jaimeday's Journal

Last night my friend Tamara and I attended a performance entitled "Electra in Pieces" at the Theater Building. We aren't exactly sure how to describe the event other than to say it was a dramatic interpretation of several greek epics/myths and there was dancing, passionate acting, music, and it was free.
Free fine arts events. That is one thing I continue to love about this campus.

I am rereading Chuck Palahniuk's "Survivor".

I want to join a book club. My boyfriend's mom Susan is in one consisting of librarians, other teachers (Susan is HOSA teacher at Hays High School), even housewives. And I think I want to find a group of people with whom to discuss the literature and how we interpreted it.

It was recommended to me that I try to find one or create one at Texas State. But I'm hesitant to start one with my peers. I'm stereotyping them, so help me. With the experience of discussing literature in my classes, I have found that the opinions of my peers often come across as presumptuous and often just plain rude. I don't think I would choose to subject myself to such overwhelming negative experiences.

I am allergic to the cold. I had to buy warm clothes today because apparently I am not suited for sub-60 degree weather. And then I left my good hoodie in the Biology Mac lab. Someone somewhere is warm on my account. But its that idea that keeps me from being upset about losing it. My friend says that she would still be upset. But that won't get it or the forty dollars it cost back any sooner.

I scrambled to write my literature paper Tuesday and Wednesday. In it, I compared my interpretation of Samuel Beckett's play "Endgame" with his actual recorded direction of the play from 1992. This was both one of the easiest and most difficult essays I've had to write.
Easiest because I love this play. Not only this one, but all of Beckett's work that I had experienced so far in my life. He is an exzistentialist writer, which can make him vague and depressing at times. Well, depressing most all of the time. But that is not why he interests me. It's because he is real, his writing acknowledges suffering and mortality in the world. Everyone can relate to his words. I found "Endgame" in the school library when I was going through my mom's breast cancer treatments and there were several lines to which I could relate. Right at the onset when Clov describes his suffering as "grain upon grain" piling to an "impossible heap" my attention was set.
It was the most difficult to write because so much emotion was not called for in this critical essay. I had to reign in how passionate I could get.

Something intensely personal happens and I should be writing about it. But this is the time for me to talk. I've never held my mom's hand so much as I have lately.

I had one of the best days of my life yesterday. But it was so simple. On Thursdays this semester, I didn't have class until 12:30 so that would be my day to sleep in. My boyfriend took me to class then while he ran around and did his things. Then he called me afterwards and picked me up for lunch. I decided en route that we should eat at Valentino's. One of the guys who works there used to work with his dad. That is one thing I continue to love about this town: how my boyfriend and his family know just about everyone here and I can name drop to make friends! My landlord is a friend of their family, so I have a great deal on the house I'm renting that is two blocks from campus. His mom knows the VP of the bank who got me set up here in town, not to mention various restaurant and business owners around town.
We ate at Valentino's and ended up sitting there for way too long, just talking and catching up on each other's lives. That is one thing that some couples I know miss out on. When you are so wrapped up in each other's lives, calling every hour to see where you are and what you ate for lunch, you miss out on the mystery and being continuously interested in their stories. We are constantly reintroduced.
After lunch, we walked down to the Hill Country Humidor on the Square. I left smelling of cigar tobacco and expensive-flavored smoke. While we there a woman came in to buy cigar tobacco for her husband, a friend of the owner. Their exchange of words was memorable.
"So, what's John up to today?"
"Well, he better be putting up Christmas lights."
"Did you make him a list? Men work better off of lists. Otherwise he won't know what NOT to do! If we don't have a list, we're liable to actually DO something."
And then he proceeded to claim that his shop was a husband-sitting service where men can come when the wife has things for them to do. That way, the men have a place to hide and the women know where they are.
I don't always go for that kind of stereotype humor. But coming from this man, I had to laugh.

Do I want to go to grad school right after undergrad? Do I want to apply here? Is Technical Communication what I want my degree in? Can I afford to apply anywhere else? Would I want to leave Texas State after these years, now that I'm acclimated? Finding a job in which I will be using my degree should not be a problem. I do not want to be like friends and family of mine who have bachelor's degrees and work at HEB, bars, even with me now at Job Corps, etc.

Sunday was my day off of work and I had plans to live in the library for awhile and write. But then at 11:30 in the morning, my mom called me upset and on her way up to see me. I couldn't obviously tell her, no, I need to write today. Because sometimes there are priorities. I am just thankful that there is less than two weeks of class left.

30% of my Genetics lab grade is due on Friday.

Essay #4 is due Wednesday. Immediately upon assignment, I knew I would rather write about Wal-Mart and its negative effect on the economy rather than Intelligent Design being taught in public schools. But now I'm not so sure. As a rule, I usually try to shy away from discussing religion. I bow my head and observe silence through mealtimes prayers and ceremonial invocations. I say "Bless You" when someone sneezes and "Thank God" when something goes right.
My family consists of Mississippi Southern Baptists and practicing Pentecostals, except for us(we?) rebellious cousins/grandkids. They quote the Bible for guidance and life lessons. But some of them also drink to excess, swear and sin unrepentantly, and have children out of marriage.
So it is with this background and introduction to religion that I have decided to choose the road not taken and write about Intelligent Design to introduce myself to the subject.

Science Friday
Today is the day after Thanksgiving. I am on a laptop at my boyfriend's mom's house. I am not feeling especially productive today, except for the fact that I did laundry and ate three bulemia-inducing meals yesterday.
I was listening to a rebroadcast of the Ig-Noble Awards on NPR this morning. The nutrtition award went to a Tokyo scientist who has cataloged and photographed every one of his meals for the past 34 years. The award in medicine went to an American man who invented Neuticals (fake testicle implants for neutered dogs).
David Sedaris. I should write pages about him. But I should probably read his work first. I keep hearing his name mentioned on NPR these days.
I need to contact Ms. Martin at Trinity. She edited at the Current when it first started out and could
possibly help me out with contacts and/or positive advice about my educational and professional futures.
Yesterday on NPR, Bailey White read her short story "The Telephone Man" for Thanksgiving. Books on tape might become interesting to me when I have to drive to see my parents these holidays. And then there's the impending 12-hour drive to Mississippi at the end of December.

Library again. This time I'm searching for at least five more peer-reviewed journals to use as sources for my genetics paper. I'm trying to scrounge together the most remedial article to be found so I can actually understand the information being offered and work it into a coeherent paper.

I am cold. I am in the library attempting to put a dent in my genetics paper and I'm too cold to concentrate. I could just move my laptop and papers to a warmer location, somewhere actually away from windows and the breeze. But where's the fun in being responsible? I still have a week and a half to turn-in this paper. But I'll be damned if I'm going to work on it over the Thanksgiving break. Oh, and I'm cold. And I'm checking my email, writing to prospective correspondence course professors, and checking up on my friends' myspace accounts. I should be compiling information about the PCR process and how we discovered what species of animal our samples were in lab. But, no, I'm listening to my stomach growl and my teeth chatter and watching my hands turn purple in response to the temperature.

Today was a good day. I caught up with old friends, got sick and was taken care of by Tori, and came to the library. Tomorrow is "Sure Thing" day.

My boyfriend and I don't get to see each other nearly as much as we would like. He works three jobs and has class and I work at Job Corps and have class full-time, so our schedules are not always cooperative. But we are real people, responsible and rational. We cannot afford to miss work to sleep in or go on a date. We cannot miss class regularly because we are paying too much money to waste it and educational success is important to us.
But every now and then I feel neglected and that I am not a priority in his life. I tell him these things and he gets mad at me because he stays so busy that there just isn't time to come see me and there isn't money to be spent. This exchanged happened this past weekend, with both of us getting worked up because we are unsatisified with our current situations.
Of course, being the girl I am, I called my friends to talk because I was upset. And, even though I know this, I KNOW this, we came to a consensus. Only you can take care of yourself. You have to put yourself and your life first. Take care of your obligations and your responsibilities, and then make time for the benefits.

And then he called me at 3:30 a.m. when he got off of work.
And told me to open my front door and let him in.
He had driven up to stay with me Saturday night, to say I'm sorry, I love you, and I miss you, too.

And things are good.

CDL= Can't Drive Legally...but can flirt her way to passing.
I have to have a CDL as a part-time staff at work. (It occurs to me that soon I will have been at Job Corps for one year.) I practiced driving the bus around campus for an hour one day. And then my instructor/coworker/bitter old man who has been there for 33 years had me drive the course in town that the DMV was to take me through.
Even thinking about driving the bus makes me nervous, let alone being responsible for up to the 50 lives that a bus holds.
I finally took the driving test on Monday at 2 p.m.. I fucked up eve-ry-thing. From start to finish. I didn't put on my seatbelt immediately. I didn't parallel park successfully the first time, though the state trooper let me redo it, and it was flawless. I hit several curbs while driving. I was too far over in my lane, so far that the truck along side of me had to swerve around me. And MOST significantly, I didn't TURN OFF THE BUS to perform the air brake test (testing the air pressure while the bus is running is like measuring running water).
But in a funny story sort of way, I passed. The tester was a male state trooper. Something unconscious in me kicked in and I took full advantage of this fact. Apparently, I was able to flirt my way into passing. He told me that he was "hesitant to pass" me (for damn good reason, I think) because I obviously needed more training. And at the very end, I thanked him for his time and he said that I was the bright spot of his day. I almost expected him to ask if the number on my paperwork was my cellphone.
Anyone who knows me somewhat would be shocked to hear this story. I do not flirt. I don't bat eyelashes or humor people (guys) when they ask questions just to get you to talk to them. I don't usually ask them about their families, where they are from, or feign interest in their responses.
I have a boyfriend. And that is more than enough for me.

We will be reading/performing David Ives' play "Sure Thing" in my literature class on Friday. The Bill to my Betty is this good-looking Lambda Chi Alpha guy that my coworker wants to "hook me up" with. Hell, I'll flirt with a good guy and play the part for some extra credit.
I just turned in my two English papers, one reviewing a critical review of Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery" and the other a review of "Basquiat". As always, I'm optimistic.
No, I take that back. I am not always optimistic. I received a 45 on my third Genetics exam. Thankfully, he drops one of the three grades, but my other two were barely impressive. I can see my whole college future relying on the success of my DNA paper for the lab because it is 30% of my grade and the better I do on the paper, the higher my grade and I need to make a C in the course because it is a prerequisite to the higher level biology course I need to take to finish my minor and graduate this time next year. It's kind of disheartening to hear from my friends who are in grad school this year and actually teaching course themselves. On the other hand, it is inspiring that I known grown people who are back in school after an amount of time and are successful. But maybe I just don't want that for myself. Even my boyfriend said that I better do it now while I'm young. But then why am I so timid, so reluctant to dive 100% into the idea of two more years of college? Hell, that way I'll have my Master's before I'm 26 and (ideally) I'll be working in my field of choice.

I was taking one of those sell-out quizzes people send out to their friends on myspace and one question was something along the lines of "Tell me something embarrassing or unknown about you" and without hesitation, I wrote "I can spend hours in a library". Its just something I love to do. Check out a laptop and write for a couple of hours of peruse the shelves of fiction and nonfiction. Or even read the free subscriptions to thousands of published magazines.
Its a guilty pleasure I have.

Turned in my review of Basquiat this morning. I suppose I never realized how much I enjoyed that movie until I was assigned to write about it. I do know that I prefer nonfiction movies to fiction, or at least movies that could have happened as opposed to fantastic accounts of romantic interludes or science fiction.

Today is Veterans' Day and the powers that be had a ceremony in the Quad at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month...so, this morning.

We discussed Amy Kolen's essay "Fire" in 3311 today. And for some reason I'm debating on whether or not to start thinking about grad school. The program offered here is in Technical Communication, that's the closest to my major. I just want to edit up other people's writing!

I was in the waiting area of Riley's Transmissions with my friend the other day. I was reading a back issue of Newsweek, published prioreven to Hurricane Katrina. My friend picked up a book entitled something along of the lines of "Famous/Influential/Interesting People from San Marcos and Hays County". I skimmed through the table of contents, a list of local names and townspeople, until my eyes caught the piece about Susan Hanson.

The piece was praising and exhalting Professor Hanson for the numerous awards received for her writing, her experience as a journalist for the San Marcos Record, and interesting highlights from her life, from her status as a lay-minister for the Episcopal church to the incorporation of nature into her classes.
I consider myself lucky to be attending a school where a person such as Professor Hanson teaches.

I say this because I really have no idea what I am going to do exactly with my degreee in Professional Writing. All I know is that I can apply it to pretty much any field, from copy writing at a radio station to law to teaching. I am not sure, but I know that something I enjoy will find me and I will find someone to pay me to do what I love. And Professor Hanson seems to do just this so comfortably and with a passion for this field.

I'm not trying to say that "if she can do it, anyone can", rather I'm commenting on the fact that if you take the initiative to find what you love, you CAN make a career out of it, without losing who you are in the process.

Once again I find myself in the student lounge of the Alkek library. A few students around me are studying, checking email, and smiling. I like it here. I can focus on my writing and not be distracted by roommates, friends, family, etc. I have a laptop and a soda, and plenty of initiative to write my review of Basquiat and then possibly dive into a critical review of Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery".

I was supposed to take my driving test for my CDL at the DMV this morning. Even though I was there at 7:30 a.m., the two men in front of me filled up the schedule and I will have to try again on Monday morning.

Well, I'm registered for the spring semester. Ecology, Economic Botany, World Drama, British Poetry & Prose, and Spanish 2320. But I need to do some rearranging and cleaning up because my classes range from 11 am to a lab that ends at 8:30 pm on Wednesdays. Oh, yeah, that will have to change.

I received a speeding ticket while driving through Schulenberg en route to the Renaissance Festival on October 30. But the good news is that I will make my final car payment on December 26, next month.

correspondence and inconsiderate roommate
I am debating about whether to enroll in a few correspondence courses to ease my last year of undergraduate studies. These would be the American, World, and/or British literature requisites that I must fulfill.

But that isn't what is really on my mind. It's my nasty, inconsiderate, messy roommate. He leaves everything everywhere in the living room, kitchen and bathroom. I have no doubt that my family, friends, and boyfriend are all tired of hearing about it from me. But then when I finally decide to stop sugar-coating how I feel and just tell him, I can't. Last night, I tried to let him know that I do not like certain things, but his excuse was that he has had three tests this week and to give him a break.

I am thisclose to moving out as soon as possible, probably at the end of the year. My saving grace is that my mom reminded me yesterday that I found that house, my name is on all of the utilities, and I am responsible for it because it's my boyfriend's family who are friends of the landlord.

If this were any other relationship, I would be expected to speak up and be honest about the situation. I should remind him that we did not sign a lease nor did we pay a deposit, so none of us are really stuck for an amount of time.

And my other roommate is never home, so it's really just me and him, getting on each other's nerves. It's funny that to defend himself from my constant nagging he has resorted to belittling my boyfriend, asking me what he is going to do with his life, mocking his choice of riding a motorcycle, etc. Roommate may be double majoring, but at least boyfriend picks up after himself.

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