There is no such thing as bad weather. All weather is good because it is God's.
-- Saint Theresa of Avila.
....And that is something we should all remember out in the cold and in the rain.
In Pace Christi,
Elyse
Wednesday, October 19, 2011
Tuesday, October 18, 2011
MORE Pointless Things I Have Learned
1. The doors of the bathroom stalls in the basement of Collier Library are in serious need of WD-40. You can shove your weight against them and they will not budge, even if they are unlatched. One is permanently out of quarters, appanrently... A handwritten sign on the door says, "Out of Order Quarters."
2. I found the stairs in the back of Bibb Graves. Or, apparently, the stairs from the basement to the first floor, so, congratulations me, I added another flight to my climb up the building. The stairs were narrower. As I am becoming accustomed to going up the stairs two at a time (per my custom) in most of the buildings, I will stick with the normal stairs and smile at those who huff and puff. -- I also walk fast, apparently. And I accelerate when going up hills. Go figure.
3. They sell cookies in the Guillot. I bought one today. I was 2/3 finished with it when I realized that the sprinkles on it were in the shape of tombstones. Audrey and I had a good laugh over that.
4. PLEASE don't tell me psychology and speech are PREREQUISITE courses! I will absolutely croak if they are. Neither is my thing. I am not good at speaking in public (I tend to start rambling, if you can believe that) and I am not good with subjective sciences. If I must take psychology, I insist that UNA offer Latin classes! I can bargain for a trade-off, can't I?
5. They have now turned on the heat in the math building. It is now one of the warmest, if not the warmest building on campus. Or at least it was this morning.
FOURTEEN DAYS UNTIL BROTHERBAND 1: THE OUTCASTS COMES OUT!!! (It's by John Flanagan who does Ranger's Apprentice and it's set in the same world as RA and some of the same characters- cough, cough, Erak, cough, cough- may appear in it, so you may understand why I am excited about this.)
In Pace Christi,
Elyse
2. I found the stairs in the back of Bibb Graves. Or, apparently, the stairs from the basement to the first floor, so, congratulations me, I added another flight to my climb up the building. The stairs were narrower. As I am becoming accustomed to going up the stairs two at a time (per my custom) in most of the buildings, I will stick with the normal stairs and smile at those who huff and puff. -- I also walk fast, apparently. And I accelerate when going up hills. Go figure.
3. They sell cookies in the Guillot. I bought one today. I was 2/3 finished with it when I realized that the sprinkles on it were in the shape of tombstones. Audrey and I had a good laugh over that.
4. PLEASE don't tell me psychology and speech are PREREQUISITE courses! I will absolutely croak if they are. Neither is my thing. I am not good at speaking in public (I tend to start rambling, if you can believe that) and I am not good with subjective sciences. If I must take psychology, I insist that UNA offer Latin classes! I can bargain for a trade-off, can't I?
5. They have now turned on the heat in the math building. It is now one of the warmest, if not the warmest building on campus. Or at least it was this morning.
FOURTEEN DAYS UNTIL BROTHERBAND 1: THE OUTCASTS COMES OUT!!! (It's by John Flanagan who does Ranger's Apprentice and it's set in the same world as RA and some of the same characters- cough, cough, Erak, cough, cough- may appear in it, so you may understand why I am excited about this.)
In Pace Christi,
Elyse
I Am A Distributist. That Is Both A Political And Economic Philosophy.
...And now you are asking yourself, what is a distributist? A distributist is one who adheres to the school of thought of distributism, which is, in a nutshell, the idea that the less government, the better. Perhaps it can be more clearly put by saying that problems should be taken care of on the lowest level of government possible. In other words, local problems should be handled by local government and state problems by state government, with the least amount of interference by the federal government as possible.
As Ronald Reagan so wonderfully put it, "The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from government and I'm here to help."
Our forum speaker tonight was Philip Marks from the Small Business Development Center, who spoke to us about government contracting. I regret to say it is a field I am not very interested in. I was, however, fascinated to learn exactly how important Huntsville is to the nation and the local economy (primarily because I am fascinated with rockets and other things that go boom).
...By the way, has anyone heard of the show 'Rocket City Rednecks'? It's totally worth checking out. A bunch of rednecks with Ph.D.'s who blow stuff up. Awesome.
I did write down a bunch of statistics that Mr. Marks gave us, such as that 23% of all government contracts must go to small businesses. And that 68-82% of people work for small businesses (and small businesses are defined both by the number of people that work for them and by their amount of revenue). Employes must be less than 500 for a business to be considered small.
I don't know. I really am not a fan of big government because it's pretty apparent anything the government gets its hands on messes up. Need I say more? I may also add it's because I am a Southerner. Don't get me wrong. I love my country. The government, however... is not the country.
And now, after using the word 'government' excessively in this post, I am thinking of one of Tolkien's letters in which he went on one of his delightful rants about WWII-era Britain. He disliked the use of the word 'government' in reference to anything other than the abstract concept of governing, and joked about giving anyone who used it in any other way a chance to recant before hanging. He said a much better name for the British government would have been to call it "Winston and his gang". (And if you do not know who Winston Churchill is, you are in a sad condition, my friend.) That, he said, would "go a long way toward clearing thought, and reduce the frightful slide into Theyocracy".
Distributism was a system of thought much advocated by G. K. Chesterton and Hillaire Belloc. I am a big fan of Chesterton's Orthodoxy and have read a couple of works by Belloc, as well. Has anyone else heard of the Ballad of the White Horse? It's awesome. I know a couple of lines in it... And I had best not quote them here and now...
What sort of reflection upon our speakers qualifies as enough? I believe we could have a debate on this topic. Some people write profound posts about the speakers' talks, others write a paragraph and are done, and I'm not sure how to classify mine. Pointless rambling again, probably.
In Pace Christi,
Elyse
As Ronald Reagan so wonderfully put it, "The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from government and I'm here to help."
Our forum speaker tonight was Philip Marks from the Small Business Development Center, who spoke to us about government contracting. I regret to say it is a field I am not very interested in. I was, however, fascinated to learn exactly how important Huntsville is to the nation and the local economy (primarily because I am fascinated with rockets and other things that go boom).
...By the way, has anyone heard of the show 'Rocket City Rednecks'? It's totally worth checking out. A bunch of rednecks with Ph.D.'s who blow stuff up. Awesome.
I did write down a bunch of statistics that Mr. Marks gave us, such as that 23% of all government contracts must go to small businesses. And that 68-82% of people work for small businesses (and small businesses are defined both by the number of people that work for them and by their amount of revenue). Employes must be less than 500 for a business to be considered small.
I don't know. I really am not a fan of big government because it's pretty apparent anything the government gets its hands on messes up. Need I say more? I may also add it's because I am a Southerner. Don't get me wrong. I love my country. The government, however... is not the country.
And now, after using the word 'government' excessively in this post, I am thinking of one of Tolkien's letters in which he went on one of his delightful rants about WWII-era Britain. He disliked the use of the word 'government' in reference to anything other than the abstract concept of governing, and joked about giving anyone who used it in any other way a chance to recant before hanging. He said a much better name for the British government would have been to call it "Winston and his gang". (And if you do not know who Winston Churchill is, you are in a sad condition, my friend.) That, he said, would "go a long way toward clearing thought, and reduce the frightful slide into Theyocracy".
Distributism was a system of thought much advocated by G. K. Chesterton and Hillaire Belloc. I am a big fan of Chesterton's Orthodoxy and have read a couple of works by Belloc, as well. Has anyone else heard of the Ballad of the White Horse? It's awesome. I know a couple of lines in it... And I had best not quote them here and now...
What sort of reflection upon our speakers qualifies as enough? I believe we could have a debate on this topic. Some people write profound posts about the speakers' talks, others write a paragraph and are done, and I'm not sure how to classify mine. Pointless rambling again, probably.
In Pace Christi,
Elyse
Monday, October 17, 2011
And I Thought I Was Doing Good
There is a reason why you look at your syllabus for your class the next morning BEFORE the night before the class. I have an outline for my English paper due and I haven't even started. I fail. AND I have a 'Reading Closely' assignment on some passage that I haven't looked at, either.
I thought I was doing good. I had done about half of the practice test for math, I had done my German homework, and an hour of language lab (in that frozen meat locker of a place), and I thought I was doing okay. Not so. Cancel any thoughts of doing chemistry tonight; I've got to do an outline. And I'll probably do a complete sentence version anyway, because I just feel more comfortable doing that. It helps me write the actual paper better.
But, for the good news, after tomorrow's English class we have two classes that are just conferences and mine is next week so on this Thursday I will have only one class. I will be home by 9:30. I will not be able to understand why. It will all be so weird. No, no, I'm supposed to get home around 2:30... Something is very strange here... What am I forgetting?
Tomorrow we have forum, too. I notice many people are behind on blogging. I can't even remember what I blogged about for the last forum! Hey, it was a week ago. Oh, now I remember. I believe I said something about relativism and gun control... I should go back and look at it. No, I should not. I should go do my outline.
Elyse
I thought I was doing good. I had done about half of the practice test for math, I had done my German homework, and an hour of language lab (in that frozen meat locker of a place), and I thought I was doing okay. Not so. Cancel any thoughts of doing chemistry tonight; I've got to do an outline. And I'll probably do a complete sentence version anyway, because I just feel more comfortable doing that. It helps me write the actual paper better.
But, for the good news, after tomorrow's English class we have two classes that are just conferences and mine is next week so on this Thursday I will have only one class. I will be home by 9:30. I will not be able to understand why. It will all be so weird. No, no, I'm supposed to get home around 2:30... Something is very strange here... What am I forgetting?
Tomorrow we have forum, too. I notice many people are behind on blogging. I can't even remember what I blogged about for the last forum! Hey, it was a week ago. Oh, now I remember. I believe I said something about relativism and gun control... I should go back and look at it. No, I should not. I should go do my outline.
Elyse
Friday, October 14, 2011
TGIF!!!!
Lovely, lovely, lovely Fridays.
And do you know why they are lovely? Saturdays follow them!!
My chemistry test this morning was much less hard than anticipated. And Dr. Bibbee let us out of history twenty minutes early "because you can't cover Aristotle in just twenty minutes". Hoory and all that. Although I was rather disappointed because I find philosophy fascinating. Yes, I read philosophy books for fun, mainly those by Peter Kreeft. He's an awesome writer. Of course, he wrote The Philosophy of Tolkien which begins with, "Oh, no! Not another book about Tolkien! Why should we read this one?" so you know it's good.
Do I have a math quiz Monday? I can't remember. Hopefully it's written down somewhere if it is. I know we do have a third exam next Thursday.
I'm supposed to meet with my advisor and have no idea how. Why is this necessary? To make sure we do all the things we're supposed to and take all the right classes?
I went to the game last night. Does that count as an honors event, Dr. Brewton? We stayed until the field goal that tied Delta State with UNA, but didn't bother to stay for overtime. It was sad not seeing the victory torch lit today. I kept it company anyways. It and the silly lion probably needed some comforting...
In Pace Christi,
Elyse
And do you know why they are lovely? Saturdays follow them!!
My chemistry test this morning was much less hard than anticipated. And Dr. Bibbee let us out of history twenty minutes early "because you can't cover Aristotle in just twenty minutes". Hoory and all that. Although I was rather disappointed because I find philosophy fascinating. Yes, I read philosophy books for fun, mainly those by Peter Kreeft. He's an awesome writer. Of course, he wrote The Philosophy of Tolkien which begins with, "Oh, no! Not another book about Tolkien! Why should we read this one?" so you know it's good.
Do I have a math quiz Monday? I can't remember. Hopefully it's written down somewhere if it is. I know we do have a third exam next Thursday.
I'm supposed to meet with my advisor and have no idea how. Why is this necessary? To make sure we do all the things we're supposed to and take all the right classes?
I went to the game last night. Does that count as an honors event, Dr. Brewton? We stayed until the field goal that tied Delta State with UNA, but didn't bother to stay for overtime. It was sad not seeing the victory torch lit today. I kept it company anyways. It and the silly lion probably needed some comforting...
In Pace Christi,
Elyse
Thursday, October 13, 2011
Why Am I Posting When I Have Little To Say?
When Dr. Brewton told us to personalize our blogs, I don't think he meant this. I don't just ramble meaningfully about our guest speakers, or even meaningfully about campus and schoolwork, but I also ramble meaningLESSly about nothing in general. Like now, for instance. I am rambling about rambling about rambling about rambling about rambling...
Ha ha. Anyway. We may or may not be going to the game tonight! When I say 'we', I mean my family and I. I would like to go, certainly, and so does my mom and my sister. The boys, however, have declared that football is 'boring' (anathema!) and so will probably be threatened with dire consequences in order to secure their good behavior if we do come (thus requiring them to come along, as well).
I already have an idea for the compare/contrast essay that is not due for about a month! I will compare and contrast Edmund from The Chronicles of Narnia and Boromir from the Lord of the Rings. I initially thought of simply comparing and contrasting the two series, but decided to narrow the scope to just two characters. However, I have thought up of three points apiece for comparing and contrasting, and could have thought of more, so that proves how much I like these two series (despite my recent near-incoherency about Percy Jackson and Ranger's Apprentice). I am more knowledgeable about the Lord of the Rings however and will be delighted to debate it with anyone who fancies a go at someone who has actually (gasp!) read the Simarillion. Even if the last time I read it was more than a year or two ago. I would read it again now but I am on overload. I have two books sitting on my dresser that have been sitting there untouched for weeks. In my defense I didn't bargain on one of them (they are on loan from a fellow parishioner) and the other proved to be dry if well-researched.
At least all I have to do for the Athens/Sparta history paper is print it out again. As for the analysis of Hammurabi's Code, I have yet to figure out how to make Word let me put my last name as well as the page number at the top of each page. My name, yes. The page number, yes. Both, no. It wants to put my name and one uniform number at the top of every page. Which is not good. I like Word 2010, even if it was a huge shock coming from complete mastery of Word 2000, but its still computer-like insistence on trivialities like this is annoying. Which is also good, in a sense too, because if computers/droids could think, we probably wouldn't be here. (As I think Obi-Wan said in the Attack of the Clones...)
I am such a nerd, aren't I?
If I go to the game, I have to wear a black shirt, right? I have only two black non-church shirts, and one features a picture of Pope John Paul II on it and the other... well, I could still wear the other, even if it has a big red cross on it. I'll probably be wearing a coat over it, anyway...
We still get in free if we're students, right? Even if this is against Delta State and it's televized? And what's this about getting a free concession item? UNA seriously needs to improve its communication. Or maybe it just doesn't want to advertise its free giveaways. Meh.
In Pace Christi,
Elyse
Ha ha. Anyway. We may or may not be going to the game tonight! When I say 'we', I mean my family and I. I would like to go, certainly, and so does my mom and my sister. The boys, however, have declared that football is 'boring' (anathema!) and so will probably be threatened with dire consequences in order to secure their good behavior if we do come (thus requiring them to come along, as well).
I already have an idea for the compare/contrast essay that is not due for about a month! I will compare and contrast Edmund from The Chronicles of Narnia and Boromir from the Lord of the Rings. I initially thought of simply comparing and contrasting the two series, but decided to narrow the scope to just two characters. However, I have thought up of three points apiece for comparing and contrasting, and could have thought of more, so that proves how much I like these two series (despite my recent near-incoherency about Percy Jackson and Ranger's Apprentice). I am more knowledgeable about the Lord of the Rings however and will be delighted to debate it with anyone who fancies a go at someone who has actually (gasp!) read the Simarillion. Even if the last time I read it was more than a year or two ago. I would read it again now but I am on overload. I have two books sitting on my dresser that have been sitting there untouched for weeks. In my defense I didn't bargain on one of them (they are on loan from a fellow parishioner) and the other proved to be dry if well-researched.
At least all I have to do for the Athens/Sparta history paper is print it out again. As for the analysis of Hammurabi's Code, I have yet to figure out how to make Word let me put my last name as well as the page number at the top of each page. My name, yes. The page number, yes. Both, no. It wants to put my name and one uniform number at the top of every page. Which is not good. I like Word 2010, even if it was a huge shock coming from complete mastery of Word 2000, but its still computer-like insistence on trivialities like this is annoying. Which is also good, in a sense too, because if computers/droids could think, we probably wouldn't be here. (As I think Obi-Wan said in the Attack of the Clones...)
I am such a nerd, aren't I?
If I go to the game, I have to wear a black shirt, right? I have only two black non-church shirts, and one features a picture of Pope John Paul II on it and the other... well, I could still wear the other, even if it has a big red cross on it. I'll probably be wearing a coat over it, anyway...
We still get in free if we're students, right? Even if this is against Delta State and it's televized? And what's this about getting a free concession item? UNA seriously needs to improve its communication. Or maybe it just doesn't want to advertise its free giveaways. Meh.
In Pace Christi,
Elyse
Wednesday, October 12, 2011
Again, Not Much to Say
...Other than it's official that the coke machines in Wesleyan hate me. Snack machines, whatever. The coke machine one time took my quarters and gave me nothing in return. Today, the snack machine used a Jedi mind-trick on me to make me accidentally hit the E button instead of the C button, thereby giving me crackers when I wanted the Rice Krispies. At least it gave me two quarters back. I can try again Friday.
Although which of the two is less healthy for me, I don't know.
I am being stalked via email. FIRST by Collier Library and then by Tell Me More. I have a couple of books due in over a week, mind you, and they're already sending me emails every day wanting me to renew them or return them. I renewed. And then Tell Me More, one of the many supplements to the German course, sent me an email today that went along the lines of, "We haven't heard from you in 8 days! Learning a language takes lots of practice! We hope to hear from you again soon. Sincerely, your friends on the Tell Me More team."
That's actually rather creepy. I want to send them back an email saying, "Ich habe keine Zeit!" but as it was an automated email no one would probably receive it. Sadly. I would so love to rant at them in a foreign language.
I should really be doing something productive instead of sitting here blogging, like working on my notecards for my English paper or doing chemistry homework or something...
In Pace Christi,
Elyse
Although which of the two is less healthy for me, I don't know.
I am being stalked via email. FIRST by Collier Library and then by Tell Me More. I have a couple of books due in over a week, mind you, and they're already sending me emails every day wanting me to renew them or return them. I renewed. And then Tell Me More, one of the many supplements to the German course, sent me an email today that went along the lines of, "We haven't heard from you in 8 days! Learning a language takes lots of practice! We hope to hear from you again soon. Sincerely, your friends on the Tell Me More team."
That's actually rather creepy. I want to send them back an email saying, "Ich habe keine Zeit!" but as it was an automated email no one would probably receive it. Sadly. I would so love to rant at them in a foreign language.
I should really be doing something productive instead of sitting here blogging, like working on my notecards for my English paper or doing chemistry homework or something...
In Pace Christi,
Elyse
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