Wednesday, December 19, 2007

remembering

It's odd how we take for granted the people in our lives. For example, my dad is the greatest guy ever. He has his faults, and yes they have shaped his choices so that he may not be who he wanted to be, but to me is a very strong man who has taken what he has been given and just tried to survive. I saw Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium and they had some interesting things to say. And 'just' doing something was a no-no. But sometimes all you can do is 'just' survive.

I spent the weekend with my dad. I miss him a lot. I really hope that I am able to get this internship down in FL, cause that would mean i would have this one summer with my dad where we can hang out and do things and learn about each other as adults. It would be wonderful.

I have a long list of things I want to do in my life. Sometimes I wonder if I want to accomplish them just because I want people to see that I've accomplished them. Sometimes I think I want to accomplish them because I want to accomplish them for other people I know who were never able to do so. Sometimes I make up stories about my grandparents to make them sound so much more amazing and worldly and accomplished and more interesting than they ever were in real life. I don't know.

I've settled into this life that I have. But I'm afraid that I will let down those who will come after me. Not that my grandparents ever let me down. More like I'm trying to live up to them? I don't know.

Quote of the Day: "Life's an Opportunity. Rise to it!" Dustin Hoffman as Mr. Magorium

Picture i took recently:
Beauty in the Concrete

Thursday, November 15, 2007

feeling good

life is going very well.

I had a meeting with Dr. Lee and it seems I am in a pretty good position to get everything i want out of life. Namely to report/copy-edit for a while then go to college and teach for some more time. It makes me happy. I am sending in my applications for summer internships tomorrow (for the Florida Times-Union in Jacksonville, FL and to the Virginian-Pilot in Norfolk, Va.). Both are a step up from the internship at the Daily Press and are really nice papers. Hopefully one of those will pan out and I will get another experience that will send me off on my way to several years in a good job at a good paper and then to grad school. woooo

Dr. Lee was also very proud of the paper this week (as i was). It was like the papers from last year. Good fairly clean copy and a nice layout. Yay!

Now I just need to get through the rest of this semester. I have some plans for being productive over break too. Hopefully they will pan out.

Winter's Here!:
Quote of the Day:
"Don't erase the part of you that's responsible for your will..." ~ "Time and Time Again" Chronic Future

Monday, November 12, 2007

I just had to post a blog whilst I am still relatively sane and in a fairly giddy mood because of the success of the Captain's Log's layout night (pick up a copy if you are in the area at any time).

WEBSITE:
In my quest for some such item of interest, I found this amusing website that only served to increase my happiness in the entirety of this night:
The Church of Google is a satirical site that seeks to prove the irrationality of religions by putting forth a new one: that of Googlism. The page discusses how Google really is a god (a female one at that) and is the only that has 9 scientifically proven pieces of evidence for that conjecture. It is highly amusing. Enjoy...

QUOTE:
Norman Mailer died last Saturday so I will leave you with a famous quote that sums up life in a nutshell, as he was so fond of doing:
"Every moment of one's existence one is growing into more or retreating into less. One is always living a little more or dying a little bit."

Saturday, November 3, 2007

Coldness

It's fairly cold out. That's nice cause I get to break out my nice sweaters, but at the same time, its cold!

Found a really cool website where you can draw your own snowflakes. Its awesome! Try it out.

I want to be a pirate too!:

"Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin to slit throats." ~~H. L. Mencken

Thursday, October 11, 2007

Not doing homework

Break was actually really nice. My boyfriend (Travis) and I went to two movies, The Seeker: The Dark is Rising and Resident Evil: Extinction. Both were really good movies. The Seeker is kind of a kiddie movie but it had amazing cinematography and music. Everyone seemed to find it kind of a predictable but I thought it was the use of symbols, foreshadowing, and music that helped you figure out exactly what was gonna be happening. And let's face it, you feel good about yourself when you are able to guess where a movie is going. I thought the plot was actually very good. Resident Evil is, at its core, supposed to be just a zombie movie. But I've decided I like that franchise (if we leave out the first one) because it is more intelligent than just a horror movie. Plus, Milla Jovovich makes me think of Fifth Element and Oded Fehr (Carlos) is just hot.

I've been thinking lately that I have a lot of trouble remembering happy memories. They seem to just fade away on me and all i'm left with is the depressing ones. And even the simple happy moments that I can always count on (snuggling with Travis) are often clouded with the amount of gloomy thoughts I tend to have during those times. Travis and I have this thing (b/c I am really stupid and way too self-reliant). Whenever he notices that something is wrong he asks me if I'm okay. I always, automatically, say yes. Then he says pinkie swear...meaning that I am not allowed to lie to him in that moment and I HAVE to tell him if something is wrong. If i am really okay, then I pinkie swear that I am and we move on. Usually if something is wrong I smile, shake my head and then he asks me about it and he just waits for me to eventually tell him. Tuesday I pinkie sweared when I shouldn't have. I lied. I was thinking about all the bad memories I have and I was getting down and thinking about all the stuff that is happening now and all the stuff that we'll be facing in the future and I was starting to drop off the edge...and I lied and said I was fine. Which may seem small to many, but since we had this major truth session a year ago I vowed never to lie again. I decided that even if i had no idea why i was feeling bad or sad or depressed, I would at least let him know that was what I was feeling. And this time I didn't. And that is a huge thing. And it is making me worse. And making me less able to focus on all this work I have to do. :-(

I am so thankful, though, that I have him. Because he cares and listens and offers advice to comfort or even just sits there and holds me in my silence, which is comfort enough sometimes.


Website of the week:
This one is interesting, especially to a person that is running out of books written by favorite authors. What Should I Read Next? is a site that takes a list of your recent favorite books and suggests books you should read next (just as the site's title suggests). For example, I put in From the Corner of His Eye by Dean Koontz (one of my all time favorites). It first suggested some other Dean Koontz books (I've read them all so I moved on). Then it listed a few more: Edge of the Moon by Rebecca York (part of a series about paranormal events, which also fits the subject of Koontz's book) and Jupiter's Bones by Faye Killerman (a detective book, it fits)among others. And if you register, you can eventually help them guide their choices and make the searches better (kind of like pandora...but with a little less immediate feedback).

Quote of the week:
Freedom, morality, and the human dignity of the individual consists precisely in this; that he does good not because he is forced to do so, but because he freely conceives it, wants it, and loves it.
-- Mikhail Bakunin, God and the State, from The Columbia Dictionary of Quotations

Friday, September 28, 2007

Thinking of actually updating every week now

This week marks the fourth issue of the The Captain's Log for this year and I am finally satisfied with an issue. There were a few kinks here and there but they were so small as to be unnoticable. I did end up being the one who laid everything out and maybe that is why i've always been a little annoyed with previous issues. I tend to not feel satisfied until I've done something myself, no matter how good someone else's work is or how not so great mine might be.

Walking around campus and seeing people grabbing the paper to read it has been rather rewarding. And there are administration members on campus who have come up to me and said that this is the first paper in years to have actually addressed issues that students are actually interested in. Yay!

I've settled on my Food and Literature Senior Seminar topic: Using Food to create an identity for Italian Americans. It should be fun.

Finally I recommend that you start using Stumble Upon. I was fairly against it originally, but I have found some really cool sites using it. For example, the Action Blog is basically a database of Web sites that lets you sign petitions or inform you about issues affecting the world. I also found a lot of cool photography pages. A neat travel site is for this guy Dairo Endara. Pretty pictures and neat tunes.

Web site of the Week:
Young Gallery ~ Young Gallery is a photography gallery in Brussels. It's Web site shows galleries from international artists that have been and will be featured in the gallery. They range from beautiful black and white portraits of African creatures (Nick Brandt) to really gorgeous shots that feature abstractions of color (Yves Ullens). I really recommend the time to scan them.

Quote of the Week:

"How strange is the lot of us mortals! Each of us is here for a brief sojourn; for what purpose he knows not, though he sometimes thinks he senses it. But without deeper reflection one knows from daily life that one exists for other people -- first of all for those upon whose smiles and well-being our own happiness is wholly dependent, and then for the many, unknown to us, to whose destinies we are bound by the ties of sympathy. A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life are based on the labors of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have received and am still receiving..."

~~Albert Einstein, "The World As I See It: An essay by Albert Einstein."

Friday, May 4, 2007

less doubt, more nervous though

well the semester has ended. I feel fairly good about my grades. But I won't really know all of that for a couple of weeks. What is on my plate for right now is the Captain's Log. I'm trying to get set up in the office right away because I won't really have time later. I'm nervous and a little worried, but in general I am okay with knowing what's coming and I feel confident the paper will come out on time and so on. I've even got Regina (the previous news editor) offering to help with editing since we seem to be without a qualified copy-editor. I suppose I'll be pulling the majority of the duty on that one though.

Another thing that I will be doing for the next week or so is the rewrite of my paper for Shakespeare class. According to Dr. Nichols, he wants to go to the conference and so I figure I'll be able to go. Especially if I rewrite the paper well which i think i will.

Other than I am sort of hanging out. In the next few days i will be dropping my stuff at Travis' apartment, camping with his family, heading to Staunton for a few days, and then I'll be back here on Wednesday. Not bad. Expensive driving though, what with gas being so expensive.

I guess that's it for now. I'll be writing more later as I get more settled in and I start at the Daily Press as well.

Quote of the Day:
"Life happens too fast for you ever to think about it. If you could just persuade people of this, but they insist on amassing information." ~~ Kurt Vonnegut, American modern novelist (died this year, sadly)

Friday, April 27, 2007

Doubts

So I've been getting a small taste of the duties involved with the Editor-in-chief position at my college paper that I have for next year and, although there are still apprehensions, I feel a lot better about it. I have a great staff next year who will prove to work really hard and I am going to be so thankful for them. I can tell that already.
I think the biggest issue for me will be the idea of money. One of my goals was to put into motion a plan that would lead the paper to permanent self-sufficiency, giving it the ability to be completely free of influence (censorship). And I'd like to get it on the track of offering reporters a freelance style stipend for articles published. However, although I tend to be good at saving money, I don't generally have a head for budgeting and what not. Given that this is one of my major goals, I feel like I might have set myself up to fail and to fail miserably, at least in that regard.
I do, however, feel really positive about my ability to lead these people, a quality I have never really seen in my introverted self before.
I'm really trying to get back into my photography. I've felt so disconnected from it lately because I have been so busy with life. But I want to return to my love. I wonder if I could somehow get access to the darkroom over the summer? Possibilities. For now I just have to get done with this semester. So countdown: 1 ten-minute presentation on a 20-page senior seminar paper on integrating human rights and environmental rights and 1 exam on Ancient literature. Not too bad, unless I put things off:-(


"To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else means to fight the hardest battles which any human being can fight ; and never stop fighting." ~~e.e. cummings

Wednesday, April 25, 2007

This life

Okay well I'm going to do a quick introductory post of sorts generally so that I can get that all out of the way so you understand where I'm coming from and why i write what i write and how i write it.

So i'm a college student (one year til the real world and counting...eeek). I'm a journalism major with a poetic soul (hard news isn't really my forte). I love Shakespeare and analyzing literature, but I also love putting out the news. A journalism major gave me both avenues in an easy to attain format.
At my school I am the Editor-in-Chief of a rather good newspaper. We rock out, on a small, underbudgeted scale of course. I am also interning at a daily paper over the summer. I work in a library because the people rock and it smells like musty books (which i believe is my favorite scent next to coffee).
Blogs have many purposes. They can let you vent, explore new topics, keep people updated, or keep track of your own life. I've got bunches of blogs, some of which is still keep up with, others I've abandoned. This one was started because my school started to block my beloved blog site LiveJournal. When that one came back up I gave up on this one for a while. Lately, I have decided to change the goal. As the title says (taken from a song by Jose Gonzales) I plan to search for truth, but truth as it is translated into life through newspapers (my professional forte), photography (that which keeps me sane), books (my obsession) and music (an obsession that defines me).
So there you (I) have it. A purpose. I'll be updating shortly with real stuff. If you're not familiar with blogs, just to let you know you can comment as you wish. Just give me your name if you want a response or for me to know who it is. As Roland of Gilead says often in Stephen King's "The Dark Tower" series: Thankee-sai!

Peace