I Love Christmas

There is something about Christmas that makes me feel wonderful. It's not the gifts, because I could care less if I owned half the stuff I do right now, let alone get more crap. I think what really draws me is the happiness that others seem to express around this time of year. That might also couple with the fact that another semester of college is coming to an end. This excitement is lessened however by the fact that finals are inevitably linked with this event. This cannot completely depress me however because I realize that classes and tests are very small things in the grand scheme of life. Also, life is never going to be perfect, and for that matter you can't assume that it will ever get any better, so you might as well be happy with the here and now.
Another aspect of the season that I love is the Christmas carols that are played this time of year. I could sing them over and over again. I wouldn't even mind playing them all year round. I know a few people that seem to hate these songs and I feel pity for them. They are obviously very bitter about either the joy other people are experiencing or about the lack of joy that they feel in the season. Why must we take something that is meant to be joyful and cause it harden our hearts? Despite these few scrooges, I try to make the most of the season. I have decorated my door with many hours of cutting and pasting and put up lights in my room to bring out a cheery attitude in those who visit me. I think generally what truly makes me happy is making other people happy.

meme tag

Phil has tagged me with a meme. PZ Myers started this on Pharyngula a while ago.

Here are the rules:

There are a set of questions below that are all of the form, "The best [subgenre] [medium] in [genre] is...". Copy the questions, and before answering them, you may modify them in a limited way, carrying out no more than two of these operations:

You can leave them exactly as is.
You can delete any one question.
You can mutate either the genre, medium, or subgenre of any one question. For instance, you could change "The best time travel novel in SF/Fantasy is..." to "The best time travel novel in Westerns is...", or "The best time travel movie in SF/Fantasy is...", or "The best romance novel in SF/Fantasy is...".
You can add a completely new question of your choice to the end of the list, as long as it is still in the form "The best [subgenre] [medium] in [genre] is...".

You must have at least one question in your set, or you've gone extinct, and you must be able to answer it yourself, or you're not viable.

Then answer your possibly mutant set of questions. Please do include a link back to the blog you got them from, to simplify tracing the ancestry, and include these instructions. Finally, pass it along to any number of your fellow bloggers. Remember, though, your success as a Darwinian replicator is going to be measured by the propagation of your variants, which is going to be a function of both the interest your well-honed questions generate and the number of successful attempts at reproducing them.


My Ancestors:

My great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandparent is A Blog Around the Clock
My great-great-great-great-great-great-grandparent is The Anterior Commissure
My great-great-great-great-great-grandparent is Laelaps
My great-great-great-great-grandparent is Quintessence of Dust
My great-great-great-grandparent is An Evangelical Dialogue On Evolution
My great-great-grandparent is Exploring Our Matrix
My great-grandparent is Sporadic Maunderings
My grandparent is Signs of Insanity
My parent is Craziness


The Questions (and Answers):

1. The best comedy in children's movies is:

Chicken Run

2. The best song that moves me inexplicably in 80s pop is:

We Didn't Start The Fire - Billy Joel

3. The best book appealing to both children and adults in Fantasy is:

The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring by JRR Tolkien

4. The most fantastic movie of all time is found in:

The Princess Bride

5. The best Coming of age movie in Drama is:

Forrest Gump



So now I tag Sarah.

Conflict is My Life

I have a major problem with conflict. When I disagree with someone on an issue I take an unwavering stance and get into easily avoidable conflicts. Then again, even if I don't care about an issue I make a point to start arguments. I decided to defend a subject without thought, just because it is opposite the stance someone else holds. With this outlook on life it is very difficult to create and maintain friendships. Being agreeable does not come easy to me because I have always been taught to question others thoughts and beliefs. I wish I could just relax and let my guard down around people and be open to new thoughts and ideas. Not everything that is different is bad. I just wish I didn't act like an ass all the time.

Last Night

So yesterday I was considering going to this A Capella event in Alumni Hall at the HUB. It was part of Penn States Late Night program. It didn't start until 10 pm however, and I didn't really want to be up until 1 am. I also didn't have anyone to go with, and these kind of events are always more fun to attend with somebody, so I didn't end up going. Now the ironic thing is, though I didn't intend it, I actually stayed up until about 1 am, so I could have spent the time listening to music instead of sitting in my dorm room. But all was not totally wasted. I was at first considering how to decorate my room because I have been becoming increasingly depressed with its bland nature. I made the decision that I would like to paint the window into something a little more scenic, so I looked up what kind of paints the job would require. Now it's just a matter of finding a store that sells them and getting the funds to buy them. (I still have a $100 check that needs to be cashed, and not much cash left in my wallet.) Then I got sidetracked from that issue because I remembered that I promised Philip that once I had some pictures from the camera he let me borrow, that I would create a flickr page. So I spent the rest of my time setting up the account and adding a few pictures. You can see this page by clicking here.

The College Grind

So this school year started off pretty bad. Probably not any worse than last year, but not much better either. I didn't have to find new friends, which was a plus, but the homework load for the classes I'm taking seemed pretty intense. Then, less than two weeks into the semester my grandpa passed away. This upset me emotionally and it also threw me further off my hectic schedule. I was getting so far behind I thought I would never catch up. I worked pretty steadily for two weekends straight trying to catch up, and I finally felt like I had succeeded. This Thursday I had nothing pressing to get done and I did not feel the least bit guilty for taking the night off and watching a movie with Karen. (Which by the way, "Good Luck Chuck" is one of the worst films ever created.) However, I have fallen back into that place where I feel I am too far behind to catch up, so hopefully when I go back to studying I will feel like accomplishing a lot and get back to that relaxed feeling once again. But I don't count on it. I wish I was just a little bit less lazy, and then I wouldn't have to go on rants like this. I also wish my life was a little more exciting so my blog entries wouldn't be so boring, but maybe that's just asking for trouble.

Summer

So I'm sorry (to the two people who read this blog, especially Philip) that I haven't been writing this summer. It has been kind of busy. I had to help my dad catch up on all the stuff that had been forgotten because it was not of enough importance to maintain while I was gone. This consumed most of May. Then in June we did our hay. That was not as bad as sometimes because we did the majority in large square bales (3*4*6) that were stacked in the pole barn with tractors instead of hands. This was really nice. I did put in a few long days on the tractor though. The hay got a little wet, which sucked, but it stayed pretty green, so it wasn't a loss. We were done before my birthday, which was nice because too often we have to put in hay that day. I had a pretty nice birthday. Heather took my out to dinner the night before and we watched the Corry fireworks. Then on my birthday we all went to TJ's to play pool in the afternoon and my dad, mom, and I went to Dutch Treat for dinner. A plus was that my mom got out of the hospital on the 29th so she could come with us for all the fun. She seems to have made a full recovery from her stroke, though she still calls Melissa Marlissa more often than she used to. I think I basically wasted July, but maybe that was a good thing. Though I guess I do remember that at the beginning we sold all of our 7 puppies and Philip and Janelle were here for quite a while. Then I went to Canada last week and had a lot of fun. It took about two hours less to get home than it did to get up, which is kind of ironic because the border into the US is usually harder to cross than the one into Canada. I have been picking a lot of vegetables and fruit this summer and freezing it. I hope to eat healthier at college this coming year and I figured that the fruit smoothies that my aunt Dawn suggested my mom make would probably be good for me too. Thus, instead of having to buy a whole bunch of fresh fruit I will have most of what I need in my freezer. Well, that's a pretty good update I think.

College

Schreyer Honors College is the worst honors college in the nation.