guardian over AJ, Olivia, and Gabby in the case that they would both die before the kids grew up. I said "sure." What else am I supposed to say? No? I will also get the house in that case.

Where will I get a job? I still haven't heard back from Wells Fargo... or any of the other bajillion places I've applied.

Scary thought: What if I dropped out of college?

Oh, Liz. Don't do that. Your loans are in deferrment until you graduate OR drop below half-time. You really want to pay back thirty grand in loans while you have no job? Maybe I should buy a lottery ticket. Or go to the Casino. I've never done either. Can't say it's not possible if I don't try, right?

I've never done a lot of things. I've never fired a gun, but it is something I would like to try. Jason has been giving me the runaround on this one. I want him to teach me, but he's got his reasons not to, I guess. Like, what if I go kill somebody. Cops don't trust anybody, not even their friends! He's been on Facebook while he's at work, I've noticed. Oh man, if his Sgt. caught him on the laptop doing that..

I hate that my mom is on Facebook. I can't do anything fun anymore! I keep telling myself that I'm an adult and that if I have a picture of my favorite rum as my profile pic, that's my business
...... but I would get nagged for the next bajillion years. She's already after me about going to see the dentist while I'm home. I'm going to tell her I did, but I won't be going.

Well, I think I'm a little early, so let's go to the Mitsubishi/Mazda dealership and check out the lot. The new Lancer looks kind of neat, but it's a peice of a crap. They don't have the huge ass Mazda CX-9 that I want. Sad. Oh well.

I wonder if Dana and Bethany still have mice in their apartment.

Jesus it is cold outside. I don't want to get out of the car.

I Can't... Believe... What I've.. Just... Done...

After spending roughly three years walking down the path to becoming a high school math teacher, I freaking changed my major.

WTH are you thinking, Liz?

Well, self, I'm thinking I will live in a run-down apartment and eat dust balls and cob webs for the rest of my life if I become a teacher. Besides that, I don't think I want to be a teacher any longer.

So WTF are you gonna do now?

I am changing my Mathematics Teaching major to a Mathematics major with a concentration in statistics and a minor in business management.

Yep.