Winter is here

Advent is underway. The first snow dusty the ground, though hardly any stuck. I made snickerdoodles for my last day of Sociology class. Sparky’s has egg nog ice cream – it is perfect. We put up a wreath and a little fake tree and lighted garland in our townhouse.

We tried to visit the Magic Tree this weekend. The guy who does it calls himself Will Treelighter and is pretty wacky, but it always looks amazing so everyone goes. We went too late at night so the lights were turned off on the tree. Instead, we bought chips and salsa and watched disc 2 of The Fellowship of the Ring (we watched disc 1 before leaving).

The Magic Tree when I visited it in 2007

Once the pesky little matter of finals get out of the way, I have my last Christmas break to look forward to. It should be a good one. Michael and I are headed to Colorado for the LVR staff reunion and hopefully some other adventures.

I love and hate winter. I hate the cold and the dismal gray that depresses me. But I love the first snow, and how everything looks encased in ice. I hate the commercialized Christmas and how materialistic everyone is. But I love the real excitement of the holiday and everyone getting together. I love the church hymns and the Christmas lights and egg nog. Happy winter!

Klondike Sunset/Sunrise Photos

Sunset over the lake at Klondike Park

Hints of sunrise over the Mississippi

The sun lifts itself over the hills beyond the Mississippi

The lake is especially reflective in the soft, early morning light

Thanksgiving Break

I have so much I should be doing right now, but I’m tired of this semester. Research papers constitute the only type of writing I get to do this semester. I hate research papers. I used to think it was because they’re so much work and I’m lazy, but it’s really because they’re all about regurgitating someone else’s information, and that bores me. I would love to be writing journalism or fiction or even good essays. Something where I get to think and put my own creative imprint on it.

So while I procrastinate on my boring homework, I’ll write about my Thanksgiving break. Meredith and I stayed in Columbia for the Iowa State game on Saturday. Michael came on Friday and I managed to get him a cheap ticket. On Sunday night, Michael and I went camping at Klondike Park in Defiance. He’s in a photography class and wanted to get pictures of the sunset and sunrise at the park. I’m always up for photography and camping, so after a little whining about how cold it was gonna be, I gladly went along.

As far as camping goes, it was pretty lame. We were the only ones there, but the campsite was lacking in both rustic-ness and amenities. If it’s rustic, there’s no need for amenities. But if we’re right next to a parking lot with a streetlight, with picnic tables and fire ring, we might as well get a bathroom too. It’s part of the adventure to have no bathroom in the wilderness, but going on the ground here was just kind of annoying. The weather was nicer than I expected though, and we had fun.

Cd release party/benefit concert

It’s All About the Benjamins is a great band out of St. Louis (but I consider them local). They’ve frequently played at the Artisan (now The Underground Cafe) in Columbia.

Tonight they are having a cd release party for their first album, Love is Blind. The event is at the Blue Fugue, and will also be a “Rock for Research” benefit concert. Proceeds go to the Anne Hopkins Foundation to support research about Spinal Muscular Dystrophy.

Great band. Great cause. Starts at 7 p.m. Be there!

Strawberry Fields Forever

“Let me take you down ’cause I’m going to Strawberry Fields. Nothing is real, and nothing to get hung about. Strawberry Fields forever. Living is easy with eyes closed, misunderstanding all you see. It’s getting hard to be someone, but it all works out. It doesn’t matter much to me.” -The Beatles, Strawberry Fields Forever

The setting sounds lovely and surreal. But it’s not about fields of strawberries, it’s about a Salvation Army orphanage that John Lennon grew up near in Liverpool. He uses the nostalgic setting to search for himself. It’s getting hard to be someone. But whatever. I don’t care. I know how he felt. I have no idea how to “be someone,” or if that’s even what I should be striving for.

Do I have to get an awesome job to be someone? I don’t know if I will get a job at all. I should be making a difference in the world. Am I? I’m no Mother Teresa, but I think I’ve helped people. I hope people I encounter benefit from knowing me. I try to love people and understand them, and to care about them even if I can’t understand them.

I’m lonely. Why? I have a great family, a wonderful boyfriend, a ton of friends. I do stuff. A glance at my thousands of nature photos from hiking and backpacking trips proves I have a pretty sweet life. But I’m still lonely. Probably just the weather and end-of-semester blahs. I wish I weren’t so flighty. Little things get me down. I need to be more deeply rooted, so nothing could shake me. Sometimes I feel like I’m living with my eyes closed, trying to just make life as easy as possible, ignoring a lot of potential.

This blog is worthless. Let me take you down, ’cause I’m going to Strawberry Fields. Nothing is real.

Esquire Assignment

I’m supposed to be planning an issue of Esquire magazine for my mag editing class. I must pick a topic for the issue, then write a table of contents description of each story that will go in the issue, complete with bylines. Trouble is, I struggle to connect with Esquire’s readers. Some demographics of Esquire readers:

• * 67.4% of readers are men.
• * Median age is 46.
• * Median Household income is $117,251.
• * 23.8% hold top management jobs.

They are also highly educated, attend museums and live performances, buy their wine by the case and fly to foreign locations more than three times a year. I can’t relate to most of those things. Most importantly, I’m a chick. I’m less girly than a lot of girls, but I certainly don’t think like a middle-aged rich man. Hmm. What do they like? Politics? Booze? Half-naked women? I’m not sure. I want a catchy theme that can cover a lot of ground while being smart and edgy.

I should have blogged this sooner so I could ask for ideas. The assignment is due tomorrow morning. I need to channel my inner-Esquire. My friends have offered me these topic suggestions: hot chicks, fast cars, beer, music, bourbon, football, boobs, rocks. Hmm.

Good editors know how to think like other people. They know how to think like their readers. But I would never edit Esquire. My readers would have something in common with me. Bah. Back to the drawing board.

 

Nice weather makes me happy

My blogs have been mopey again. They have a tendency to do that. It’s not a fair reflection on me. When I’m in a good mood, I go out and do stuff. When I’m in a bad mood, I sit at a computer and write. Naturally, the bad moods are dominant in my writing. I’ll try to throw a little sunshine your way.

God realized that he gave us an absolutely miserable October. He decided to make up for it by blessing us with a truly lovely first week of November. I hope he keeps it up with the nice weather. I’m pretty sure I have Seasonal Affective Disorder (cleverly acronymed SAD). Only instead of seasonal, mine is more up and down. I have Weather Affective Disorder, which I just made up. When the weather is bad, I am unhappy even if things are going well for me. When the weather is nice, I’m downright giddy, even if things are otherwise going poorly. I should move to Hawaii and live my days in bliss. Hawaii has everything: mountains, ocean, forests and warm weather. It rains for five minutes every day, but the sun keeps shining. There are lots of rainbows. Trust me, I’ve been there. I’d kill myself within a month in Seattle. All that rain. Just dreary. Thank God Missouri has everything. It keeps you on your toes. The bad days remind you to appreciate the good ones.

I haven’t talked about anything but the weather so far. This is why I don’t write when I’m happy. I have other things I could be doing. I’m going outside now for a bike ride, or perhaps to Capen for a hike. Enough of this computer screen.

Dear Google,

There’s no denying that my generation has developed an unprecedented dependency on the internet. But just how far does that dependency go? Can Google give us everything we need?

WordPress Dashboard shows me what people typed into their searches that brought up my blog. One of the recent searches was “im a student what should i do if”…

I’m sure there was more, but I guess WordPress has a limit to how many words of a search it will show me. The ambiguity intrigues me. I very much want to finish the sentence. I see this search as a desperate cry to the internet to answer some burning question, seek some sage advice. Dear Google, help! I don’t know where else to turn. Let’s brainstorm.

I’m a student. What should I do if…

• I have swine flu
• I don’t know what I want out of life
• I’m failing
• I’m pregnant
• I want to ask him/her out
• There’s a rabid squirrel in my room

OK, so those are just a few possibilities. What should this person do? We know it’s a student. We know the student doesn’t know what to do. We know they turned to the internet for answers and we know that their search yielded my blog as a result.

I have this sinking feeling that I didn’t help the searching student. How could I? Can the internet really do for us what we’re now turning to it for? I’m sure I’m blowing this out of proportion, but the wording of it just made it feel like the beginning of a Dear Abby letter to me. Maybe this is the new technological progression of the Dear Abby column. What does it mean? We can’t go to our own friends and family for advice. We feel isolated and alone. We want someone to talk to, but who can we trust, if not those closest to us? At least Abby had a real person, albeit a stranger, writing back to us on the other end. What does the internet give us? Automatically generated electronic results from a multitude of known and unknown sources. Cold, impersonal, computerized suggestions that may or may not apply to our question.

I know I’m not the first to say this, but I do believe that the more technologically “connected” we become, the more disconnected we become in our personal lives outside the computer screen. Why call when you could text? Why text when you could Facebook? Why ask a real person when you could get a million more answers from a search engine? I hope we never lose our personal connections– it would be a steep, steep price to pay for progress.

Days go by

“Days go by, I can feel them flying like a hand out the window in the wind. The cars go by, yeah it’s all we’ve been given so you’d better start living right now… We talk about tomorrow, then it slips away.”  -Keith Urban, Days Go By

Today I registered for the final semester of my senior year of college. I might not ever register for classes again. I’ve been in school since I was 3 years old. Finishing college might be a big deal. I’m only 3 classes away from fulfilling all my requirements, so I get to pick a totally random fourth class just for the sake of maintaining my full-time status and keeping my scholarships. I’m looking at a scuba class, but it’s really too expensive.

The passage of time has forced me into decision-making, something I generally put off as long as humanly possible. I finally decided last  week to apply for Advanced Writing as my primary capstone choice and for Magazine Staff as my secondary choice. I got my first choice, so that means I’m a writer and not an editor. I rode the fence between the two for at least a year. Editing seemed like less legwork. I’m decent at it, perhaps even good. But at the end of the day, I couldn’t get past the thought that I would truly miss writing if I wasn’t doing it, despite all the stress and work of reporting. It may be the first time in a very long time that I chose the path that seemed more difficult. I feel pretty good about it. More work and less money– I must be pursuing my passion.

That being said, I still have no idea what I want to do when I graduate in seven months.

Pandora Radio

Pandora online radio is totally brilliant. If you spend time on the internet when you can be listening to music and you’re not using Pandora, check it out right now. It’s like iTunes Genius except you don’t have to own any of the music. You create your own stations by selecting either a song or an artist. For example, I have a Beatles-inspired station and an “Accidentally in Love” (Counting Crows) inspired station. Then Pandora plays songs that have a similar style to your selection. You can pause a song or skip a song.

You can give each song a thumbs-up or thumbs-down. It will never play something you’ve given the thumbs-down to. The site uses your approvals and rejections to further hone in on exactly what you’re looking for. To further customize, you can add variety by selecting secondary artists or songs for each station. Pandora remembers you every time you come back and you can save and edit as many stations as your little heart desires.

The website will give you all kinds of information about the bands and songs you’re listening to.