All We Need is a Little Patience

I don't blog with nearly the frequency that I used to, but I think that is because now I spend more of my time living my life and not so much time sitting around waiting for things to change. There are still plenty of things I'm waiting for, like my divorce decree and my cut of the house, but really those are minor things in the day to day of living.
This summer has already had so many opportunities for my wonderful boyfriend, my spectacular girl and me to spend time together doing all kinds of fun things like hike, go to the King Arthur Festival, listen and sing along to sea shanties (yes, really), watch movies, hack limbs, swim at the pond, play with the dog, eat ice cream, go to country stores and just hang out and enjoy each other's company. It took a long time for this to happen and I think that lets me appreciate it all the more. At the risk of being really goopy, I think so much has happened and so many things have changed in me over these past few years that I've become able to stop looking at my life as a series of obstacles and impediments and rather than just feeling guilty about sometimes having the need to receive, I can see how much I have to share and to give too.

Go Ahead and Bow Down, if you feel like it

I think this is better than what I got the last time I tried something like this.

You scored as III - The Empress. The Empress is a maternal symbol. She is the mother figure who loves, nurtures and protects. She will protect you, she will always be there when you are in trouble. When you fall over and graze your knee, the Empress will kiss it better. Yet she is not a weak figure. Her compassion is strength. If her children are threatened she will stop at nothing to protect them. If well aspected in a Tarot spread, the Empress can symbolise security, protection and unconditional love. If badly aspected it can represent over-protectiveness, fear of risk taking and refusal to face the real world. III - The Empress 94% XIII: Death 81% I - Magician 75% VIII - Strength 69% VI: The Lovers 69% XIX: The Sun 69% II - The High Priestess 63% IV - The Emperor 63% X - Wheel of Fortune 56% XVI: The Tower 56% 0 - The Fool 56% XI: Justice 50% XV: The Devil 31% Which Major Arcana Tarot Card Are You? created with QuizFarm.com

Rant

WTF? It's 1 am and I just finished taking my criminal law midterm exam online. I'm glad there's less than a month left until I finish this whole program because I feel like my head's going to explode after being asked to explain why we allow alcohol to be sold and consumed but not "narcotics" like opiates, cocaine and marijuana. Pot is not a narcotic. It's a plant. Stop lumping it in with crack and oxycontin. And god please stop those people in the class whose whole point of debate on the issue is that it's bad because it's illegal and therefore it is bad. These are the same folks who argue that it's ok for the governmnet to wiretap our phone calls if they say they need to because if they say they need to, then they must be justified. Sheep. baaah baaah.
I hate people sometimes. I really hate stupid people with no capacity for analytical thought. I hate staying up until 1 to write an exam I don't even care about. (and yet I do care because little miss super student inside me wants to maintain the cumulative 3.67 GPA I've got now that no one in the world will ever ever see or care about other than me.)
I hate how arrogant I get about school. I knew there was a reason why I said no more after I finished my masters. Why didn't I listen?
Three more weeks and I'm done. Then I have to move off my ass and go out and sell my newly certified skills. Joy.

So Solly!

I'm usually not so much of a collecting-type geek, but this 1963 Waddingtons version of the classic board game Sorry! looks really friggin awesome. It's my favorite passive-aggressive board game, in the first place. And look at that little dude bowing! And there are cherry blossoms and bonsai trees and sort of Chinese looking mountains. It's so 1960s retro-Anglo-Asian. I dig it.

Of course this whole game lust has been spurred by the fact that I bought a new version of Sorry! today at Walmart since my last one is still at the ex's place and not worth the hassle it would take to get it back. They've designed the latest version to look all space-age and astral. A space-robot motif, I guess you could say. I don't like it. I am disproportionately disappointed that the design has strayed so far from the classic, simple lined version I remember playing back in the 70s. I don't want space age Sorry!, I want the more normal one. Except now I want the retro-Anglo-Asian version even more.

Happy Anniversary!

Happy anniversary to Gary Sredzienski and the Polka Party on WUNH celebrating their 19th anniversary! It's the coolest show around, bar none. If you're in the Seacoast NH area tune your radio dial to 91.3 FM between 9 am and 11 am on Saturday morning to get in on the fun. If the airwaves won't reach you, go to WUNH and listen to it live online or download previous shows.

Hello Estonia!

I love how weird and random the internet can be. I was just looking at visitor stats and see that someone in Estonia googled something in some language that may or may not be Estonian that got them to click on a link to a picture of a bag I made two and a half years ago. Of course they might have been searching for something like "ugly handmade bag", but even still, it just seems kind of cool.

Rant

Five weeks to go to finish the damn paralegal certificate course. I'm getting kinda tired of this online study thing. I have learned a lot along the way (which was the whole point) but when they make me take a class on the basics of using MS Office during the last of the six terms, I wonder what they hell the point is in that. Especially since I had to submit 17 separate Word documents showing I know how to cut and paste, use find and replace and use the thesaurus for the first week's assignment.
I've been using Word or some form of word processor since 1987 for god's sake! Hell, I even used to teach students how to use the damn software as part of my job when I taught English in Japan. At least I can jump straight to the weekly assignments and not worry about wasting time doing the assigned reading in the fifteen-pound textbook that cost $70.
Oh, and let's not forget the sections where the book asks us to go out and plagiarize web articles and call them summaries without asking for any form of citation. Sorry, but as a former English teacher that is a total pet peeve of mine. You don't just go out and gather various paragraphs from the web, sequence them yourself and claim it's your own work. That's cheating. And it's exactly what the book asks us to do. I added citations anyway. I mean, how hard is it to google up one of those citation-generating websites now?
The $800 or so dollars of student loan debt I'm generating on this course is starting to piss me off. The only saving grace may be the two weeks we spend on Excel because I suck at using Excel and I do need to use it for one of my bookkeeping gigs.

Hontoe Moods Cashey!

Gee, maybe I should go really old-school and teach from this text in the fall. It's called "Exercises in the Yokohma Dialect" and was first published in 1897.
Piggy? what's that about?

Wicked Awesome Weekend

Well, that was such a great weekend that it lasted until Wednesday morning!
On Saturday me, my girl and my awesome boyfriend went and flew pirate kites at Wagon Hill. There was a nice steady breeze blowing up on the hill and the kites really took off. We brought the dog with us and he had a blast too. After we dropped the panting pup off at home we went to Calef's in Barrington, stopped at the Dairy Bar in Durham and then a little later on went to Hot Dog Heaven in South Berwick. (yeah, there goes the Weight Watchers...)
On Sunday afternoon my dad and step mom had the family over for a barbecue, which was actually Weight Watcher friendly since I'm back on WW with Dad. (and driving those who deal with me on a daily basis crazy because of it, but I'll save that for another post.)
On Monday the three of us went hiking near Squam Lake on Mounts Morgan and Percival. It was my girl's first ever hike and she loved it. I was so proud of her. We're definitely doing more of that. I even went down through the cave and ladders on Mt Morgan. It was awesome.
In the evening we hooked up with my sister and her family and went to Portsmouth for the fireworks. That was ok even though I was tired and could hardly walk because my left knee was all locked up. It seemed like the same show as last year and the traffic to get out of town was truly sucky. But I sure slept good that night.
On Tuesday me and the girl hung out at home and relaxed for most of the day and then wonderful boyfriend came over later and we all went to my sis's house for a barbecue and to watch the Dover fireworks from her driveway. Mom came and joined us, which was great since I hadn't seen her in a little while. The food was awesome, as it always is when my bro-n-law is running the kitchen and the grill. The fireworks were really nice too. I think Dover shoots off better fireworks than Portsmouth.
Today it was back to the regular routine and to work, Even that was ok after such a great weekend.