if engineers were mostly girls...

I would work in a therapy office disguised as a computer lab. These engineers spend HOURS in here every week. There have been so many times work has been lost or destroyed because of a computer malfunction or something and hours and days worth of work is simply gone. And I can't do anything about it. And it KILLS me. If this happened with girls mostly I would watch the tears well up in their eyes and I would try to somehow uselessly [because really, how do you see the good in a ton of work gone down the drain] comfort them and let them tell me all about what was just lost [because we're girls and we need to talk it out] and how hard they worked on it. Maybe I would carry a bag of cookies with me to work just for circumstances like this.

Maybe I'm just thinking what it would be like if I was an engineer. Well if I was I wouldn't have to be concerned with not passing my test on saturday and living in a dark alley pushing a shopping cart and living in a cardboard box.

I hate tests [that determine the rest of your career].

I have my content exam this saturday. Its basically a test over all the material you could be required to teach, in my case: world & u.s. history, geography, government, economics, & some sociology. If I don't do well on this I can't teach. I'm not THAT worried about it, but I'm not taking it lightly, kind of the same feeling I had before I took the GRE and knew if I didn't do well on that I wouldn't get into grad school. Anyway so I'm reading through a prep manual and I come across this little tidbit of "inspiration":

If a sensation of panic begins, work with the fear and imagine the very worst! Work through the entire scenario of not passing the test, failing the entire course, and dropping out of school, followed by not getting a job, and pushing a shopping cart through the dark alley where you’ll live. This will place things into perspective!

Oh, thanks, that's much better.

high school laugh out loud moment of the day.

teacher:...right so the students in the court case were suspended from school for wearing the black armbands in protest of the Vietnam war, have you ever seen any students here protesting anything?

kid: those pro-life people.

teacher: what about them, what did they do?

kid: ...they're..pro-life, they have those shirts that say, "Pro-life" on them...

teacher: ...okay...anyone else, do you remember anytime students have protested something?

same kid: anti-gang people, people against violence.

teacher: okay, what about them?

same kid: they're anti-gang, they wear those shirts that say, "My leader walks on water".

more food for thought.

An article from Relevant came out today about our generation's epidemic of identity crises. Here's a bit from it that rang true for me personally, and here's the link:

I once considered myself an idealist. I have come to realize that my license for optimism has since expired. The more seasoned I become, the more I understand the realist I have ripened into. I have been weathered down by this world. I am jaded, as you are jaded. I am not who I say I am, just as you are not. I am a liar, a beggar, a thief, a fake, just as you are. An idealist might say that it is better for us to all be weathered pieces that have now formed to fit the abstruse shape of the next. As a realist, I will tell you that the Maker has cultivated far too much beauty in each individual heart for us to toss aside to blend in.

Another Relevant writer posits the following adaptation of the words of Allen Ginsberb in a piece hilighting the self-destruction that inevitably comes from following Hollywood's example for "cultural living",

The best minds of my generation. Destroyed by madness. Madness we have created in our cultural insistence on (groupthink) individualism and (false) freedom.

How blessed am I that my identity & worth is found in the creator of the heavens and the earth?

Watch what God does, and then you do it, like children who learn proper behavior from their parents. Mostly what God does is love you. Keep company with him and learn a life of love. Observe how Christ loved us. His love was not cautious but extravagant. He didn't love in order to get something from us but to give everything of himself to us. Love like that.

You can be sure that using people or religion or things just for what you can get out of them—the usual variations on idolatry—will get you nowhere, and certainly nowhere near the kingdom of Christ, the kingdom of God. Ephesians 5:1-2, 5 [The Message]

read me.

So practically everyone is calling for Huckabee to pull out and let McCain officially enter the RNC as the only choice for nominee and get a head start on unifying the Republican and quite frankly his biggest thorn, the (big C) Conservatives. Well my man Mike is still in it against McCain as I foolheartedly predicted a couple of months ago, however I am a realist and realize McCain will get the nomination as long as nothing like a silly PR spectacle (i.e. Howard Dean circa 2004) gets in the way. Since my wishful thinking panned out for Huckabee's campaign I've been keeping an eye out for any pundits who are expressing why Huckabee should positively stay in the race (for now) and my faithful Economist came through with such news.

Also I've been equally curious as to who McCain will pick for his veep, and I read an article this past week from the Washington Post about how McCain has a tough choice to make. The buzz around the watercooler has been that he will choose Mike Huckabee or Lindsey Graham or the like, which is a good pick because they would compensate for his outings with Conservatives. However also has the option to go with Texas Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison. From the article,

The first and only female Texan to serve in the U.S. Senate, Hutchison brings the kind of conservative credentials on taxes, defense and foreign policy that McCain's Republican critics ought to love. Gun lovers adore her -- as much as we District residents resent her attempts to kill our sensible gun-control laws. She votes consistently pro-life and has earned a 0 percent rating from NARAL Pro-Choice America, though she has said Roe v. Wade was correctly decided.

As chairman of the Senate GOP policy committee, Hutchison is the fourth-highest-ranking Republican senator. She's plugged in with the party faithful, good on the stump and as savvy as they come.

It should be interesting who he picks.

Just a question to the void, would you vote for a Presidential candidate who is pro-choice?

money, money, money...

I am a pretty strong anti-debt person, pretty much generally meaning no charging credit cards more than you can pay, etc. Apparently Americans are starting to come around as well since their houses are getting foreclosed on left and right, here's a good article about current debt crises from the NY Times.

heaven in a box.

I don't eat cereal because I don't care for milk. However occaisionally (1-2x a year) I'll buy a box of cereal to put it into small ziplock bags to grab on the way out the door in the mornings. Well I hit the jackpot with this box of Kashi granola. I love granola and this has got to be some of the best I've had, it's not too sweet and its not sticky AT ALL. However I probably won't make this a regular purchase because of a) calories and b) price ($4.50 a box).

severely unmotivated.

I have a paper to write, albeit a short one, that I am in no way wanting to write, so I'll blog instead.

I was a leader at a junior high disciple now in katy this past weekend, my partner and I had 7th grade girls and they were so great and so loud and so exhausting, but in a good way. The dnow was at a megachurch, you know the ones on major highways with the big digital signs, so it was quite different than any church I've ever been to but it was good to experience somewhere different. My girls were pretty solid for 7th grade girls and they have an excellent youth pastor who is providing a great foundation for them. Oh and I had the best pizza & breadsticks I've ever had, Fuzzy's in Katy, they might have more locations, if you're ever in Houston look them up.

I visited Brittany in Houston after lunch on Sunday and we shopped and did non-college station things for a few hours before I headed back. She lives in a really neat part of Houston now, close to the Galleria area. Her company is in a big skyscraper and I got to see her cubicle; it was fun I felt like adult for 5 minutes, and I look forward to visiting and taking shopping trips many more times. :)

I never really caught up on sleep from this past weekend and as usual on tuesday and thursday afternoons all I can think about is what I want for dinner. Any suggestions?