Communication Barriers

My parents have gone on vacation, once again, and left me here to take care of their pets and make sure the house doesn’t blow up. Not quite sure if I'm really the person to keep the latter from happening, but they seem to have faith in me, so whatever.

Background pic from here, edited by me :)

Most of the time when they go on vacation, I stay at my own apartment, sleep in my own bed, and come over to the house twice a day to feed the dog and cats, and make sure everything is okay. This time though, I decided to go ahead and stay at their house, partially because I hate driving out here twice a day, and partly because their house is about halfway between my apartment and school. You do the math.

It’s been nice, I have the house to myself, I have permission to eat any of their food that I want, and a nice king-size bed to sprawl out on.

The first couple days were great, I got up whenever I wanted to, watched whatever I wanted to on TV, had plenty to eat, and took good care of the pets. And if it had stayed that way, it would have been bliss!!

I think the dog and I realized the major flaw in this plan at about the same time. Apparently, she was expecting me to speak “dog”. In school, they taught me French and they taught me Spanish, but nowhere on any list did I see a class in which I could study dog, not even in college (and college has everything, right?). I can learn Latin, a language that’s not even spoken anymore, but I can’t learn dog. It's obvious that our educational system needs work.

Image created by me :)

These language barriers have caused the both of us a lot of undue stress. She obviously thinks that I should know the difference between “I need to go outside”, “Can we play?”, and “There’s a creepy stalker-guy outside with a pickaxe, call the police now”. There has been a lot of tension between us the past few days, because as long as she's not doing the “gotta pee” dance and crossing her legs, I go back to my schoolwork and ignore her, hoping she’ll leave me alone. She retaliates by going and getting in the bathtub and ignoring me, hoping that I’ll have some sort of epiphany and give in to her request.

Don't get me wrong, I've been loving on her, playing with her, and making sure she's fed, which is why I am completely flummoxed by her continued barking and whining. Something’s got to give though, maybe here in the next few days we can figure out some sort of rudimentry sign language or something, so that we don’t drive each other completely crazy.

Why Facebook is the Bane of Any English Teacher's Existence

I love Facebook, don’t get me wrong, it keeps me in contact with people I wouldn’t ordinarily get a chance to talk to. But every day, there’s something new to annoy me. I sign in and I’ve got people yelling at me who obviously don’t know that capital letters should be used to a) start a sentence, b) emphasize a word or phrase, or c) convey yelling. It really gets under my skin when I’m minding my own business, and suddenly there’s someone yelling to the world that nothing eventful happened at work, and now they’re home and bored. Seriously. You should yell when you find out that your baby’s father is a being from outer space, when your car rolls down a hill and explodes into a ball of flames, or when your foot turns an odd shade of green and then falls off. Those would be appropriate topics to shout about, and I would commend you for your appropriate use of the Caps Lock button.

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Speaking of when to use buttons, apparently the concept of when to use of the apostrophe in the English language is a very hard one to master. I meet someone new online, and all is going well, I’m thinking this is a pretty cool person to talk to! Then out they come with something like “I went their to see if they had you’re shirts, but they said its going to be a few days.” It all goes downhill from there. (If you don’t see what is wrong with that sentence, please step away from the computer and find an English professor immediately, if not sooner.) 

Source

I’ve also seen some people for whom butchering the English language is not enough, they apparently need to completely destroy it. Peoplee needd too realizee thatt itt makess myy brainn hurtt whenn Ii havee too filterr outt thee extraa letterss att thee endd off theirr wordss. See, not very fun, is it? Or maybe there are just an absurd number of Gollums running around, I don’t know. And if you’re going to use a cliché, at least get it right. There is no such thing as an “intensive purpose”, and worst can’t come to worst, because it’s the same thing! Seriously, if Facebook wasn’t so bloody convenient, I’d probably set it on fire.

Halfway, thank goodness!

So, I'm working on 4 classes at the moment...I'm really starting to feel it now! I'm halfway through week 4, and my motivation is waning. I'm still getting the work done, don't get me wrong, it's just finding the will to do it is becoming increasingly difficult. Just gotta make it through the first week in October, then I drop from 4 classes, down to one, and it's economics...different section, same professor, which will make the last half of the semester much more tolerable. I'm loving my economics class (scary, huh?) because the professor is awesome. He's fresh out of grad school, laid back, and a total nut. But he teaches in a way that's easy to learn. He uses real life examples to teach us the concepts, and I'm not talking about real life examples we'll face in the working world. I'm talking about "A bottle of tequila costs $20, and a box of lemon drops costs $2. You have a budget of $70. How many bottles of tequila and how many boxes of lemon drops should you purchase to maximize your satisfaction within your budget constraints?" Ok, so it's a little more involved than it sounds, but I remember that a lot better than examples most professors would give. He also tells random stories, and most of the time has the entire class laughing hysterically. For example:

My buddy is a hunter. He hunts squirrels and things. I don't know why, he just does. He takes his dog with him; the dog chases out the squirrels, and he shoots them. So he was out with his dog one day, hunting. He had already gotten a lot of squirrels, when he got the feeling he was being watched. He walked around a bit more, looking for more squirrels, but couldn't shake the feeling that he was being watched. So he slowly turned around, and there was a black bear, about 30 feet away, staring at him. He didn't run, because he didn't want to get chased, but he was still a couple miles away from his truck, he wouldn't be able to make it anyway. He started backing away slowly, when all of a sudden the bear started charging him. All the while he's praying "God, please let this bear have some Christian values, so he won't kill me!" So the bear finally reaches him, the guy's down on the ground, scared, and still praying. The bear rears up with his front legs outstretched, and roars. Then the bear stopped...bowed his head...and said "Lord, please bless this food that I am about to eat..."

Anyway, my college transfer success class is still bugging me. This past week, we had that life plan assignment due. Once I stopped pulling my hair out and clawing at the walls, I got it done, and accessed the website for the class to upload the assignment. Only the option to upload wasn't there. So, I waited a day or two, since I finished the assignment early, I had some time before it had to be turned in. When I checked again, the link still wasn't there to upload my file. So Thursday night (the assignment was due Sunday night), I emailed the professor and she said "the link is there, if you don't see it, call me." So I called, and left a message, and never got a call back. Some of my classmates and I were discussing the issue on the discussion board for the class, and decided to email the assignment if the link wasn't available by Sunday afternoon. I took one last look at the assignment page, the link still wasn't there, but I noticed that the due date in the system showed Saturday, September 5, 2009. This particular system does not accept assignments after the due date, which is why we couldn't upload our assignments! So the life plan assignment and upload link was included with this week's assignments, but not a word from the prof, no "oops, sorry, try again" or anything, just the link. Oh well, 4 weeks and I'll be rid of that class.

On a bipolar note...I added another medicine to my drug cocktail about a month ago, and I think it's working. It was a bit iffy, because it is an anti-depressant, and in patients with bipolar disorder, there must be a careful balance between anti-manic and anti-depressant meds, because too much of either can be...well, bad, for lack of a better word. Anyway, I'm actually feeling emotion again, which I think is pretty nifty!! I noticed it while watching tv. For the longest time, I would watch, but had no real emotional response to what I was watching (which I used to have, long long ago, in a galaxy far away). But I've noticed in the past few days that I'm not just a zombie-bot anymore, but I'm starting to get that range of emotions back, and I'm very glad. 

Anyway, I've got to work on some more homework, then I need to get myself to bed so I'll be ready for class this evening. Until next time...watch out for bears!

Time to move!

Well, we got the dreaded letter...the office at our apartment complex sent us a lovely letter saying that our lease is up at the end of October, and they're raising our rent. It's only $30 a month more, but with me not working, it's difficult to keep up with all the bills as it is, without adding more to the rent. But, it's alright, Jay and I have decided we want a fresh start anyway, in "our own place". We took over the lease here almost two years ago from my sister-in-law, and even though we've lived here for that long, we still want to have that experience of moving into our first home, one that we picked out together. I don't know, maybe I'm just silly.

So anyway, the hunt has begun. It's going to be tricky, because there aren't many options within our price range (we've got a really good deal right now for the size apartment we have), and we also have 5 cats and a rabbit, so it's going to be hard to find a place that will let us bring all the animals.

So far I've been pretty lucky. I found 2 places that will take our pets, one is an apartment that's just a smidge smaller than our place now, but still has the required 2 bedrooms, and 1.5 bath. That place is about 5 miles from us, but much closer to the highway. The other place is a townhome just north of here, also close to the highway. I found the ad for that one on Craigslist (it's a community though, not just a single townhome for rent), so I'm still trying to contact the leasing agent to figure out all the details.

I've also found a couple houses for rent, the only problem with that is that they probably won't still be available when we get ready to move, so I'm going to have to do some more looking in a month or so.

Well, I'm off to hunt again, see ya!

Procrastination...

Shhhh!!! I'm hiding from my homework....if anyone sees it, don't tell it where I am!!!


Week 3 of classes is coming to a close, since I'm taking minimester classes, that means that midterms are in the next week or so, and finals in another 4 weeks! Then I have just one class for the last half of the semester, and believe me, it will be a well needed break. I don't think I've ever had 4 classes at one time, and it takes quite a bit of motivation to keep up, which is not good when I'd rather be watching my stories on TV!

But anyway, I got some good news yesterday. Three weeks ago, I went for my first physical in 6 years. I'm never going again, just FYI, I came out with more diagnoses than I went in with. But I digress. My doctor thought that I may be experiencing problems with my gallbladder, so she sent me for an ultrasound. I finally found out yesterday that I will NOT have to have surgery to have my gallbladder removed, but she said there is a spot on my kidney that may be a kidney stone. Oh boy. If it's not one thing, it's something else! Never a dull moment. Hey, at least it keeps me entertained.


So, I finally got up the motivation today to do some homework. I've been trying to stay ahead of the work, one of my professors posted the assignments for the entire semester, so I'm trying to get them knocked out as quickly as possible. For the first half of the semester, he was nice and only gave us one chapter a week to complete. Then he apparently thought it would be a good idea to start giving us two chapters a week during the last half. Since my final project is due the last week, and according to the schedule I only have one week to do it, I'm trying to get ahead to give myself an extra cushion to get it done on time. Then there's the professor that only posts one week at a time, which drives me nuts. The "week" is supposed to start Monday morning, and it's an online class, so normally I would expect for the assignments to be posted at a reasonable time on Monday, like sometime in the morning. Well, last week, the assignments weren't up until Tuesday evening. Another irritation. But the thing that really gets under my skin about that class, is that she tests us on material we haven't even covered!! I went back and re-read the syllabus, and all the instructions for the course, and I'm not missing anything. There isn't any kind of web-activity we have to complete that magically gives us the answers! The class is a new one that they're requiring for graduation, called College Transfer Success. It's supposed to "help facilitate the transition from high school or full time work to community college". Anywho, I looked at our assignments and saw that the writing assignment was creating a "life plan", and the test was on professional etiquette. The life plan had no instructions whatsoever, so I'm thinking I'll just read the chapter, and it will explain what I need to do. Nope. The chapter was on understanding and accepting diversity in the college atmosphere. Great. So then I take the professional etiquette quiz. It has questions like "You're meeting with a client in your office and your boss walks in. What is the correct way to introduce them?", and "You're at a business luncheon, and the host makes a toast to you. How do you respond?" I have no idea!!! I think I managed to pull off an 85 on that quiz, but I'm definitely going to say something to the professor about it, I'm not going to fail this stupid class because she can't be bothered to give us the material we're going to be tested on.


Oh crap...I think my homework found me. Oh well, back to it, I guess. I've got one more test, and then I will officially be one week ahead of schedule, at least in a couple of my classes. Off I go!

Here goes nothing!!!

My name is Juliet, if you don't know me, I'm a full-time college student, working on an associate's degree in business administration. I spend my time studying, watching tv, studying, sleeping, studying, spending time with my husband...did I mention studying? Maybe next semester I shouldn't take 5 classes...oh well. I really enjoy my courses though, but if you'd told me in high school that I would fall in love with business, I would have probably called you a liar and set your pants on fire if they weren't already. Anyway, I have this semester and next semester to go, and I will FINALLY graduate. You see, I've been in college since fall 2004, changed majors at least 5 times, finally landing back at business (it was originally my 3rd major).


Hmm...what next? Well, last November, I married my high school sweetheart. It's my second marriage, the first one was just a practice run, I guess. Anyway, Jay's the one I should have married in the first place, but we both had some growing up we needed to do. I love him very much, and I'm very proud of him. He was in the same boat as me, he was in college from fall 2002 until 2007(?) and had to drop out for a bit due to medical reasons, and is just now getting back to it. He decided recently that he wants to be a doctor, and started back to school this semester. First he's working on a bachelor's in biology, then I'm not really sure what's going to happen after that...either he'll get financial aid and we can stay where we are now, or we'll move about an hour away so he can go to the state university, and therefore have less debt when all is said and done. But he's really excited about it, and I am too.


I've had a couple issues come up in the last few years that radically changed my views on health and well-being. First was in 2006, I was diagnosed with endometriosis, which has been rough. I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy. Without going into too much gory detail, basically spots of tissue grow in places they shouldn't be in a woman's pelvis. Some people can live their lives not even knowing they have it, and we "lucky" ones have chronic pain that is not easily tolerated or managed. I've had 3 surgeries since 2006, and last year I was able to have surgery with a specialist in Atlanta, Georgia (thanks to my wonderful parents), and have been relatively pain free ever since. Unfortunately, barring any sort of miracle or cure, I'll probably have to have surgery every few years to manage the symptoms. Either that or buy a pharmaceutical company that manufactures narcotics. I'm still undecided.


Second, I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder in April 2008...my how time flies. Endometriosis is not a major factor in my life right now, as I am symptom-free for the most part; bipolar disorder, however, is a major part of my everyday life. Even when I'm as close to stable as I can be, it's still something I have to keep tabs on. Have you ever seen the TV show Lost? On the island, there was an old ship that contained a cache of dynamite. It had been there for a long time, and was "sweating" nitroglycerin, making it very unstable. Two people managed to blow themselves up, just by waving it around too quickly, or setting it down on the ground too hard. Having bipolar disorder is almost like carrying around one of those sticks of dynamite with you all the time and hoping it doesn't blow up, leaving a wake of devastation and destruction. Luckily, thanks to the pharmaceutical companies, there are treatments available that can help manage the symptoms (maybe I should buy one of those companies after all...). Some people are even able to manage without meds...so far I'm not one of them. My most recent drug cocktail has me feeling pretty good, not too high, not too low...then again, it's only been about 2.5 weeks, so it could still blow up in my face. I've got my fingers crossed for positive results.


Mental health has gotten a bad rep over the years. I mean just look at all the movies that show some form of mental illness...they are way over-dramatized. Yes, there are people out there at the "completely lost touch with reality" spectrum, but then there are people who you could meet on the street and would never know there was anything "off". I have bipolar disorder, it does not have me. And just because I have bipolar disorder, it doesn't mean I'm crazy. I'm just "mentally interesting". I hid my condition for a long time, because I was worried what people thought of me, but recently I decided to open up about it, I was tired of hiding. Luckily, the people that I'm close to are very accepting of me, regardless of any diagnosis I may have.


Anyway, it's been kind of a long intro, but I wanted to touch on the things that you, my reader, may need to know about me, to give context to my later posts. Then again, knowing me, I start something with every intention of following through, then forget, so it may very well turn out that I don't have anymore posts :) 


Like I said, here goes nothing!