Just a few things going on

Since I last wrote:

- Lots of studying
- All final exams went extremely well!
- Polo Club
- Sweet and sour mix
- Online shopping
- Tim's 97% on the PCATS
- Christmas lights and tree are up - Puppy's new haircut
- Salsa dancing
- Magic bullet (and no, this isn't a sex toy, it's a blender)
- Flight Sim X Deluxe for D's
- Blockbuster Total Access 2 week free trial
- Sitcoms up the wazoo
- Self-refilling container of "Kapusta"
- Sushi with the group
- Trying out driving the Titan- Shopping with Megan

The handshake-or-hug dilemma

I find it funny when I meet someone new and pause when I have to decide between a handshake or hug. Old friends? Family of close friends? Close friends of your best friends? Acquaintances you've known for awhile? Family friends you see once a year?

I went to a Red Wings game Saturday night with Jason, Dusan, and Stephanie (not Gabe's Stephanie, a different one). Turns out, this Stephanie and I went to high school together and have seen each other dozens of times but never formally met. When I went to give her a handshake and a "nice to meet you", she ignored my handshake and gave me a hug, and I laughed.

Oh and, I realized I hit up almost everything sports-wise this year: Red Wings, Michigan football, Pistons games, and a Tigers game. Cool huh?

Our philosophy class was discussing morality and Immanuel Kant's Ethics of Duty, and how a moral action takes place in the human heart (according to the Ethics of Duty). My professor said something interesting the other day that really hit me. This is kind of how he explained it to us:

"A white priest was taken by the KKK years ago. They tied him to a pole and beat him up and told him to bow to them and admit he was wrong in what he believed. They tortured him for hours and eventually broke his jaw too. Finally, he submitted and bowed his head and they let him go. Fast forwarding, when I was still a student years ago, this man was my professor. He told our class the story of what happened. I asked him why he submitted, and he looked at me and said, 'Sometimes, you have to sacrifice your beliefs.' You see, humans are not strong. That is why Jesus Christ is above human. He did something we can not: he sacrificed himself for his beliefs."

It may be the same thing everyone from church has been telling me for years, but for some reason, it just made more sense when he said it this way. Maybe because we established the "how" and "why" of striving for morality before he even brought this up.

Oh yeah and a follow up on my last entry...
I felt bad for being impulsively mad at the one girl who had a problem with the paper I wrote, so I edited more to-be verbs and emailed it back as an "olive branch" gesture to show her it was reasonable for her to have these concerns (I knew my paper wasn't perfect). But then the other two group members called me to rant about the to-be verb/cliche frustration the other girl had emailed us about and I was back to being irritated with the whole situation.

She actually emailed the professor about to-be verbs, cliches, and not having enough transitions (she said she felt uncomfortable turning in a paper that didn't have enough transitions between paragraphs). Keep in mind this is a Management Information Systems class. I'm pretty sure the professor won't be more worried about to-be verbs than what we've actually written. At any rate, here's what he wrote back:

"These are good questions. The verb "to be" is a perfectly good verb, usable when action verbs do not suggest themselves. This verb often signals the use of the passive voice -- a voice to be used sparingly. Transitions should be used to the extent the reader needs them -- frequently, but not mechanically. Cliches should be used sparingly, since this writing is formal writing."

The whole ordeal was kind of unnecessary but I tried to be polite about it. At least it's all done and over with!

I am is were was are be being been

I was really quite annoyed when I sent out a 5 page paper that I'd worked hard on to the rest of my MIS group members to edit, and this one girl sent back an email exclaiming how terrible it was (she said there were too many cliches and to-be verbs).

My thing is, in high school, to-be verbs matter because it's not good to get used to writing with them. They eliminate the possibility of a more detailed sentence and just sound bad. I mean I would know - I'm not bragging but I was in the WC and I've seen the abuse a monstrosity of to-be verbs does to a paper, but do you ever read a book that has zero to-be verbs?

I couldn't write the paper in first person because it is about a company and the company's use of Excel and Access... and well, we're not the company.

I dunno I guess I just wanted to get the ideas right on paper first and then go back and edit grammer and to-be verbs with the group, and it made me uncomfortable that she was so unhappy with it. I've never been able to spit out sentences that are both "to-be-less" and make sense.

As for the cliches, that might have been a mistake on my part because I didn't realize I was writing those.

On a seperate note...

I've been filling in at the reception desk at work because Aurora up and married James... yes, if you know who I'm talking about, you know why I laugh (James is about half her age and half her size) Anyway, Claude volunteered me, which works out because I have an excuse to drop everything and study while I'm up here. Or write in my blog when I need a break - haha.

Funny thing that happened today, this guest came in for an employee here. I paged him and called the employee to come get his client, but I couldn't get ahold of him. So this poor client is like "well give me his cell number and I'll leave him a message to let him know I was here." So here's the client standing on the right side of me on the phone, and out of the corner of my eye, I see the employee step outside of a conference room on my far left. It took me a minute before I realized it and had to rudely interrupt and tell them they were talking to the person on the opposite side of the room. It was funny because I would hear one guy talking and the other guy replying so I started laughing too. Ha, maybe you had to be there.

This is kind of cool - a picture of a memorial for former Michigan Football coach Bo Schembechler made it to Yahoo's Week-In-Photos.

Disappointing speculation

Could a broken heart be a heart that wasn't complete to begin with (and can't seem to pull itself together)?

My guh sent me this - hahaha

"You'll shoot your eye out!"

Okay not really, but all this stuff about my eyes made me think about that movie... I think it's called A Christmas Story? Where the kid wants to get a little bebe gun or something and everyone tells him it'll be too dangerous because he'll "shoot his eye out".

Anyway, I'm wearing my glasses out in public for the first time in a long time. I think I did once over the summer, just because, but other than that, I haven't worn them outside for maybe a couple years.

I mean, I did get glasses when I was in 2nd grade, so I had my fair share of wearing them. Now, my eyes are irritated and occasionally feel a burning type of itch (I bet your eyes are watering just thinking about it). Of course my contacts are just making it worse, so I reluctantly wore my huge, asian, thick-rimmed glasses out today. They keep falling off my face and every time I go inside from outside, they get all fogged up.

My dad had surgery for cataracts a few years before the divorce. I guess he just had a blind spot that he couldn't see out of, some kind of opaque part of his eye's lens. I'm not really sure what the doctors actually had to do to get rid of it. I hope it's not genetic and this has nothing to do with cataracts. I'm kind of paranoid since my eyes are so bad.