Something Creative

This post is brought to you by the letter "L".

2008-09-01T00:46:54Z

- Post a Comment and I'll randomly assign you a letter
- You have to respond by listing ten things you LOVE that begin with that letter.
- Afterward, post this in your journal and give out some letters of your own. gave me the letter L.

In no particular order:

1. Lasagna - There's nothing like comfort food.
2. Lamps - Sure, it's an odd choice. But lamps are sexy, and can totally change the mood/look of a room.
3. Lord of the Rings - Because there's nothing like a Director's Cut with weeks worth of extra footage.
4. Lavender - Mmm.... aromatherapy.
5. LCD Soundsystem - One of my favorite electronic artists.
6. Limes - In small doses. I <3 Lime-aid and using it in marinades.
7. Licorice - Redvines are the shit. Also, Liquorice Altoids.
8. Loofahs - Better than washcloths, for sure.
9. Luxury - Decadence never dies.
10. Loops - The easiest way to make music on the computer.

I made it into DAAP! woot (and other various ramblings)

2008-04-17T04:17:48Z

    I made it into DAAP! No more worrying about what classes I'm going to have to take anymore! I can finally relax... at least somewhat. The real stress now is trying to finish out this quarter knowing that the classes I'm taking may not apply to my major. Trying to be motivated for something you don't have any reason to be motivated about... yeah. I have a shitload of reading to do for 2 of my classes, all of it is so bland it's hard to keep concentrated for longer than 15 minutes at a time. I constantly drift in and out... I don't know if it's because the reading is so dry or if I have ADD, or if it's just a constant lack of sleep. I'm on a CPAP machine and have jaw-clenching problems, both of which have been going on for years now. It's hard to attribute my overall blah feeling to any one thing.
    So... about DAAP. I don't know if I should be excited or stressed. I think I'm feeling a bit of both at the moment. From what I've heard, DAAP is quite the experience. Constant sleepless nights working on projects, constant competition, constant critique from professors, etc. The first year is supposed to be incredibly time-consuming and boring, so hopefully I can keep focused enough to get decent grades. I won't know until Fall, though. One thing that makes me happy, though, is that I will be able to register for classes before any of the freshman, because I've got 71 credit hours, which makes me eligible for early registration. I'll finally be able to have a schedule on my terms... or at least a schedule that won't drive me completely insane.
    I also need to buy a laptop... hopefully my parents won't freak too much about that, money is tight at the moment because my brother is a psychotic drug addict who thinks of my dad like a faucet of everflowing money. $40,000 for a rehab program for him, and as soon as he's done, he decides it's a good idea to completely disregard the plans my parents had come up with, and manipulates them into taking him back home. The only real solution to his problem right now is severe, extensive psychiatric treatment, but he won't submit to ANYTHING. My parents don't want to toss him in jail, because he's their son... at least that's how I see it. I don't know what it's like to have a mentally insane child, but I can't imagine it to be very easy. My parents have always been very lenient, which I think makes trying to handle a mentally ill son incredibly difficult for them. I can't say I would know what to do in their situation, but some of the things they've done have been completely brain-dead. If your son has a drug problem, and has a history of psychotic episodes and panic attacks, why would you give him money to go out to "buy cigarettes"? Why would you promise him $1000 dollars when he gets out of rehab to get back on his feet? It's like my father is tempting disaster at every turn. I can understand why he does the things he does... he wants to keep himself sane enough to function in his job, which means appeasing my brother in whatever way possible. So, in other words, my family is incredibly dysfunctional.
    I don't expect my parents to do everything for me, but they have paid for my other brother's college tuition (and now his grad school), and I only think it's reasonable they should do the same for me. I'm not opposed to the idea of student loans if necessary, but those are a pain in the ass to pay off, and the 5 years after graduation are essentially just as bad as being a poor college student. I don't know if I should get a job or what, but I think if I had a job and tried to succeed in DAAP, I would struggle. Maybe I need to get a summer job to help put some money aside, or pay for a couple of things to furnish my apartment.   I'm trying my hardest right now to spend as little money as possible on extraneous things, and I feel horrible every time I ask for money for something that isn't food/grocery related. I literally have no storage in my apartment right now, one of the rooms is overflowing with piles of various crap, but I don't want to ask for anything because I know my parents are having a hard enough time right now as it is.

Off to reading... hopefully things will settle down a bit and life will return to its semi-normal state... until then...

meh

2008-04-12T05:05:41Z

    I don't understand why I have such a hard time realizing all of the shitty things I do to people, especially those close to me. I definitely don't consider myself a "bitch," but I guess I have some bitchy tendencies. I am definitely sarcastic, though I know it hurts people, so I try to tone it down for the most part. My main problem is I'm told that I argue a lot. I just don't see it. Maybe I've gotten into such a habit of being argumentative that I don't realize when I'm doing it, but I find it hard to watch myself externally and see all of the bad behaviors I exude. A lot of it may come from the fact that I argue a lot with my mother. She tends to be incredibly oppositional defiant and stubborn, and having a conversation with her is extremely difficult. Most of my conversations with her end with one or both of us yelling. To give myself the benefit of the doubt, however, everyone in my family experiences the same phenomenon. Anyway, hopefully I'll be able to work on the whole arguing thing... my relationship is suffering because of it. But, no need to tread those waters for too long, the time to fix it will come when it comes.
    On another note, school seems to be going okay. I finally managed to sign up to be a full-time student, and I will be covered by my parents' insurance. Every quarter is the same thing; I wait too long to sign up for classes, then I don't know what classes I want to sign up for, and when I finally do find classes that interest me, they are filled up and I am stuck petitioning into them or not taking them at all. I'm like a fish out of water in college right now. I want to get into University of Cincinnati's DAAP program, and I've sent in an application, but I applied last year and didn't make it into the program. I don't know exactly why I wasn't accepted, all I received was a "we regret" letter. Those are amazing. If I were to take a guess, however, it's because I don't have any standardized test scores for them to get a chub over. I essentially dropped out of high school and got my GED, so standardized test scores were the least of my worries. I went to community college to get my feet in the water, and I just recently moved out of my parents' house into an apartment to live closer to the college's main campus. My GPA is great, but I don't know if I will make into DAAP on GPA alone. I should know by the beginning of May, according to advisors. I did, however, manage to make it into a "Discovering Arts and Sciences" course which should help me come up with some sort of backup plan if I don't make it into DAAP. The class seems interesting enough, with guest lecturers coming in from the multitude of liberal arts programs.
    Not much else is going on in my life at the moment, though I'm definitely on edge about the whole DAAPlication.