(And I probably mis-spelled both of those. Ha!)
I should probably be really offended by this, but I'm not. I think it's hillarious. This probably means that I am going to Hell. (Although, if I am going to Hell, I am probably going for better reasons than this.) Maybe I can be rescued by a "noodly appendage."
This website does bring up an interesting debate, however: The age old question of "Which is scientifically more accurate: Evolution or Creationism (currently getting a makeover as "Intelligent Design"... which means Creationism).
It should be noted that this debate is similar to the arguement regarding which came first, the chicken or its embryo, but not quite as important.
Here's my thing: I believe God created the world. I don't particularly care HOW he created the world. I believe he could have used evolution and taken millions of years and finally wound up with humans. I also believe that it is possible that it simply looks that way and that God really did make everything in seven days. Carbon dating, as I understand it, assumes that carbon has always decayed at the same rate it currently decays at. It's possible that temperatures, etc., the likes of which can never be known to man, were involved when the earth was created.
The bottom line is this: I don't care. I accept both theories in their respective realms. The seven days creationism story can be a metaphor and instructive whether or not it actually took seven days-- and yes, whether or not it actually happened that way at all. Evolution could have taken place and does not neccessarily conflict with Christianity in anything other than the minor detail of "was the earth really created in seven days or not," which is something even most Christians can't agree about.
In both theories, humanity was the last thing to arrive on the planet, not the first, which should tell us something about our theories and the relative importance of them. Namely that, in either case, WE WEREN'T THERE.
That said, the current socially acceptable theory is evolution. It's not really that much more believable than Creationism (or Flying Spagetti Monsterism) in my opinion, but that's the theory everybody believes for the moment. Why wouldn't you at least want your kid to know about the theory that has shaped most scientific thought for the last 100 years or so? You can teach them Creationism yourself. Or your pastor can teach them Creationism. Whatever.
I took geology in college and don't feel any worse off for having to learn about evolution and the current popular scientific theories about how the earth and various types of rocks were formed. Then again, I've always been a firm believer that if my faith/religion is really doing what it's supposed to do, then it should stand up to the study of other beliefs/theories, etc. If it doesn't, then I don't want to believe in it anyway.
Then again, I'm probably going to Hell, so I don't know if I'd take anything I say regarding your eternal soul too seriously.
So, after all the insanity of two weeks ago, I am starting to calm down.
And when I say starting to calm down, I mean that I have pretty much been walking around in a state of euphoria.
Some of you may have heard of euphoria but never seen it in action. Basically, "euphoria" in this case means that my attitude this week has been like this:
"Oh, the room is on fire. Oh, OK, well, let's get some water and see what we can do about that. There is no water? Well, all right, spit will probably work, so why don't we just try that and see what happens."
I'm not sure what brought on this feeling, but it is probably because having my mother at my place turned out to be really fantastic and a big help to me. I didn't realize how swamped and burned out I was until I got a little TLC from the Mom Department.
So, if all of you have felt that I've been a) a little hard to rile and b) pretty much walking around like a stoner, I blame my mom. Yay, Mom!
I would like to celebrate the fact that it is still warm enough to open the windows at night while I sleep and cool enough for that to be pleasant. Yay climate!
I would like to point out that if you ever believe that everything has gone just about as rotten as it can go, wait five minutes. You will suddenly see that everything can get much, much worse.
1) Work has been a nightmare. I don't even want to discuss it.
2) Grandpa has a stomach anuerism (however the hell you spell it). This means that he has a blood vessel that is stretching. If it bursts, he will die. It could burst at any time. They don't want to do regular surgery because he'll get pneumonia (I don't know why, but he's had surgery before, and everytime he gets pneumonia, and he has almost died from it at least twice in the last five years), so they're going to try to do a more minor type of surgery. They did an angiogram in his leg (? thought that was a heart thing, but whatever?) to see if his blood vessels were "straight enough" and they might be. However, he has a bad heart valve. So, basically, we're waiting for an echocardiogram to tell us whether or not he has to have the heart valve fixed before the anuerism can be fixed. Also, it can be fairly minor surgery to fix the anuerism, but it may turn into more major surgery, which we won't know until the day of the surgery, which just happens to be scheduled for Septemeber 8th, which is when my best friend died. Peachy. (Yes, I am a wee bit superstitious. Quit judging me.)
3) My sister went back to Iowa.
4) I have been about the biggest, sappiest, lost big sister ever on the face of the earth due to the sister's return to Iowa. And when you're the big sister, you can't tell her that when she calls. You just have to pretend like you think it's the best thing ever that she's moved to the end of the earth when really, you want to get in the car and go drag her back to civilization right now, mostly because you are selfish. I know I am.
5) My mom wants to come stay with me for a week and "clean my cupboards" while my other sister does orientation. Now there's some stress relief and no mistake. To add another dimension to the parental invasion, I will have no place to hide my beer paraphanalia. To be honest, I don't even know where all my beer paraphanalia is because I like to sleep in free T-shirts.
6) The guy I like is too much of a dumb ass to realize it, and I'm too much of a chicken to tell him. However, that did not stop me from spending plenty of time talking to him on the phone this week about his latest near misses with relationships.
7) I forgot that I was invited out to a concert tonight and accidentally stood a friend up. (Sorry Dr. G. I am an assclown.)
8) I'm pretty sure I either had an oil change appointment last Saturday or I have one tomorrow. Either way, I have no idea what time. Or if I've already missed it. So I have to get up at 8 tomorrow to check.
9) I did not get to see the Dukes of Hazzard movie tonight. (Once again, quit judging me.)
10) I spilled orange juice all over my new outfit today.
11) Too many cooks will spoil the stew.
There were other things, but I'm going to quit there. I add boo to the total score of this week. Anyone else want to join me in boooing the week out of the stadium? Share in the comments. I definitely volunteer to group hate whoever deserves it.
"If I danced on my feet as I dance in my dreaming
As graceful and gleaming as Death in disguise
Oh, that would be sweet, but then would I hunger
to be ten years younger, or wedded, or wise?"
~The Last Unicorn.
*Line breaks may be incorrect.
On Thursday, I returned to the Cities after a brief "vacation" up north. I use the word vacation here, but it is not entirely accurate. It was not entirely a vacation, but it was very pleasant.
I went home, and harvest time arrived. This is not something you can plan. It simply happens when the right amounts of sunshine and rain combine over the course of a summer to allow the grain to ripen. It also depends on the rain holding off until the swaths have time to dry because we are not the kind of farmers who spray our crops with Round-Up in order to kill off the wheat and let it "dry" on the stalk. Those kind of farmers suck.
Basically, I mostly just had to cart people back and forth to the fields and help my mom with the house work because I have an unjustified reputation for being relatively inept when it comes to large machinery. I am just fine with this repuation because it means that I don't have to run the combine while Dad takes in the grain truck. Since we were really the only ones ready, he didn't have to wait in line at the elevator, so it was really only 10 to 15 minute streches anyway. I was the one who used to rake the straw while they were doing this stuff. Quit judging me.
At any rate, it was good to go home. The older I get, the more I enjoy the fields and the wheat and the smell of the straw.
I thought about this as I awoke with a great big jolt this morning to the sound of someone honking the horn at the people who live downstairs.
It's that time of year again folks: The time when I bribe myself with clothes to make myself go back to my daily tasks. I still have to put an offer on pants on the bargaining table, but so far I have settled with myself for an undisclosed amount of clothing once again.
There are definitely some orange pieces in my wardrobe this year, and I'm not sure how I feel about that, but my trendy little sister helped me shop. This is yet another sign of my elderly-ness. My sister has to tell me what's cool. I'm actually OK with this because I argue that I don't have time to keep up with fashion AND work all the time AND have a social life. But I'm not putting her on my staff. Yet. If I win lots of money or become a famous writer (ha) I will have to add her to the payroll.
If you haven't been able to reach me, I blame Cingular. Have a good one!
After reading this article in the Trib, I have decided that I too want my occupation to be "World Domination." I think that sounds like an exciting career opportunity for a young start-up like me.
Ok, peeps, the book list is short this month. This is because I did a lot of traveling, etc., in July, and did not have time to read. May my winter reading make up for my lack of summer reading.
The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse by Louise Erdrich: This book was pretty good because it was set up by Fargo, so I knew many of the places she was talking about. Also it was good because it was surprising, especially the main characters. It dealt with the relationship between the individual and faith. High quality reading, but I warn you that it's literature.
Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince by J.K. Rowling: I've already commented on this book, but here we go again. This book provides lots of back story about Voldemort's life, etc., which is good. On the other hand, I got angry about some of Rowling's choices. This does not mean that I will stop reading Rowling's books or that I'm trying to tell Rowling what to do. It just means the plot that did appear in this book made me really angry. Also, I feel like some of the character developement of everybody else was sacrificed for the sake of elaborating on Voldemort. In the end, still good because it's Harry Potter and when is it ever not good, but on the whole, not as good as the other books in the series. Worth the read, though.
The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom: This is possibly one of the saddest books I've read all year. It's all about an old man who dies. He is dissapointed with his life, and finds out that in Heaven, you meet five people who teach you how to look at your life and how to learn from what you went through so that you can be happy in Heaven. Parts of it are very moving, especially if you've ever lost someone or if you've ever felt that your life is going nowhere. I especially enjoyed the first person he meets in Heaven and that person's comments at the end of the section. I cried a great deal while reading this, but I wouldn't consider it "sappy" or "girly."
The Truth by Terry Pratchett: This is all about the advent of movable type in Ankh-Morpork. It's pretty funny. You get to see Vimes from the outside looking in, which is a bit more scarey than being inside his head if you can believe that. The story follows William DeWorde who creates the Disc's first newspaper and involves the city accusing the Patrician of stabbing his secretary. What follows is an attempt on the part of the paper to get to The Truth, whatever that might be. I enjoyed it. Not sure where it comes in the series, but somewhere after The Fifth Elephant. On the whole, a pretty good read.
Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson: This was my favorite book this month. Robert Louis Stevenson has always been a favorite of mine, and I've read a lot of stuff by him that no one has ever heard of (David Balfour and The Black Arrow are two examples). We all know the basic premise of the story, which is that Dr. Jeckyll turns into Mr. Hyde. The story is so interesting because it's told from the perspective of Dr. Jeckyll's friend and lawyer, and even though we (should) all know that Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde are the same person, the way it is told is fascinating because the narrator really believes that they are two different people and offers all kinds of theories and conjectures about the situation his good friend is in. It's fascinating. You should definitely read it.
And that's it, kids, unless I finished a volume of Sherlock Holmes that I don't know about yet. Happy reading!
I have made an important life decision after this weekend's adventures. I will never ever go to grad school in Iowa.
Why was I even in Iowa? Well, to make a long story short, my sister had to be moved there for grad school, and my parents couldn't do it alone after a couple of falls and injuries. And I had to miss a wedding because of it, and I was very sad about that, but nothing could be done.
So, I drove many many hours to Iowa City with the fam in tow to discover that I hate everything about Iowa in every possible way.
To begin with, all the stores have funny names, even though they are the same store. For instance, Yonkers there is the same as Herbergers here. Why does it need a different name? I don't know. Because it's Iowa.
The rental properties are disgusting in Iowa City because they can be. There's more students than properties, so they can afford to be gross because people have to live there. Case in point: They told my sister the apartment had been cleaned and the rug shampooed; however, all of our feet were filthy after working in there. And we had to rescrub everything. Walls, floors, everything. And I'm not talking the cursory go-over you do because you're moving into a place that you aren't familiar with, I'm talking Mr. Clean and elbow grease scrubbing because there were nasty food stains on the walls, etc.
Then, every single solitary person I met in Iowa was mean. After staying in Iowa for about 24 hours, I can see why. If I had to live in Iowa with all those other mean people, I'd be incurrably mean, too. Seriously, I almost punched the maintenance man in the throat after he told my father that he didn't know where the circuit breaker was but it was that metal box with circuits inside it probably on the wall somewhere. Jackass.
Next, I saw a person arrested for the first time ever (as far as I can remember)on Saturday night. Probably for some sort of alcohol related offense as the whole town seemed to turn into one big drunken block party after 9 PM.
Then comes possibly the strangest part of the entire trip. Sunday morning, we get to the sister's apartment, and there's a guy digging in a dumpster. As he was not college aged, I assumed he was homeless. Then, I saw that he was coming out with cans and bottles. OK, fine, strange, but still probably homeless. Then he gets into a car with a woman (still carrying the bottles) and they drive down to the next dumpster and start doing the same thing. We go upstairs and tell my sister and she says, "Oh I know, I've been watching him all morning." Then, while we're putting together furniture, another person pulls up and starts digging in the dumpster but has to leave empty handed because clearly the man already took all the cans and bottles. Then we decide to go to Target to get some cleaning supplies, etc., and there is yet another woman digging in the dumpster while her car idles who has to leave because she can't find anymore bottles and cans. Apparently there is a 5 cent deposit on bottles and cans in Iowa, and this is what people do on Sunday morning after the drunken Saturday night block party because this was going on all over as we drove through town.
Also, not only did the entire drive there and back smell like pigs, but also the entire town smelled like pigs. Now how you get a city that size smelling like pigs, I don't know, but it did.
Additionally one of the key reasons for my dragging my feet about applying to grad school there in the first place was the corn, which was also still there.
I did have to add ten to Iowa's total score because they had Dipping Dots at the mall, but Iowa was so far in the negative by this point that it didn't matter anymore.
So basically, I hate Iowa because it's weird, it smells like pigs, the people are pigs, the rental properties are maintained by pigs, and in order to feed all the pigs, you have to have lots of corn.
If you need any more reasons/proof that Iowa is weird, here you go.