observation

It's funny how so many people seem to fit the mold I expect them to.

lotion up

Worse than being retarded once in awhile, is to be retarded consistently.

For some reason, every time before I cut my nails, I decide to put lotion all over my hands.

This makes clipping nails the most frustrating of experiences, usually resulting in injury.

The worst part is that next time, the same exact thing will happen.

Outlet

Hmm.

So I'm out of school.
I graduated in June.
Spend my entire summer in Belize.

It's amazing how impossible it is to convey how life-changing an experience like that was.


Now with an unprecedented amount of free time on my hands, maybe I'll come back to writing again. I'm going to try to go back to my original style, where I don't spend my time writing about my mundane life (now quite possibly even more mundane than usual). Haha. Not like anyone reads this, but it's just nice to have an outlet.

life-itis

now. normally one would be worried about having a case of senoritis in their last quarter of college. But nope. Not me.
I'm done with life. Life as it is. I'm ready for something completely different. You know what? i don't even care. Bring it on!

We all need some chage once in awhile.

And studying for midterms is not looking to be part of that change.

Learning

I realized why I can't learn recently. Why information passes over my brain, avoiding any contact with thoughts, cognition etc. Why I sit in class and do not process. Why I can't even *think* anymore. Why my mind is blank. Why that blankness is dark. Why my vision is blurred.

L&D.

Things are on my mind even when it's empty.

I think I'm going to get some aderol for this weekend.

The Wonderful Thing About Tigger

Today was a lovely day. Christmas breakfast in the morning included pouched salmon in vegetable gelatin (the description doesn't do its presentation and deliciousness an justice), some ham, horse-radish, and bread. Then I went to the beach. Isn't San Diego amazing? This has really been one of the best Christmas holidays in years. Everyone was so happy. No one was stressed, nobody was yelling at each other, and nobody got killed by a tiger.

Unlike somebody today. Did you hear about this?

Read the article at CNN.com.

Can you imagine how terrible that would be? I know I transitioned into this subject in a manner that was a little unsensitive, but really... I can't even imagine that. Sitting in a café and seeing a tiger? And then to be attacked?I would just think it to be a dream. What a horrible thing to happen on a holiday which is for spending time with your loved ones.

Oh well. It's too bad that someone got killed, but I think it's just as bad that they killed the tiger. There are less tigers in the world than people, and we got to keep the gene pools strong in in both. For the tiger: we just need as many individuals as possible to diversify the population. For the human: this allows those with adequate escape and/or tiger-fighting skills to survive and pass on those qualities to subsequent generations. Excellent!

But really now, what would you expect a tiger to do? Not take the opportunity to possibly escape its restricted life? It doesn't know that there isn't a place it can go outside of its fenced-off area. If you think about it, more dangerous things are released all the time without too much of a second-thought. Think about how many rapists, child molesters, murders, drug dealers, etc. end up getting out of prison, or who go unconvicted. Those people hurt many more others much more often. But I guess, how are you supposed to restrain a tiger? Can it even be restrained? When it's running around killing people it's difficult to try to tranquilize it. Such a method doesn't always work, and I'm sure that a pissed off animals that has just been who with something would attack the shooter first.

Man. That's crazy. I might have to change my mind about wanting a tiger.

Herring Day

Tonight was Christmas Eve, which my family celebrates in leu of the regular Christmas Day. To my knowledge, this bares minimal, if any, religious significance given that I am an atheist, my dad thinks religion is for the weak-minded, and my mom just agrees with my dad. Actually, my mom was never really religious, and she's never approved of me hanging out with religious loonies. It was actually a surprise a few years ago when I found out I had never been baptized. We had gone to church when we lived in Canada, so that was a little interesting. Apparently, it's still a little bit of an issue between my mom and grandma.

I'm happy that I was never baptized. I like to think that a person should be able to make these sort of decisions on there own. Otherwise, the least they could do would be to offer some sort of anti-baptismal procedure -- which I don't think they do. I think faith is an extremely personal thing, and in my opinion people can choose to believe in anything they want, but I never fancied the notion of brainwashing children into believing in something. But I guess it's not really brainwashing if you believe it yourself; then it's just called "teaching."

The day was filled with tons of cooking, but yielded very little results quantitatively. When we sat down at the table, my mom and I were surprised at how much work we did with so few items on the table. Essentially, we had only the following:

1.) Bread (which had to be picked up at the bakery in Hillcrest this morning. Me at 8am)
2.) Herring with onions
3.) Pastries filled with mushrooms
4.) Borscht (beet soup)
5.) Potato and vegetable salad
6.) jam-filled cookie things

wow.
Really?

I guess things just take a really long time. Everything is time-consuming. It was way better this year than last, because I helped out with everything. Last year for some reason, my mom did a lot and it was too hard on her. It was actually fun, and when things started to frustrate her, I just stepped in and did it myself and amazed her with my novelty-talent of the moment.

Christmas Eve, to mean, is a way for me to connect culturally with my heritage through food. These are things that I love, and there is a history behind them all. It's simple food, and the most delicious food I've ever had. It's so incredibly important to me to learn how to make all of these things, because really, it's morbid to admit it, but one day there won't be someone to ask how to do it. My mom, dad, and brother are the the only family I have here (and my brother is not really good for anything here). I'm so far away from any other family, so it means a lot to me to be close to them and to connect.

Also. I went to the beach with my mom today. I told Justin this to make him jealous. He just replied that he too went to the beach, but you couldn't really see it... oh snow. I can't wait to go sledding. :-)

fyi: that's not a picture of our actual herring. But it looked very similar. minus the capers I guess. Plus onions and cranberries and lemon. Ours was better. I love herring. Wow, I love herring. When I went to Norway and Finland, I judged the quality of the hotel by the quality and variety of herring served at breakfast. Finland won. For sure.