Tomorrow Keely and I leave for four days in Canada, to be split between Nanaimo and Victoria. The four of us girls went to Nanaimo last year, but I haven't been to Victoria and I am excited to go. Hopefully the weather will cooperate. The only drawback, we thought, to going this weekend was not getting a Thanksgiving dinner. I love turkey. And mashed potatoes. And yams as long as there aren't marshmallows on it. But the sacrifice was worth it to get out of town. However, we found out last night that the family we're staying with is going to have the big dinner on Saturday, so we will get to have all the trimmings! Wahoo! Canada is such a nice place to go to. It always feels so much calmer there. No cell phone ringing (not that mine rings incessantly). No e-mail. And the Taite's house is so awesome! I love that upstairs rec room!!
It's very quiet here at work today...
You know what I love about Canada? How cheap things are! I plan on Christmas shopping as much as possible! And I need a new key chain since my Vancouver stone man one that I bought on my birthday has somehow lost both his legs...Do you think that was some kind of Freudian "accident"? Hmmm...
Count down til the end of the quarter. I think there are only 2 or 3 more classes left before the final! It seems like we took the midterm just last week! It sounds like a number of the people in my class are returning for the 102 class with Clyde next quarter, which is cool. We have a lot of fun in class. Clyde likes to teach us "naughty" signs. Very important in the outside world. :)
So, my contacts finally came in on Sunday. It's not three days later and my eyes are still irritated. I switched solutions, from the three-in-one stuff they gave me, to plain saline solution like I used to use. That's helped a little, but still...Maybe I need to get a different brand? I hate the thought of waiting again for a new pair...but I also hate the idea of my eyes itching all the time. It's times like these were wearing glasses really is more simple.
Well, the week has steadily improved over the week. Monday and Tuesday was fraught with friends acting weird, incessant rain, etc. But now it's better. I know, not a lot of details. But that's the problem sometimes with having a blog. You can't exactly broadcast details in case the details are reading the blog on a regular basis. That is what journals, of the spiral bound variety, are for. :)
It's been a tumultuous past 48 hours. Can't get into it all, but trust me. The constant rain isn't helping. Of course crap has to happen when it's raining, so I can't even go out and try and walk off my melancholy. I fell and scraped up my hand (which looks fine now) and knee (which is still scraped considerably. Traffic sucks because of all the rain. That's about all I can say, and obviously that doesn't seem bad enough to write about. I realize this. Right now I just can't disclose everything.
But tonight is class, so maybe that will cheer me up a little.
So, last night I got my midterm and unit 3 exam back. The results are
I'm not an artist. I would love to be able to paint and sketch, but I've been blessed with the ability to write, and that's not too shabby of a talent. However, sometimes I cannot help myself from at least attempting to be artistic, in case there is something I missed. I have this table that I inherited from Keely. It was white, dingy, kinda ratty looking. Until lately, it was pushed off to the side, never really in direct line of sight, but now that I've rearranged furniture, it was set in a place where it was the first thing anyone saw after walking inside. I tried covering it with pictures, candles, a scarf, but still it looked ghetto. So, I painted it black (have I told this part of the story already?). I know, sounds like an unusual choice since my living room is red and my dining room is blueish. But, somehow it works. Tonight I painted a second coat because it was chipping already. Then, I stenciled swirlies on it, because we all know how I love swirlies. Then, I had a pain marker and wrote pithy saying and profound statements that I've collected in my various journals over the years. However, many of the saying were writing related and I don't want the entire thing covered in writing sentences, so I need some help. If you have any possible contributions, let me know. Use the quotations at the top of this page as a sort of guideline for what I'm looking for. After I have enough, I'm going to gloss it and then I think it'll be done, unless I don't like it, at which time I will simply repaint it solid black again and call it a day.
Today was a great day. It was pretty nice out so I walked down (or is it up) 45th Street and then over to Gasworks where I composed a little essay about needing a single word to capture the meaning (long story) of something that is quite long. Then I read for a bit before walking home. Cleaned the house. Rented some movies. Anger Management is humorous but not as funny as I thought it was going to be.
Last night was fun. Didn't get a chance to sign as much as I thought I would. My classmates weren't and after they'd all left and I joined Keely and her group, they were all signing at such an advanced level, that I felt completely out of it. So, I just came home.
Finished the new Steve Martin novel, The Pleasure of my Company today. It was pretty good. I think Shopgirl was better, though. The character irritated me with all his insane neurosis. But I guess we all have neurosis to varying degrees. :)
So last night was the mid-term for ASL and I think it went pretty well. Clyde brought in four huge tvs and we split into groups so that we could all see. At first, we thought maybe we'd be able to work as groups, and during this, one of the groups (coincidentally, my nemisis herself) was trying to get me over to their group. In fact, she grabbed me by the pony-tail and pulled me from my seat! That was about the time that he told us we couldn't work together, so she pushed me back to my chair. So. Then I was put in charge of the remote control to the VCR, because my group said that I had proven my remote control skills at the study groups when we watched the receptive translation tapes in frame by frame. I did not realize how many times I would be rewinding the video!!! It took us a little over an hour to get through a, at the longest, 10 minute story. I think I did pretty well on it, though. Immediately following the mid-term was, as I said before, the unit 3 quiz. I think I did well on that, too. It was funny, the first section was colors; he signed a color to us and we wrote the English translation down. The second one he did was "tan." Everyone in the class was befuddled and claimed he hadn't shown us that one. So I fingerspelled, in a covert way, "tan" to him and he nodded and put his fingers to his lips, as if to say, "Don't tell them." It was funny, having this somewhat secret communication with the teacher. lol So then he gave some more hints and everyone got it. Dang it. That could've been the point I needed to beat my nemesis!! After everything was done, I asked him, "Where are our book quizzes from ages ago?" And he told me, and this is the third time in a month that he's said he was going to, that he would bring them next week. So I gave him some grief and said, "Again???" He said he would bring them with these quizzes and give them all back at once. Then he patted my shoulder. lol Teacher's pet. heheheeh
Tonight is Deaf night at Jillians. Hopefully I'll be able to communicate and understand better now that I have 2 months of class under my belt. That'd be cool.
No other plans for the weekend. Strange. I'm sure I'll find something to do.
I bowled one of the best games I'm cabable of last night! My score was 125! (or something close to that) Of course, the subsequent two games were closer to my usual average (hovering around 75). But, still, 125 is impressive. For me. My forearm is kinda sore today, though. :)
I haven't studied for my mid-term at all. Well, unless you count the fake signing that I was forced to endure last night. (long story, lol) Anyway. I'm not too worried about it.
I reread some old blog entries this morning. First, I was going to delete some of those that I thought I might not want a certain someone to read. But then, as I reread them, I decided that they weren't that bad and that was then this is now. A lot of them were funny. Is it bad to crack myself up sometimes? :) I was also reminded about how bad most of 2002 sucked. This year is much better. I hope I'm not speaking too soon. I also realize how old this Web design is and how long it's been since I touched a lot of these pages.
I know that I say this every year, several times a year, but I have to say it now. Here it is November 2003. I cannot believe it. What the heck happened to the past 10 months? And, the first Riemer baby, Katarina, turned 10 years old today. How is that possible? She is a baby. Her getting older only serves to remind me that I am old. And here is how I know that I am old. Marie told me that one of Katarina's presents was a walkman. My response, "Oh, was it a tape or cd walkman?" Marie answered that they probably don't even make the tape ones anymore, since she hadn't seen any when out shopping for the one that was purchased. What? When did that happen? Good Lord. I just can't believe it's November. But I won't wax nostalgic quite yet...I'll save that for December.
I encourage everyone to go buy the new Jason Mraz cd. It's pretty cool. He has a quirky style that I find compelling. He uses the word "lugubrious" in a song. Frankly, I don't hear that word used enough these days. :)
Tomorrow I have my ASL mid-term. I don't think, in my "real" college days, I ever had a true mid-term. Usually mid-terms ended up being unit tests. But I see how, in a language class, a mid-term is useful. I'm not all worked up about it. Some classmates are, but they're probably those that need a grade. I only need the grade to prop up my fragile ego, which really, I don't need because I already know that I am good at school. If only I could get paid for school...or at least reimbursed. Anyway. We have this mid-term, followed up by a unit quiz. Does the teacher think that this is like, ice cream, with sprinkles on top? What good sense does that make? Oh well. I should be fine. As always, as long as I keep up with the few who have faired better on the quizzes than me...Hey, we all have to have goals. :)