What a Wonderful Way to Spend a Saturday

This is great. Here I am, chilling on the loveseat with some Chips Ahoy and a Pepsi Max. My DSi and iPod are well within reach, and I am practicing HTML. Jerome had been messing around with his little media center, but he got discouraged and quit, unfortunately. His brother, Jeremy, is painting miniatures. Probably Warhammer guys, but I'm not sure. Listening to Cage the Elephant, which is completely working for me right now. I'd like to put together another Lego project, but to be honest, I'm having a ball relearning algebra. Who knew I'd become so lame? I do this sort of thing for fun. And lemme tell ya, HTML is rocking my world. Maybe someday I'll be able to write humor again, but right now, I'm in nerd/geek mode. Anyway, if I can ever get the hang of basic HTML, I think I'll move on to JavaScript (which I did mess around with just a little this morning), and then eventually work my way up to C or C++. Not sure which C language I want to go with. I'd need to do some more research first.

Sure, I have essays to grade and stuff to read both for class and for pleasure, but my brain is craving this math/science stuff at the moment, for some reason...

Off topic: Howlin' Wolf just came on my iPod. Blues music is working for me too!

The Madness Continues...

Over the weekend, I completed two fairly crazy construction projects. Well, the construction projects themselves weren't crazy, but my doing of them was. On Saturday evening, I spent an insomniac night putting together a Lego Technic motorcycle project. Then, on Sunday evening, I spent an insomniac night putting together a Lego architecture project. Fallingwater. I think that is the largest, and, arguably, most difficult Lego architecture project. I spent a fair amount of time listening to podcasts about a variety of topics, including spiritual/philosophy, technology, and female difficulties (to put it politely).

Well, since that's over, I am considering reading up on programming again, and perhaps practicing math and science problems. I also have an electronics kit that I just don't feel like working with tonight. I also, of course, have work to do (grading and reading both). If I weren't always so tired, I would try my hand at humor writing again. I guess at least blogging keeps me in the writing mindset. Well, I'm off to do something--just not sure what.

Nerd Alert!

Continuing on with my unbridled nerdiness, I find myself this weekend lounging on the loveseat with my iPod being charged by my laptop, which is, not surprisingly, on my lap as I type this. On the coffee table, you will find Chemistry Workbook for Dummies and Algebra Workbook for Dummies because, yes, I enjoy doing math and science problems for fun in my spare time. That iPod has a paused "Stuff You Should Know" podcast loaded up on it. The topic is how taste works. Speaking of taste, there is also a bag of baked cheddar fries snacks and a Coke Zero on the coffee table, keeping me energized in a low-fat and low-calorie manner.

Also on the coffee table, you would find my DS and my ereader. Brave New World is on the ereader; platformer games are in the DS. There is a deck of Magic cards and four d20 dice, two d10s, one d12 and a counter. There are also some miniatures that we used as Magic creatures last night, but that can double as monsters in Dungeons and Dragons.

I just bought a couple of Lego kits (you can thank Josh and Chuck for this one); the other day I listened to a podcast of how Legos work. This rekindled my love for Legobricks and construction. I just got Fallingwater the other day, and a Technic kit yesterday. Wish I had the time to do all the things I want to do. As you can see, I'm finally just now getting around to blogging, which was another of the things I've been wanting to do for a while. I also have been playing very small amounts of Fallout: New Vegas, and sometimes Mega Man. And then, of course, there are always my iPod apps. Now I just need to learn to program apps. I am glad that I have so many interests, but I wish I had the discipline to pick and choose which things I do which days. And I also wish I had the patience to learn all the things that interest me.

Oh and also, to satisfy some of my nerdy cravings, I still type html codes in manually when I blog.

Too Old for a Quarter-Life Crisis; Too Young for Mid-Life...

Okay, so I'm obviously going through some kind of crisis.

If you read my last post, you would see that I've been thinking quite a bit about high school, the past, and my unrequited love for the sciences.

To make matters worse, I am now listening to a lot of podcasts. It's like I just keep trying to add to my knowledge base, things that won't exactly benefit me in my job. I have the most peculiar hobbies, I suppose. But then, I'm still doing the gaming thing, except... as a gamer, I am reverting to an even younger age, as I seem to have acquired quite a taste again for... Mega Man!

Yes, Mega Man. Anybody remember that game? I just bought the app for my iPod and Mega Man 9 on Xbox Live Arcade.

I'm all about the platformers, for some reason. It's been a while since I was into those type. I'm usually a huge FPS fan, and, don't get me wrong, I still am, but there was something last year that made me want a Nintendo DS, and then to get some Mario games and Kirby. Then, just a couple days ago I remembered Mega Man.

I called my grandmother last night, who is an old-school gamer who can't stand violence but loves those old games she used to play on probably a 286 or 386. It was funny because I reminded her of Mega Man (which, by the way, she introduced me to), and she mentioned a couple of games I had completely forgotten about: Freddy's Rescue Roundup, and Oil's Well.

To make a long story short, I think we're going to get those for her. Maybe next time I'm at her place I can relive a part of my past that has less regret tied to it. In the meantime, I'm going to go make a list of all the places I want to visit and all the skills I want to learn and knowledge I want to gain. And I'm gonna go listen to those podcasts for a head start.

Reminiscing and Regretting

Hmm, I just haven't been feeling as inspired lately. I'm trying to force myself to write, though, so that I don't lose my touch. These days, most of my time is taken up with grown-up stuff: teaching my six classes (and prepping for them and grading papers from them), doing other work-related things, and keeping up with my part of the household-related stuff. I just don't have much to write about, but as I ran across some old stuff I'd written about myself a couple years ago, I figured I should document myself these days so that in a couple more years, I'll remember what I was like at this point in my life.

Well, I went through a brief resurgence in my appreciation of the hard-rock/metal genre, but now I'm turning more into my high school self. Yeah, that's a good way to put it. I feel like the high school me.

Now I'm not sure how good this is, reverting to my 17-year-old self. Life was pretty rough for me 10 years ago. I was making that life-changing decision to change from a chemical engineering career path to one of English education. I was seeing my former dreams shatter in front of my eyes with the revelation that, no matter how much I loved engineering, chemisty, physics, and various maths, I just was not good enough to build a life around it. Also, this was about the time that I was suffering severe panic attacks that impaired my performance at school, further reinforcing my negative self-image. I was depressed because I didn't feel like I belonged in my school and no boys were interested in me. You know, your typical teenage angst.

Anyway, I'm not feeling so much like that, per se, but I am finding myself fascinated by the sciences again. And another similarity to high school is that my musical tastes are changing quite frequently. And I seem to have picked up my vague interest in hockey again. How bizarre.

To deal with this new math and science obsession, I have purchased several books in the Dummies series (involving chemistry, physics, and math) and invested in an electronics kit. I don't have time to use any of these much, but it is comforting to know they're there.

And don't even get me started on the 3-D puzzles.

Things are going well between Jerome and myself. Every day, however, I live with this gnawing regret that I was unable to know him at a younger age. If I could somehow go back in time and change my own history, I would move to where he was raised in 1997. This way, I could still have my experiences with my 6th grade boyfriend (which, aside from the breakup, were remarkably pleasant) but without all the negative stuff that came in 7th grade and after. Now don't get me wrong, not ALL of my high school experiences were bad, but the negatives strongly outweigh the positives. To the extent that given the chance, I'd move in a heartbeat. Anyway, then I could have gone to a teacher's academy AND (more importantly) a science academy.

I honestly think that if Jerome and I had met at a young age, both our lives would have been exponentially better (ha--exponential, get it? math? never mind). We've talked before, and have come to the conclusion that we would probably have been great friends in junior high, and probably would have dated in high school. Heck, since neither of us went to prom in real life, we probably would have gone together. Jerome thinks we probably would have been married and maybe even have children by now.

Regrets.

Makes me even unhappier with my grad school years and the relationship that accompanied it. Makes me hate that I can't go back and change things. I would still be a skeptic and a cynic, but I probably wouldn't be so jaded.

Even one of Jerome's friends from his high school said today that it would have been cool if I had gone to their high school. Made me feel really good. I never felt that accepted at my own schools.

Well, I sure came up with a lot of stuff to say, especially considering I was feeling uninspired earlier.