Later This Week

For 20 years that house that I grew up in did not have showers, or so we thought. The showerhead has always been there but we always had to take baths. My dad found out that he had to just do this one little thing to finish it up and we would have had showers. This week my dad has been installing showers for their Christmas present. The reason he has had to install showers even thought we already had them is several things have happened. Needless to say we have showers in the downstairs bathroom, and the upstairs has showers installed, but the upstairs is leaking. If we want to bath we have to do it downstairs.
Thursday I went around the area and looked at Christmas lights. I wasn’t very impressed. Many people didn’t have any up. I went to Linden, Alabama where I went to High school for two years and looked at the light up there. There were only a couple houses I really liked. I drove by one of my teacher’s old houses and the people that live there now had lights that were pretty cool. I brought back memories of a Christmas party we had there. It was a lot of fun. One of my classmates had been in a car wreck not to long before and she had to be rushed to Tuscaloosa because she broke her neck. I remember hearing that she was very close to breaking her spinal cord. Anyway, she came to the party. It was good to see her and see she was ok. Afterwards I went to Thomaston that is about 15 minutes north of Magnolia and looked at their lights. Three houses that were close by each other were covered with lights. It was great. I didn’t get to look at them very close because I was on the main road and had to go. I was neat. I came back home and picked mom up and we went to Arlington which is up the road a little bit and they had a couple. Then, we went to Shiloh to look at this man’s house that is famous for Christmas lights. Every year he puts something new up. He had several things in his yard that anyone can drive up in there and look. It is really neat. It looks like he really enjoys doing it for people because it looks like he really puts a lot of work into it.
Yesterday was pretty uneventful and today we are just hanging around the house.

Earlier This Week

This Monday and Tuesday I was up in Birmingham visiting with my sister. Monday night I went along with her little girl and her husband to the Birmingham Zoo, where Christmas lights were everywhere. I was very pretty. Kennedy, my little niece, was practically running through the zoo because she was so excited. We went and bought hot chocolate to drink and walked to the carousel. The hot chocolate was not that good. Kennedy got to ride on the carousel and afterwards we went into the Children’s Zoo. Kennedy petted some of the animals there and then we left. It was really fun. The lights were beautiful and it was fun to watch Kennedy. On Tuesday I babysat for my sister and then Wednesday I came home.

End of The Semester

Christmas break finally came. I didn't think it was ever going to get here. My exams went ok. My sociology exam was very nerve racking. It was online and on a server that wasn't able to handle a lot of people at one time. My sociology teacher taught two classes of at least 150 students in it. There were at least 300 people trying to take the test at one time. It took me an hour to get the exam open. We were supposed to have two and a half hours to take it, but I know some people including me didn't have that much time. I emailed my professor and told him about it along with many other people I am sure and he wrote back and said he would take that into account while grading the test. I came out with a B- in the class. I had and A+, 2 B- and a B. I didn't think they were going to be that good because I slacked off a lot during the last part of the semester.
During exam week I had a cold and didn't study very much because I was laid on the couch while drugged up because of an earache that I had in both ears, but not at the same time thankfully. Our cousin has been staying with us while his wife sells their house in Nebraska and he was handling buying a house down here. He told me that whenever he has a cold he takes a vitamin c and e, two Tylenol, and an Alka-Seltzer cold and sinus and it is gone in two days. I didn't try it but I wanted to. If I had the money to but the medicine I would have. Wednesday night of that week I went to take my Spanish exam while still being sick, and on the way home I was involved in a car accident of some sorts. I was turning right onto a major street and the car that was turning the same way decided that she could go too. We were headed for the same lane when she came up behind me and I hit her. There isn't much damage to my car, just a crack in the driver side bumper. I wish she knew how to drive because that could have easily been avoided. It was very aggravating. Dad told me we could put superglue on it and it would be fine. Thanks to her I am going to have a super glued car, not telling what it is going to look like. Not a very good exam week. I was glad when it was over.

An All Around Good Ol' Day

Today was a pretty good day. Instead of school I had other things to do. I went to the birthday party of my friends little girl. It was fun to watch her open all of her presents. My friend was over there amoungst all the little children helping her little girl open her presents. She was so cute. Which I will most likely do the same thing with my kids.
After that I went to a bridal shower of another one of my friends. I felt right at home becuase her famiy is just like mine in the aspect that they talk like they came from the south and it was a good ol' get together for the women of her family and friends. The thing that cracked me up was that they turned the Alabama football game on during the shower. There was people watching the game (including me, I am a big fan of Alabama football) in between seeing what presents she got. This was all happening at a shower with all women and no guys there. There is nothing wrong with that, but I thought it was great. Her dad wasn't there but I have met him and he reminds me so much of my dad an uncle. He is this good ol' guy from the south, just like my dad an uncle. The family that I met today of her aunts and cousins reminded me so much of Magnolia and how showers down there pan out. It was cool. I felt right at home and a little homesick.

School, School School, That is all I ever do.

I only had one class today. It was Spanish. Our teacher fussed at us today because we had not been reading over what she had assigned us to read for the next day. You could tell by the way we were answering the exercises today. Which honestly I didn't actually pay that much attention the reading. I simmed over it. It was about how to do present progressive and it looked easy so I scimmed over it.
Yesterday, I found out what I made on my English paper. I made a C-. Which I did write it the day before and turn in a rough draft. Needless to say, on my next paper there will be close communication with my teacher. As soon as I find out what I want my subject to be.
Registration for Spring Semester started this week. A class that my creative writing teacher is teaching is already full. I was going to have to take his class in order to resume my creative writing minor if I wanted it. Now that it is full, I don't know what I want to do. That sounds like I was going to do the creative writing minor because of my teacher. He was some of the reason that I want a creative writing minor, but I also want to write books for a living and taking creative writing won't hurt. He class is so good, he knows what he is doing and he is laidback, like me. I might still do the creative writing minor. I depends on things. Registration is so nerve raking.

I need to stop writing every week and write everyday

Well, I am still waiting on what my grade if for my paper, which it usually takes a week for the teachers to grade papers. I hope I did good. If I didn't that would suck.
Everyone in my spanish class is getting tired of it. We have to do group work in the class and my partner for a particular exercise wouldn't do anything. We had to tell what we did with our friends and when and that kind of stuff in spanish. He just sat there. I told him what I do and then he kept on just sitting there and not participating. We have to tell what we found out to the teacher I had to come up with something. I asked him what he does and he said he doesn't have time to do anything. He just goes to work and school. So I told the teacher Stephen no tiene vida. (Stephen has no life.) A round of laughter arose from the other students. It was a little agravating that he was just sitting there because he had done that before in another exercise we had.
Anyway, last Friday I had to go to a reading that my creative writing teacher had. If we go to the readings on campus he will allow us to have one abscence for every reading we go to. I don't care about the abscences, I was just going to see what he had written. He read his thesis to us. It was a non-fiction thesis about Darwin. I have ADD so therefore I drifted into other thoughts while he was reading it. The part that I heard was pretty good though. Usually they have two people read at each reading and the teacher (I think) that was after mine had an interesting story he had written. It was about a woman that was making a wax mask of Abraham Lincoln for a man and he went into detail about each part of the face. He told about making the nose, mouth, eyes etc. He told a story of Lincoln to go along with the face part. Like I say I have ADD so I didn't pick up on some things, but at the end the guy put on the mask of Lincoln and shot himself. Kind of interesting.
That night I went to a trunk or treat at my church. It was fun. All the little kids that came were so cute. This one guy that had brought his kids dressed up with a vote for pedro shirt and a big owe afro. It was funny. I left with two big pockets full of candy.
An interesting thing happened this weekend. My friend called me from her cell phone in her car. While I was talking to her I heard this crashing noise and then I heard her say that she would have to call me back because she just got hit. It freaked me out and I worried. but she called back later to tell me that everythig was alright. I haven't really talked to her to find out the details. I thought that it was interesting because the same thing happened to my sister while she was in college. She was talking to her friend on the cell phone and her friend told her that she would have to go because she was rearended. It's weird that it happened to me and my sister. Wow

Buddism and going to school things

I went home this weekend just for the heck of it and because my sister and her little girl went down so I also went to see them. Not much happened down there as usual. Sunday night a friend of my brother and I went to listen to my creative writing proffesor talk about buddism. He is a buddist and had a Q&A type thing at a Universalist Church. It was interesting. I learned a lot about buddhism. There was one thing that was talked about that I was kind of wondering about.
Yesterday I went to school as normal. I came home afterwards and started working on a paper I had due today. I hope I get a good grade. I think I did good with that paper.
Today I went to school (this may seem repitious but this is my life at the moment). After my class this morning I went to sign up for advising. I have to be advised at 8:30 in the morining, which on wednesdays usually I sleep in. I shouldn't complain getting advised is a good thing sometimes. I looked up my adviser on the UA website and he is a African American writer. I have never met him before. I think this will be interesting get to know him. Which speaking of advising I have to make up a tentative sceduale to take with me.
After doing that I ate breakfast at the Ferguson Center and went to work for 2 hours. I may complain about my job but it is a good job. I only work 2 hours a day. Then I came home.

A week later

Man, it has been a whole week since my last blog. That's not good. Well I had my oral interview in Spanish today. It was interesting. We were partnered up with someone in my teacher's other class that she teaches. We knew that we were going to partner up with someone at the beginning of the week, but we did not know the person that we had to partner up with becuase they weren' t in our class. It turned out that I partnered up with this really sweet girl. I wasn't sure what to say at the last of our conversation so she helped me out a little bit. We had to talk about our likes and dislikes which thankfully I was familiar with the word that I liked and disliked. Which now that I think about it we didn't talk about what we didn't like. Well anyway, before we walk out the other girl asked our teacher if we did a good job. She laughed and said that she was going to give out the grades for it on Monday. Hopefully that laugh was that she was just sitting there taking notes and hadn't decided how she was going to grade it. I thought we did a good job see as how it is a introductory level class and we had never had to talk just spanish ever before.
The other day I went to the Tuscaloosa Public Library and got me a library card. I have lived in Tuscaloosa for two years and haven't gone to the library until this week. I had planned on going for two years but never made it. I checked out two books on tape. One was humorous clips that were on NPR and the other was the book that Elizabeth Smart's parents had made about when Elizabeth was kidnapped. I listen to them at work to make the time go by faster because let's face it bug picking is not that exciting.

A kind of normal day

Today was the regular old go to class day. I went to Spanish this morning and then went to work afterwords.Next Friday in Spanish we have to do an oral interview with our teacher. That aught to be really interesting seeing as I am awful at Spanish. So I have to work on studying that and also I have to be wraping up my Enlish paper that is due the week after next. I haven't even written my rough draft yet. Not a good thing. But I am going to work on this weekend hopfully and get very close to finishing and proofreading.
Work was very interesting today. Sometimes in a Sample there is too many bugs in it so I have to split the sample. The way to split a sample is to put the sample in this plastic thing. It is hard to describe, but anyway, you have to spin it back and forth a little bit so the sample will split. At the top of this big cylinder plastic thing is two holes that the now two 1/2 half sample comes out of when they are split. Well I got a little to happy with spining this thing so water and some of the sample, not all, came out. For at least 20 to 25 minutes I was soaking up the water with crappy towels that the lab has. Most of the sample was still in the splitter so it wasn't a complete loss thankfully.

Glad that was taken care of

I found out today that besides the fact that my job paid me too much money is that I get to keep the extra money. I not to sure but I don't even think the money is going to be taken out of my next paycheck. The professor that I worked for fixed the problem though so that is good. It may not seem like it by reading my blog, but I don't want to take more money than I am supposed to be paid.
Next week in my Spanish class we have to do an oral interview with our teacher. That aught to be interesting seeing as it is getting a little harder to understand it.
For an assignment in creative writing we have to look through books, signs, or anything that basically has words and construct a twenty line poem. I have done this before in my Intro to English class and it was really fun. My poem turned out to have an interesting interpretation. I am looking foward to this.
Speaking of jobs I have been thinking about getting a job in the English department mainly if possible to get to know the professors better and see if I can get hints of tips on publishing stuff. Basically get to know people in high places. Because writing books doesn't have a steady income and that's what I want to do with my major. That and my brother has a job in the film department where his major is and he know some pretty good people that could help him out.

Work Worries

Today I found out what was going to happen because I was paid too much. They are going to take the money out of my next paycheck, which is fine with me. I would rather that happen then have to pay them back, but it makes no difference really. Timecards are supposed to be in on the Friday’s before the payday at noon. This is retarded because you have to estimate how many hours you will work for that Friday. If you end up not coming in on that Friday you have to subtract the hours from you next paycheck or make them up, which I no fun. My timecard didn’t make it to the payroll office last Friday so I had to run around campus trying to get my timecard turned in. This could all have been prevented if someone would have told me that I needed to turn it in. From now on I will be taking it to the payroll office that Thursday before it has to be turned in.
Well, that's enough venting about my job, but that the main excitement that happened today. Today was just a regular wake up at 7:00 and go to my classes until 12 and the go to work day.

It's Been A While

So lately I obviously haven’t been posting anything on my blog. This is because I have been busy with school and things and haven’t had much time to write. I had my first Spanish test in my 101 class last week and made a 90 on it. I was pretty excited because I was really worried about it.
I went home this weekend to watch General Conference with my parents and sister and her family. I mostly slept through most of it, but it is going to come out in the Ensign so I will be able to read it (thank goodness for the Ensigns).
Something cool happened in Spanish class this week. One of the girls in my class is also from Magnolia, which was cool and weird at the same time. Magnolia is a very small community. It has a post office two country stores and an intersection with a major highway. One of my sister friends told her that he had gone through Magnolia. He was excited to see it but when he got there he blinked and he missed it. That is an exaggeration but, needless to say it isn’t very big. But anyway, it was really cool to find out she came from the same place I did.
Also something cool that happened this week is I finally change my major officially. On the University of Alabama records I am officially known as English major. Now I just have to come with a minor. I am thinking either creative writing of geology or maybe a slight chance of journalism. I have to do some more thinking on that.
Oh yeah and today I found out that my job paid me more money that I should have gotten. So it took the pay stub to the main man and told him about it.

Literature and algae

Picture 070
Originally uploaded by Baggis.

Today I had my regular literature class this morning. Our teacher is going to assign our first paper next thursday so I have to come up with a topic that I want to write about. Then I went and ate breakfast at the Ferguson Center. They have a really good breakfast. I usually get eggs, bacon, and hash browns. It is really good. Then I went into work at the biology lab.
Work was very interesting today. After two years of picking bugs out of pond samples, I came to the conclusion that picking bugs has officially become nasty. Before it has always been interesting to me becuase I like science, but don't have the dedication to major in it. I picked bugs for a guy that was taking samples out of somewhere in Florida, but now I am picking bugs for two girls that take samples out of somewhere in Alaska. The Florida samples were interesting because they had cool looking crayfish and clams we had to pick out. The Florida samples weren't very colorful, they were just blah. Now that I pick out of Alaska samples there is colorful and interesting things. The samples have algae and slime in them so they have some blue and green in them, thier not just full of dirt and things. The algae can be nasty because I have to ring it out sometimes to get the water out so I can put them in a drying oven to dry. They Alaska sample with alae in them are also interesting because I have never had to pick out of algae before and it is a new thing.

Weirdness of weather

Today was one of those day's where I just wanted to stay in the bed. I told myself this morning as I do when I don't want to get up to go to class. "Bev you just have two classes today and one of them is your Creative Writing class that you like to go to." So needless to say I got up. Spanish class went by suprisingly fast and Creative Writing was its usual laid back fun class. After my classes I went to work. I work on campus so I walk to there. On the way there it was really erie because there was a huge black cloud in the sky. It was erie because after the last time there was a huge black cloud devastation happened to New Orleans. That cloud was kind of intimidating. I went into work and worked for three hours and after that I came home. Walking back to my car was a better walk because the cloud had passed and blue sky was beginning to come through the clouds.

I am not an idiot after all

It turns out that I am not an idiot after all. There was an actual assignment called ESCRITURA. Luckily nobody else found it either, except one girl, so it is due tomarrow. They should make it easier to find things when they set up a class with online/computer work.

Wo, Wo, Wo, I can not believe I did that.

In my spanish class part or our grade is composition. I consist of things called cyberjournals and things that we look up on the internet. Knowing this now I will tell my story. This afternoon I had a lot of spanish homework that i needed to do before tomarrow. For part of this homework I had to look up two spanish restaurants and write down what I would like to order if I was actually ordering something from these places. I was supposed to print it out in order to take it to class tomarrow. I did that. I look at my syllabus to see what else I had to do and saw some activities that were supposed to be done on the internet. Then the next thing that is on my syllabus, due tomarrow, is in big letters ESCRITURA. So I'm thinking I need to go back on the Internet and find this ESCRITURA that I am supposed to do and write something in spanish, but I did not know what I was supposed to write. I am sitting there for at least two hours or more trying to find this ESCRITURA that I am supposed to do. I at least read my syllabus 6 or 7 times trying to figure this out. Finnally at five o'clock today I figure out that the ESCRITURA is the restaurant thing that I did. ESCRITURA means compostition type thing (actually it means writing in Spanish) I felt so much like an idiot because I was looking for somethings that I had already done for TWO HOURS!!!!!!!!

EN-200 Creative Writing Assignment #1

Blackberry bush
Originally uploaded by qwghlm.

Some people and blackberry bushes are similar because once you get past their thorns you can experience their tasty goodness. On the outside some people seem like they are a mean person that wants to hurt people and do not want them to know who they really are. Once you get past their thorny outsides you find their blackberry goodness.

This weekend

This weekend was a good weekend. I went home Friday night spent the night in Magnolia because my cousins baby shower was the next day. Saturday we went to the shower. It was cool to see everything that my cousin got. She got a good deal of stuff that she needs to have for her first baby. It was good to see her because we don't get to see each other very often because she is down there and I am in Tuscaloosa. While I was there I got to see a good friend of hers that went to high school with us. She had her little boy with her. He was so cute. I also got to see another girl that was in my older brothers class and her little four year old girl. It is amazing how much she looks like her mother. I was able to visit with my aunts and other cousins that I don't get to see that often. Sunday I went to church and came home and did nothing for the rest of the day except sleep and watch tv.

What's up with that?

I wake up at 7:00, which I have decided to do that even if i don't have an 8:00 class, and go to my SOC 101 class. I'm not fussing mind you. On little website calender that my teacher has made it says we will be in class from 8:00-8:50am. We were there for a total of tweenty minutes, then he let the class go. Now I have more time to do his quizes that are due tonight, but I kind of makes me worry, what kind of class this is. Do I work hard in that class, that has a lot of busy work outside of class like my other classes, or worry about my other classes and just do enough to get by?

John Marcher is gay!!!

So obviously I joined blogger today. It is a pretty cool idea. So, I have made a decision for what I want my major to be. I have definately decided to go into English. It took me two years to decide but I have finally done it. What finnaly confirmed it is my literature class today. We were reading "Beasts of the Jungle" by Henry James. In the book to male character has a secret that he keeps with a woman he had met. The secret is about him. Today, my teacher was trying to get us to guess what the secret was. The whole time I was reading this story I was thinking that this male character was gay. I was right!!! Well there isn't really a right answer in english, but I was thinking what the teacher was thinking. That may not seem that exciting, but it is when you have been trying to decide what you want to major in for two years.