dusty in here!

Reshuffling of priorities the last year or so. When's the last time I posted here?! i didn't even look!

Ok well I'm still in school and set to gradumate in the fall of '10. I'll miss my goal of doing this in exactly two years by three terms, but so what... it'll be done.

My teachers and professors have all been mostly awesome so far, except for one, and we won't go there. Note to adjunct community college teachers everywhere- If you spent the majority of your career teaching primary school and have gone to work in a community college, please adjust your teaching style. NOBODY wants to relive their 3rd grade year. That's right- NOBODY. And no one wants a new unreasonable rule after unreasonable rule surprising them and piling up on them at every class meeting.

Smart half will be done the same term. He'll have a degree in accounting.

yay!

I have all of my math requirements done. I still can't say I ever got an A in a math class, but I got some Bs. And I was happy to have the Bs, for sure. Because I never got a B in math, either...

I have one more class each in writing, communications and business. I'm full-on science classes til I am finished (10 more classes of them). I am not a scientific person. I often wonder what the hell I was thinking when I chose my degree program. Not that I don't enjoy science, because I really do dig all the ologies I've encountered... I'm just not good at the whole lab report thing and don't always get the point in class. I'm almost completely "right-brain" and this "left-brain" stuff involves learning a new thinking thing. I have high Bs so far in these classes this term and am bringing those grades up with more efficient studying methods. (bizarre to even have those words come out of my head, actually).

My mad skillz lie in words, and so I'm lucky enough that I am now working in the tutoring center as a writing tutor.

ta

halp!

A backhoe ran over the internets today and broke it!

harharhar

serviceable

My old best friend/sister is getting married this weekend.

Strangely enough...

So over the past few months i've been working on a wedding gift for her and her guy. I started by buying a large quantity of fimo, primo and sculpey clay, in many colors, and two sets of pigment (12 jars each set), and a cheapass wooden jewelry box. And two kinds of grout.

I've never done anything that needed grout, so I just bought two bags of dry stuff.

Then, I made a big ol' margarine bucket full of tiles that I made with the clay, all about 2 x 2 or smaller, and some in odd shapes. Into the clay I stamped little designs, some from stamps, some from jewelry, some from traveling around friends' houses and squishing it onto things with interesting textures. Then I cut them all into neat little shapes. Glued them onto the box (ok I know now that I should have actually used mastic), then grouted the whole bugger up. Fabulously messy. The grouting was the best part.

I don't know how durable this is going to be, but it's a custom deal with their names on it and stuff I made all myself, and it is signed, but they will have to find the signature. It's encoded on its own tile. I will try to remember to get some pics of it and add it to flickr. I still have to paint the inside though.

just thinkin

that I hate people who sign their posts, emails, comments, etc with "Just a thought".

More passive-aggressive "I know more than you do" bullshit, attempts at snide superiority and all that.

Finals are over, I have a week free before school begins this summer. Grade update: Took a W in math earlier in the term.
A in writing (from a teacher who "doesn't give anyone As", from what my fellow students say).
A in the Health class.
B in Excel class.
A in the GPS & Mapping class.

Also was recommended for the tutoring center to tutor the writing students in the class I just finished, as well as the three under it, and am wanted two days a week in class by the teacher who doesn't give anyone As but gave me one.

bwahahah.

Seriously, though, math has been the only class that's challenging. I got the low grade in Excel for a few reasons- total chaos during the class, a teacher that was like sandpaper on a sunburn and sheer frustration with a program that just makes little sense to me. I can see where it's useful, but don't give a crap about learning it.

And so ends year one at Klamath Community College.

good stuff, maynard

The more I listen to middle eastern dance music, the more i love it. It's so free sounding. I think that's the polyrhythms but man, if there's something that makes me want to dance, this stuff is it. A ended up with a promo from a few years ago put out by Putumayo Records called Turkish Dance Groove. It doesn't have any artist info, but it says "A musical mix of Balkan, Central Asian, and Middle Eastern flavors mixed with sophisticated global pop and dance music". Whatever. It's good shit. I'm especially enamored by Gulseren and Bendeniz. I think both of these are Turkish..

I dig the different scales and vocal styles (different compared to western music), how the instruments are used differently than we would, and how seamlessly it meshes with techno stylings.

nuthin no how

I don't live in a "community", if one defines "community" as a group of disparate people working to make life better. Every effort to make it a better place is stonewalled, plastered with blame- every step a battle with city and county government, neighbors and economic interests. This is a town full of bitter, angry people who hate each other. "Stupid" is a cloud that hangs over it. Bush 1's "thousand points of light" are so dim and weak and browbeaten they can barely be seen or heard anymore. Everything is someone else's fault, someone else's problem, someone else's mess, drug problem, poverty or hungry kid. This is the "me" generation as it begins its daily regimen of Geritol.

just gross

will somebody do something about all the tooth-whitening ads online? They're really gross and I'm really sick of looking at other people's gross teeth.

Limpin' ain't easy

Saturday night, while trying to do my part for the environment by hanging blankets out on the line (ok and also because i'm cheap and it cuts the power bill a lot) I fell down the back porch stairs and sprained an ankle. At least the blanket hit the ground before I did and the landing for most of me was pretty soft. But damp.

holy cow

there's a happy cow commercial with two cows that have my first and middle names. how weird.

a neat lady

I have, over the past few months, become friends with a really neat old lady. She's about 70 and has a very active and inquisitive mind. I started teaching her to play the guitar a couple of months ago, and she's kicking ass at it. She is playing "House of the Rising Sun", and she figured out how to transpose it to other keys on her own. When she first started, I played my fingerstyle arrangement for her and she swore she'd never be able to do it. Ok she's got the chords and is real close to being able to pick through it. She gets a fistbump and a hellyeah. She memorized the string names to "Every Awesome Dude Goes Bonkers Early". And we sing "House of the Rising Sun" with the Gilligan's Island theme song words. And then we just laugh til we cry because we're crackin ourselves up.

"Mama Weer All Crazy Now" is a scream when you play it all fingerpickin/folky style.

I had left a damaged but still totally playable Spanish classical guitar at her house for her grandson to goof off on and then she brought it out one day and started asking me about it. Her grandson has a mean rhythm hand. He is on it. He's 8.

hmm

all the noise about decriminalization is very interesting. I just want the grows out of the forests. How can we do that? Hmm. Maybe someone will figure it out soon.

Buy local! Know your grower!

Dewd!

I have an A in my math class right now, with like three weeks left to go. A solid 91%! I can hardly BELIEVE it! You are reading the writings of someone who failed basic math over and over and over until the first quarter of her sophomore year in high school (when she was shuffled off to "business math" so I could get my math quota to graduate).

For me to have an A in a math class, well, it just about makes me want to cry, squeal, laugh, holler, shout, etc.

On the other hand, I am not feeling very challenged by my cultural geography class. :(

Plus, my dad said he was going to come back to the states for my graduation from KCC. He said he's been waiting 20 years for it. heh.

zip zowie

Hell yeah aced all three of my midterms including the math one. I was so shocked to get that I even had to ask the teacher if my grade sheet was actually mine and not someone else's.

Next week is the final class in the Historic Land Management community education class I signed up for. It's been a great class so far.

I'm looking at U of Idaho at Moscow for my Bachelor's. It's the only college that offers what I want to take.

Had a great show on KTEC yesterday. Friday, there was an information panel offered in town here on the Israel-Palestine conflict. I had the two organizers come on the show and talk about the panel, and it went really smoothly. I was surprised that the phone wasn't clanging away, but it wasn't really presented in a way that was confrontational. So either no one was listening or no one felt offended enough to call and tell me how offended they were.

And to top off a pretty sweet month, I learned to play "Mama Weer All Crazee Now" on the guitar. I play it acoustic, having learned the Slade one and then filtering it through the Runaways version rather than the Quiet Riot one. I even sing it.

In December I was given a stack of promo stuff from a local Alliance sales rep. Some good shit in there. Heavy Trash, anyone?

not what it was

A new Michael's store opened up here in town. So I went, because I'm hoping to finally have a local outlet to buy my Rapidograph ink. I loved the store when I lived in places that had it before.

Nope. No Rapidograph anything there. In fact, 80% of the store is dedicated to scrapbooking. Pft.

waiting

man what the fuck is up with the postal service lately?!