I am really excited I officially start my divemaster certification tomorrow....
And I have only smoked 2 cigs since the end of Jan.

as for grad school....still working on the app-mostly the career goals and recommendation letters...
havent done much spiritually or yoga related, but I'm thinking about it more and making a plan of attack
I'm starting to reconnect with friends, in fact I have a big April planned, oe of my friends is coming down on sunday the 13th, hanging out, then we are driving down to Atlanta on wed. and picking up another friend...all 3 of us are going to the georgia aquarium, then friend one is leaving thurs morn, and friend 2 and i are going to stay in atlanta till fri, then drive back up here to myrtle beach and hang out, she flies home on wed from here...going to be LOTS of long overdue fun and lots of reconnecting!!

The combination of my birthday, reading “Hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy” (AGAIN) and that last blog about religion is the premise of this blog…
I’ve thought about writing it for a couple of days, and I feel today is definitely appropriate since 1. I have te time, and 2. it is my Uncle Joe’s birthday
Yes I know, right now I make no sense, and I don’t know what the reasons for writing this blog are, maybe just felt like sharing…


When I was a child, I collected snow globes….from the time I was rattling my brain trying to understand the concept of god until…I have no idea when…maybe till I die…(I don’t think these thoughts are truly over) I have in some ways thought the Earth was kind of like a giant snow globe, not that someone can shake it and create weather but more of, the earth is part of a big snow globe that someone has sitting on a shelf, collecting dust…and then my thoughts turned to maybe Earth is some giant experiment, where “aliens” put a bunch of their animals planet and are trying to learn things about their “natural behaviors”
Enter Hitchhiker’s guide.
Yes, I thought of this stuff before I ever read the story or even heard of it….Isn’t it odd how you think of something and think it’s a really cool, individualistic spin on the world only to realize it is a best selling story? Maybe that’s why I like the story so much, it clicks in my brain.
Enter Uncle Joe.
My uncle Joe is my favorite uncle (from my mother’s side)…I don’t exactly know why, but he is. He is also my godfather.
Enter birthdays.
I have since gotten rid of my snow globe collection, all except one globe, a unicorn with glitter “snow”. It was given to me by Uncle Joe as a birthday present (when I was 13, I think). It’s always been in my bedroom, even in the dorm at college.
It seems silly, to carry around that particular snow globe, but it remind me of my thoughts long ago. First that we may be some study or something as insignificant as a piece of glitter, our world may not be all we make it out to be. And second the symbolism of the unicorn that creatures exist that we are still unaware of. Or maybe that once existed that were destroyed my mankind (and I do mean mankind instead of humankind since in those days women weren’t of the hunting parties).
I have thought many times to get rid of my last globe, but I never really understood why I could not bring myself to do it. With the events as they are now, I have come to understand it.

When I was a child, I was actually bribed to go to church.  I hated going because we went to one that you had to dress up for, or at least my parents thought we did.  My dad travelled a lot and he was apparently excused from going most of the time (even if he was home).  So back to the bribe-basically if we went and behaved we would get to go out for breakfast and we (bro and I) got to pick the place.   It was a lutheran church I believe...that's what I was babtized as too.
I had a good sunday school teacher at one point, made some good analogies and really brought the bible to life.  Even gave everyone an bible as a present. 
My mom is fairly religious I guess.  She really didn't seem it growing up. other than getting us to go to church and when we were young, we prayed before eating.  We also set up a nativity set for christmas too.  But I guess you learn more about your parents as you get older.  She doesn't go to church anymore, hasn't since she stopped making us go; but she still claims to be pretty religious.  I did find out, not that long ago actually, that mom doesn't believe in evolution.  Strange I thought.
Don't know to much about dad.  His parents were menondite, so I guess he was baptized that too, but I don't know much of what he believes.
By 6th grade, I owned about 4 bibles.  I read them all, cover to cover and I realized I didn't believe in.  So in 7th grade, I started studying religions and I couldn't really find one I agreed with so I abandoned it for a while.
Eventually I started celebrating solstice or yule simply because I suffered from seasonal depression and it seemed like a quiet holiday that occureed around the time of Christmas.  And I started adding bits and pieces as I felt, and I starting thinking about what I believed. 
Upon further research, I found a little label to call myself "green witch", but the lables aren't clear and I could be considered a "herbal witch", or "garden witch" or "kitchen witch". 

Most of the times I got in trouble were times when I was not at fault...my brother lied about doing something, blamed it on me-I in turned blamed it on him and since my parents couldn't figure out who did it-we were both punished...

then there was this one time when it really wasn't anyone person's fault...EMS would call and ask if everything was ok becuase someone had just called and hung up---ended up being the cat hitting the speed dial...

most of the rest of the times was for running away or hiding...but then again, I had good reason to.

I think 25 is the new 40....A few of my friends turned 25 reacently...none without difficultly.  A good friend is turning 25 in just a few days, and his crisis started a few weeks ago.  Now it is my turn...14 days till my 25th, the crisis is starting....What the hell am I doing with my life?

I have come to discover that turning 25 is, not a cause for celebrating, but rather a time of reflection.  Thoughts range from thinking you're a huge screw up, never going to make anything of yourself, feelings of lonliness and regret for past mistakes.

One of my friends from college turned 25 last september...one day, he called and asked me to marry him...purely because he was freaking out and thinking that he should be married by then...what odd tricks the brain plays with you

Just when I think I can put this crisis on the back burner, I think of something else...I know it will just be another day and nothing will really change.  My analytical self says its not a big deal...yet the iceberg in my chest is trying to melt...(maybe an effect from global warming, sorry couldn't resist)
my struggle is with thoughts of the future...i see myself in so many places, yet can't get any of my ideas to merge.  I don't want to be an "old cat lady" but yet I don't see how anyone would be able to stay sane living with me.  Yet I don't quite understand why this is bugging me, I love living by myself and doing what I want.

Ramblings from watching a House marathon...

 

I see many parallels between myself and the character Dr. Gregory House.  We are both misanthropes due to people's stupidity and we don't try to hide our superior intellect.  Most see us as arrogant or egotistical, but it reality, we are just as we are, we are right.  We are both analyst to the extreme that everything was be analyzed and the interesting is the only thing which is important.  Who cares if everyone is doing is, because as we have already discovered, everyone is stupid.  It is the anomalies which are amusing since we are, ourselves anomalies. 

One of the writers for this show is in fact, a Gregory House himself.  Who else would see the world as we do?

Insecure...
1. in the means of being unstable, not firmly fix, likely to fail-that would be today...I got a migraine, and I thought I was going to fall over more than a couple of times...but its getting better now...

2. in the means of lacking security or safety-about a month ago when my mom told me that my brother wanted to move back to the US (he currenlt lives in England) and furthermore that he wanted to move to the state of Florida

3. in the means of lacking self-confidence-about 2 days ago when I sent out requests for recommendations for graduate school...It's simply because I have to get them from professors that haven't known me for 3 years and I think I have changed a lot in those 3 years.

In instance 1-I am overcoming the filling by sitting in the dark with no loud noises(ok, not really) but I did walk around with sunglasses on, even when I went to the store and even after the sun went down (and I was driving home-at one point I was making an unlighted corner and almost missed the road oops!) and I also told people to whisper and be quiet many many times-I think the only thing someone could have done to reassure me is...I dunno-cuddle with me till I fell asleep?  :)

2. Yeah-I still haven't really overcome this one-I just keep telling myself that chances are he isn't going to move back (he ran up a TON of debt before he left) and even if he does Florida is a big state and you'll never see him-and even if you do see him-it will be ok-cause you can run away, or drive away, or just plain GET AWAY. But in the back of my mind, I think that if this even does come to pass, I feel that I will probably run out and buy a handgun and learn how to use it. (no not against myself!) I'm open to suggestions on how I can be reassured on this. If you have ideas, or want to know why this is such a problem for me-feel free to drop me a message.

3. Recommendations...I will be reassured when I get emails saying that these professors will indeed write the letters...I at least have some confidence that if they say they are will write recommendations, that they will write good ones. So this is just a wait and see kind of thing.

I have told three people-
1.Tiny Tim (yes he's a midgit, and everyone that we went to college with calls him that because there were about 3 Tim's in our major)-a guy I went to college with
2. Mike O (a guy I met in college)
3. Christine (a woman I just met at work on Tuesday, but hey she said she would contribute money if she won the lottery)

and now I will tell all of you
I want to buy a yacht and live on it with my two cats.  Part of the year I would run education programs for students-about the enviroment, sustainability, maybe about sailinmaybe SCUBA.  Part of the year I would work on marine reasearch and part of the year I would run a live-aboard (a SCUBA cruiseship). 
I would welcome interns-but I wouldn't set a lot of requirements down.  I would be very flexible with start and end dates; I would allow them to bring their pets aboard. I would pay them; and I wouldn't care if they were actual college students earning credit or if they had their degree already and were just looking for experience.

reprint of a myspace blog from Jan 21

I read a line somewhere (sorry cant remember which book as I read so many) "People thinking in other languages". I found this line intriguing, for I have always wondered about this. It brought me back so something my exchange mother asked when I was in Germany. One day she asked if I was dreaming in German yet. I found the question perplexing and thought about it a few days. I realized that most of my dreams aren't in any language. Communication is just known, like a thought.

This year I have started a dream journal and I have come to realize a great deal more. I have an uncanny imagination. I believe I would make a good movie director. In dreams, I am sometimes present as a bystander, watching the dream like a movie. Sometimes, I am a particular person, "living" the dream. But more commonly, I'm both, I go through several "camera angles" throughout the dream and sometimes I'm more than one "character". I found this bewildering and still o sometimes. I've given some thought-since my dreams are mostly unspoken-doesn't that mean that I'm not really anyone but the bystander-an all knowing bystander….but upon more days (and mostly sleeping nights) of thought-I must actually be the character-for I FEEL as they do.

FYI, sometimes I dream animated. Those dreams are really cool!

This has lead to further insight of my waking hours. When I read and book with an actual story-I don't read the story. The pages truly do come alive and the movie plays in my head. It's so real to me that when I finish the story, and think about it, sometimes I forget that it was actually a book and not a movie. I could tell you about the actors, what color the house was that they lived in, everything just like a movie. This could be why I'm so picky about fiction stories, and why I don't read them often. It really annoys me when I'm "reading a story" and I get my movie going and then later in the book they start adding the scenic details. Too little to late. The whole set come crumbling down (literally crumbles in my movie, or the actor transforms) to suit the book. It's really aggravating.

reprint of a myspace blog on Jan 21

We have lost the purpose of language-turned it into a memorizing vocabulary words as a measure of intelligence.  We teach, even emphasize, different spoken languages, but when will begin to focus on communication?  We neglect communication subtleness that is the same in all languages-body language and facial expressions.  Yet many do not know how to do this.  The basis of all languages, something we assume everyone knows and therefore we need not teach it.  But it is clear that few truly understand...:

     Even in college, we focus on public speaking in communication courses.  We mark down when using thought words -um, and, and pure silence.  But isn't this what communication is about, conveying your ideas, and therefore one should be actively thinking when they speak.  I welcome ums, it shows the person is able to adapt, they are using their most current thoughts, not just the ones they have prepared.  Communication is about conveying your ideas to others.  College on the other hand is teaching to write a speech and stick to it. But that should be counter-intuitive.  If you start a prepared speech and are met with blank stares or bewildered looks, should you continue with the same speech?