Biking and stuff

So I mentioned last post about biking and such.  The other morning I biked with my sister to work at 6:30 in the morning and then continued onward to the next town 7 miles away.  Got to the other town at around 7:30 and stood around in a daze for a little bit before I went to the dollar store and bought myself a couple jigsaw puzzles and a soda.  After recovering my stomach I biked back.  It was nice weather, that early, too - the sun was just rising so it wasn't too hot or humid yet.

It was a highly electrifying experience and it made me feel better about the bike trip that's coming up  fast - I got the trip itinerary the other day in the mail and we'll be biking around 30 miles a day for a week to reach Lake Ontario and the Canadian border.  I'm so excited to just have a week to make connections and friendships. I talked to an older friend of mine and she's probably going, so I will most likely share a tent with her.  There are some kinks that need to be worked out (like how I am going to get my sis' bike to the place where we're leaving), but other than that I have everything I need to go.

In other news, I've been reading some - decided to read The Phantom of the Opera because I've always wondered what the book is like compared to the movie(s).  Frankly, I like the newer movie better because the book uses a lot of archaic language and seems a bit overplayed.  I do have a friend named Christine though, so whenever Christine Daae the character is mentioned, I think of my friend Christine.  It's sort of funny.

A Post

So I'm a little ticked right now. I'm about ready for the summer to be over already. At the very least, I've got only a month left here at home (29 days, so less, actually). Drama on the internet and in real life has taken its toll.

I wish people weren't so fierce in their arguments. Got to talking with someone and ended up in this big debate again about politics and she told me I was wrong, that her opinion was fact, and that she just “saw things as they were.” An opinion is an opinion: it doesn't necessarily mean it's right or wrong. (Well, unless it crosses over into moral territory. If I were to believe that killing people is okay, that's obviously wrong.) Who am I to judge someone else's opinion and say that it is “wrong” or “right?” I've heard someone else say that one can vote for a candidate who doesn't believe in what they believe in as well, and still achieve results. (For example, someone can vote for a candidate who has “pro-abortion” beliefs and still be against abortion personally – because a “pro-abortion” candidate usually takes actions to implement prevention measures for women in programs like Planned Parenthood.) The world isn't as black and white as some people believe and say it is. Yes, there are some things that are very good (like philanthropism) and some that are very bad (like murder, rape, etc). But most of our daily actions don't fit under black and white standards. This world is so full of gray standards.

I witnessed a similar argument in a devart chatroom today – about whether fan-fiction can be literature. The little argument spiraled down into nothingness after awhile, but it was an...interesting debate at least.

We were supposed to go to a wedding for my cousin today, but no one gave us a ride, and now my mom is all mad (but not much more than usual, actually). She's probably going to boycott our relatives or something.

One good thing – earlier this week I finally handed in all the money to my pastor for a bike trip at the beginning of August. It's through the Youth for Christ chapter at the church I go to at college and it's basically biking around the state and being awesome for a week. Another week after that, and I'm going to back to college for the fall semester. And then I'm going to be pulled in so many directions – it'll be crazy, but I think I'll enjoy it.

More writing later.

(Also, I won this from the crane machine today. It's adorable. :D) 

Field Trip and a Wedding

So yeah, it's been three months since I've posted anything.  I guess I just got lazy, no excuse for that.

I am going to a wedding on Sunday for a friend of mine - she's marrying an very nice Australian bloke who she met while working at a summer camp a few years ago and will be moving to Australia with him after they take a honeymoon to Disneyworld for two weeks.  It will be the first wedding I have ever gone to, so I'm excited and I'm very glad for my friend.

I'm also taking a short "field trip" to my hometown with another friend of mine tomorrow morning to do some reconciling with my past.  I asked her months ago if she would take me and I won't lie - I have been desperately hoping that she would forget all about it.  But I knew she wouldn't, which is why I asked her, so I couldn't backturn on my decision...so nervous, but I need to do this.

Will write more next entry.

Trip to Amherst

It seems that life has caught up on me, and I haven't blogged at all.  Which is somewhat sad, I suppose.

I do have something interesting to talk about a little though.  This past weekend (Saturday specifically) I went on a trip to Amherst, Massachusetts to visit the Emily Dickinson museum (which is actually her house and the house in which her brother and wife lived in).  It was an interesting experience, and we all went on an hour and a half tour of both of the houses. I learned quite a lot about Emily and her life, more than I knew before at the very least.  Not that I knew too much to begin with, honestly.  I never was particularly interested in her poetry too much, but I found her life to be intriguing at the very least.  And I never knew that she was a red-head, either.

We visited her gravestone, too, in the cemetery nearby, and I never had realized before how creepy and sullen graveyards actually are.  Many of the stones there were wore off completely, and most of them were from the mid-1800s (like Emily Dickinson's, though hers and her family member's were more better kept than almost any of the others in the cemetery).  It might be interesting to write a story about a cemetery in the near future.  There's just something about death that compels silence, somehow for me; although I know that nowadays, most people don't regard the dead with much respect.  While we were there, I found one of those red Solo cups and realized that college kids had probably been drinking in the cemetery at some point.  It saddened me.

So, that was fun, and worth the six-hour round trip car ride with the English Club members, whom I honestly don't know that well.  They were all very nice to me, however, and it made me happy.  And I didn't have to pay for anything except for food, because the college's Student Association paid for the trip. Although I still spent more than I should have on souvenirs (they had some neat postcards for sale at the museum, and I've used most of them for Postcrossing already, though I have one left).

That's all for now. :)

Rant about Caffeine

So today, I got a box of those drink mix packets that you can add to water. Pretty normal, I guess.  It wasn't until I reached the checkout that I realized that they had CAFFEINE in them.  Caffeine.  In powdered drink mix. 

I know all about the power of caffeine.  It's in everything, really.  Chocolate, of course; coffee and tea (obviously), and apparently diet A&W as well.  In fact, it's really difficult to find a soda that actually doesn't have some form of caffeine in it (besides fruit-flavored sodas, really).  And I mean, I really do like caffeine, especially since I go to bed late and roll out of bed for my morning classes.  But I also wish that they told you how much caffeine was in each cup/serving/piece of food, and at what level that would affect you. 

For example, the other day I had a medium-sized coffee drink from Starbucks before class.  After class, I had a diet soda.  A little while afterwards, I was talking to a friend and my hands were shaking.  I was also talking amillionmilesaminutewithnobreaksinbetween, and well, the fact that I was talking fast might have had something to do with the fact that I'd had a crap day and was pretty upset (I got rejected for a job that I'd applied for from the group interview, plus just overwhelmingness), but still.  I wish I knew how much caffeine I could safely drink without becoming like I did that night - going into danger mode.  As for tea, I usually try to drink the herbal/fruity teas that don't have caffeine in them - I like them better anyway for the most part.

Anyway, that's something to talk about.  I've mostly just done a lot of homework today (Plato and Aristotle for my Lit Theory class; Latin translations; looking at a physics practice exam...) I'll try and find something to talk about tomorrow too.

Anyone ever played...

Telephone pictionary?  It's wonderful fun.  Tonight I went to someone's house and had dinner, and afterwards someone had the idea to play it.  Basically you write a sentence on a piece of paper and you pass it to the next person.  They try to draw it in only a minute, and then the next person has to write a sentence of what they think it is.  And so on and so forth, until you run out of people.

I started off with "A cat sat on the bearded man's hat" and ended with "Jeff was electrocuted to death while riding a dog." It was hilarious.  And one of my friends was perturbed when I wrote this sentence for her to draw: "Some people on a ship killed a mermaid and put her on a lifeboat out to sea."  It seriously looked like that, no joking.

That's all I have for tonight. I've been bad with being regular with posts, I know.  But I'm going to find things to write about/time to write about them...I will! :)

A Poem, and First Postcard

I've written a poem about a time that I ran over a rabbit when I was around 17.  I'll post it here because I can, I guess.

I felt the rabbit under the tire

after I saw it dart across the road.

I felt the rabbit under the tire

brown fur suddenly acquiesced

rust-colored stains and

asphalt marks.

bump, flat, now stuck

to the road.

tears were a flood

hysterical, crazy laughter

because I could not believe

what I had just done.

the teacher said that I could

pull over, to take a breath,

but once you are in the mode

of flowing, it's hard to stop.

I felt the rabbit under the tire.

I felt the rabbit under the tire.

And I drove on.

I think it needs a little work, maybe, but I'll take a look at it later.

 

Also, I got my first Postcrossing card the other day, from the Netherlands!  They even used one of the fancy Postcrossing stamps they have over there.  Here's a picture of it. :)