Public Transport: Revisited

Dear Readers,

I know I've talked about using public transport before, and it almost feels like cheating to use it as a post topic again, but there is just so much interesting material!

Portland has an amazing transport system. Now, some of you may have a different opinion having traveled to places that have more amazing transport systems and are thinking, "Pfffft, she has no idea what she's talking about. I'm not reading any more of her lies." This wounds me, down to my core. I would never, never, knowingly lie to you, Readers (unless it was for the sake of a re-he-he-he-ally good story...). So, let me qualify this. As someone who comes from a town with two public buses, Portland's transport system is amazing.

Strange people exist. They are everywhere. At some point in your life you are the strange one. According to my youngest sister I'm frequently the strange one.

This is the story of one of my more recent experiences on public transport:

Now, before you can get on a street car or train or bus you have to wait for it to arrive (this should be obvious, but I do hate to assume) and this is where the most prime experiences come from, at least in my history.

Most of the time on a train or bus or street car people are pretty good at keeping themselves to themselves, it's when they're out in public waiting for the transport to arrive is when they're really very strange. I generally combat this this by listening to music. You don't really have to pay much attention to people when you got headphones on or in the case may be. Every once in a while, as music does, there's a lull or break in the song.

I was listening to music while waiting for the street car, this kept me from noticing the man that approached the shelter. Even though I wasn't paying attention to him it was obvious from my perhipals that the man was having a lengthy conversation with himself. That's all well and good people can have as many conversations with themselves they want, I don't really mind. I also talk to myself, not generally in public (I mean that's a little strange) but who doesn't talk to themselves?

Anyhow this man was clearly talking to himself out loud, in this day and age it's amazingly easy to use mistake talking out loud to yourself for talking out loud on your Bluetooth.

Somehow, by sitting quietly and not bothering him, I had done something to seriously offend this poor man. How do I know this, you may be asking. I know this because as soon as my music was quiet enough I heard, "Oh my God! That is disgusting! Somebody cover her up, she is so fat! How can she be in public like that?"

Generally I would have continued to ignore this, however it was such a rude comment that my curiosity was in overdrive. So doing what any normal person would do, I look around. This was my mistake. 

I was the only other person at the shelter.

via Myself
For reference: This is how I was dressed on the day in question.

At this point some of you are probably pretty offended. And I can't really say that I blame you, but maybe you'll be less offended when you hear that I wasn't. I've always had a pretty good sense of humor about my weight,  it's not like I'm in denial. I'm well aware what I look like. Perhaps if this comment has come a week or so sooner, before I was serious about getting healthy again, I may have been more upset. As it stands I really had to try my hardest not to laugh and pretend that I was only listening to music.

I suppose the point of this is to try and impart some sort of knowledge upon you:

If you're on a journey never let someone bring you down. Your journey is your own and you are the only person you need to answer to, not the strangers at the streetcar shelter.

Group Projects

Dear Readers,

Today I want to talk about something that almost every school attending person (and maybe those of you in the working world) hate to hear: Group Projects!

via http://bestanimations.com/Nature/Storms/Storms.html

Alright, so maybe the lightning was a little dramatic. But I fell that it was necessary in setting the mood.

Group projects.

via http://bestanimations.com/Nature/Storms/Storms.html

(how many more times will that be funny?)

They weren't so bad in elementary school. Most of the time you got to pick your group. From across the class you'd be doing this strange interpretive dance, hand signals, or even Morse code in the direction of your friend, 

via http://adventuretime.wikia.com/wiki/File:EYEBROWS.gif

hoping you were subtle enough not to get caught. 

So, that wasn't so bad, generally. Middle school was a bit rougher, just because, well...Middle School. If you've been there you know what I mean. If you haven't I'll be a little more clear. You're not guaranteed to be in a class with your friends, so you may have to work with gasp strangers. Even worse, about 50% of the time it will be strangers that your teacher assigns you to. One one hand, not being assigned is nice, you can drift around until you run into another socially awkward student who doesn't want to stand up and declare that they have no friends in the class. On the other, you get to be less socially awkward if the teacher just tells you where to go. The group projects are always a bit slap-dash because no one has mastered the skill of taking control without being a jerk. Things don't get done.

High school isn't much different. Everyone's a little older, and if you're lucky you've got friends who carried over from middle school, so you can start sending flares and smoke signals when you want to work with them on a project. But it usually goes like this:

via http://giphy.com/search/sean-astin/2?sort=recent

The worst I have ever encountered, though, has to be the group projects in college. There are so many ways they could go, but let me share with you my most memorable experiences. 

1:

I was the youngest in the group (not uncommon, I'm actually sort of used to it). And my social apprehension told me not to try and make waves, just sit back and let the adults do what they wanted to. 

For this project we were summarizing a critical analysis of Jean Rhys' Wide Sargasso Sea (7/10 would recommend). And by summarize I mean really, no opinions of our own, just tell the class how it is. Boom. Done. Easy. So the plan was:

• Read the essay (at home)
• Individually summarize and find thesis (at home)
• Meet, agree on thesis (during the one hour class)
• Split up essay (also during class)
• Write a portion of completed summary (at home)
• Present (I don't feel it needs to be said, but in class)

Sounds fairly simple. Except we couldn't agree on the thesis. Now, as a general rule (for those of us not familiar with essays) the thesis is generally at the end of the intro, so within the first 1-3 paragraphs. And even more easily, it's usually identified by the words, "I will argue" or "This will prove". No, instead we spent the better part of our one hour class trying to decide which of the sentences in the middle of the essay was the thesis. 

Painful. 

When we presented each of us had to speak for only 2-3 minutes. But still, a day before we had to present one of the woman in the group was extremely worried that we wouldn't have enough to say. So we met out of class and worked it out. 

We were over our time, and I still don't think anyone learned anything from the jumbled mess we tried to present to them.

2:

Funnily enough this project was for a similarly themed class taught by the same professor. So, the group project was largely the same, but let me recap:

Summarize critical essay (this time for Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre [10/10 would recommend]). 

Seven people per group. Easy peasy lemon squeezy. 

The thing with this one was that we were given just about a week to pull it all together. Not really a problem because it's not that hard of a project. 

So we meet in class Tuesday. We agree, we will all upload our section of the group summary by roughly noon on Wednesday so that everything can be ready on the Thursday when it's due. 

I'm a flexible person (not physically) so I'm always alright with someone saying, "Hey, I'm trying really hard to finish this but I have school/work/to deliver a baby but I promise I'll have it in a couple of hours." No problem. Thanks for communicating. Glad to be working with you. Name the kid after me. 

What I don't like is just hearing nothing. Wednesday by noon we had all but two sections. One of the women emailed and politely informed us that she'd be getting her section up in a couple hours. Fantastic. 

I heard nothing from the other. 

5 pm: Nothing.

7 pm: Nothing. 

9 pm: Nothing. 

So I send her an email. [Side note: I'm not sure how it happened, but I sort of became the leader of this group. Maybe because I'd done a project of a similar caliber? Who knows.] 

10 pm: Nothing. 

11 pm: Fine, I'll write her section myself, at least we'll have something to hand in on Thursday.

I stay up 'til almost 1 am, nothing. 

So, I think, "Well maybe she's dead/in the hospital/dealing with a tragic life event." That's fine. I'm nice. 

8 am: "Oh, I was working all night and just saw this email, I thought we were turning stuff in next Tuesday. Is the presentation today?"

I had two reactions to this: Initially

via http://www.livememe.com/f3ah38h

All night? Literally? That's amazing and I'm sorry you had to work for so long, really.

Quickly followed by:

via http://www.uludagsozluk.com/k/facepalm/

Yes it's today, why did you think it was next week?

 So, like the nice person I am I email her right away, "Yes it is. You can go ahead and write something up [why did I write this? I can't tell you, but I gave her the option even though we have to present by noon.] Or we can keep what I wrote and you just expand on it for the presentation."

Now, when I write emails to people, especially of this nature, I sort of expect to hear something back, "Thank you so much, you're my savior and I worship the ground you walk on" ... Alright that's a bit much, but even just "Alright, thanks" would have been alright. But I got nothing. 

9 am: Nothing.

10 am: Nothing. 

11 am: Nothing. 

And by nothing I don't just mean no email. I mean there are no changes to the document. Literally no contact from this girl. 

Don't worry, though, at 10 I did get an email from another group member telling us that she was "sick and hurt her back" so she couldn't make it to class. 

Now, I'm not here to question the validity of back injuries or illness. But, I have a little sister. I have three, but this story is about the youngest. When we had to do chores when we were little she would always come up with a reason not to "My arms hurt", "my head hurts," and the most common, "my back hurts". So perhaps you can understand why I'm both irritated and amused by the email from my group member.

Life goes on, however, and I realize that this woman is not my sister and might legitimately have a back injury. 

In the end we ended up presenting Thursday. Despite being a person down and having one of our members being pretty unprepared. 

Did it go well? Yes.

Did we get extra points for going first? Yes. 

Did the professor love it? Also yes. 

Did I want to rip my hair out during the process? 

Yes. 

You've Gotta Give it a Go

Dear Readers,

As I touched on in my previous post I am working on becoming a healthier life style. For me this includes, cutting out all of the fast food I've gotten so fond of,

via Myself

All soda

via Myself

And most of the sweet treats we all love

via Myself

I won't lie. This is not easy, I've gotten so used to having a certain amount of junk a day. I'm happy to say, though, that I'm already getting to the point where it's easier to say, "Man, I really want pizza. Or, I could go have some grilled chicken and treat myself with a small piece of dark chocolate." I end up getting a bonus piece of chocolate out of the deal along with less regret.

Lifestyle change also means that I'm drinking about five hundred thousand gallons of water a day (not literally, that would kill you. Seriously, don't try to drink five hundred thousands gallons of water. Ever.). In all honesty, though, by the end of the day I usually end up feeling like a water balloon. Or how I imagine Violet Beauregarde felt.


The way I physically feel, though, is out of control. It was normal for me to get an upset stomach at least once a day due to something I'd eaten (I don't handle grease or dairy well...) but I just wouldn't stop eating that way. 

To help with my healthier lifestyle I've turned to Pinterest (as well as a couple other forum based sites) for my motivation and meal ideas.

Some of these foods sound amazing (who am I kidding, most of them do). My only issue is that a lot of these healthier options I'm unfamiliar with. Like, eggplant.

I know that more than once in my young life my mom had to have made eggplant for us. But when faced with a recipe for eggplant parm I had no idea what that would even taste like. So I decided, Hey, why the heck not? I'm adventurous. I'll give it a go.

So I walked myself down to the store and picked up the things I needed. Now, I've gotten fairly good at picking up produce on my own. Oftentimes I have to use Google to know when something is ripe. But I get by. I didn't google eggplant ripeness criteria.

How the heck do I know if an eggplant is ripe? They all feel the same. Are all of them ripe, or are none of them ripe?

Thanks to this lovely article I now know what to look for. At the time, though, this was completely unknown to me. So I just picked any ol' eggplant.

So, I went back home and cooked up some lovely eggplant parm.

Via Myself

Presentation aside, I think I made a pretty alright looking eggplant parm. So, I ate it, thinking I knew what to expect from the taste and texture of the vegetable.

Readers, I hate eggplant.

I'm not sad about spending the money on that disgusting vegetable, though. Because I did something I don't normally. I stepped outside of my comfort zone for the purpose of doing something good for myself.

Will I try any more eggplant dishes in the future? Probably not.

Will I continue to try the strange recipes I find on Pinterest? Absolutly.

Once More, With Feeling

Dearest Readers,

To those of you who are left are are still interested in reading my thoughts on life, hello again. To anyone who happened to fall into this bizarre world of mine accidentally, welcome to it, don't take life too seriously.

It's been nearly a year since I've done anything for this blog, or any blog-ish things at all. Well, just short of a year technically, I guess, if we're going off the actual dates from which I posted. Maybe that could be my new thing, post sporadically for three months then wait a whole year... It's a plan. Not a good one, but it does exist in the realm of plans.

I wish I had some interesting story as to why I was gone so long. Something like:

via Myself

I was traveling though the jungle, looking for the lost earring of the leopard queen.

via http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caribbean_reef_shark

I went deep sea diving, met a shark and just hung out for a while. 

via Myself

I constructed an airship and became an air pirate. (Sky pirate? Yeah, that's cooler.)

None of these are true, as amazing as they might sound. I could make a story, I suppose. Though I doubt it'd be believable, because I've got a flair for the fantastic.(A helpful skill when writing fiction, not so much when writing about true life events.)

The reality is that I've got a bad habit. I'm fairly positive that most humans have one or two. The bad habit of mine that I'm interested in covering right now is lack of commitment. This habit follows me throughout everything I choose to do.

I really want to learn to knit! - I've made two scarves.
I love cross stitching! - I've completed two square inches of the large project I started.
I should totally write a blog! - You can see how that one went.

The lack of commitment comes in the form of thinking of other things I could be doing with my time. Instead of doing something I enjoy, why don't I do something else I enjoy. In this fashion projects are left half done for what seems like eternity. Most likely eternity.

New Year's Resolutions are so cliche it hurts. However, I've made one. I'm trying to better myself in certain aspects of my life. Health and literary interest, mainly.

Luckily for you, I've also decided that my self betterment should include finishing things I've started.

via MyselfAnd by that I don't mean my cross stitching project.

I mean continuing to write this blog.

I've realized quite a few things about myself this year. I wear make up because it makes me happy. I wear nail polish for myself to enjoy. I eat better because I don't want to feel gross and sick all the time. I'm going to write a blog because I think I'm hilarious.

You're welcome, world.