Winter Wanderings

I'm having trouble with this whole keeping up writing thing...

School's going well enough this quarter. I'm taking five courses this term. So far, so good, honestly. But Keeper's helping a ton with it too. He's been helping me study whenever he can, and he helps with translating my mind's ways of thinking into legible sentences from time to time, which is incredibly helpful. He's been a real help to me in all sorts of ways lately.

I've got a couple interesting classes, and a few rather....blah...classes. Ethics (business ethics for engineers and management) is turning out to be pretty awesome, if for no other reason than that the professor is a pretty darn cool guy. Have you ever met someone briefly and just thought "wow, I'd love to get to know this person and be friends with them"? This man is one of those people. He describes himself as a "60's kind of guy", and his train of thought is completely derailed minute after minute. I love to watch and listen to his thought-trains. He seems to have a very familiar way of thinking about things... He has a connection to animals, but is not exactly an animal-rights activist. He gets very deeply saddened when he hears about people being mistreated, or disrespected.  He seems to want to see the world, but knows that he has limits. All I can think as I sit in his class is that I want to know his mind. He's a fascinating character to me. And he and Keeper have known each other for some time now, which only seems to have made this character all that more interesting. Keeper really likes and respects this man, and this man seems to really actually care about and respect Keeper as well. Knowing some of the people that Keeper has had as 'authoritative' figures throughout his life, I've got this feeling of happiness in knowing that this is one of the guys that Keeper looks up to in his life. I rather hope we can all go out for drinks or something some time (Keeper, GB and me), as I can't help but want to know this man for who he is and what he represents and what he believes and how he thinks.... not to mention to see how he and Keeper interact and influence each other.

Organizational Psychology sounds a lot more fun than it is. And Organizational Communication isn't much better. They both just seem to be complete common sense, but it seems, at least from how these courses are being taught, that the information being given to us is anything but common knowledge. Which is rather....embarrassing?...saddening?.....frustrating?

Group Discussion is turning out to be almost a complete waste of time. The professor has given us the task of creating the course itself. We've split into five or six different groups, in which we're currently supposed to come up with the course's content, activities, schedule, policies, and knowledge-assessment aspects of the course. Instead of each group coming up with an entire course (going week by week and creating each aspect of the course), each group is responsible for one aspect of the course. I'm on the activities team, and it's utter stupidity. We're already three weeks in, and we only just got the "course content" from the content group, so we can find activities that coincide with the content. And now that we have the content, what exactly is the content group supposed to do for the rest of the quarter? This course is a complete waste of time.

My last class is Advanced Web Design. This is the second of three courses that I need to take in order to become Web Design Certified. This is the second good class that I have, even though it's only once a week on Mondays from 7pm to 10pm. This class is basically just compounding on stuff I learned last year about web design, and I really actually enjoy it. I'm hoping to further my knowledge in web design and perhaps utilize my skills in web design in my future employment.

Speaking of employment... Still working my internship with the company out in Waukesha. Not a ton of hours, but working from home, which works out relatively well, especially with my five classes, on top of my student job at the museum.  My student job is working out pretty nicely. My boss says if I don't get an internship next summer, she wants to bring me up to the Events Assistant position (which is a higher pay, and more hours). I'm pretty stoked about that, but I know it's not a forever kind of job (which, frankly, I'm happy about, as I do NOT want to be on a college campus forever).

In home news, Keeper and I and our six cats are doing pretty well. We have the krizmaz tree up, and my krizmaz lights are everywhere. It's nice to live with someone who doesn't mind my fascination with lights... :) We also have been increasing our book collection! We're currently at just over 330 books in our personal collection. We have 8 bookshelves throughout the house, 6 of which are used for books. Two of our bookshelves are being used as part of our entertainment system, holding our media and game collection. We've got over 50 board/card games, and plenty of video games and movies and TV shows and almost every type of media you can think of. But the books are my favorite. We've made almost weekly trips to Half-price Books for the past two months or so... Because I've found the wonder of the Clearance section! Wonderful books between $1-3! How can you go wrong with that?

I've become such a biblionist! AND I LOVE IT. :)

Anyway, that's all I have for now, I think... More when I can.

October Oddities

The beginning of this month was quite a rush! But after that first week and a half, things have certainly settled down a bit...

Not that I'm complaining, of course!

It's been a pretty fantastic year so far, and I think it's just going to get better. Keeper and I are doing wonderfully. And our six cats are crazy as ever!

We've been slowly selling furniture and items from our house, and making room for newer furniture and things.

The cats have been doing pretty well as well. We received a Kitty City tower piece from one of our friends, and the cats simply LOVE it! We thought it was pretty darn cool, too, so we went out and bought the "Sleepy Corner" and the "Hideaway" to add to the tower. We're keeping our eyes peeled for the "Climbing Hill" and the "Cozy Bed" yet, though! Jazzpurr especially loves being Queen of the Kitty City domain. :)

Halloween is coming up, and Keeper and I don't really have plans as of yet. I think we're probably just going to ignore it for the most part this year. Where we live, kids don't really come door-to-door, so even if we bought (more) candy, we'd just have to eat it all ourselves (UGH, NO! CANDY!!! OH NOEZ! etc. etc.)...

I have to write a blog post for one of my classes soon. I'm supposed to write a blog post on my position on an issue related to Mass Communication. I'm not sure if I want to write it on this blog, or make a new blog to take down after the quarter.

I have a fair bit of writing to do in these last two weeks of the quarter. Blergh. I like writing, but not on some of the subjects I'm being required to write on. Two more weeks. I just have to keep reminding myself. Two more weeks, and this quarter will be over.

I think that's about enough rambling for me today.... On to those writing assignments!

Mindless

Holy crap, my mind is all over the place these days!

And I know I haven't blogged on here in a while. I apologize! I've been rather busy, and haven't really felt like writing blogs (especially with all of the papers I've had to write for school)..

Where to begin.

Spring break just ended. Keeper and E. and I took a few days off and went to Madison. It was really fun to get away, and even share a childhood memory with my two favorite people in the world. :)

The second half of Spring Break was spent working. I worked a 10 hour day on Saturday, after a pretty poor night's sleep. But, on the brighter side, I also got to see my first Roller Derby bout! Keeper's parents came into town (to celebrate Keeper's mom's birthday), and took Keeper and I to the Brew City Bruisers' semi-finals at the U.S. Cellular Arena.  Considering my sister also participates in Roller Derby, it was cool to see the kinds of stuff she's been doing, even though I didn't get to see her play (she's in Minnesota).

Yesterday was back to classes, and that was... well.... Hell, to put it lightly. Work was not bad, but I spent the entire time writing (yet another) a paper. the subject of this paper wasn't so bad, as it was on my best friend, Twin. This paper was for my Creative Thinking class, and I got to write a 3-5 page Creative Profile on Twin.  After work, I had my Creative Thinking class, and then after that, I had my Microeconomics class. I hate that class.

I should elaborate.

I love the subject. I find economics to be quite interesting. But my professor is a JERK. With a capital J. Every class, he insists on slipping in at least one bashing comment on President Obama. On top of that, this guy has us read the text book (the text book which I actually understand), but then teaches us his own idea of what microeconomics is. He calls on students to answer his questions, but we (the students) rarely have the right answer and when we answer wrong, instead of actually teaching us, he corrects us and moves on. I'm failing to learn anything from him. All he's been able to do is fluster me. It's incredibly discouraging to be spending so much money to not learn a damn thing. And it's incredibly, incredibly frustrating to know that I'm spending so much time and money to not be learning what I should be learning, and getting punished for it in my GPA, which will affect my future job prospects. GAH! (also, I should mention that there are two professors at MSOE who teach this course, and they're both incredibly difficult.)

So. What am I doing to help myself? I'll tell you. I'm trying to continue the course. BUT, in an effort to keep an F from going on my transcripts, I'm looking at possibly taking the same course, online, at MATC over this summer. If I can swing it, I'm hoping to take the MATC course and not have to take it ever again here at MSOE. Because here, it just blows.

In other news, I've been applying for internships! I've got my first phone interview tomorrow for a part-time (school year) internship that would change into a full-time internship over the summer. I'm pretty stoked! This interview is with a company called RedPrairie, which is located out in Waukesha. I've also applied at a place called Zywave, and I'm working on applying at FIS Global.  I'm pretty hopeful for these job prospects.

I think things are looking up. Keeper is working full-time now, E. is looking at getting a freelance writing gig (last I heard), and I'm hopefully getting something full-time soon also!  Our cats are all doing really good, and it's spring time!

Time to go outside and do something fun!