Think positive thoughts.

So, I had a meeting this morning, and left rather disgruntled. I felt the meeting was less productive than it should've been, and I left feeling a little deflated.

BUT... thankfully my day got better. I went over to TSD to do some more volunteering. I'm helping take language samples and it is so much fun. I really love working with these kids. Every time I go I feel like I picked the wrong major! And then I think "Oh no, I have to go back to school!" Because I really think that teaching is what I want to do.

Now what? I don't know. Maybe I'll go back to school and get a degree in general education. Bah! This is where my stress levels increase and I start to think "Oh now I can't do anything?!"

Almost done. Almost done.

Sorry... I don't have any more coherent sentences.

Later: our new "diet" and "work-out" schedule. Woot!

Pictures!

I will be the first to admit that lately, I've been kind of a bad blogger. Moody, grumpy, spastic, and a tad bit crazy. Oh well, I'm feeling much better now.

A week ago B-man and I took our first trip to the American Aldi but I was sorely disappointed. We purchased a bag of pasta, and a waffle maker. It was cheap. Why not? So on Saturday I decided to make waffles. The wells are really small, so the waffles turned out a bit... weird, and the recipe had no sugar in it, and it was kind of bland. But it looked good. Maybe I'm just a sucker for warm breakfast foods. I love the steam in the picture though!

Or at least, Zuko thought it looked good!

Oh well, the recipe was VERY close to the Ebelskiver recipe, but just not as good.

Another recent food adventure involved making pizza. But this was fast pizza. At our local grocery store they make tons of different kinds of breads, and recently I had bought some Naan, but we had not eaten it yet, and I was worried it would start molding soon... so I made Bar-B-Q chicken pizza. It was.... in a word... delicious.

I think that is all I have for tonight. This week is going to be crazy, what with all of my homework, a bake sale, and a few other activities. Then I'm planning on driving out to Nashville for the weekend. We will be leaving the puppies home for the weekend. We've hired a pet sitter, but I'm still kind of nervous. I would feel better if some one I knew was looking after them, but with two dogs I feel bad asking any one! They can be a handful sometimes. After this week, and weekend are over... I'll be a hop, skip, and jump away from GRADUATING!!!!

And now I will stop playing with my food.

I'm feeling diverse and cultural...

I do not have classes on Fridays, so instead I took the opportunity to go to a few presentations today. I feel a little bit more cultural, and a little bit smarter, so that's good!

The first presentation I went to today was by two Deaf, Native Americans. They were here presenting on Native American Sign Language, and more specifically that of the Plains Indians, and the importances of researching and saving this beautiful language. For more information you can visit the Hand Talk website. It's all very interesting.

The morning started off with a beautiful blessing over our college, and program. Even though it was is a different sign language, I could understand some of it. I think it was just a precious way to start off the event.

After the blessing every one trooped inside, out of the drizzle, and settled into the auditorium for a power point slide show. Hmmm... my favorite! lol. It was so interesting, and I wish I could share more, but to be honest, it was all new information to me!

To my right is James Wooden Legs, and to my left is Melanie McKay-Cody. Their presentation was interesting, and engaging. After the presentation James said a "closing prayer" and then invited any one in the audience to come up and be blessed. It was really special, and I'm glad I had the chance to be there.

Afterwards, I also got to go to the sit-down lunch and just chat and ask questions. It was cool because my roommate, Nikki, from last year, was also in attendance. Yeah!

After hanging out a little bit more, and enjoys Jame's magic tricks, I headed over to the UC so I could see a presentation from a Tibetan Monk.

This is Arjia Rinpoche, the high lama, and Abbot of Kumbum.... and the list goes on and on. I had never met a Tibetan monk before, so it was an experience, albiet, not a life changing one. His story really is incredible, so if you have an extra $20 to spend on a book, I would highly recommend it.

This is another monk who was with him, but I didn't catch his name. :) Lol. They were from the Tibetan Monogolian Buddhist Culteral Center, in Bloomington, Indiana! That kind of makes me giggle a bit. Regardless, if you are interested in learning more about them, you can check out their website!

Now what? I have traveled through time and space today! So now... Brandan and I are going to the movies, then maybe to dinner, and then... maybe roller skating. We'll see how the night goes!

So tell me... have you ever met any one incredibly interesting? Tell me who, when, and why?

I'm famous!!!... or not...

Ok, not really. Recently I was interviewed for a little clip about the general opinion on global warming. The portrayal of my opinion is not complete - but unless you really want to know, I will keep my long winded (albeit, educated) opinions to myself! I think I probably said something about how, the effects we are witnessing, are real, but in the grand scheme of things, it's normal. And something about how pollution is very destructive, but it hurts some areas more than others. Yeah... I think I just kept going and he was like "Why is this girl still talking?!"

The kiddo's name was Shane Donahoo, and he is a student of the School of Journalism and Electronic Media at the University of Tennessee. For more articles and clips you can check out their website!

So there you have it! After he video taped the clip we had a nice conversation about food networks and... I don't remember what else. Then I traipsed off to my night class as the snow fell. Picturesque, really.

In other news... I am actually going to cook food tonight. It's been a while, stress takes a mean toll on me, but B-man and I went grocery shopping yesterday, so... I have to cook!

Finding the Balance...

So I'm trying to find a good balance of blog postings... I could probably blog all day... 20 times a day. But, I know no one would want to read all of that. I also know that I would love to make Video-blogs 20 times a day. Ignore that fact that there isn't enough time in my life to do that.

I've kind of decided that blogging once a day is acceptable, and then posting two or three videos a week (at the max) is good too. Since it is something that really does help me practice, I don't want to get sick of it. lol.

So, here's a new video, just a short bit of what I did today, and some things I did yesterday. I know that my blog/vlog entries might overlap, but if you really don't like watching them... you don't have to! lol.

I hope every one had a wonderful St. Patty's day, and I'll catch ya tomorrow... after I've been go-go-going all day! Yippeeeee!

Smooth sailing.

Yesterday I spoke with my teacher about the other test I had bombed, and thankfully she too is going to let me up my grade a bit.

After that quick discussion I was off to my Tuesday night class, and the test that I had not prepare for. But, I think I did well on it because her tests are pretty straight forward, and none of this is really new information.

Then I drove home, kidnapped my husband, and we went out to dinner. I had really not been in the mood to go out over the weekend, so instead we went out on Tuesday. There is this new restaurant called "Bangkok Tokyo" and it is a Thai and Japanese restaurant. It is not a fusion restaurant, it has two separate menus for each kind of cuisine. B-man and I went opposite of each other. He got Thai, and I ordered Japanese.

I really wanted a good sweet curry, ya know, with pineapple and raisins. Yeah, they didn't have that. They had lots of food I've never heard of, and three variations on curry. So I ordered Chicken Teryaki with rice. The food was good, I didn't have a knife... and I didn't really want to ask for one... because I had already filled my question quotient for the evening. So I ate my chicken sans knife. It was interesting.

Over all it was good. B-man said his curry was delicious, and if we go again I will have to try something different.

We also learned this yesterday = our favorite Chinese buffet is closed. For good. For ever. and ever. It was a sad realization, their food was really good. 0_0

_____***______

In other news, I went and volunteered at TSD again today. They were doing testing, so I didn't feel too useful, but then I got to play some games with the kids, and that was really fun. We played dominoes, boggle, and Sorry!.

I think I will probably be volunteering at the middle school every Wednesday and Friday. It's such good practice, and it'll probably look good to have so many volunteer hours racked up in a portfolio.

So, I think that is all. I want the weather to warm up. Soon.

I need a nap. Ciao bella!

Crying.

I hate sad posts.

I hate depressing posts.

I tend to stop blogging when things aren't happy because I don't really want to dwell on them.

But today is a special case (because it has a (semi) happy ending).

I woke up this morning. Then I went to class. Debate class. It's a part of my western civilization class. It's kind of silly, but in general it's not too bad. We discuss things like "Which had a bigger economic impact, AIDS or the Plague." Yeah. Duh. We sit in these groups and come up with questions for other groups. Here's where it goes sour.

I suggested a question. Some one else said something, and the next thing I know:

I'm crying. Yes. I'm sitting a group with three 20 year old guys, and I'm crying. Why am I crying? Because... I don't know. I can't even explain why I'm crying. Should I say "One day you'll understand." or "Wait till you get married."? Nope, you probably won't understand then either. I spend so much of Sunday crying that social interaction is causing me just enough stress to make me cry. Oh dear.

So, I did manage to get out the words "Failed a few midterms" and "really it's nothing" before one of the afore mentioned 20 something year olds offered me a handkerchief.

What?

Yeah, that zip sound that happens in movies. That happens in my life. It was sweet, but I had to politely decline. Really, he had probably used it to wipe his nose on... or maybe he carries it around to offer to crying married women. Who knows?! I did manage to make it through the rest of my 50 minute class without crying. Yes!

The people, they look like ants, marching

back and forth, where are they going?

Where have they been?

The rest of the day was pretty uneventful. I finished my project for my class that I had failed the test in. Then spent a good while trying to convince myself that I should go. Cause, ya know, skipping doesn't usually help your grade.

So, I went to class. And I got my test back. It was one page long. I cried. I hyperventilated. I already know what grade I'd gotten. Why was I crying again? I excused myself to the bathroom. Then I sat down. I took slow, deep breaths.

I wasn't going to be able to talk her. Just thinking about this was making me upset. So, I wrote it down. I went through each of her response, and wrote down why I thought that my response was correct. English is such an ambiguous language. Lame. I think I cried during this part too. I guess confrontation causes me stress.

In class we talked about independent learning.

She just gave us a bunch of bottles of stuff and some almonds.

Yeah... this is what we came up with!

It all worked out in the end. I ended up explaining two of them, which she had read differently than I had intended, and she said I could do the other questions again for half credit. So, instead of getting an 8/15, I now have a 13/15. We also had a good chat about the value of grades, and that she knows I work hard, and that as long as I keep participating and turning in my homework, there's no way I will get below an A. Awesome. Could you have told me that on Saturday, when you sent out the "test grades." Yup, muchly appreciated. Then I wouldn't have eaten all of this:

Ok... I didn't actually eat all of that today. And it had nothing to do with Language Development, or classes. Well, it did have to do with classes, but in a round-a-bout kind of way.

I was going to watch a movie. I needed to watch the movie so I could pick an element of Judaism to write about, that was present in the movie. I didn't see any religion. I missed it. I watched the whole thing. We talked about it. Yeah... he's Jewish... but... umm... not so much? I can't write about it. Even I can't BS two pages about nothing! So, thankfully there is another option and I will write about the other movie.

Life is Beautiful. That's the name of the movie. It came out in 1998. It is probably one of the sweetest, most sad movies I have ever seen in my entire life. I ate ice cream. I cuddled the dog. I hid my eyes. I plugged my ears. Then I cried. The main character, a Jewish Italian during the holocaust, is in the camp with his son, whom he hides from the Germans to keep alive. He makes it into this big game of points and hide and go seek, and then....

I can't talk about movies. Go look it up if you want to know. Some people like to know what's happening, and other don't. I must know. Everything. I hate surprises. Yuck.

Any way, I cried. I started to tear up, and B-man looked at me. I cried.

"Don't laugh at me?!"

"I'm trying not to cry too!"

Yup, those were his exact words. So it's not that I'm a crazy-crying lady, oh thank goodness.

My two favorite...men?

And I guess that is where I must end. I am so thankful to the people who have supported me through this miniature meltdown of mine. I don't know what came over me, but it was awful. I should be returning to full health soon, but beware, because I still might cry.

My poor husband. It's not even "that time" and I'm acting like a lunatic!

Rough weekend.

I don't cry a lot. I think I can see a piece of B-man fall apart when I cry. So I try not to. But yesterday, I made up for all the crying I hadn't done previously.

I failed two of my midterms. I knew about one of them a week ago, and I kind of shrugged it off and figured "I'll just work extra hard in that class." and every thing was going to be ok. But then I got the results back from a different test. This one was a take home test that I had spent 4 hours on. Four Hours! Do you know what I could've done with those for hours of my life, had I not wasted them on this stupid test? I could've studied for the other one!

After about noon, when I got my score... I spent the rest of the evening between fits of tears, fits of panic, and maybe even a little anger. This teacher has also been rather ridiculous with regards to grading other things, so I don't know how much talking with her is going to help.

I'm so close. I can taste th graduation cap. I know I will make at least a C in each of these classes. But that's not good enough to me. My 3.4 GPA is going to go down toilet, and my hopes of graduating Cum Laude have been dashed.

Today, I will try not to cry so much. But it will probably happen.

It's hard to be disappointed. It's even worse when the only person you can blame in yourself.

Four Score and Seven Years Ago...

So, I got a text message today suggesting I update my blog. Now, I could update with everything I have been doing lately, but that would be extremely boring as all I've been doing lately is school. Lots of school. Back in October I got really sick, I had a kidney infection, was anemic and sleeping far too much. So... when I wasn't in class or doing homework I was sleeping!

Now I am trying to catch up on all of the stuff I've been missing! Brandan and I are doing well. Our house is put together, our two dogs are perfect, and our fish is just bubbly! Brandan is enjoying his work, but looking forward to actually working in an office again!

I am currently in the middle of crazy exams! I have a paper I should be writing at the moment, due in like... 4 or 5 hours... but I figured this wouldn't take too long! On Sunday I went and interpreted for Deaf Awareness day at Dollywood. It was a lot of fun and a good experience. I am really starting to step into the "interpreter" shoes and enjoy what I am studying, instead of constantly worrying.

Tomorrow Brandan and I are heading up to Northern VA to spend some time with our families, so that should be a hoot, albeit a lot of driving! That's ok. Brandan could use the practise. In the meantime I am going to go write my paper about the affects of having a deaf child and how that changes the family. Good times!

PS: My title is an ode to a recent assignment I had... interpreting the Gettysburg Address. Yippee

Rubbing my eyes to sleep...

So, I had a wonderful amazing day - and I was really excited to come and blog about it. But then I ate dinner, and told a bunch of people, and sat down, and played on facebook... and I'm a bit less motivated. Regardless - I feel like sharing. I'm going to number the "Happy Events" of the day, to make it easier to follow:

1. I finished my last exam this morning - and I am done for the semester!
2. My WEDDING DRESS IS HERE! Here being my parents' home - but that will be where I reside in just four days.
3. I packed up a good deal of all my stuff.
   
   Now the good stuff!
   
   
4. When I went to put the "good deal" of all my stuff in my car, my front blinker has been... shattered. The pieces where all over the ground. I wasn't too upset - it's the same side that got dented in April of last year. Figured it would cost $50 for the piece, and it look easy to repair... BUT:
   
   as I'm standing there I notice a guy standing by his car on his cell phone. I turned to him, to ask if he saw who hit my car and he was like "I hit it. I thought I was going to have to wait forever for you to come out here! Just let me know if you want me to pay for it, or if you want to go through insurance."
   
   What? He had been waiting on me for 30 minutes! Any who, I know that getting a ding on your insurence as a 20 y/o male is probably the last thing you want, and I was fine with having him just pay me for the parts. So he gave me his name, number, and insurence information - just in case.
5. I was ironically on my way to the store to buy more tape to close up my boxes, so I didn't have any tape to secure what was left of my blinker. I collected the pieces, borrowed some masking tape from the front desk, and then headed off to Kelsey's to drop of my stuff, since:
6. Kelsey is letting me store my stuff in her basement for free over the summer - and subsequently she is saving me a couple hundred bucks!
7. I got to Kelsey's, and awkwardly backed into her drive way. We each carried one box tot he basement, but these were not light boxes. I mean - I'm trying to pack efficiently, so as to not take up too much space in her basement. So these were "MAN" boxes. When we went out to the car, who should randomly be walking in front of her house, but a set of Elders! Yes. I know. How perfect? So the Elders came and helped us carry the rest of my MAN boxes down to the basement. I was so greatful at that moment. I don't get mushy too often, but after we finished and I was driving away - it felt like a hug from heaven. I knew at that moment that Heavenly Father was watching out for me - even the little things.
8. I went to Krogers and bought some tape. I then proceeded to put together the pieces of the broken plastic light covering. I was only missing a tiny piece on the bottom corner, but other than that - I taped it back on and the light looks fine, the bulb is protected, and it should hold for a while.
9. Leaving Kroger I decided to stop by an auto parts store. I had already gone to one, and they had told me they couldn't get me the piece I needed, but I was just crossing my fingers, figured since I was out that way I should try any ways, and low and behold! The guy ordered it, and it will be here on Saturday!
10. I called the guy who hit my car, and told him the price, and we were going to meet up - but I guess he was headed out of town when he hit me, and he won't be back until after I leave. So he's going to mail me a check - with the back up that... I still have his insurence info.
11. Got back to campus, parked my car, got and and started walking when to random guys walked up to me...
    
    "Did your car get hit earlier today?"
    "Umm...yes...?"
    "We saw the guy, and waited around to make sure he left a note or something so... did everything work out?"
    
    
12. Then I got to tell them that he waited for me to show up, and that everything is going to be a-okay!
    

So. Not only did I pass all of my classes with flying colors, but the guy who hit my car waited around to tell me, it's an easy fix, the missionaries had perfect time, I got some delicious KFC, I taped my car back together, and there were other people looking out for me! 

I'm definitely feeling the love. So... how was your day?

Umm... yah!

School is almost done. Here's the list of "to-do's"

Voice Jury

ASL Linguitics Exam

Special Occasion speech for Public Speaking

Pack

Clean

Get out of Tennessee for the next few months.

Yup - that's everything! Almost done... almost done...