edshots

I'll admit that I've never seen the movie (don't really ever want to unless I have to sit through it within attractive lady friend who MUST watch it), but I know that everybody is going to be going on about the bride-to-be from Georgia who was found in New Mexico.

If I was the groom-to-be I would very happy that she is alive just so she could come back to me so I could kill her for doing this silly assed thing.

I'm also mildly pleased that I was right when I said that there wasn't foul play involved in this one. One reason I thought that was because the fiance wasn't out there begging the "evil-doers" to bring back his beloved. The other reason was that in every picture I saw of the young lady she had a look of mild panic behind her smile. In each picture, the whites of her eyes were visible on three sides of the pupil. That is not usual. It usually means that the fit is about to hit the shan.

I hope that they are able to work out the issues that led to this. I'm pretty comfortable in front of large groups but even I would be intimidated by a wedding in front of 600 people with 14 bridesmaids and groomsmen. That is just one silly bigass wedding.

I'm not one of those people who go about telling a lot of other people about my personal life. I will talk about myself at a surface to not-too-deep level, but don't go out of my way to tell everything that's going on.

As such, it's not unusual for somebody to ask me a question about old news. Somebody will ask me about how so and so is and I have to tell them that I really haven't had any contact with that person for a while. They look shocked, and then embarrassed, and I feel sort of stupid as well.

I guess I sort of rely on the grape vine to pass along information, and when it doesn't I feel ambivalent. One the one hand I wish the word had gotten through. On the other hand I'm glad that I'm not the grist for the gossip mill.

I guess that it's a situation where I would prefer the best of both worlds, and am disappointed when I don't get it the way I want.

Well, I had the last of another class last night and I'm down to the last two. It will be pleasing to finish. My papers are almost all done and I'm almost looking forward to getting back to the regular job.

The key word of course being almost. As much of a bother being a student is, it is nice to have more time to look at stuff, find out things and pick out what you want to focus on. I don't have that luxury at the job.

I am looking forward to getting back in the mix and hopefully making a difference again. That's always pleasant.

One of the things that I never (and I mean never) have ever taken for granted in a woman is her hands. I say that because one of the things that I do to deal with stress is store it in my shoulders. The more stress I have the more my shoulders, and moving on down my back, ache.

I often comment that my ultimate dream of a woman is one of those 95 pound Asian women that can run a four minute mile and never have to leave my back. Some people that don't know me think that I'm joking. Most know I'm not.

At the moment, my shoulders are in a significant amount of pain. I try to stretch them but it hasn't been working. With all the school work and things coming up, I know that I'm under a wee bit of stress but it is now becoming annoying. I'm not asking for much, just a good (or even a) rubdown.

If anyone reads this and is interested, let me know.

Well, the paper got edited and handed in and that is the first of my last classes in the books. I'm thinking that if this paper is about as good as the others I'll be in good shape.

Shared a couple of cold ones with some of the class mates afterward. It's funny what you can talk about when you no longer have to worry about t-tests, standard deviations and disbursement patterns. Interesting things like Tofu turkeys, mice and jobs. All in all an enjoyable time.

Two more papers, three more classes.

The end of the term is a fascinating time. I never realize just how much work that I have until I get it all at one time. Three papers, two assignments and two presentation all due in less than ten days. It helps when some of the work can be related to other work, so instead of two entirely different papers, I can take from one and add it to the other.

Writing the papers and coming up with the presentations aren't the hard part. Once I get writing I can do it pretty effectively. The hard part is figuring out what the heck I'm going to write and how to organize it. That sometimes takes me days longer than the actual writing and presenting.

The bad news is there's a paper dur tonight at 600. The good news is that I just finished writing it. The scary part is now I've still got to edit it. Having an editor would be nice. But with luck it would end up being somebody like J Jonah Jameson who couldn't stand me and make me change things just because he can.

Looking at the list of entries, I noticed that the one I spent about an hour on last night wasn't there.
DAMN!
It was a really good entry too.

I'm not going to try to recreate it because it came when I was in a particularly interesting mood.

Tomorrow I have a presentation due that is worth a chunk of my final grade. The next day I have a large paper due that is also a large part of my grade in that class. It's mildly ironic that in order to help out the students so that everything is not due the last week of class, my professors managed to all have everything due the week before the last week of class. I wish at least one of them had not been looking out for me so well. Of course the good news is that I get to goof off the last week of the term.

One of the parts of being back in school after being out for so many years that I still have trouble with is ggetting into the proper frame of mind for some of the assignments. I am generally a reserved person, I don't go around sharing emotional stuff with a lot of folks. A few of the assignments this term have been asking for a lot of emotional reactions.

Now don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong abaout emotions. They're great (except for the bad ones). But when I get into my academic mind set, I find it difficult to get out it for an assignment that askss for it amidst several others that don't. It's almost like walking up the stairs and thinking you have one more step up when you really don't. The jarring impact just takes you by surprise.

I prefer my academics to be academic, not feeling.

Working on my assignments today, I hit what may be one of the hardest writer's block that I ever have. The assignment was to talk about a loss that you have gone through and discuss how you addressed each of the stages.

Stage one: Denial. Okay this is easy. I can deny most anything if needed. Heck, I can even deny that I have to do what I'm already doing by saying I don't have to, I'm just doing because I choose to.

Stage two: Anger. I rarely get angry. I was told many years ago that I only have so many "angry's" in my life so that when I start getting there, I stop. I ask myself if this is the last "Angry" that I have, and I die after I use it, is it worth it? In 99% of the cases I asked this the answer is "NO!"

Stage three:Bargaining. I like this stage. I'm still wondering "what if..." about all kinds of things. I also know that God knows better than I do and that even if I had the silver tongue of Johnnie Cochran mixed with the communication skills of Ronald Reagan and the advertising ability of Nike, I probably won't be able to convince the Big Guy that I know better than he does.

Stage four: Depression. This stage to me is kind of like stage two. Frustration or powerlessness turned outward is anger. Powerlessness turned inward is depression. It is foolish to say "If only..." Because one may have never done it otherwise. To assume thatone had the ability to change things is hubris. One of the most important lessons I have learned in life is how little my opinion matters to the cosmos.

Stage five: Acceptance. I do not accept death. I do not accept a no-win situation. My father has been gone for a quarter of a century, but I am still not okay with that. I believe that when the world is perfect, there will not be pain and suffering. I am not going to accept otherwise in the meantime. I believe that there will be a day (God willing) that I will see my dad again and be able to say the things that I should hav back in the 1970s. That I was too young and foolish then will not be held against me.

I do not accept an end to things.
Where there is life, there is hope.
I may recognize there there is an infinitely small probability. That does not mean that I have to give up.

That's why I buy PowerBall tickets.

I haven't put anything up over the last couple days because school work is catching up with me. I have papers and presentations coming out the wazoo (and I didn't even know I had one of those until the assignments started clogging it) so I've not been able to do much more. Even today, when it's absolutely wonderful outside, I'm here at the computer wrting assignments.

Next week, when all these assignments are done, it will probably be about 27 degrees and windy.

While visiting Ohio today, President Bush met with state and local public employees who function outside of Social Security and have the option of investing in personal accounts.
Ninety seven percent of Ohio’s 1,000,000 public employees and five million nationwide, exist outside the current Social Security system and can invest in personal accounts.


Why can't I?

Well, I did walk through campus, a couple times, and it is a loverly day.

Just some random thoughts after perusing the news...

The big stink about the judicial filibusters: If guys like Kennedy, Schumacher, Boxer and Reid are mainstream, I don't want to be.

Yankees/Red Sox: After pushing the fan that made contact with him the other night, Sheffield should be suspended. Also I don't care if they are two of the best teams in baseball, I'm sick of hearing about them. If it wasn't for teams like them, playing in big money markets and keeping it all, the Pirates may have a chance to win a World Series this century.

Washington Nationals: Now that they have finally played the first game in DC, can we not have to hear about them as much now? After all, they're only the Expos.

The Minutemen project: Illegal border crossings in the area where they are observing are down amazingly. Maybe that's what the federal government should be doing...protecting the border.

Football: The draft is coming up. The off season holy days of the football faithful. I'm looking forward to it.

Related football: Pitt is it! The University of Pittsburgh has reclaimed its old name. Now everyone can call it what it has been called all along.

Court news: If there is a bigger waste of time than the Michael Jackson trial, I'm not aware of it. Can we just convict the guy of being weird and sentence him to France or something equally nasty.

Speaking of France: A bunch of cheese eating surrender monkeys. ( I just wanted to type that)

Money: It's a nice thing. I wish I had more. Well, I did in my retirement account until the market tanked this week.

Retirement: By the time they finally get around to fixing Social Security (which is neither social nor secure) I'll probably be too old to get in on the fix.

The Pope: As an out of practice Catholic, I admired the man for his steadiness. I wish I could be as strong in faith as he was.

The next Pope: Early odds are on a European to be the next Pope. Cardinal Ratzinger is the early favorite. Sounds solid to me but I think that I'm putting my money on Cardinal Arinze from Africa.

Well, it's a loverly day in the neighborhood, I think I'm going to go outside and play. Actually I'm just going to walk through the campus at Gettysburg College and look at how loverly the day can be.

Last night, I was going through some of the boxes that I had collected over the years of papers and such. I was going through one of them and I found some letters that I had gotten about 20 years ago.

A (big) percentage of them were from the girl (young lady?) that I was crazy about at the time. Reading over them, I thought about how , although I didn't think about her often, I missed her. I know that part of that is missing the person I was 20 years ago, but I think the reason is different. I think it is because back then I still was an absolute romantic. I believed in "happily ever after" and "true Love." I still do, although not as religiously as I used to. It twanged at my heartstrings as I read some of the things that I know meant a lot more 20 years ago than they do today.

I've occasionally thought about her since those days. Usually I hope that she did better than I did in life, love and other things. Occasionally I hope she regrets dumping me. If I ran into her today, assuming either of us recognized the other, I would still feel all the "love" I did then. It just wouldn't be the same love that it was then.

Back then, we talked about forever. Now we would talk about since then.
A small, but very important difference.

Romance is talking about what may be. Life is talking about what is.

No wonder I prefer being a romantic.

One of the most annoying things about being a guy is that you are never sure if that attractive woman that you are looking at, talking to, or hoping to get to know better, is attached or not. I recently ran into this as I was helping someone to deal with things that I had a better handle on than she did with some problems. While I was helping out, she got a call. She said it was from her boyfriend. I could feel the hope drop from my chest to my socks in a second. Now I recognize that there had never been any suggestion that there might be a chance at anything at all, but when it catches you off guard, after you spent a bit of time hoping there might be something there and trying to find out if she likes you, it is still a bite in the bottom.

I don't think that she noticed that I was feeling the way that I did becuase we were able to finish what we were working on, but I'm still feeeling kind of bad about it.

It's almost like when you realize that you might never play major league baseball or have the chance to date Kathy Ireland. You knew it was never going to happen, but you always knew ther was a (extremely, very extremely) chance that the laws of probability might smile on you.

The good news of course is that I haven't done anything stupid yet to totally rule out a chance. Good Lord willing, I won't any time soon.

I'm so happy that today is the day that I get to send my money to Washington, DC so they can spend it for me. THey can spend it on neat things like the Rock & Roll hall of Fame, Steam Engine museums, studies on why slugs mate the way they do, the "Robert Byrd what ever the hell he's naming after himself this week, " junket trips to wonderful locales like Singapore, Antartica, Hong Kong and Tahiti, the quest to remove God from everything, the UN, BArbara boxer and Ted Kennedy lecturing the country on ethiccs and other interesting such stuff. I probably would have spent my money the same way if I didn't have to send it to the IRS.

Or I would have gotten something useful, like food.

The good news is that Washington doesn't get all my tax money. I get to send some to Harrisburg too. That way Eddie Rendell can send it to Pittsburgh and Philadelphia so they can lose...oops, I mean, invest, it in things like mass transit anad crooked unions.

Ain't tax day nice.

I'm currently taking a course in research and statisitics. Now I recognize that many people in the social work field got it to it because they didn't like numbers or science, but the fear of numbers some of these folks display just amazes me.

I understand that numbers can be intimidating. So can a large, slobbering dog. But both can be a lot of fun if you just get past that initial fear.

I also find it interesting that people who deal with people for a living, wouldn't be glad to deal with someething that actually does what it's supposed to. When I'm working with a family, I can tell each person what to do, how to do it, how to reinforce others doing it, and evenshow them exactly how to do it, step back and watch the fail miserably at doing it. Then I get to start again. With numbers I know that every time I tell 2 to get together with 5 and addd, they will be 7. If I tell to take five away, I'll get -3.

It's the same with statisitics. If I take a data set and apply the tests to it, the numbers will come up the same way. Once you understand what a t-test is, the rest is easy. If only clients were so inclined.

The nice part about it last night in class, for example, is every body likes Ed in class. When in doubt, ask Ed what it means. It's a cheap ego boost, but I like it. Even the Prof thinks I'm good. Last night she suggested that she felt that she was wasting my time in class since I already understood the stuff. I told her that I did get most of it from before but i still was learning. The nice part is she thought that I might even be able to teach the class. Hmmm....

WHen I first decided to do this, I thought that it would be pretty simple.. Just pop in every day and jot down some deep thoughts or light fluff.
The hard part is : A-remembering to do it, B-coming up with what I've got to say.

I've got some plans for some posts, but I haven't figured out how I want them to come out yet, so I'm gonna try to get them in this weekend. I'll see how that goes.

edshots

This is more interesting than I expected.