Biggy Bob's New Home

Starting Friday afternoon and carrying on till Monday afternoon, I have been building a new outdoor cage for my 4 foot iguana, Biggy Bob. I called him Biggy Bob because he was the biggest iguana out of all the young ones they had for sale at the pet store, and a few months after that the cat broke through his cage and ripped him up bad. We rushed him to the vet and he had to have most of his tail snipped off among other things (antibiotics, a shot, and a lot of praying on my part). That was about 6 years ago and he had long outgrown the last cage my mother and I had built him. This one is extended from the side of a shed, and is about 90-100 square feet and about 8 feet high and also encompasses two shrubs for him to climb in and snack on (which he proceeded to do immediately after we put him in there).

Grandmother

I spent the last week in New York City, supposedly looking after my grandmother while my dad was recovering from his own surgery. She never got out of the hospital though and I really wasn't able to do anything but visit her every day for a few minutes, which was something but not nearly what I was hoping to do in coming up. She is a mean old Italian woman that grew up in WWII Italy, and is currently facing her third fight with cancer while suffering from Lue Gerig's disease in her throat and mouth. She is hard of hearing and recently had to have a feeding tube put in. I just wish there was more that I could do, but she can't stand for anyone to even clean her house without her there, yet alone clear out all the weeds that have overgrown her backyard garden. Shes just too stubborn, concrete, and independent... I wonder where I get those traits?

Over the summer, I have been working for this friend of my mother's in a lawn care service. The hours are typically around 7ish to as late as 3 or 5 depending on the job we are doing. He has some big jobs like cutting the YMCAs around here, and some mansion type houses around Lake Serene/Cane Break areas, along with a host of smaller yards. Of late I have been coming in before class on Tuesdays/Thursdays to get a few extra hours in. I always bring a change of clothes, deoderant, and a brush with me and I try to take a shower in the Payne Center, but that doesn't allows pan out. So if I show up a bit late with leaves in my hair not quiet smelling like a field of roses... I was working!

Blackberries and Iguanas

I basically live out in the country... there are pastures on all four sides of my house and you can't see it from the road. We get a lot of wildlife in the backyard, just yesterday a herd (?) of wild boars was running through the back pasture. Theres a gaggle of turkeys and a pack of coyotes (who we hear almost every night) as well. But we also have a lot of wild blackberry bushes. There is one big bush that sprang up in the yard, and there are also giant thickets of them out in the fields, especially since the cows have been gone a while. And although it has been somewhat dry here, we have been getting some showers of late- just enough rain to make them all plump and juicy. I keep going out and picking more, but not just so my mother can cook up some cobbler- I feed them to my iguana. It annoys my step dad, but when I rip my arms up picking the blackberries I'll give them to Biggy Bob if I feel like it! I named him that because when he was little, our 20lb tom cat sat on top of his cage and crashed through it during the day. When I got home I found the lizard a little more than half dead under a dresser. His tail was mostly ripped off, had a broken rib and a punctured lung, and had bites on his neck and belly, but after a trip to the vets he survived. Right now though when the temperature starts pushing 100 like it has been, he gets very active and when I open the door to his cage (His cage has wheels and we move him inside/outside with the seasons) holding a plate of blackberries he literally launches himself off the branch and onto my chest looking for them! He isn't all that bright either, when he gets like this you have to lure him to one side of the cage, open up the door and basically sling in the food before he tries to jump you again. Then you have to walk to the back of the cage and hide behind the food...... THEN he finds it. Main reason this is so bad is that the sucker is almost four feet long now!

Touch of Madness

The other day I was throwing away this bill I had paid off for a computer, it was part of my last birthday present so I could acquire credit. My mother took the bill out of the trash and warned me to never throw these away, either keep or destroy them. Now I didn't know where a shredder was, but I had a few lighters. I scoured my room and picked up some old bills and bank statements along with a lighter, then proceeded into my bathroom. I cleared off the sink, opened the window, turned on the fan, and even dragged the Ionic Breeze my dad bought a few years ago into the bathroom. With the door securely closed, I placed a bill in the sink and lit her up, just a little in the corner and titled the bill while watching the flames lap hungrily at the sides of the paper. I make sure to only burn one at a time, and after each burning I swept up the remains and placed them in a cup. So one by one I dropped them into the sink and observed the flames soaring up into the air, the tips of the flame tickling the faucet. As the flames continued to spread, they caused the plastic to shrivel and the envelope to contort. After having had their fill, the flames died out and all that remained where the embers. I breathed new life into them, causing the many embers to flare up with renewed hunger and consume ever more. The vibrant reds and oranges appeared to be twinkling as they danced across the remains of the paper. When all the fun was over, what was left looked strangely like cloth, and had a soft velvety texture. So as it is written...

Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust

Paper

Not sure this will work, and its pretty rough

Overcoming Prejudice

Whether we like to admit it or not, we all stereotype groups of people. Our minds desire order, and we have an urge as humans to structure the world around us to better predict events, situations, and behaviors. Usually those with common backgrounds will share culture and experiences, leading to some patterns in behavior, yet it is still impossible to define every individual within a group through a handful of statements. It is reasonable to assume a Christian will go to church on Sunday, but that doesn't mean every Christian wakes up for every Sunday morning service. Most stereotypes are of a darker nature, and take more effort to move beyond. In Raymond Carver's Cathedral and J. R. R. Tolkein's Lord of the Rings, characters overcome their hate and mistrust for each other by shared experiences and tribulations.

In Cathedral, the husband has quite a dismal look on blind people. He has never met one, but he has seen other stereotypes of the blind where they wore dark glasses, stumbled around, and had very negative drab attitudes. The last thing he wanted was one of these people coming into his house. But when a friend of his wife's spouse dies, the husband is forced to open his doors. The man was married for eight years, and the husband could only think of how miserable a life that woman must have led after marrying a blind man. Since this man means so much to his wife, he has no choice but to try and be kind to Robert, but at the same time there is a growing tension in the husband as his wife seems to completely ignore him for the evening.

In The Lord of the Rings, Gimli and Legolas have great mistrust for one another. Gimli is a dwarf from the Lonely Mountain, and Legolas is an elf from Mirkwood. For ages the two races have despised each other. Elves are seem as silly and nosensical to the dwarves, all they seem to do is write poetry, sing and drink their lives away. Elves on the other hand see dwarves as greedy and twisted, ready to sacrifice all things of beauty for money and power. On top of the racial tensions between the two, Gimli's uncle was incarcerated by the king of Mirkwood, so Gimli bears an even greater grudge against Legolas. At the Council of Elrond, where delegates of all the free people of Middle Earth meet to discuss the fate of their world, it becomes clear that a handful of people will need to destroy the ring, in the heart of the enemies terretory. When Legolas volunteers, Gimli is not about to let such an important task rest in the hands of an elf alone.

On their journey, the two begin to depend on each other, especially after the nine members of the fellowship break up and Gimli, Aragorn, and Legolas are left in on their own. They begin to gain some respect for one another during their travels as each notes the other's talents and capabilities. This culminates at the Battle of Helm's Deep. Vastly outnumbered with no place to run, the two relieve some of their stress by engaging in a rivalry to see who can slay the most orcs. They find they are equally comparable warriors, and towards the end of the battle they are forced to retreat into the back caves of the fortress where brilliant veins of precious minerals and metals. Legolas is horrified at the idea of letting more dwarves come and mine the minerals, completely ruining the beauty of the cave. Gimli convinces him that the dwarves would spend years before swinging a single pick-axe, only working to follow the veins to enhance the beauty of these caves. Legolas seeing that a dwarf can appreciate things of beauty above material wealth, and Gimli seeing that an elf can be serious and come to fight as well as any dwarf, the two become friends.

While the husband and Robert never come to blows or fight any epic battles, there still is a great deal of tension. The husband can't see why his wife spends so much time with this obviously inferior person, to the point where he feels completely ignored in the room. He feels threatened, especially when Robert and his wife spend so much time talking about their past, and she does not once mention her husband, as if that wasn't important to her. She even scolds him at one point. Yet over the course of the evening, the husband observers Robert eating capably, and smokes cigarettes and dope. Robert is jolly, and has a full beard, the complete opposite of what his notion was. Yet the defining moment is after his wife goes to sleep and the two men are left watching a documentary on cathedrals. The husband fails at describing cathedrals, so Robert helps him draw one. Robert may be blind, but he had faith and spirit that let him understand cathedrals better than the husband. Shocked that it took a blind man to help him see, the husband comes to accept and respect Robert, overcoming his prejudice.

SGA Senate

During the middle of last semester, my roommate suggested that I apply for the SGA senate. The year was more than half over, but for some reason there was a large number of holes in the roster and they really needed people to join in. I had a few bills in mind to work up, but then I got put on the committee for campus improvement I believe (the exact name eludes me, I am on the committee for campus relations now- if I actually get voted in during the fall that is XD). Our committee was given a number of projects and I start to work on the McCarty compter lab. Now I thought the comps might be a little old but MAN was I in for something. Out of the 10 computers there, ALL of them took at LEAST 10 minutes to boot up, some weren't fully plugged in, a few would give the nice little message of OS not found, one couldn't even recognize its monitor, and all of them couldn't get past the start of a good old disk defrag. I went to iTech to see if ANYTHING could be done besides buying new comps, and found out those computers in McCarty were well over ten years old, way past time to put them out to pasture. I look online, find a nice brand of cheap comps from the company iTech is buying from, and found a set of free monitors and word processing software (both legal!). I was talking with someone from Res Life (they actually buy the computers) and thought I had everything down pat just wanted to tell this lady about how much money SGA could donate for the computers to meet Res Life half way or such, when I found out that iTech already had plans to take over and replace the computers in McCarty. I wasn't told anything about that at iTech, but it did take me a good week to get in touch with the right person at Res Life. No one knew where I should go, and I kept leaving a name and #, but just kept getting redirected to other people before finding the right office. McCarty is still getting new computers, so I guess I should be glad my work is done- and maybe I was the catalyst for this change *shrugs*.
Oh yeah, I am a College of Education and Psychology representative, and am open to any suggestions you might have for the campus. SGA is given a nice budget, and there is a lot we can do on campus regarding policy and structures. Even if it has nothing to do with Ed/Psych, I can always redirect it to someone else in the senate who would be more fitting to address the issue.