1. My fellow Seattle people will not be shocked to hear it was The Stranger, a free weekly paper with copious amounts of picture-ridden escort ads.

So far in the past 21 hours I’ve been awake I have managed to do these things instead of my homework:

1. Talk on the phone with one of my best friends for four hours. Yeah, really. She lives in Alaska right now, unfortunately, whereas I still live in Seattle, so we don’t get to talk as often as we’d like, but when we do? We talk forever. It’s pretty much ridiculous.
2. Squealed at the ridiculous amount of adorable at Cute Overload with aforementioned friend.
3. Read 85% of Down to the Bone by Mayra Lazarus Dole which I really, really like. Reading it makes me hungry! So much talk of Cuban food, so little time! If it wasn’t for the fact that my bus for school leaves in four hours and I haven’t finished my paper yet, I would be finishing it right now!
4. Watched Trembling Before G-d, a documentary about gay and lesbian orthodox Jews. Heartbreaking, but fantastic at the same time.
5. Written an infinite amount of lists about what I should be doing.
6. Began NaBloPoMo at my LiveJournal.
7. Wrote about 400 words for NaNoWriMo–though I intend on writing about 3,000-4,000 words today after the long-ass nap I plan on taking when I get home from classes. Add me as a writing buddy! I’m pumpkincarriage.
8. A million other things I probably didn’t need to do, but did anyway.
9. Wrote this post.

Yeah, seriously, I am the world’s biggest procrastinator. The other day I was procrastinating by reading articles on how to quit procrastinating. Of course, I mostly opened a billion articles in a billion tabs, then just scanned a few and closed the rest and went to do something more fun instead.

Considering the amount I procrastinate, it’s a wonder I actually manage to keep good grades.

How bad do you guys procrastinate? Or how do you avoid it?

After taking nearly two years off, I decided one day to go back to school starting almost immediately afterwards. The professor that was rumored to bring cookies every Friday? He did. He was also the best English teacher I’ve ever had.

In early or mid-June I decided to move away from home (and Seattle) for the first time to Bellingham, Washington…two weeks later. Where I knew no one. On June 22nd I made that move. I’m going to Western Washington University for summer quarter. I intend on fully transferring for winter quarter. The elementary education program here is awesome.

It’s been a little scary, but awesome. Sometimes you just have to do something crazy to get your life in order, I think.

I hope to be posting here more–for real this time.

Stuff I need to do:

• Redesign donut.nu
• Update WordPress
• Find and install a good plugin for comment threads
• Update my ‘about me’ pages–much as changed

I’ll moving to a new site within the next few days and will be posting much more often.

Despite the bad, a few good things have happened since my last entry:

1) I went to see The Phantom of the Opera when the tour came to Seattle. It was a-effing-mazing and worth every penny of the exorbinant amount I spent on my four row-center tickets. Despite the fact I totally couldn’t afford them.

2) I took a day trip to Bellingham with my friend who was catching the ferry to Alaska.

I loved it, particularly Fairhaven. It was pouring down rain when we arrived by train and the first thing we see is a fish and chip shop being run out of a double-decker bus with a gazebo on the side for indoor dining. It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen at that point. We were there for over half an hour and yet our food managed to be burn-your-mouth hot the entire time.

Click on image to go to source.

It’s particularly good that I loved it because I’ll be moving up there when I transfer to Western Washington University for their elementary education program.

I want to get my master’s degree in Library and Information Science (an MLIS) so I want to get my teaching qualifications as an undergraduate while still being able to double major. The education program before the double major is a five and a half year program. Adding in another concentration to that might add a considerable amount of time, but I’m hoping to plan it well.

3) My friend and I have resolved to travel through Europe for three months in 2009, unless one of us wins the lottery in which case we’re replacing the words ‘Europe’ and ‘three months’ with ‘the world’ and ‘forever’. Likely from September to December. I’ve done the math on what I need to save (plus what I was saving for my formal education, but am now deciding to blow on travel–a different sort of education, but arguably of equal importance) so I’m in the process of trying to find an additional job or two that pays the same or better than my current job.

Number one is I need to get another job. Preferably two more.

In early October I decided to drop my classes at Seattle Central–where I was attending until I transfer to an in-state university due to money–to take care of my mother and earn money for tuition.

Right now I’m just delivering newspapers which, quite frankly, pays shit. I have limited work experience because I was focusing on school and my family before, but now I need a few part-time jobs. The next couple weeks will consist of me applying everywhere that happens to be hiring.

I’m hoping to get one with medical, dental, and optical insurance because I definitely need all three. The fact that I could get really sick at any moment and be totally screwed without insurance scares the hell out of me. Who thought universal health care was a bad idea again?

I’ve also been thinking about zombie attacks and how to escape when one inevitably happens. I have a mental list of things to keep in mind when zombies attack (though a lot of points could go for Maoist rebels or something as well as zombies). Perhaps I’ll make how to guide out of it soon.

Below are examples of idiotic things said to me on a weekly basis as well as either the response I give or the response I wish I could give depending on who is doing the commenting.

“Oh. A useless degree.”

First of all, kindly fuck off.

Is there such thing as a useless degree, honestly? I don’t believe so. Least of all a degree in languages. Many people in English-speaking countries are monolingual; being multilingual is a sought-after skill in today’s job market. There are tons of things you can do with a BA in Spanish and French. Many people are unwilling to learn a second language. For some reason, this seems to be more rampant in countries where the predominant language is English.

Mostly, I’m getting a BA because I love languages and I like to learn, not because of the job I’m seeking.

“Nobody speaks French.”

I think the people of the 29 countries of which French is an official language would disagree with you. About 300 million people on the planet speak French. There is a French speaking country on every continent aside from Antarctica–as far as I know, emperor penguins don’t speak French. Or at least they didn’t in March of the Penguins which is clearly a vital source of penguin language information. It’s also an official language of both the United Nations and the European Union.

“French is useless.”

See above.

“Can you get a job with that? What are you going to do with that degree?”

I’m not getting a BA in Spanish and French to get a job; I’m getting a BA to learn more about something I love. I love to learn. I’ve always been that girl who’s constantly reading up about random things. When I was a kid, sometimes it was animals or dinosaurs or space or Sweden. Sometimes it’s still animals or dinosaurs or space or Sweden. I’m filled with tons of random bits of information about everything.

And, as I said earlier, multilingualism is a sought after skill even in non-interpretation or translation fields.

You know your previous teacher has messed you up when your teachers tell you they want you to be comfortable and it’s okay to make mistakes and that makes you nervous.

My previous Spanish teacher was amazing, but he scared the hell out of me (and everybody else) which worked; fear motivates me. The class started out with 40 people at the beginning of the quarter and ended up with 10. He was definitely good about weeding out the people who weren’t serious enough about the class.

When he said gracias what he really meant was shut the fuck up. Once he called me by my first name and I didn’t know who he was talking to–he usually just abruptly shouted my surname.

But he was hilarious and definitely overprepared us. He didn’t want us to miss out if we transferred to university because we started out at a community college.