Oh No!

We've been having a guy mow our lawn (front and back plus edging) for $15 each Wednesday. Well I've become extremely dependent on that and so this week was a train wreck for me when he didn't show up on the scheduled day!! I emailed him on Wednesday evening and got a response from him saying he was very sorry but his parents had been in town and Monday was their last day. He decided to play hookie and it put him back a day but he would be there the next day in the early afternoon. Well, Thursday came around and still a no-show (luckily we pay him by the day and not in advance) but still. Our lawnmower is on the fritz right now and we're relying heavily on his services to avoid having to pay a lot of money for repairs for now. So, I was thinking maybe he had too many clients and was so behind that it pushed him behind one more day. Well, here it is on a Friday night at about 11pm MDT and the lawn is still not mowed. Well, I waited til about 8pm tonight when it might be cooler and I tried to at least mow our backyard because that tends to grow the fastest. I got about a little less than half done and then all of the sudden the mower wouldn't start again after I emptied the grass bag for about the 3rd time. I could NOT get it cranked again at all. So, it looks like I will be waiting on this guy again. I guess I could borrow somebody else's mower but oh well.


Other than that, nothing much has been exciting here. I keep checking obsessively for my Praxis test scores online even though I know that it's nowhere near time for them to post the scores but back in my mind, I keep hoping they graded mine fast--silly, I know. I got a pedicure today with my friend, Karen. She took me for one for a belated birthday present. It was a very nice salon and spa near the mall area. It's called Viziato's. It was so fancy in that salon!!! I should've taken pictures but that might've come off as a bit tacky. :) Anyway, my toes are now poiple! It's definitely not a color I would normally choose and I've heard that if I ever wanted to go bold with a color on nails, put it on the toenails! My toes are about the same color as this print--except darker. :) I've gotten back into half marathon training and it's kicking my butt!

Argh..

Kyle and his friend just went to Jack in the Box for their "lunch" at midnight. The old me would've gone with them but I chose not to tonight but that makes it so much harder when they come back home with their goodies and are munching on them behind me as I write this.

That test was hard!

I had my test yesterday for the ELL certification. All I can say is that it was sooooo hard!! I finished about 15 minutes before the end of the testing session that was about 2 hours long. The test comprised of a listening section where we had to listen to sections of speech from English language learners and diagnose what their issues were with the language. That part was a little difficult because some of the speakers sounded really clear and spoke clearly to me but they might have had a slight issue with sounds. The next sections were teaching methods and theories and maybe a little bit of law-related material. By the end of the test, my head felt like it wanted to explode and I was really pissed off at the BSU ELL department because the 2 linguistics classes that I took didn't talk about any of the stuff that I encountered on the test!! It was a good thing that I even spent any time preparing for this test on my own because I would've been totally screwed had I not.

This week BSU is having a very important person coming to give a talk and his name is Peter McLaren. The professors have been hyping this man up so much the last few weeks. One lady in my test session asked me if I was going and she sounded so excited about it but I made up a white lie saying I wasn't going because I'm lazy and didn't want to do anything else this week after finishing up classes. Well my real reason for not going is the fact that I don't want to go to anything extra because it would show my support for this program that did not prepare me at all for this test and thanks to them also, that if I get an ELL job soon, I'm going to be so lost as to what to plan for these kids--I have no tools under my belt to plan fun activities to help these kids learn English and I will be jumping in cold turkey. I realize most education classes don't really prepare you for a lot but my undergrad classes actually taught me how to make lesson plans and even gave me some ideas as to what to do in planning language games. Anyway, I won't know my scores for a few weeks (about a month from now) and hopefully I passed it.

Tiger's going crazy right now...

I'm done with my classes for the summer.

Still have my paper to get done soon.

I have my ELL praxis exam on Saturday that determines if I get certified to teach the subject and hopefully I'll pass the first time around. Fingers crossed, please! :)

I'm tired and don't want to think anymore. I'm thinking about chopping off a lot of my paper that I've written so far because I'm just babbling simply because I got mad at the class and wanted to vent but I don't want to write too much to where the professor can't follow my point: my point that I'm trying to talk about is the way we use language to categorize people and how that's not technically fair because usually those categories aren't based on good things and just on preconceived judgments...but how can we get away from that? It's human nature to want to categorize by color, shape, size, gender, etc. It's confusing to me--we're supposed to treat everyone equal, yet not everyone is the same, but if we make notice of that, we're categorizing...and it just goes in circles from there! ARGH! BLAH!!! Anyway, that's what I want to talk about and I have a feeling my paper's gonna be chopped in half right now and I might have to start over and put more concise language and phrasing in there instead of rambling.


It's late. I'm getting up somewhat early tomorrow to go to weigh-in, I think and then I'm going to pick up a couple of friends at their training classes and we're going to lunch. Then I'm going to take the practice Praxis exam again and see how well I did on it. I only missed 17 out of 90 questions and if I do the simple division problem from that it means that I made an 81 on it but I know that's not how they score it, however, it made me feel good. :)


Oh yeah, I revisited my Body Attack class this evening. It about killed me. The instructor did say that this was a harder routine though and that it's real tough on endurance and range of motion and whatnot. Of course, that class has never been really easy either but I will say this--I didn't leave the room at all. In the past, I've always tried to conveniently miss one song routine to make the class "shorter" to me. This time, I stuck with it and stayed in there. Yeah, I'll probably be sore tomorrow but it'll be worth it. This Saturday will mark exactly 10 weeks before the City of Trees half marathon that I've signed up to do again this year. I've already begun training for it this week and so next week will be my 2nd week of training officially. I'll be looking forward to these next 10 pounds to drop off of me by the end of training (or sooner, hopefully). I think these last 10 pounds will be the last of my weightloss problems...I think I'll feel much better after that and I can just maintain my weight then and not feel so pressured. I don't want to get down way too low.

I guess that's about it.


Night, ya'll!

Correction...

It is now 106 degrees outside...

Hot, Hot, Hot!!!

It is so hot here right now!!! The high for today is supposed to be 101 according to the local newspaper. Usually the temperature here doesn't actually reach it's high until about now (4pm) or a little later but lately it's been about 88 degrees by about 12pm--that's HOT!!! I'm so wishin' for a pool right now. Maybe one day, I'll buy a blow-up kiddie pool and just sit in the water all day. Our poor flowers look so parched even when we do water them! I started feeling sorry for them just now and put out the sprinklers in the backyard. We hired a guy for $15 to mow our yard every Wednesday because it was just getting so hard for me to do it. I was so fed up with doing it. So, we decided to let someone else suffer--haha.


I have a partner from class coming over tonight so we can work on our project that's due on this coming Thursday. Hopefully we can get it done or pretty close to being done tonight. Wish us luck!

Long week of class

I just got done with one long week of class. The class actually lasts 2 weeks and it's only Monday through Thursday but the class lasts from 11:30am-4pm. It's LOOOOONG. The professor is one that I don't particularly care for because of his opinions. He's rather harsh sometimes and very intense. Since I've had him before though, I knew sort of what to expect and readied myself for it so I wouldn't get so offended this time. Well...guess what? He managed to offend me but this time I was able to keep control of myself and even though I was angry, I tried to let go. This time he decided he would talk about the series "Twilight". If ya'll have been paying attention, then you know that I'm quite obsessed with it mainly because it's a fun storyline and I like the characters (namely the leading vampire...hehehe). Anyway, he said that he rented the movie the other night because it was a movie he wouldn't typically rent. He said he enjoyed it. It was fun. Then something possessed him all of the sudden and he said that he was offended by it. DO YOU KNOW WHY????? Because he said, "My people weren't represented." My people meaning the Latino/as. What the heck????? I immediately fired back with something like, "Did it have to include Latino/as to be a complete story?" He said yes and that it didn't show any representation and that was racist. Then people in the class (who haven't even read/watched the movie or any of the books) started chiming in. Now, if I hadn't read any of the books or seen the movie, I would feel as if I had no part in a discussion about the series. Anyway, everyone was confirming or agreeing to this bullcrap that the book was racist in that it criminalizes the dark-skinned people (the Native Americans are beasts who have uncontrollable tempers and the only black person in the movie just happened to be a bad vampire). I got so upset with what was being said about this and I just felt like screaming but I just had to keep my mouth shut because I wasn't going to win since I was a white girl. The professor was saying that this particular interpretation could be debated depending on which side you look at it from. Obviously since I'm white, I'm not gonna see the "oppressive, racist" nature of the series. The author, Stephenie Meyer, is Mormon and apparently her faith had influenced her in writing this story. I read somewhere that according to the Mormon faith, the people of color had the mark of Caine on them and in order to save their souls, they would have to marry a white person to cleanse themselves and their offspring would lighter skin--therefore, cleansing them. Or something like that. So, in this series of stories, it's all about how the pale, beautiful vampires are the utmost in beauty and everyone wants to be like that. I also read that Stephenie Meyer was trying to watch out for racism in her book by not necessarily saying the skin was white but "diamond" colored. Anyway....all this aside, I was so mad that people who hadn't even read these books were making accusations and presumptions that they didn't have anything to back it up with. I was mad also because they were taking the joy out of a harmless story (in my opinion) and this series of stories made me start to read again for leisure. How dare they take that away from me and turn it into racist, white power material!!?? Does that make me a racist for enjoying the story line? I think not. Not every story has to have every nationality under the sun to be "complete". In fact, the stories I've been reading for him don't always include anglos so can I call him on that? No, because I'm white and I'm always represented. What a CROCK OF......


*sigh* Well, that's what I've been dealing with so far this week. I've got a project due next Thursday for the last day of class and a paper also. I probably won't be updating til after that but I will be sure to let you know what kind of other ridiculous argumentative debates we come across between now and then. :)

Holy Bladders, Batman!!

Lately I've been so unmotivated to start back up with my "strict" food watching but now that I've registered myself for the City of Trees half marathon again, I guess I need to get into gear now. I've started my gallon of water per day regimen just yesterday and I'm about to burst at the seams every 20-30 minutes at the very most. Most of the time, it happens at the most inopportune times such as sitting in class (the professor probably thinks I'm trying to ditch his class all the time) or after I've got a full cart at the grocery store. That happened yesterday and I just had to check out (very hurriedly) and shove the cart in a corner next to the restroom and run in. If I keep this up, I may just float away or my body will get used to it and I won't be in agony anymore.


Ugh..anyway. I've got about 4 pages done on my paper and I'm thinking I'll get about a couple more pages squeezed out and that'll do. :)

What happens in Vegas...and in Milford...

My attempt at gambling (with a dollar)...

Sadly, I did not win anything...I ended up losing a dollar. :(

With the parents!

Grandpa, Kyle, me, and Grandma out on the front lawn.

Happy 27th Birthday to me! :)


The Las Vegas Airport was a sight to be seen--slot machines EVERYWHERE!! I tried one just so I could say that I gambled in Vegas. Unfortunately, I didn't win any huge fortune. Darn it! Kinda sad, huh?

The trip to Milford, IN was great! It was nice seeing most of the family for the holiday weekend. We got to relax a lot and not worry about a whole lot. We also ate way too much on the 4th of July--well, at least I did. I felt like puking later that night and ended up taking 4 pepto-bismol tablets to ease the food-induced nausea. ICK! Overall though, it was wonderful and I hope to see the Brown clan sometime soon again!

I also got to see Chris one more time before he leaves for his 13 week bootcamp in San Diego...I'm sad. I couldn't get enough hugs from him before he left Monday night from Grandma's and Grandpa's. I cried a little later that night after we went to bed. He'll be fine though. I know he will. He's a strong person but that doesn't change me thinking about the little baby brother with white blonde, curly hair and a snot bubble being blown out his nose from a sneeze into playdough...

I love you, Chris.