Monday, June 27, 2011

I play Minecraft, and have an internship in my spare time.

My mom and I got in an argument about what it means to have a "really long day".  To her, it means having nothing to do, so the day goes by really slowly.  To me, it means having so much to do that at the end of the day, you don't remember the first thing you did that morning.  Which was the kind of day I had... every day last week.

Take Wednesday, for example.  I had an interview in the morning, and then had to take my grandma to two doctor's appointments.  When I got home, I started looking around for a veterinarian because my cat was sick.  I called one I'd been happy with in the past (an exotic pet vet that doesn't treat cats) and got a recommendation.  Called them, made an appointment for the next day.  Dinner and whatever, then went to a friends house to watch Spanish soap operas for a while.  As I pulled out of her driveway, I was thinking "I have to wake up early tomorrow.  Second day in a row.  Why did I have to wake up early today?"

Thursday was the same way, with more surprises.  Vet appointment, work, get to work and my car is steaming.  Figure out what the problem is, call shop, call another shop, drive car to shop, walk home a half an hour on the phone with a friend, worry about my cat, then... other stuff I guess.  I don't remember much else, really...

By Friday my car was fixed, my cat's blood tests came back... normal.  So I have a healthy cat and a healthy car and I'm dead tired.  Doesn't leave much interesting to talk about, really.  Maybe tomorrow I'll remember what I wanted to post about before I got distracted by Minecraft...

Wednesday, June 15, 2011

I must have been a demon child.

I was flipping through some old spiral-bound notebooks, and found one with "journal entries" dated from what should be my 4th grade year (they were obviously a class assignment).  I had to share a couple samples.  Spelling and grammar are the original...

"I am writing about the best behaved class in world.  They woud not move inless they where told to.  They woud not tak.  They whoud do there work on time. They whod be perfiect." (Nevermind not being allowed to move.  I made a their/there/they're error... gasp!)

"Over the long weekend I did the same thing each day." Boring! "I had a friend over and went to a dogs house with my friend. ... And on Saturday I got told I might be adle to babie sit the dogs." Is it sad if I still remember how excited I was about that?

"Yesterday was so fun.  I swam for 3 hours.  The swiming pool gives out kick bords.  There is also a 'becah with pool water.' It is rellay fun. I had a lot of fun yesterday." Apparently I hated my life.

"The flight to Arasona was not fun. It was saposto (!!!) take off at 6:00 but when we goton we had to wait 4 hours intill they siad the plane was not going to fly." I remember this well.  They told us they couldn't fly the plane because the trash can lids in the lavatory weren't sealing correctly, which was a fire risk: should the paper towels catch fire, they needed an air tight seal to put the fire out... such bull. "We had to wait intill 11:00 to take off.  We did not get to the hotel intill 3:00 in the morning.  That flite was not fun." What I don't mention is that I was awake at 7 the next morning.  Without an alarm clock.  Begging my dad to get me breakfast and run around the hotel with me.  I wish I could pull that off now...

"At the picnic I met alot of cosens." I wonder what that would look like... "Most of them I did not even know egxsted" Well, when I couldn't spell, I perservered...

"I am going to a friend's house.  I will go at 6:00 and come home at 9:00.  It will be fun.  I am going for her birtday party.  The funny thing is, her party is only one hour long.  I'm going to a friends house." ...

"Sunday I went to a swiming party. They had an infateble octopus. I was the first one on it. The funny thing is the birthday girl did not go on."

Suddenly it switches to cursive...

"On Sunday I went fishing.  All I chaut was seaweed and a few sticks.  On monday I went fishing agian. That time we lost a rooster tail. I got my hook caught a lot of rocks."

"On the weekend my cat acted weirder than ever.  The only place she slept was on a newespaper.  The newspaper was on a banket.  The blanket was on a Futon.  My cat was relly wired."  Not sure why I found this noteworthy...

So, I still want to know why I felt well behaved students shouldn't move.  I've always been fidgety.  I can't imagine not being allowed to shift my legs without being told to...

Monday, June 13, 2011

When you meet that person...

Encouraging me to sign up to be on the email list for a club (economics or finances or something I'm not really interested in), a fellow student told me "You can never do enough networking in college".

I guess I already knew this.  The statement has stuck with me.  The idea has stuck with me.  It's left me feeling guilty sometimes, looking at my vast range of college activities: going to class, doing homework, hanging out with my standard group of friends, eating, sleeping.  There are clubs on campus, a few that I'm interested in, but I haven't really gotten myself interested enough to attend many meetings or events.

At some point in the past couple days I realized something: it's probably more important for me, right now, to network among adults than to network among my peers.  Peers may be useful resources in the future, and they may know people now... but those already in the working world can get me great connections now.

That said, I went to go see Revenge of the Electric Car on Wednesday (the West Coast premiere of the sequel to Who Killed the Electric Car... right in my hometown!  More on that later, hopefully).  I told one of my high school teachers about it, and he showed up also.  We were talking, and somewhere in the course of the conversation he mentioned someone I should meet.  A few minutes later, she walked into the theater.  So he was able to introduce us after the movie.

Holding her business card, I ran back inside and excitedly gushed to a staff member I know that I'd just been introduced to someone who works in the field I want to go into.  He grinned.  "You never know when you're going to meet that person who changes your life."

She wanted to talk with me more, so we scheduled time to talk on the phone.  After a bit of conversation, she asked what I wanted.  I told her, basically, I want more to do this summer.  So she offered me an internship: blogging about topics related to sustainability.  Something I originally wanted to do with this blog but never got around to.  This is a woman who knows people.  Hopefully I'll soon know these people as well.

I was remembering the young man who gave me the tip about networking, convincing me to (however reluctantly) sign up for the mailing list for that club.  I never did get any emails from them.

Wednesday, June 1, 2011

If I Die Young

This is one of my favorite songs of late.  They just started playing it on the radio, but it seems like its about a year old (funny how stations seem to pull that all the time).



For those of you who might be interested, apparently the band got their first actual fan mail about this song.  A young woman whose best friend had died of cancer was contemplating suicide.  She heard the song and, hearing the life it had in it, realized she still had something to live for.  She wrote them, thanking them for saving her life.

I'm wishing someone would tell all those drivers out there that there's more to live for than being in front of another car.  Watched someone run a red light on Sunday (I was about to drive out into the intersection when someone sped through.  Possibly faster than the speed limit...)  Last night, getting on the freeway at one of those annoying x's where cars getting on and cars getting off have to switch places, I sped up to get ahead of someone getting off... and I'm pretty sure she sped up too.  Because, you know, it's useful to speed up when you're heading into a sharp turn.

The most frightening example of recent impatience was today, end of rush hour, driving home from my grandma's house.  The left turn to get on the highway was on the other side of a slightly gridlocked intersection, and the light was green.  The light was green, but there was nowhere to go because of a couple too-anxious cars going the other way who were in the middle of everything.  The car in front of me decided that wasn't a problem for him, and nobody seemed to be coming in the other direction, so he drove around the gridlock.  Someone honked, and a biker on the sidewalk next to me looked seriously frightened.  We made eye contact and shuddered at the state of drivers...

I didn't get the job I was waiting to hear about, so it looks like I will have to be driving a lot this summer (running errands for my parents, volunteering all over the place, commuting some 20 min to the low paying internship I did get).  Hopefully I can make the best of it.  Hopefully my body can learn how to sleep again.  Not sure when it decided that it didn't know how to do that properly...