2.5.12 – 2.11.12
Monday night I went to my Children’s Lit. class, and the gal I mentioned last week was back in class. Didn’t get to talk with her, but watched her interact a little more, and lost interest. It happens 
. That night, back at home, I picked up reading my next book (another Korkie recommendation). You’ve most likely heard how viewing video screens before bed can worsen sleep, so I’ve tried a number of times over the years to establish some kind of nightly routine that’d keep me from the computer or TV. This week, I’ve been reading for the last hour, or so, before going to bed as an exercise of this concept, though the jury is still out on whether or not my quality of sleep has improved .
Tuesday was a busy one. I had my regular noon class, went home for a bit, then went over to work from 3:30-6:30, then made it to my 7pm class. My availability on Tuesdays is only for a 4 hour shift, no later than 6pm (to give me a chance to grab food at a relaxed pace), but I probably won’t ever work it because it’s kind of an odd time. The first Tuesday of every month, though, the Lego Store has our free Monthly Minibuild event… and my manager asked if I could help out. I figured I’d give it a whirl this week and see how it worked out. Since I had to duck out before the event would be over, I was out front of the store guiding in people from the queue. Really, it’s probably my favorite thing to do at this job – just hanging out in front of the store, talking with these parents and kids and keeping things fun while they wait to go inside. I saw one of my former bosses there, too (I’ve actually seen a few, since working there), and she still looked as great as always… of course, now she had a 4 year old son in tow. She was the gal who sat across from me, teary-eyed, when I was dealing with those wonderful allegations during my time at the first YMCA site. I swung by for some Taco Tuesday tacos before class, and actually made it with time to spare, so I’ll definitely keep doing these monthly events – it’s a ball . Haha, speaking of having a ball, my night class is Speech, and we always have a lot of fun in there… circle our desks around the outside of the classroom and discuss topics and fill out entertaining little exercises that we read out loud afterward. This week we had a handout with a long list of (mostly) dirty/offensive words, and we had to list the ones we liked the least. One gal, when it came time to read the numbers of her chosen words (instead of having to swear at each other), accidentally said #2 twice… and as the whole class glanced down to see that it was a word for penis, the fact that she apparently HATED that word cracked everyone up. I don’t think I’ve collectively laughed out loud in a class in a long time… it’s a great class, anyway, and that was just the perfect feather in the cap of a long and fun day.
Wednesday turned that fun around, a bit. I had a test in my history class, and while I’d studied and felt comfortable with it… I didn’t feel too confident about how I did. It’s been a number of years since I’ve taken a test, so I’m sure I’m also just a little out of practice, but the phrasing of some of the questions and potential answers is what really through me off. That didn’t feel great, and then I came home to start writing and became distracted by one of my older posts on my site (one of those “exploring who I am, but not figuring it out” entries), and through a combination of those things, I started to feel that ol’ anxiety build up in my chest. As I was driving to school for my night class (yes… I’m there a lot), I turned to God and asked for peace. I’m in a great place in life, but things can always crop up… I ain’t no perfect 
. He gave me exactly what I needed in my Child Development class (interesting subject, great group interaction, and an astonishingly lovely gal who wasn’t there last week), and I left feelin’ great again. That gal I mentioned (ya know, in the previous parenthesis) isn’t a tiny blond, but she’s certainly captivating.. so, onward we go, again . Haha, I almost feel like I’m back in high school… my eyes flitting from girl to girl, temporarily fixating on each one as “OMG, new girlfriend?!?”
Thursday afternoon, I came home from class very excited. Not only was my week over, but I had a new game to play. For a little while, I’ve been keeping track of some bad habits, and after reaching a milestone, I rewarded myself by buying myself Rocksmith. It’s a PS3 game that might sound similar to Rock Band in name, but this uses an actual guitar and is much more structured around actually learning how to play. It came in the mail earlier than I expected, so it’s been sitting on my desk all week, waiting for me to have time for it. So, I brought out my ol’ dusty guitar, cleaned it off, started up the game, began to tune my guitar, and BAM… snapped a string right off. I’d been driving all week, so I didn’t bother getting strings that day… I just wanted to sit around and relax. Oh, and I have to say… Thursday night’s The Office (Dwight gathering a team for a special Florida project) made me LOL quite a few times. That’s not something I’ve been as prone to this season, but it felt pretty good .
Friday morning, I set out to the library to drop off my books (more on the second book below), pick up a new one, and grab myself some strings at a music store right here in San Clemente. I made it to the library fine, but when I pulled into the parking lot of the music store, I saw a sign on the door apologetically announcing they wouldn’t be open until later than normal. Foiled again. I laughed and went on my way, planning on going back Monday afternoon. Ended up spending the evening with Sarah at her place eating Flame Broiler and watching TLC wedding shows… so the day wasn’t a horrible waste .
As for my book-reading, Thursday night I read a little extra to finish up my second book before my Friday excursion to the library (it’s not far, but why not kill 2 birds). This one? Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry. I think it was a bit more enjoyable than last week’s, but still.. I didn’t really enjoy reading it. To expand on what I mentioned last week, I love movies that I can love… that bring out an emotional reaction of tears or happiness. Movies move me, and I’ve yet to find that in a book. Sure, neither of these stories really pique my interest, and that’s cool (which goes back to the “numbers game” realization last week)… but I think that’ll be a huge moment for me, if it happens. There are other issues, sure, that I mentioned in a reply to a comment last week (books take way too long for what little entertainment value they provide me, and even when there was a book I liked, I couldn’t read it a second time without being bored senseless), but that I can’t become engrossed in a book and its characters, the same way I can with audio-visual work, I think is a difficult detriment to overcome. Well.. probably not that I CAN’T, more that I haven’t yet .
So, how was your week?
The 29 Year-Old Virgin
An image search for my name can bring up a number of surprises, since I’m king of the Internets, and this one’s no different. Prophetic information about my future, or simply an image from a blog post I commented on?
Both?
So, How Was Your Week?
I’ve been mulling over something like this for the last couple of weeks, so I’ll see where my typing fingers take me. I’ve felt like I’ve become a bit presentational here, lately, and I really wanted to start writing about more everyday, journal-esque things (e.g. “today I washed my car, oh boy was that exciting!”), so this afternoon I thought of doing a weekly recap. This may be a one-off, so I didn’t bother coming up with a category header or anything, but I’ll give it a whirl .
Intro done? Good. This semester I’m taking a Children’s Lit. class, as I mentioned when talking about having to read Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland last week. We met the first week of school, but didn’t have a class meeting for 2 weeks. There was this really cute gal that I was hoping to finally get to see again in class this Monday, but she wasn’t there. Hopefully she’ll be around tomorrow night. She was good lookin’, certainly, but she had really nice posture and wrote things down in a big weekly planner (the kind you buy on your first day in high school)… I don’t know, kinda dorky, but that made her all the cuter . Forgiving her absence, it was actually a pretty female-centric week: one of my new teachers (see below) is very hot, another is adorable in the kinda way you’d have a crush on a friend’s mom, and I met with a counselor that I was half-tempted to ask out. My return to college has been pretty decent to me, so far.
Speaking of school, two other classes started this week, so my schedule’s definitely full. It’s kinda nice, though, because my weekend’s may include work, but working at the Lego Store is definitely far from hard . I worked Friday afternoon, and I saw a boy wearing a jacket with Stoneybrooke written on it. That’s the private school in San Juan that I grew up in, from 1st-8th grade, so I mentioned it to his mom. We really got to talking about it all, how much it’d grown and changed since I first went there, and when I mentioned my new teaching endeavor, she said, “Thank you.” That was kind of a strange thing to hear, but ya know… it was pretty cool, too. The mom recounted how her son actually had a male teacher for 3rd and 4th grade, and she really valued that he had a man teaching him during that time of life. I didn’t have a male teacher until junior high, so it’ll be interesting.
Saturday afternoon, Korkie came by. She started taking tap dance lessons this semester, and she bought new shoes (after borrowing mine the last few weeks), so she brought them with her and we hung out for awhile as she practiced in my garage. We went to see New Year’s Eve at the dollar theater, as was the reason for her coming over to begin with, and it was pretty much what I expected it to be… but Michelle Pfieffer was adorable . Before KB even came over, though, we met at the San Clemente library… and I checked out some books.
Korkie’s a big fan of reading, herself, so the other week we were eating at In-N-Out after class, and I asked for some book suggestions. She mentioned a favorite of hers when she was younger, so yesterday I picked it up (along with another favorite she handed me as we browsed through the children’s section at the library), and I finished it this evening. The Westing Game was entertainingly written, though when KB asked me if I liked it, I couldn’t really say. I joked that I’m still struggling with being able to enjoy reading, so I probably shouldn’t say anything . Later tonight, though, I had an embarrassingly astonishing thought (while having a conversation with myself on the subject) – I don’t really enjoy MOST forms of art.
I blew my own mind.
For so long I’ve struggled with not being about to appreciate most art (painting) or that I don’t like books, but the comparison has always been to movies, and tonight I realized – I don’t like most movies, either. I think Citizen Kane is boring, I tend to not really like Spielberg, and I’m one of the few folks who didn’t like the most recent Star Trek. It’s cool.. my tastes are my own, but I realized that I’ve never tried showing the same generosity to books or paintings. Most of the frustration I’ve had with my lack of appreciation/understanding of these things over the years has mainly been because I just don’t like something that so many others do. I love Norman Rockwell and Dr. Seuss, but there are going to be huge amounts of works in both of these fellas’ respective fields that I don’t love. It’s a numbers game . How many hundreds of hundreds of movies have I viewed in my lifetime compared to how many books? I think it’s a fascinating realization – one that’s really going to help open me up on this new endeavor. I’m NOT going to like most of the books I read, so I’ll just have to keep going until I maybe find something I love. Not every movie can be The Dark Knight, so why should I expect books to be a different situation? Granted, it takes a lot longer to read a book than to watch a movie, so wasting time on one I don’t like is a bit harder to take… but hopefully I can find something great soon . I just laughed and smiled at myself in the mirror (I was washing my hands in the downstairs bathroom) when this idea struck me… so simple, but so valuable.
So, how as your week?
