Day 19 (+8) Tick..Tick...Tick

So, yeah, I know I didn't update yesterday. But really don't give a damn. And today's post will touch on that, among other things.

• Yesterday marked 6 years of dating Brett. And did we do anything special? Not really--went to Toys'R'Us (because we can) and Target (to spend too much money on razor blade replacements) and Brett went into work for about 15 minutes and Traders Joe's (for the essentials). We hung out and played video games and just chilled, basically.
  That's just the way I like it. I like that I'm comfortable with him, that we can both relax in the same room, enjoying the closeness, without having to constantly be talking or doing stuff together. I like that enjoying each other's presence aspect of our relationship.
  Though we will be going out to eat tomorrow night to celebrate :)
  
• Because of the aforementioned anniversary, I, from time to time, get asked it there are any "major plans" in my future. (My favorite way I've been asked this is if Brett was planning any visits to jewelry stores in the near future. As if I would know.) We talk about it, sure. But honestly? Marriage is nice and I look forward to wedding planning one day, but it's expensive as hell. In today's economy, I know I'll be footing the bill for a large portion of that. And with my student loans payments and other bills, that's not exactly something I can afford. So, yeah, we've talked about our future. For now, it's pretty far off in the horizon.
  
• Fun fact--a lot of my friends are totally understanding when it comes to this and don't pester me about it. So thanks, y'all :)
  
• Sometimes I worry that because I'm not in academia or education stuff at the moment, I'm losing that part of my nerdiness.
  Then I realize that one of my long-term objectives is to categorize my 1000+ book collection by LC Call Number, and I have emailed the actual Library of Congress to ask them on how to find certain book numbers, and have researched how craft my own LC Call Numbers...and I worry a little less.
   
• Sometimes, when I think of libraries and such, I wonder if I should have gotten my master's in library sciences instead...I can tell you it probably would have been easier finding a job relevant to my degree, that's for damn sure.
  
• Yesterday, at Target, I discovered they sell Panera soups. You guys. Panera's Broccoli Cheddar is my life blood. I was entirely too excited when buying that soup yesterday.
  
• I was listening to my iTunes on shuffle the other night, and Rooney's "When Did Your Heart Go Missing?" came up, aka one of my senior year anthems. I wondered what they were up to now, and found lead singer Robert Schwartzman's Twitter (I was at the time updating my Twitter [@sallem5]). He's generally better known as Michael Moscovitz in The Princess Diaries. Gif for reference:
  
  
  I was like, alright, follow him, that's cool.
  Well, guess who requested a follow-back? That's right, that guy.
  
  So yeah, that's my life.
  
  (Btw, if you haven't figured it out yet, the title is reference a news ticker...because you're just getting whatever rolled into my head.)
  
  

Day 16 (+4): Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Better, but Only If I Feel Like It.

(Yes, yes, I got even more behind. I’ll catch up though. Eventually.)

My inspiration today is this article. I thought it quite interesting. The article’s theory is that girls are taught from an early age that intelligence/cleverness is an innate ability that one does or doesn’t possess, while boys are taught that intelligence/cleverness can be improved upon through focus and hard work. Because of this, the article supposes that girls (specifically at the 5^th grade level) give up more easily when they come to an obstacle than boys do.

I, of course, had to think back to my 5^th grade experience. Most of my 5^th grade memories aren’t academic—after all, it was 1999 to 2000, so I mostly remember being worried that the end of times was nigh. (Seriously, kid you not, the only thing that managed to quell my fear was on New Year’s Eve when the year changed over in Asia and Australia, and I thought, If it made it to 2000 there…) I also have other memories from the year, also not related to my studies, like the weight related one I touched on in this post.

The one thing that really stands out from what I learned was this poetry contest. Basically, my teacher had us each write a poem, and the ones chosen would be entered into this anthology.
And I was just so confident about it. I remember thinking, I’ve got this in the bag. Yeah, I know—I was such a huge turd-nugget. Anyway, turns out I was right; my poem along with two others in my class were chosen to be put in the book [here’s the Amazon link of the edition I was in]. The book is somewhere at my parents’ house, because I’m pretty sure I didn’t bring it with me.

How does that anecdote tie in with the article? Well, I thought I had an innate ability to write well, when to be honest, I knew how to play the system. Rhyming? Check. Ridiculous premise? Check. Set stanza form to make it sound more lyrical? Check. 5^th Grade Samantha didn’t play no games, yo. And part of me purposefully knew that I was writing something that would appeal to whoever was choosing the winners. But mostly, I just had been kind of catered to believe I was an awesome writer.

I know now that there has to be an internal desire to be a writer, but it does take hard work. I’m sure that if I had applied myself, I could have focused more on the hard sciences or math, and went to college in those areas. But I had always been told that reading/writing was my thing.

So was it because I was a girl? I don’t think so. Having an older sister who had been praised more for the sciences and math areas, I think it was more of a comparative things. At that same age, Heather struggled more with getting the context behind the reading, while I usually made mistakes on math (I would add when I needed to multiply, stuff like that). It was the way my parents (and teachers) saw what we were actually good at. It was one of the good things that came out of having a sibling so close to my age that —adults could compare us and actually say, Sibling 1 is good at one thing while Sibling 2 is good at another.

I do think the theory holds some water. After all, I remember in high school, getting so frustrated in my math classes, and just plain becoming pissy about it. Granted, I still did well, but I was so used to knowing how to do things almost immediately, or with very little thinking, that any obstacle just bothered me. I quickly learned in college that sometimes things take time.
I don’t think that was fully a girl thing either. It was more based on my own inflated ego about schoolwork. (What can I say? I know I was full of myself.)

My point is, while I can see why the article comes to that conclusion, I wonder how much is situational and based on that particular girl’s experience in the classroom.

Day 14 (+2): Book Club--I Promise, We Actually Read (Sometimes...)

[One day, I will catch up to the day. Until then, I will continue to add that plus, to remind myself).

So, yesterday's post talked about a book I read, that I normally wouldn't pick on my own. That's because, I'm in a book club!

It's kind of big for a club (about 30 people), but not everyone shows up every time. Usually about 10 people. Anyway, this post is going to talk about how I found The Cville Page Turners, joined up, and took a hold of my sanity back. And it might be gif-heavy. Because...

Alright, flash back to last April. I was in a slump of a mood, not feeling stimulated intellectually. So I did what any person would do:

I Googled it :P

Came across Meetup.com, a site I had perused before but never really did anything with. If you've never been to the site, you can find groups in your area based on a specific interest, ranging from the norm (nature hikes and such) to the very specific (like vegan women that married foreign men). Okay, that one's not actually a thing, but you get my point.
Anyway, I decided to go with my interest in reading. It would stimulate my mind in a way working in retail wasn't, make me read more, and I could meet fellow readers and gush/scorn with them. I had been in two book clubs before (one as part of a dissertation group, and one that never actually got around to meeting), so I knew the basics of what to expect. Finally found one that

• read books that I might like and read a variety
• wasn't ridiculously large. There's one book club here that has multiple meetings for each month, and you pick the one that fits with your schedule. Though once those very limited meeting spots are filled, you're screwed. And it had 100+ members according to the site, so more than likely I would never have seen someone even two months in a row.
• would meet at night. At the time, I didn't have a set schedule, but I knew that eventually I would want a normal work schedule.

Found The Cville Page Turners (for those of you that are slow, Cville is slang for Charlottesville...). So I signed up for May, checked the book out from my local library, and began to read.

When I pulled into the restaurant that night, I was nervous. Part of me wanted to turn around and leave. Would they like me? (Maybe) Would I be the only one that showed up? (Probably not) Would I be comfortable? (Not entirely, but that's to be expected)

It happened to be a month with only a few of us, so I got to talk extensively with four other people. And I had fun, so I returned the next month. Got to meet a majority of the group that meeting, and reconnect with the others. And I kept coming back.

I really enjoy my book club. We meet at restaurants, so there's no awkward factor of going to someone's house or frazzle factor of hosting it. A large number of us are not Charlottesvillians by birth, so it's nice to be able to connect with someone on that "I didn't grow up here either" level. And while I may not have all the experiences as the other members have (that's the nice way of saying that I'm the youngest in the group by a sizable amount), I get to pick their brains for advice, which is nice. In turn, I let them make fun of how young I am.

I have really liked how it's made me read so many different things. I'd always avoided Dan Brown on lit snob principle--if it sells super duper well, it must not be good. But June's selection was Inferno, the newest in the Robert Langdon series. It gave me as good of an excuse as any to read all the previous ones, which were on my list anyway (if very, very low priority). And there were parts I liked, and parts I didn't, in his works. But I was able to say to myself, Hey! Look! You're learning to look past a book's popularity and actually try it! Good for you for not being as pretentious!

And next month, we're reading A Time to Kill. I've always enjoyed the movie, but never got around to reading the book. So, yay for knocking another one off my list! (It's also the only movie where I like Matthew McConaughey.)

I also like how we talk about the book, but we definitely don't allow that to limit our conversation. We've connected with other things.

Basically, the book club has given me a way to make friends, which has helped me regain some of my sanity back :)

Group hug!

[Side note: yesterday's post was under 500, as I was typing it on my phone and couldn't check my word count, so I made sure this one was long enough to make up for it :P ]

Day 12 (+2): And This is Why I'm Awesome!

So, yesterday's post was about how I suck at keeping up with things. But that's in the past. Today, I'm going to focus on the good about myself! Yeah!

(Warning: some of the things I like about myself are strange. Deal with it.)

• Eyes--I like them, much more than I used to. I've always liked the shape, placement on face, all the sizing stuff. When I was younger, though, I thought that having brown eyes was boring, because it's the dominant eye color of the world (I'm also kind of a nerd about genes and how they visualize themselves with people...) I wanted to stand out, to be noticed. When I was high school and got contacts, I got green contacts. And later, I got blue green ones that looked pretty damn cool. But when I got glasses my freshman year of college, I stopped wearing my contacts as often. And I found the varying colors in my eyes, and started to realize that they were cool on their own. And while I still hold some fantasy of having a different eye color, it's more from novelty. 
• My brain's capacity to remember things--It's so weird how well I can recall certain things. And not just things that should stand out, like my brother's birth or my 13th birthday. I remember that football was one of our spelling words in 2nd grade, the very moment I decided to change my favorite color to blue in 3rd. And birthdays? I'm a fiend. I like that ability to recall the inane. By proxy, my trivia skills are quite honed. 
• My complexion--While it's currently a nice shade of pale, I do have a darker skin tone than the average white person, from generations of Cajun in my blood, I assume. It's also a source of protection, as I don't burn easily, and if I do, I usually tan and/or freckle. 
• My varied interests--I like how curious I can be about a variety of subjects. Almost anything, I can find something I find interesting about it. And this shows up in my hobbies and things I like to do. Sure, I like to read and write, but I've always been a fan of video games, I enjoy going on nature walks, I like finding out how science has evolved.
• My optimism--seriously. Sometimes I sicken myself with how "look on the bright side" I can be. But because I have dealt with disappointment in many ways, I can find the good fairly quickly. And that helps me move on and learn quicker. 

So while there are other things, these are the first ones that came to mind. And it's nice to remind myself how cool I can be and what is good about myself. It motivates me to add more to the list. 

(Note: I'm going to check later to make sure, but I think I reached 500. My computer frazzled out on me, so I typed out most of this post on my phone. And who said learning to text was useless? ;) )