No less than the stars!

Bad dream

So last night, I had a dream that my friend C came over to Knoxville to visit me (he lives in Arkansas).  We had sex.  Then I found out later in the dream that he immediately had sex with 20 other Knoxvillian women afterward.  Then I woke up.

And it was one of those dreams that is SO REALISTIC that you have no idea you're dreaming until you wake up and realize you're alone in your own bed.

How awful.

George Clooney changes lives?

In life, moments of pure ecstasy seldom happen.  No, I don't mean sexual euphoria.  I just mean unadulterated... joy.  And when these moments do happen, the circumstances are rather unremarkable, most of the time.  Take for example, one of life's circumstances that ALWAYS manage to gift me the privilege of that ecstasy.

A really good movie.  I know few other ways in which a human ends up... not just feeling, but EMOTING.  Those are two drastically different things.  Feeling is passive, while emoting is decidedly active.  But I've gotten off track.  Really good movies... I love the way the world seems when I walk out of one.  Especially if the movie was inspirational in some way.  The world doesn't seem so apathetic and pessimistic.  After a great movie, lassitude doesn't exist to any degree.  The only way my mind wanders is the direction of optimism.  After a movie like this, my problems don't seem quite as important as I thought they were.  I also don't seem as important as I thought I was.

Sadly, this refreshing, effervescent perspective seems to only last as long as the drive home from the theatre (though sometimes it may last well into the following day).  I wonder why that is?  What unremarkable life circumstance(s) make(s) you feel the way I just described?

P.S. The movie that inspired this blog entry was Up in the Air.  You should definitely see it in theatres!  :)

Merry Christmas 2009

Hello, friends!  It is a little past midnight here in Tennessee.  I have been trying for the past hour, to post a video blog to Vimeo, but the uploading process was unsuccessful.  In my frustration, I have reverted (slightly unwillingly) to regular blogging.  And oddly enough, I have a topic!

The topic being Santa Claus, of course.  I think there must be a small part of me that still believes in that jolly old elf.  I'm 21 years old, but I'm anxiously awaiting the early morning, in which I will gallop through my parents' tiny home and land ungracefully in front of presents.  At 21, I still wait in barely contained anticipation for what gifts my parents may have lovingly purchased.  Also at 21, that inner child still thinks Santa is coming at around 3am to display presents of monumental proportions before our tree.

And as mature as everyone (including myself) seems to think I am, as much as I shouldn't expect presents at my age, the truth of it all is that I still hold a few of the same expectations for life that I did at age 7.  With much certainty, I can say most of you feel the same way I do.  After all these years, Christmas is still Christmas.  It is a time to receive certainly, but it is also a time to give.  A time to give freely of your time, your effort, and your means.

Santa is quite real because he lives on within all of us.  The people of the world gave birth to Santa because not only do they like to receive, but they also like to give.  Santa gives us the means to give to our loved ones more than gifts.  Through Santa, we create new childhoods and relive childhoods that are long past.  Because of Santa, there is one day out of the year that NO ONE has to grow up.  For one day, we are all children.  Best of all, we are all children TOGETHER.

So, in the words of the wisest child ever created in literature (that is, Tiny Tim): "God bless us - everyone!"  :)

A micro-blogging exhibition

So, I feel that micro-blogging is more up my alley.  What is that?  Twitter, updating your Facebook status, things like that.  I just think I'm more successful at coming up with witty comments and pictures to go along with them, one status update at a time.  Call me shallow, call me lazy.  So, in the spirit of micro-blogging, here are a few examples of my best ones:

1. Finals week at UTK



This is definitely one of my proudest moments.  I have no clue who this dude is, but he is quite possible my new hero.

2. Snakes In An Office! (Not on a plane... get it?  Ha ha ha.)



If you can't tell, these are those fanged staple removers one finds in offices all over the world.  This is what I do at work instead of... well... work.  Anyone else think they look like snakes?

I will leave you with a geeky pick-up line: "I find your graphical user interface to be quite attractive."  Use it free of charge, for all your nerdy getting-laid needs.  Works best on bloggers and website designers.  And possibly C++ experts.  :)

Cooking: Kinda makes you feel bad about yourself

Why do I say this?  Because the new recipes I try NEVER look or taste half as good as the Food Network people make you think.  Giada de Laurentiis makes her seafood stew look like the easiest thing EVER until you head on out to the store to try and make it yourself.  In real life, it occurs to you that seafood is ridiculously expensive, you don't have a Dutch oven, your store doesn't carry flat-leaf parsley, and any number of other things that are important to the recipe's success.  So you end up making a grilled cheese sandwich and tomato soup like every other night of your life.  Not to mention that when you DO find all these ingredients in your grocery store, you end up burning the bottom of the fish when you put it in the pan, most of the parsley ends up on the floor, and clam stock smells so disgusting you can't finish the process.  So yeah... I love to cook, but I have to be okay with failure more often than not.  Live and learn.

A new direction

As the title suggests, I am considering taking this blog in a slightly new direction.  You see, I feel that women are typically too afraid to talk about the really gross or painful parts of womanhood.  Oftentimes, we ask ourselves, "Does anyone else feel this way?  Am I the only person who sifted through 28 pages of Matt Smiths to find that hot guy from the bar?"  You know you've been there.  You know the questions I'm talking about.  So why not talk about it?

For example, why do you think you're the most sexually aroused during your period?  Why do all the guys seem to like you when Aunt Flo's in town, and you're CERTAIN you don't smell so great down there?  Talk to me about it, girls!  I know you want to.

The wastebasket that is my life

Why do I pay $50 a year on a blog I write in once a month?  Because my life isn't nearly as exciting as I thought it was, I can't make it interesting when it isn't, and I am in denial.

Of course.

Also, why should I have to write an entire choral handbook for my high school music methods class, when I want to teach elementary school?

Put that in your pipe and smoke it.

Words of wisdom

Sometimes a jerk is just a jerk.  Sometimes the guy you describe to others by saying, "He's a jerk on the surface, but beneath it all, he's a genuine, kind human being," that guy?  Yeah, sometimes he's just a jerk.  There is no secret code to making him a better man.  He's just playing his game, he's a really good actor, and you're really that stupid.

You teach people how to treat you.  That is the best advice my mother ever gave me (and she gives REALLY good advice).  More often than not, when your friends or that guy takes advantage of you, it's because you allowed it to happen.  You were too soft to stand up for yourself.  Does that mean you suck at life?  No.  It just means that you are a human being who is capable of caring for others.  And when the world doesn't love you back, you get hurt.  So, learn how to love your neighbor without handing him a block of Kryptonite to kill you with.

kthxbai.

When nothing is left, everything is gained

I am considering going back to individual therapy.  It isn't that I think I'm losing control again, it is simply that I enjoyed having a truly unbiased person to give me input about my life.  The therapist I had showed me so many new ways to think and live, and it was so incredible.  I'd love to have that support again, especially since my semester seems to be unraveling already.

Ugh.  I want nothing more than to unload my life in regards to guys and how they drop a bomb on you and expect you to just go on with life like they never said anything.  I'd love to tell you how I don't have time in my life for such bombery, but this is a blog that publishes out into the Void.  So, I will leave it on this rather vague note.

In childish news, I bought two new toys!  One is a stuffed animal, a moose, to add to my growing animal collection for my future elementary music classroom.  I also ordered a little M.O. figurine (the cleaning robot from Wall-E!), and it is soooo adorable!  Sadly, it is a birthday present for my friend C (mentioned in the previous entry), so I will not have M.O. much longer.  LOL  Ah well, C deserves this birthday present.

Well, back to my homework!

If you want to be free, be free

Ugh.  I broke up with N yesterday.  To make a long, pointless, waste-of-my-life story short, he didn't pay enough attention to me, have enough time for me, etc.  And I felt unimportant and under-appreciated in his life.  So I got out of it.  Only took me a month of wasted misery and time to do so.  So needless to say, I'm mostly relieved but also slightly saddened at having to give up on a person so soon after meeting him.  It breaks my heart to give up on anyone because I believe everyone deserves the best of what humanity has to offer.  *sigh*  Whatever.  My friend C has really been supporting me and distracting me from this whole situation.  He's so great!  :)

In other news, life at school is delightfully busy.  I love nothing more than to be in the academic zone and succeed at the things I'm best at.  Overall, my life is looking rather sunny these days.  :)