Ponderings and Musings

Mantra.

I’m not perfect. I don’t pretend to be perfect. I do strive to be perfect, but if I were perfect then I would not be human, and the last time I checked I was still human.

I don’t expect others to be perfect. But I do expect others to try to be the best that they can be. Whether a person is driving on the freeway, pushing a grocery cart or watching television, I expect a person to do it to the best of their ability.

I have one rule in my life that I never waiver from. “Always be aware of your surroundings.” Whether you’re driving, your walking or your watching television in a hotel room, know where you are, who is near you and what is occurring at any given moment. I believe that if you adhere to this little guideline, you’ll be two steps ahead of anyone around you that may not be aware of their surroundings.

There are many that stumble through life without a clue as to what is really going on around them. Such a person just tried to mow me over in Panera not ten minutes ago, as she balanced her lacha chacha aiy ya choo choo with one hand and cradled her cell phone between her shoulder and ear as she made a bee-line for a table. She was completely oblivious to fact that other people were standing in the same general area as she. Had I not stepped back and allowed her blind passage, she would have smacked directly into me and lost her lacha chacha aiy ya choo choo and cell phone. It would have been messy.

As it now stands, she is able to continue to waltz through life oblivious to all around her. Perhaps I’ve done the world a disservice.

Good Day.

Acura.
Driving Home From A Good Day At School
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Have you ever woke up and just had a feeling that the day was going to be a wonderful day? What a beautiful feeling; you wake up without needing the alarm clock, your eyes flutter a little bit, the glorious dreams of the night before linger like a warm hug and there’s no paw searching for a little tuna in your eye.

That’s how I woke up this morning.

Today was the last day of midterms. Professor Frightful didn’t get the midterm ready in time, so he decided to give us a “double quiz” covering the last two chapters. His teaching style is out there, but I’ve pretty much acclimated to it and gone into self-study mode, so I think I did well on my midterm turned quiz.

I feel confident with the paper I turned in for English. I wrote a dissertation on “My Antonia” by Willa Cather discussing all the gender confusion and homosexual tendencies in the novel.

Always trying to be the responsible student, I signed up for an extra Surveying lab to make up for the lab I’ll miss next week while Earl and I are in Ireland. Today’s lab was with the other Surveying professor and the class was considerably smaller; my normal class has 22, today’s class had 5, including myself. That made a big difference in many ways. Having a different professor gave me a new perspective on how to do things (he’s much more strict with procedure, which is a good thing) and being a small class gave me considerably more hands-on time with the equipment. I was nervous going into the class because I didn’t think I’d know anyone, but the guys were great and I felt comfortable with the “new” crew. I plan on signing up with this professor for my next Surveying course in January.

Lately I’ve been feeling like my professional destiny ended with asking “do you want fries with that?” for the rest of my life, today it was a great feeling to get back on track and start feeling the DOT thing again.

To end the day on a great note, Earl indulged my geek ways and sat down with me as we watched an episode of “The Secrets of Isis”, followed by the “Bewitched” movie with Nicole Kidman and Will Farrell. I hadn’t watched the movie in a couple of years and while still quite disappointing, we both enjoyed the experience. (Nicole Kidman should beg Sony to do ANOTHER Bewitched remake and this time make it more like the real thing.)

Today has been a good day. I feel confident in taking this vacation now.

Milestone.

I am just arriving home after taking my first final exam of the semester. Today’s foray into testing was for my “Health and Wellness” course. As a half-semester class, we get to squeeze a final into the flurry of midterms.

My initial reason for taking this course was to sidestep being the overweight father figure dressed in a pair of shiny workout shorts in a sea of buff, teenage male muscleheads and still make my physical education requirements. I figured the course would be like the health classes we all had to take in high school and in many ways it was just as I had imagined. The professor was the soccer coach, was usually dressed in coach attire (complete with a whistle around his neck) and somewhat resented the fact that he had a class of students that were trying to get out of physical exercise for their physical education requirements. On the whole I enjoyed his presentation style, preparedness for the class and the relatability of the topics to real life.

Surprisingly, this course turned out to be my favorite course of the semester. And I find this a little odd for several reasons. First of all, it has nothing to do with my major. Always looking for signs from the Universe, this aspect concerns me a little bit and leaves me to do some thinking about the path that lies ahead. Secondly, because I really enjoyed the class I managed to drag myself, on time, to this 8 a.m. course twice a week. I made it to every class and I think I might have been one of a very small number of students with perfect attendnace. Night owls usually don’t make it to 8 a.m. class.

So now I’m well versed in a smattering of health related topics. And I feel good about it.

Startling.

So today’s topic in Health Class was sexuality. Any word that contains “sex” somewhere in it always piques my interest, so I was curious to see how the class would progress today. Would the professor treat it like my high school health teachers did so many years ago – by running a well worn 16mm film on the Singer film projector, out of focus, so we couldn’t see the important parts?

I’m glad to say that he did not. Instead, he invited a speaker from the local Planned Parenthood to address the class.

The speaker blew me away with his frankness, personality and confidence he displayed while discussing a potentially taboo subject. If I’m to be honest, there are few subjects, when it comes to sex, that will make me blush and it was refreshing to hear a speaker address the class in much the same manner.

During the presentation he threw out several statistics that I found startling:

1. HIV infections are back on the rise.
2. 20,000,000 Americans per year are infected with a sexually transmitted infection and this does NOT include HIV infection.
3. Of those 20+ million, a good share of them are young adults aged 16-24.

Cluephone ringing for our conservative folks, the whole “let’s ignore it/abstinence” approach isn’t working.

Don’t be surprised if I hand you a condom sometime.

Make It Interesting.

It’s midterms week at my fine educational institution and as a student I am double blessed, for I am trying to get ahead on my schoolwork so Earl and I can go to Ireland next week without my worrying about homework that may have been left behind.

I’ve griped about school quite a bit this semester, and I believe much of my griping is justified. However, in order for me to stick with my studies and to obtain that golden nugget called a degree, I have decided that I need to just make the whole affair interesting for me.

I am currently writing a research paper on the novel I chose to read for my English Literature class, “My Antonia” by Willa Cather. I’ve decided to focus on Cather’s suspected lesbianism and the subsequent undertones of her sexuality in Jim, the lead male character of the novel.

If I can talk about sex, I’m totally there.

Today when we had a pop quiz in Surveying (which we were allowed to use our book), I heard the student behind me struggling with the quiz because she had neglected to bring her book to class and was trying to find answers to formulas that required referencing the book. Since I tend to fly through quizzes at hyperspeed, I finished my quiz early so I tossed the book in her direction and let her keep it through the end of class. Later in the day at our outdoor surveying lab, she thanked me profusely and said she appreciated the gesture. Helping her made me more interested in what was going on in school.

In our afternoon lab we had to simulate a construction site and plot out the land for a large building. Divided up into four man crews, I watched my three crewmates spin the plans around in several directions and look off into the distance as they tried to line up point A with point B. I decided to take the bull by the horns and piped up, walking them through the layout of the building and where we should be setting up our surveying equipment, just as the professor walked over. He simply said, “guys, listen to J.P.” I’m old enough to be the father of the guys, they should trust the old man.

I’m often remarking to Earl that I respect self assured people that are uninhibited. I guess it’s time for me to start expressing myself. It keeps life interesting.

Expectations.

I’m wondering if I’m expecting too much from this college experience. Today I had one class, Surveying I. I don’t plan on becoming a surveyor, however it’s a required course for all of us that wish to work in the civil engineering field. I might have to survey someday, and though we are being trained on equipment that became obsolete during Donna Summer’s “Last Dance”, by god we must take this course.

My Surveying class is compromised of 29 men and one woman. I’ve bonded with Jennifer to an extent, she’s very attractive, a little rough and what you might expect of a female civil engineer, not that I like stereotyping people, but she fits the image. Of my classmates, I’d say that I’m tied with another guy for being the oldest and many are in their mid or late 20s. There are a couple of freshmen as well. Some are stoned.

Today the professor handed out a 35 page packet on Trigonometry with the following instructions: read it, do the problems and turn in the homework next week. Now, I don’t expect him to teach us the fundamentals of trigonometry in 50 minutes, but for many of us in the class we haven’t had trig since high school. Heck, I was in the first round of students when New York State changed the traditional “Trigonometry” class to “Course III”, which was an advanced, unique blend of algebra, geometry, calculus and trigonometry that focused on the latter. I don’t know why the class of 1986 was selected to be the guinea pigs for the “mix it all together” approach but I think it kind of puts me at a disadvantage. I’m already suffering from the elementary school math experiment with the class of 1986: “let’s teach them only metric!” That went over so well when the U.S. converted to the metric system and all.

But I digress.

Now, I know that for every hour of class I should spend two hours studying and I try to adhere to that guideline to the best of my ability. But I think perhaps we should have spent some time in class talking about the contents of the packet. Instead he popped a quiz and told us we could leave when we finished that. I’m not a fan of the disinterest.

Boo.

Maybe I’m expecting too much. Perhaps I was spoiled when Miss Chontosh (high school math teacher) took time to walk us through problems and had after school tutoring sessions to coach us on the regents exams. It could be that I’m just putting too much pressure on myself and setting my personal expectations too high.

Sometimes I wonder if I should just bag it all and get a job that pays the bills and spend my free time in community theatre or something.

Crow.

Imagine my surprise when Time Warner sent a full cable crew, complete with bucket truck and hard hats, to our home only 45 minutes after the cross-eyed, twangy sounding tech and the four kids in the back of his truck left the premises.

Wow! Color me impressed.

The cable crew replaced everything aside from the cable that runs under the driveway (which is completely intact and passes all tests with flying colors), ripped out the booster that the tech installed three weeks ago, explained everything they did and gave me an internet experience that’s faster than passing gas after Burger King.

I am once again a happy geek and surfing at high speed, baby.

Bring on the porn news and family friendly entertainment.

Rethinking.

Earl has been out of town for the past two nights. He was expected home this evening, but during last night’s call he let me know that he’ll have to spend tonight out of town as well.

This kind of has me bummed. It also has me thinking.

Since he’s out of town tonight and tomorrow night he has a sleep study for his sleep apnea and then on Thursday he’s out of town again, I’m rethinking out overnight plans we have for this coming weekend. We were going to go to Buffalo for the last half of a bear run but now I’m thinking that might be a bit much, especially for him.

Maybe I’m getting old.

I guess we’ll have to discuss it tonight.

I think I’m starting to kick into hibernation/homebody gear in tandem with the color change on the trees and the cooler temperatures. For the past 24 hours or so I’ve been really in the mood to bake a pie. I’m in the mood for stew. I want to eat some squash.

Interesting that my thoughts of autumn gravitate to food.

Bin.

I’m noticing an increasing trend in this area. While making an occasional fast food stop, whether it’s at Subway, Quizno’s or one of the burger places, I’m noticing more and more people aren’t picking up their garbage and putting it in the trash bin when they’re finished.

What’s up with that?

Are people becoming so arrogant that they think they can just leave their trash lying about? Have the fast food chains instituted some table-side service that I didn’t know existed?

The next time I see an ignoramus just leave their trash lying on the table in the middle of McBomb or whatever, I might be tempted to stand up and say “Hey! You forgot your trash!” I’ll leave the “asshole” off the end of the sentence so I can give an air of being polite.

I don’t know why I think I must be the manners police in these situations but this new trend is driving me crazy.

Health.

I’ve mentioned before that I am currently enrolled in a health class to get my required physical education credit. Many see this course as the lazy way of meeting the requirement but I am surprisingly getting a lot out of the course. I don’t know if it’s guilt or what but I’ve stepped up workout routine considerably since enrolling and I’m feeling better for it. In fact, I’m in jeans that I couldn’t fit into in August. This makes me happy.

On Thursday we had an exam covering everything we’ve discussed thus far. As I mentioned before, the class is seemingly populated with slackers and before returning our exams to us, the professor mentioned that these were the poorest results he’s ever encountered in teaching this class for the past 30 years. Coming out of the class on Thursday, I wasn’t confident of my performance on this exam. So when the professor wrote the grades up on the board “80+, 3”, “70-80, 6”, “60-70, 10”, etc., I ballparked myself as one of the six and maybe one of the ten. Surprisingly it turns out that I was one of the “three”. Not my most stellar exam grade but I’m pleased.

It’s amazing the amount of practical information that is being taught in this course. Smoking leads to lung cancer. McFood is bad for you. Exercise helps you maintain a healthier body. While I’m starting to cheer on the younger generation a little bit, because I’m finding that many professors really don’t give a crap about the students they are teaching, I can not for the life of me figure out why teenagers are picking up smoking. With all the undeniable evidence out in the wild, there is absolutely no reason that any person with any sort of common sense would start smoking in this day and age. I just don’t get it.

Anyways, one of the topics that came up in the discussion today sort of surprised me. Many of the younger students believe that there are cures (or we are really close to a cure) for many of the incurable diseases: diabetes, cancer, AIDS, etc., and the U.S. government is surpressing these cures (or really close attempts) in order to keep the pharmacutical companies alive. They reason that it’s all about big business these days and why should we come up with a cure that would knock out all this big money? Now, I’ll admit that I proudly wear my tin-foil hat, especially with Bush Lite and his cast of idiots populating Washington, but that’s one point of view that I’ve never considered. I think this discussion is indicative of a lot of things. First of all, with this up and coming generation I see big changes on the horizon. It might take two or three decades, but I feel like there’s some sort of light at the tunnel when it comes to this mess our country is in. Secondly, I found myself agreeing with my classmates. I’ve never been one for taking medication. Hell, I don’t go to the doctor unless something impedes my appearance (being vain and all) or messes with my sexuality (being a man and all). I don’t know if their theory goes to the extent in which they proposed by why would big business want to cure a disease when they can make a ton of money just treating it? But you know what, this group of slackers brought up an interesting point that made me think, and add another bit of Reynolds Wrap to my hat.