Procrastination

While I was taking a break from writing my thesis I decided to watch some tv. I was flipping channels and I came across the beginning of the movie Joe's Apartment. Defintley an interesting movie if you haven't seen it before. Its about a guy who moves into an apartment in ny. He soon finds out that talking roaches who sing and throw parties live there as well. It's actually kinda gross in some parts but defintley a good movie if your procrastinating.

Addictions renewed

The addiction starts again. Though I am probably not going to do that much more with my account since they are going to reset things in the middle of november and I'll just have to start all over again. For now Im a mage, level 10 with ec 12 which means I have fireball. Oh yea :) Jeff if you did finish downloading it you can use my cb account if you want since I'm probably not going to do that much more on it.

Why we love children

1. A kindergarten pupil told his teacher he'd found a cat, but it was dead. "How do you know that the cat was dead?" she asked her pupil. "Because I pissed in its ear and it didn't move," answered the child innocently. You did WHAT ? ! ?" the teacher exclaimed in surprise. "You know,"explained the boy, "I leaned over and went 'Pssst!' and it didn't move."

2. A small boy is sent to bed by his father. Five minutes later....."Da-ad...." "What?" "I'm thirsty. Can you bring drink of water?" "No, You had your chance. Lights out." Five minutes later: "Da-aaaad....." "WHAT?" "I'm THIRSTY. Can I have a drink of water??" I told you NO! If you ask again, I'll have to spank you!!" Five minutes later......"Daaaa-aaaad...." "WHAT!" "When you come in to spank me, can you bring a drink of water?"

3. An exasperated mother, whose son was always getting into mischief, finally asked him "How do you expect to get into Heaven?" The boy thought it over and said, "Well, I'll run in and out and in and out and keep slamming the door until St. Peter says, 'For Heaven's sake, Dylan, come in or stay out!'"

4. One summer evening during a violent thunderstorm a mother was tucking her son into bed. She was about to turn off the light when;he asked with a tremor in his voice, "Mommy, will you sleep with me tonight?" The mother smiled and gave him a reassuring hug. "I can't dear," she said. "I have to sleep in Daddy's room." A long silence was broken at last by his shaky little voice: "The big sissy."

5. It was that time, during the Sunday morning service, for the children's sermon. All the children were invited to come forward. One little girl was wearing a particularly pretty dress and, as she sat down, the pastor leaned over and said, "That is a very pretty dress. Is it your Easter Dress?" The little girl replied, directly into the pastor's clip-on microphone, "Yes, and my Mom says it's a bitch to iron."

6. When I was six months pregnant with my third child, my three-year-old came into the room when I was just getting ready to get into the shower. She said, "Mommy, you are getting fat!" I replied, "Yes, honey, remember Mommy has a baby growing in her tummy." "I know," she replied, but what's growing in your butt?"

7. A little boy was doing his math homework. He said to himself, "Two plus five, that son of a bitch is seven. Three plus six, that son of a bitch is nine...." His mother heard what he was saying and gasped, "What are you doing?" The little boy answered, "I'm doing my math homework, Mom." "And this is how your teacher taught you to do it?" the mother asked. "Yes," he answered. Infuriated, the mother asked the teacher the next day, "What are you teaching my son in math?" The teacher replied, "Right now, we are learning addition." The mother asked, "And are you teaching them to say two plus two, that son of a bitch is four?" After the teacher stopped
laughing, she answered, "What I taught them was, two plus two, THE SUM OF WHICH, is four."

8. One day the first grade teacher was reading the story of Chicken Little to her class. She came to the part of the story where Chicken Little tried to warn the farmer. She read, ".... and so Chicken Little went up to the farmer and said, "The sky is falling, the sky is falling!" The teacher paused then asked the class, "And what do you think that farmer said?" One little girl raised
her hand and said, "I think he said: 'Holy Shit! A talking chicken!'" The teacher was unable to teach for the next 10 minutes.

9. A certain little girl, when asked her name, would reply, "I'm Mr. Sugarbrown's daughter." Her mother told her this was wrong, she must say, "I'm Jane Sugarbrown." The Vicar spoke to her in Sunday School, and said, "Aren't you Mr. Sugarbrown's daughter?" She replied, "I thought I was, but mother says I'm not."

10. A little girl asked her mother, "Can I go outside and play with the boys?" Her mother replied, "No, you can't play with the boys, they're too rough." The little girl thought about it for a few moments and asked, "If I can find a smooth one, can I play with him?"

11. A little girl goes to the barber shop with her father. She stands next to the barber chair, while her dad gets his hair cut, eating a snack cake. The barber says to her, "Sweetheart, you're gonna get hair on your Twinkie." She says, "Yes, I know, and I'm gonna get boobs too."

So cute!

I'm in love. Aren't they adorable? Jeff and I have been talking about getting a sheltie after we are married and have our own place. I'm excited. I miss having a dog to snuggle with, to sit with, to pet and pay attention to. I miss my old doggie but I think I'm ready for a new one to come into my life. I know it won't be for a couple of years yet though since Jeff and I aren't planning on getting married till 2006. We have been thinking about what we would name our dog when we get him/her. So far we have come up with Quinn and Lucas. I also found two other great names - Ella and Sage from watching ER tonight :D I can't wait to get all of this started. All I have to do is graduate in May an get the process moving.

An Ode to my flip flops

So I am back on campus. Back to work. I had a great weekend with Jeff and a good time with my parents. I was not ready to come back.

Today I got back into my data entry. That went fine. Afterwards I was walking away from my building to the bus stop and I tripped. I figured it was because I hadn't stepped high enough so I scuffed my foot or I had stepped on something. Nope. The part of my flip flop that connects to the part that goes in the middle of my toe (aren't I so techinical?) broke apart. I had noticed that this was starting to happen, but I ignored it because these are my favorite flip flops and I have had them for years. Though I did realize it was going to happen sooner or later. An to think I changed my mind from wearing tennis shoes today. Guess it would have still happened anyways just a different day. Luckily while overcast it wasn't raining or anything. I took both of my flip flops off and walked back to my building and into the departmental office. I explained my problem and the departmental secretary helped me tape my foot to my flip flop with clear packing tape so that I could make it to the bus stop an then back to my car. And it worked. I am now home safely, although a bit sad. I have a few other pairs of flip flops but they aren't as comfortable and don't match as many outfits as these did. Oh well. My poor flip flops. At least its starting to get cold and out of the flip flop wearing season.

Heh

I got an email today on my university account from eRecruiting. I put my resume up there last year to see if I could find a job for this summer. I ended up going home for the summer to work but occasionally I get random emails from companies wanting me to apply for their job. I have tried to log in to my account and change things but it won't let me in. I recovered my password and it still won't work. I don't think its really worth going through all the trouble of emailing them to let me back in my account. Anyways, I got an interesting one today. Here is what it said:

Dear Amybear,
U.S Army invites you to apply for the following position. They found your resume on eRecruiting and think your qualifications would be a good match.
Employer Name: US Army
Job Title: US Army Officer

LOL could you imagine me as an Army Officer? Yea right. I don't think I would fit in very well. It's like the time I got a letter to join the Marines. I'm sure Jeff will get a chuckle out of this.

New template

I found a cool site that had a huge amount of blogger layouts that were pretty cool. However, its really hard to search for a cool one if you aren't really sure what your looking for. Its a lot easier if you have a term you are going to search for. There are just so many on that site. I found a few I really liked, but for now I chose this one. I think the main image is really cute although it is a bit busy an loud. I really like that it has a sidebar and different sections for the links and such. I also like how the posts are divided and set up. The only thing I would change would to be to tame down the main image a little. Im going to leave it up for now but I might change it. I'm going to sleep on it for a day or so or maybe ask Jeff what he thinks. I really like it, but the main image is pretty busy as I've said already a few times. The other two layouts I was trying to choose from are here and here. What do you think? Im sure there are others on the site that I would really like too, but it's just too tiring searching through them all. They really should change the layout of the search function. They should cut down the size of each category and maybe have a little sample image of each one so you don't have to click on two different links just to see what it looks like.

Pit stop at home

Well I made it home. I worked on campus yesterday morning, got soaked trying to get to my car and then drove 4 and a half hours to make it home. Went out to dinner with my parents last night and am going to go shopping with my mom today. It's also nice to be able to do your laundry for free :) Tomorrow I'm getting in the car again and will be driving to see Jeff and his new apartment for the weekend , woo hoo :)

On this computer my blog background looks more flourescent than it normally does on my laptop. Is the background color really that bad? Oh an Jeff, how soon were you wanting to add that little addition into the family? After we have our own place together Im thinking. Not sure how else you could swing it.

The html god's don't like me

I had another html type idea to try. I made a geocities homepage a while back with frames. It was simple and easy to use. Nothing too fancy. Last night after I went to bed I thought about transforming my old geocities page into a new homepage where I could have this journal linked. It didn't really work out the way I thought. I probably could get it to work better if I played with it more but its very frustrating. First of all, I hate those stupid geocities add things. I hit minimize close or whatever an they never go away. I remember way back when they used to go away. Then I tried putting this blog on the site. I finally managed to get it on but there are no scroll bars on the side (I'm sure there is a way to do this, but I don't feel like playing with it now) and I can't find the code to put it in an iframe like I did my old journal. So it looks weird. Its in though. Not sure how long it will stay though. I am still interested in doing something with a wedding page, not necessarily a whole website now though. Not sure how/where I would do that though. I could create a whole new blog for that but eh. Stupid internet, making things more complicated. I think that going in with Jeff the Baptist and getting our own domian would be pretty cool, but it probably costs a lot and I'm not sure he is interested. Would be cool though.

What else...

I finished my paper! Yea. Thankfully the parts I had left didn't take too long. I had already done most of it. I'm going to turn it in tonight so I don't have to even think about it anymore. It's not one of the best papers Ive done, but I have to say its a pretty good one. I also had a meeting with my advisor about my thesis lit review today. It went really well so yea for that. So all I have left until fall break is a honor society meeting tonight, packing my stuff up and the car, and data entry tomorrow. Fun stuff.

Blogger codes = evil

I was bored and didn't feel like working on any of my papers so I decided to play with html. Jeff the Baptist had suggested that I could play with html to make him a new layout for his blog. I know the basics of html so I decided that I would try it. I first took the source code that was already in his blog and tried to add my own stuff to it. Didn't work out the way I wanted it too. Then I tried making my own in notepad. I got the basics down, but whenever I went to add in any of the blogger codes or try to make a side bar it messed things up. I kept this up for an hour or two and at the end of it I am very frustrated. Stupid blogger codes, be more easy.

I think I'm going to stick to regular websites where you can just make frames and you don't have to worry about all the codes to get your actual posts to show up. I'm just annoyed it didn't work. I did find a really cool christian image and background that I thought looked nice together. I emailed them to Jeff the Baptist so I guess Ill have to wait an see what he thinks. Every once in a while I get the html itch to make something. I have this blog and an online journal somewhere else but there isn't much coding invovled.

I have thought about making my own webpage in something like geocities or something like that but I never had a topic. I've tried it once, but I never kept it going because I never had anything to say. Maybe with all the talk about possibly getting engaged and planning a wedding soon I could make a site about that. A friend of mine made a wedding page and had links to hotels in the area and pictures of the actual wedding site. I don't know if I want to go that much into detail, but something in the middle might be nice. So I guess Ill have to think about it and see what Jeff the Baptist says. LOL I don't want to freak him out too much. :)

Getting everything done

Right now I am in the cram phase. No, I don't have an important exam coming up. It is almost fall break. I haven't decided when I'm heading home, either wednesday afternoon or thursday morning. Either way I have to finish a few things before I am able to go home and not feel guilty about it. Right now the two things I'm working on are the literature review for my thesis which is finally starting to come together and a paper I'm writing for one of my independent studies. I worked on the paper a lot yesterday so a good chunk of it is done. Now I just need to write the introduction and the conclusion and fix a few spots in the middle. I have a meeting for my lit review on tuesday and I'm supposed to turn in the paper before I leave for fall break. So I'm basically trying to squeeze it all in. I know I'll get it done, things always get done one way or another, but bleh.

I'm looking forward to fall break for the chance to go back home for a bit and for the chance to see my man. I haven't been back since I moved here at the end of August. I'm also looking forward to seeing my man's new apartment. I'm glad that we will have a chance to see each other this month because my november is crazy and I don't expect him to come see me on Thanksgiving when he should be spending time with his family. So after this the next time I might see him may be sometime in december.

I'm feeling a lot better about all the religious things my man and I have been talking about. I don't want to freak him out by talking about it all the time but it makes me feel better that things are settled a lot more than they were. Now all we have to do is actually get engaged. LOL I am not pressuring you don't worry.

Last night I ordered a pizza from Papa Johns for my treat. I am trying to be good an stay on my low carb diet, but I allow myself one treat a week to eat whatever I want. I decided on Papa John's because in recent months I have had Pizza Hut and Dominos so I wanted to see how Papa John's rated since I haven't had their pizza in sooo long. I called them up and accidentally picked the wrong location. The woman on the phone was really nice though. I then called the correct location and I couldnt even get through. The phone kept disconnecting. I finally got someone after three calls to them and the guy was a complete dolt. He mumbled, he seemed confused, and he wasn't very helpful. I gave him my phone number and he had a different name attached to it. I told him that wasn't me and he had the hardest time understanding that and trying to change it. Personally, I don't see why he had to change it. I asked for red onions to be put on my pizza. He said we don't have red onions. So I was like do you have any onions? He was like uh...yea. So I was like fine put the regular onions on the pizza. They also had a promotion going where you could get a free dvd with your pizza. *Grins* Part of the reason I ordered from Papa Johns is because of that free dvd deal. I asked if they were still running it and he said yes and which one did I want. I didn't realize I could pick which one I wanted so I asked what they had. He sighed and quickly mumbled his way through the list. I could barely understand half of them. I wasn sick of dealing with him so I just picked the one that I heard first that I thought sounded interesting - the first season of Rocky and Bullwinkle LOL. Then after he had my order he said, "Ok it will be there in one to two hours." I was like what??? He was like "oh, I mean 45 minutes." That's much better, sheesh. The pizza didn't even taste that different compared to the other places I have ordered from. I don't think I will be ordering from them for a while.

Book quotes

So today was my teaching day. For those who don't know, even though I'm sure my man is the only one reading this, I'm taking an independent study with a professor. So, for part of it I taught her her class for the day. I was kinda nervous at first since I didn't practice what I was going to say that much. It went pretty well though. I think I talked too fast a bit and should have bridged a few things because when you have read things a lot you forget it may be a bit confusing for someone else. But anyways, I talked for a little bit, showed a movie for 30min an then talked a little more. The whole thing was an hour. They clapped at the end an my prof said it went well. After me another lady came in for the last ten minutes of class to talk about her work. She actually does what she talked about for a living so she was more passionate about it and didn't rely on notes. I think the class liked her presentation better, but oh well. I did my part and Ill get my credits.

On to the book quotes thing. I got one of the books I ordered from amazon in the mail today - The Interfaith Family Guidebook. I wouldn't let myself look at it till after I had taught today so I have spent the rest of the afternoon reading parts of it an writing down page numbers of quotes and things that I think are important and want to share with my man. Since I know he doesn't want to get a million emails from me I'm going to post the things from the book that I think are important or thought provoking for you to read here an then if you want you can leave a comment, send me an email or we can talk about it the next time we are online together. This also helps me to have somewhere where I have kept all the things that I thought were important. So as I read this book and the next one that should be arriving soon I will post about them here. So here we go.

• In 1995 the UAHC - Union of American Hebrew Congregationists, the governing body of Reformed Judiasm passed a resolution urging that Reformed Jewsish day schools and part-time school programs enroll only children not being schooled in another faith. pg 10. *Not all Reformed congregations follow this, but a lot do. It just may be hard to find one that does allow it.*
  

• Jewish and Christian partners alike must eventually face one of the most critical questions for an interfaith couple: How does each partner view Jesus? The answer to this question will figure heavily in the degree of compatability the couple enjoys and perhaps even to the success or failure of their relationship. For Christians he is the foundation of their faith. For Jews, he symbolizes centuries of percecution and marginalization. pg. 22
• Christains who plan to spend the rest of their lives with a Jew must be able to reconcile their own religious beliefs in Jesus with their emotional commitment to a partner who does not worship Jesus as Lord. pg. 22+23
• Partners in an interfaith relationship need to be aware that the majority of the Jewish community is quite defensive about Jesus. Most Jews probably would view with suspicion any individual Jew who is in any way interested about Jesus. So ingrained is Judiasm's silence about Jesus, that a Jew who expresses admiration of his life might be viewed as a heretic. pg 25
• The most important aspect of Jesus for us is his example - the parables he told and the values he espoused. I know that we will talk about Jesus to katie. I don't want to pretend he did not exist or deny my belief in him. But my Christian belief has evolved to focus on the way Jesus lived his life, rather than the concern about his ressurection and our salvation. The words and actions of Jesus are a model for our ethical behavior. pg. 25
  

• If you can not find a source for premarital counseling on your own call the American Association of Pastoral Counselors pg 30
• Wedding Ceremony Questions: What do you want to communicate in your wedding ceremony about your relationship? Do you want a formal or informal ceremony? Religious or secular? If religious, what does that mean to each of you: a specific denomination 's ceremonal structure? non-denominational? spiritual without the mention of god? How important is it to have a representative from each of your religions present at the ceremony? Participating in some way? Leading the ceremony? Why? What traditions do you want to include? How does the Christian partner feel about having hebrew in the ceremony? How does the Jewish partner feel about having Jesus mentioned in the ceremony? How will each of your families participate?

• From the Christian community by at large, you will receieve a positive response to asking a minister to officiate
• One important point for you and your partner to clarify before looking for a rabbi is this: Do you both want a Jewish and a Christian officiant at your wedding or would you be satisfied with a rabbi as your soul officiant? This question is important for you to answer because only a few rabbi's will co-officiate with a Christian clergyperson. More rabbis will officiate on their own at a "Jewish-style" interfaith wedding - with a wedding canopy and hebrew blessings, but the marriage contract is a civil one - but only if you promise to raise your children as Jews.
• If after reading this (including other parts I didn't type) you feel very commited to having a Jewish presence at your wedding, ask yourselves why. Do you feel the need to demonstrate your ongoing commitment to Judiasm to the Jewish side of the family? Do you feel the need to balance the ceremony with the chrisian side/blessings? Do you feel drawn to the Jewish wedding traditions? Some of these reasons can be satisfied without a rabbi as a co-officiant. Perhaps you could ask your local rabbi not for his presence at the ceremony but for help in writing the Jewish side of the ceremony. You can include Jewish traditions without having the officiant there. In some areas you may be able to find a Jewish justice of the peace to preform your ceremony. pg. 35. *side note - I want a jewish side to the wedding even if it has to be in the form of a justice of the peace*

• No matter what your plan for religous education, your sucess depends on how much you believe in, and follow though, what your doing. pg 72

• Whether you raise your child in one religion, two religions, or no religion has no impact on their mental health. pg 72

• At their respective ages of 8 and 6, they are more interested in concrete examples of their parents care and attention then the details of theological arguements. pg. 96

• Early in her sixth grade year we told Jenny that she would have to make a decision after christmas as to which religion she would call her own. pg. 87 *This seems early but its when a child gets bar/bat mizvahed which is a choice so I guess they would have to make a decision by then.*

• Alternatives: Humanistic Judiasm, A Church without Walls - Unitarian Universalist Church *I don't know much about either of them*

• No one approach is right for every family, and there are no easy answers. A couple who works hard to communicate honestly and searches deeply will come up with its own right answers.
• The chapter on religious education seemed to say that you should do what's right for your family, but that its easier to pick one religion and bring your children up in that, but that also there are families that are bringing up their children successfully with both religions. I want to read it again though before I commit to exacly what it says just incase I missed something.
  

I know that was a lot. Sorry about that. We don't have to talk about it all at once. Im sure we wouldn't even be able too. Those are just the parts I read. The one thing about this book is that it has different people's differing views on each subject so you have to figure out which is what is really happening and which is just someones view. Its hard when your watching tv and reading at the same time ;)

Interfaith relationships/marriages

This weekend I have thought a lot about interfaith relationships and marriages. It started out with me just looking for a webring or a blog alliance to join. However, with each site I went too I kept finding links to other sites that I wanted to read. There is a lot out there too, from sites that just discuss interfaith relationships and their issues, to lists of rabbis and temples that will marry interfaith couples and even sample wedding ceremonies. Thankfully my man came online while I was in the middle of looking at everything so we got to talk about it for a while. We agreed that while it may be tough we both want to teach our hypothetical children about both religions and let them choose when they are old enough. One thing that really irks me is when people think that children are doomed for life or will be messed up and confussed if they are brought up with parents in an interfaith marriage. I will be trying my hardest to make sure that this does not happen. The only thing that my man and I had trouble figuring out is the sunday school issue. How are you supposed to take your child to sunday school and have them go to church services on a sunday if they are at the same time? Many synagogues say they accept interfaith marriages yet they don't help them in that respect.

So because my man and I have gone around many times on many of these issues I decided to order some books on amazon. The first book I bought is "The Intefaith Family Guidebook: Practical Advice for Jewish and Christian Partners." You can read about the book on amazon if you would like. It discusses issues that may come up in an interfaith marriage and discusses how to raise children in an interfaith marriage which is what I'm looking to learn about. The second book I always said I wouldn't buy till my man proposed, but I figured since I was already ordering the other book I might as well order this one too. So I ordered "Celebrating Interfaith Marriages: Creating your Jewish/Christian Ceremony." In the reviews it said that it had many ideas on what to include and had parts that you could pick and choose to include to make it truely your wedding. So hopefully these books will give me some new outlooks on things, spur some good discussions between my man and I, and help us to continue to grow and be happy.

Poem

I had to post this poem. It is from a show called "Girlfriends" on UPN and it's pretty cute. Its about four black women that are friends and the things they go through. In the episode I watched today one of the women is getting married to a short, Jewish, white doctor. For part of the ceremony one of the women's boyfriend's recites a poem he wrote for the couple. His girlfriend gets jelous though so he changes it and this is the poem he recites:

"Roses are red, violets are blue, today we are at the wedding of a Christian and a Jew"

Woot!

This is the contents of an email I got today:

"This memo is to inform you that the objective portion of the comprehensive exam has been graded and scores have been evaluated. I am pleased to inform you that you satisfactorily met the core requirements and passed the objective portion of the comprehensive exam. Congratulations!"

Wooot!!! Thank goodness I don't have to take any of the sections over again. I don't know what I got in each section but I'm going to email a prof to find out. But woo hoo!