waiting for spring

i've gotten bad about blogging. i always do.

right now, i'm watching stargate. i think this is my fourth episode of the day. but i'm sure there will be more. how could i only watch four episodes? anyway, season five is very exciting. unfortunately (i think) i've started watching a lot of tv this semester. product of having too much time on my hands, i suppose. so far, the list includes 24, scrubs, and american idol. i wouldn't be surprised if more get added. i've also (since moving my desktop back home) started playing computer games a bunch. point of this story - i am seriously wasting my life away.

in a little bit, it will be february, which means that i'll be hearing back from gradschools within the month (most likely). scary thought.

ok yeah, i really got nothing. i skipped gcf tonight. wanted to watch scrubs, but that was interrupted by the state of the union. as if anyone wants to listen to it. but really, even without scrubs, i doubt i'd go back to gcf. it's felt weird lately. everything's felt weird lately.

i should go to bed soon. arthur's class tomorrow. and i still gotta finish reading. hopefully, it'll be better than mike's class was today. i'm really disappointed in that class. although, since it is practical ethics, i don't know what i expected. i keep having to remind myself that i'm only taking it cuz i like mike.

soren is letting me hold his paw. sometimes he likes to hold hands. its cute.

trivia

Ten Top Trivia Tips about Dani!

1. The pigment Indian Yellow was manufactured from the urine of cows fed only on dani. no wonder i can't eat cows... they eat me!
2. Dani is the world's tallest woman! i have always felt freakishly tall...
3. Forty percent of the world's almonds and twenty percent of the world's peanuts are used in the manufacture of dani. that's a lot nuts!
4. The most dangerous form of dani is the bicycle! i haven't been able to take this form in ages though... not since the demise of russell
5. Dani is the only bird that can swim but not fly. sad but true. but i do so want to fly.
6. Dani was declared extinct in 1902. only to return in glory in the wondrous year of 1982. i'm like a phoenix!
7. Dani is actually a vegetable, not a fruit! yes!
8. Dani has little need for water and is capable of going for months without drinking at all. this would explain why i always want such small beverage glasses...
9. Dani can run sixty-five kilometres an hour - that's really fast. can is the operative word...
10. The number one cause of blindness in the United States is dani! kinda sad... but so many people just can't handle me.

I am interested in - do tell me aboutherhimitthem

why not smile?

i'm sitting in my office now. i teach at 11, so i'm just waiting. outside it's all snowy and pretty. (i drove to school in the snow!!) i find i don't mind the snow nearly as much now that i don't have to fear it. and not having to scrape snow off of my car helps a bunch too.

i haven't had much to blog about lately. i'm been rather stressed actually. i'm having all sorts of problems getting my stipend check, and while i ought to have enough to live on for the rest of the semester, not having the stipend does make things tight. oh well, i've vented enough about this to various peoples already. i'm sure you don't want to read about it again.

i just gave myself a paper cut. ouch! i watched 24 last night. i promised myself for so long that i wouldn't get into it, and here i've watched two weeks in a row. i don't know whats coming over me. last night was rather suspenseful though. at one point, i screamed.

i guess i should go think about teaching now. unless i can think of a million examples, today will be a short class. i doubt the kids will mind.

template

ok, so i've changed templates. much as i loved the dots, i got tired of the color scheme on the old one. so, until i can find (or make) something new and exciting, we're just gonna have to deal with this stark, white one. any suggestions?

survey time!!!

oh, i heart surveys. =)

4 jobs i've had (time at job)
Graduate Assistant (Instructor/TA) - 1.5 years; tutor - 1.5 years, citimortgage office bitch - 2 summers, 3 months each; huddle cashier - 6 months

4 movies i'd watch over and over
pride&prejudice, batman begins, what about bob, when harry met sally

4 places i have lived (time at locale)
Kalamazoo, MI - 1.5 years; South Bend, IN - 4 years; St. Louis, MO - 13 years; Jakarta, Indonesia - 5 years

4 tv shows i love
Stargate SG-1, Dawson's Creek, Sex and the City, Seinfeld

4 places i've been on vacation
(this is kinda embarrassing... i've been to more places than this... but i haven't been on a vacation in about a half-million years. sad but true.)
Canada, Bali, DC, home

4 favorite foods
Indian, Thai, cheese, breakfast

4 places i'd rather be right now
Bali, Italy, Greece, Notre Dame

4 websites i visit daily
CNN news, weather.gov, ebay, IMDB

4 bloggers who are now tagged!
(i don't really like doing this to y'all, but a survey has its rules...)
The Captain; erin; paul-guy; johnny-dee

movie

last night, my roommate and i made the mistake of renting and then watching 'the 40 year old virgin.' i had heard it was funny (from fairly reliable sources), and while i didn't expect to be bowled over, i did at least expect to be entertained. instead, i found myself willingly turning away from the movie and to my plato book. i found reading the apology much more entertaining than the movie, and as much as i love plato, i can't honestly say that the apology beats all movies. when it was all said and done, i had to retreat to my room and watch an episode of p&p so i could recover. well anyway, seeing this movie has started me thinking. i can't remember the last time i saw (or wanted to see) a comedy in the theaters that didn't revolve around sex/toilet humor. seriously. if i want to laugh and not be mildly (or majorly) disturbed in the process, i have to get out my own copy of ghostbusters. current movies are just too crass. so, i'm left wondering if the majority of people today are even capable of laughing at anything that isn't crude. or is that just asking too much?

driving down the road alone

i have a lot of thoughts going through my head now. some of them can't be written down, for various reasons. but i think a good way to encapsulate them is with the simple phrase: i don't want to grow up. i know, it sounds trite. but i have my reasons. i miss having all of my friends live within a 10 minute walk. i miss campus itself. more than that, i miss the time when the most important and productive use of my time was spent in long conversations that lasted until the wee hours of the morning. not only were such conversations standard, they were essential. when it got windy and i started to feel restless it was perfectly acceptable for me to run around campus, or do laps around the concrete ring around the jesus statue on godquad. i didn't have to be afraid of being alone at night. the weeping tree or the other side of the lake was a standard refuge. i had a refuge. the decisions i made were not ones that were going to affect my entire life. life was still completely open. relationships were still unformed and fluid. friends could be (and for me, were) so much more important than my work. i understood my role in my friends lives, and i think they understood theirs in mine. i didn't have to worry, yet, about them being taken away from me. by distance, by others, by anything. i could still make all those stupid freshman mistakes and, more importantly, have time to fix them.

now, so i don't sound completely negative, starting to enter the grownup world isn't all bad. after all, i do have a cat now. and a fireplace in my apartment. and some very exciting intellectual work that i get to do. but i am afraid of losing (or being made to lose) the personal focus that currently motivates so many of my actions. i am afraid that my friends will be taken away from me. even worse, i am afraid that they will not miss me when they're gone.

i will miss them terribly.

food coma...

just got home from indian food. am fighting a food coma that is fast threatening to overwhelm me. must stay awake. i still need to read for the schopenhauer group tomorrow. and i prolly ought to go over my greek too. but i just want to sleep....

sigh. i should know better than to eat indian food when i've got things to do. oh well. it was yummy enough (as always) to be well worth the procrastination.

so, now i'm sitting in the chair trying to ignore the fact that e.r. is on the tv next to me. most times, ok all the times, i get too grossed out to be able to watch it. i'm a much bigger fan of scrubs. much less grossness in that one. sadly, i really don't think i have anything to say tonight. i'm trying hard to get back in the habit of blogging, but almost nothing has happened this week and i have no stories to tell. i've been going to school, but aside from school stuff and seeing people at school, i've done nothing. just been sitting around.

one semi-funny story. when i got to the indian place, amanda was already there so i just walked up to the table and sat down. i'm there for a couple seconds and a waitress comes up and says "what would you like to drink, danielle?" to which i replied "how do you know my name?!" apparently, she's one of my students in my critical reasoning class. smalll world. or town.

soren has come back to snuggle me. he is the best little man. he may not always be outwardly affectionate, but i don't think even a dog could beat him on faithfulness. any time i need him, he always comes to sit with me and give me hugs. at least now i know i won't get lonely in k-zoo anymore.

home sweet home

after a lengthy absence, i am finally back! strangely enough, it's nice to be back in k-zoo - my own place, my own futon, my own insane kitty. the past couple of day have been good. i got back on monday, spent the whole day running errands and showing off my car, and picked up soren. when i first held him he spent at least 20 seconds intensely sniffing my nose, but then he basically ignored me until last night when he finally decided to purr and lie down on my face, so, i think we're friends again. =)

classes started yesterday. my (teaching) classes were incredibly short. i gave them their syllabus, had them introduce themselves, and we were gone. twenty minutes for each class. hopefully the change of subject (i teach critical reasoning now instead of practical ethics) will help me dislike teaching less. let us all hope so. you don't want to see all my posts become angry and bitter, now do you?

anyway, now that i am home from break, i have to tell you the story i promised. so, here's my saab story. =)

the time: a couple days before new year's.
the setting: somewhere on manchester road.

my mom and i had left the house to mail off the last of joey's grad apps. on our way out she asked me if i wanted to go and look at cars. i replied 'sure,' all the while not believing that anything would come of it (cf my resignation of a few posts ago). as we drove down manchester road, i thought my resignation well founded. mom insisted on cruising through the used car lots, but refused to actually leave the confines of her car to look at a single vehicle. so i was stuck with the lovely task of occasionally jumping out of the volvo to look at window stickers. sounds thrilling, right?

well anyway, mom decides that even though she has decided we ought to be economical we're gonna go to the volvo dealership, so off we go. as we pull up, salesguy tom comes running out, says he has a car that is just perfect for me, and runs off to find it. a long wait later he pulls up in this:


after only 3 seconds in the car, i was in love. of course. and despite my frequent attempts to throw the keys on table and walk away, i ended up leaving that place so worked up and flustered that i couldn't even drive home. the rest of the night was spent asking joey if the whole thing had been real. he kept assuring me that it was, but i think he got kinda tired of it after a while...

anyway, two days later we went and picked up my newest mode of transportation (and let me tell you, this little one is a serious upgrade from bessie). just look at how happy i was (and what a silly face joey was making):



and now, nothing remains but to name it. this is where y'all come in. there are two names on the table. 1) Argos - a Greek name. also the name of Odysseus's dog in the Odyssey. he is the epitome of doggy faithfulness. and, in keeping with the car's (somewhat) swedish heritage 2) Freya (if its a girl) or Freyr (if its a boy). Freya is a norse goddess of fertility, love, war, and a few other things. Freyr is her brother, and is a god of fertility.

anyway, so far i've got a couple of votes on each side. so cast your vote soon. i can't really handle driving a car without a name.

hiatus

i do have a story that needs telling right now, but unfortunately i require pictures in order to properly tell this story. since i am living with the slowest internet connection ever, this is a bit of a problem. so, don't expect any (real) posts from me until i get back to k-zoo and my wonderful world of stolen internet (prolly sunday or monday). for now, i just want to let you know that i do have a beautiful story to tell, and that it will be brought to you by the letter "s."

until next time.