NONOBADBLOG!
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Thursday, March 13, 2003 Today I am feeling: happy to be me 
Books I am reading: Mort Terry Pratchett Voyages Through the Universe Fraknoi/Morrison/Wolff Games I am playing: games? I ain't got no time for games!! I finally gave up on trying to read that Dark Material series, I read the first book or should I say I forced myself to read the first book and managed to read about half of the second one but the thing moves just way too slow for me, I think the whole series could easily have been combined into one single volume and it mighta been ok, seeing as what the book is supposedly about it something I should be interested in. I just don't have the patience for long drawn out slow moving overly descriptive novels, which is one reason I can't stand to read Stephen King books either, despite his popularity. So, I decided to go to the library and pluck another book from its shelves. I went there to get Mere Christianity by C. S. Lewis but it was checked out (and I do not want to read that book to "strengthen my faith in Christianity" by the way, quite the opposite in fact. <evil grin> Anyway, they didn't have it so I quickly perused the paperback rack and saw Mort by Terry Pratchett there, and remembered one of my long-time internet friends who believes in elves and fairies, well woodsprites, thought I might like the discworld series and told me years ago to read them, so alas, years later I decided to do so. My friend thought I'd relate to the twisted humor of Mr. Pratchett. So far, so good, I read about 20 pages and it is indeed a welcome relief from the drudgery of Philip Pullman's works. I also put Mere Christianity on reserve so I will be reading that "soon". By the way, libraries are funny, at home I have about 20 books I've bought to read "some day" but for some reason I don't, instead I go to the library and get more books to read, most of which I never do because I am too busy (especially with reserved books, they always seem to become available at the worst possible time, like during finals week or during the holidays or during some phase of my life when I'm totally obsessed with something else.) But there is just something about shelves and shelves of free books that does something to my brain hehee. Libraries and grocery stores are my most favorite places, with libraries way up above stores, and if it were legal I'd dig being buried in a library (gives new meaning to "buried in books" doesn't it?) In other news, school is going ok, I had my mid-term portfolio review in my 2D class, and I've got an A in the class so far. In Astronomy I got almost an A on the first test and we just had our second one last Monday, I think I did better on that one (I actually studied for this one!) In Art History I got a B on my first test but only because I didn't study the pictures and I missed all but one of the slide identifications, otherwise I only missed one question on the test. But the test only had 25 questions so you don't get a lot of leeway. But the instructor drops the lowest score, so I will actually study for the next test. We also have to do a research paper which is 40% of our grade and I am excellent at doing research papers because I am anal and meticulous about research and I write pretty well, so I've been told (although judging from this blog you might think otherwise but I just write this thing off the top of my head and don't proofread or spell-check it.) So getting an A in the class should be easy. My 3D class is easy I've gotten A's on all my assignments except one, which I got a B on because the original idea I had was taking way too long (we only got 2 weeks to finish the project) and I was very sick at the time, so I scrapped it and did an easier one (which took me all of 4 hours to do) and I got a B on that one but the teacher said if I finish the other one by semester's end he'll "count" it hehee. Easy A there. And my painting class, well I really hate oil paint, so I'm not exactly motivated in this class, and painting still lifes is 10 times worse than drawing them, especially when the teacher is nit-picky (which can be good if you really want to improve, but this is a beginning class, so uhm ... nit picking is annoying.) The teacher is a professional artist (one who actually has work in galleries!) though so I guess she knows what she's talkin' about. I much prefer drawing to painting though, I don't have the patience for oil (although water color is ok but hard and acrylic is ok but I've only done "graphics" type work in that, not "real" painting cuz acrylic dries too fast (although they do make mediums that slow drying time but I've not tried them.) Oh, and my Astronomy Lab class is going fine, I got a perfect score on the first portion of my Mercury Project which is where we plot 135 dots of the sun's motion through the sky and 135 dots of Mercury's motion through the sky on graph paper, it's an anal-meticulous-perfectionist's dream project. Hehee. You use 5 degrees per inch and 10 squares per inch so each square is 1/2 degree and you have to plot things to within 1/10 of a degree. Then you draw a line through the dots and label them and it must be a nice smooth curve. My teacher said mine was "nigh perfect" and yes he said "nigh" not "near" hehe. In the next part of the project we get to measure between out dots and write them all down in a chart woohoo! Yeah that'll be fun. Speaking of astronomy, I bought a cheapo telescope at Wal*Mart (note use of asterisk in place of hypen) and it's pretty cool for a cheapo. It's made by Meade but has a different kinda generic name, but Meade makes really spiffy expensive telescopes, so the quality is decent, although this model is the bottom of the line for them hehe. But hey, it's better than other cheapo telescopes I've had in the past, I can see the little bands on Jupiter and I can see the rings of Saturn, even without using maximum maginification. I wanna look at Mars too but it comes up too late at night for me to see so far. Mars is gonna be the closest to Earth in 30 years in September I think so that's cool. In kitten news, my kitty threw up for the first time last week. Yay! I mean, poor thing, but hey it's a first! She'd been outside all day and had apparently eaten a few too many twigs and it upset her tummy. What is up with the cat and dead plant matter? Oh well, I'm surprised she hadn't gotten sick before. She didn't seem bothered by it though, and hasn't done so since. She will be 6 months old next Friday by the way, I will post 1/2 birthday pix! Hehee. Lemme see, what else, oh! The ducks came back again only this time there were only 2, one male was missing, so I dunno if he found a mate, died or what, but I think the other duckies came back to tell me, but unfortunately I don't understand Duck-speak so I don't know what they said. Uhm, in real world news, they found that Elizabeth Smart girl who'd disappeared from her Mormon family 9 months ago. Personally, while I think it's cool she's alive and "well" I don't for a minute believe the abduction story. I think it's more likely little innocent Elizabeth ran away or had a boyfriend, got pregnant and family, being Mormon (where unwed girl + pregnant is a fate worse than death, literally) were embarassed so sent her "away" with a friend for 9 months and said friend kept her disguised but close by so family knew she was ok, but media wouldn't catch on. Family paid friend lots of money, he kept up the charade. Elizabeth's little sister is a "hero" for keeping the secret and lying well as mommy and daddy told her to do. I could be totally wrong of course and I have no "proof" other than promptings of the Holy Spirit <giggle> but knowing the Mormon culture and being really good at spotting liars, I may not be too far from the truth. In any case, I think it's good she's back with her (somewhat dysfunctional) family and seems to be mostly ok, albeit perhaps a bit more brainwashed. Also, it looks like we may be celebrating St. Patrick's Day with a war, hurray! Well, maybe not, Bush keeps cow-towing to the Dems and pushing deadlines back which just makes him look like a wimp like all those other president's we've had recently which just destroys any credibility he mighta had with the middle east. He might wait for a new moon though, so we can drop one of those MOABs in the dark of night and light up the sky like God Himself is on our side. Yeah, that'll be impressive to those Iraqis. In any case, if/when we do go to war I hope we do it right, not like last time where we just stir up some dust and let Saddam think he "won" because we left without taking him out. I just hope we don't kill too many innocent Iraqis but if we do it's mostly Saddam's fault cuz he uses them as human shields by putting things like hospitals in the same building as miliary installations. Too bad we can't control the media there and tell the Iraqis to get out before we bomb 'em but Saddam wouldn't let 'em go, they'd be shot or something. I am normally opposed to war but I just got a feeling we should nip this in the bud. Kinda like makin' up for our procrastination during WW2 when we coulda "saved" millions of innocent people if we'd gotten involved earlier. Better to kill a few thousands than let millions die later, and I think it'll send a clear message to the middle eastern (and other) "terrorist" nations we mean business, don't mess with the US, pal. I also think Iraq is much more behind the WTC thing than Afghanistan was and we smoked them. And no, I don't think that smokin' Iraq will cause more terrorism here, quite the contrary, I think if we don't act now then North Korea will come after us and China will come after us and France will come after us ... erm, well maybe not the French, it'd be silly for us to help them fight our own military (we always help the French in wartime yannow!) Anyway enough rambling, wow I've been long-winded today. I shall rest now.
[ 11:41:00 AM ]
Posted at the speed of blight by NONOBADKITTY!
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