On my computer the number of posts shown as you scroll down is much fewer that it was before.  You have to go to “previous entries” much sooner.  Is everybody else experiencing this?  Does anyone know why it changed?  I like the longer version much better.

Anyone want to buy me this?

It’s on sale!

I created a stir today. In order to understand the full impact of the situation, background is necessary. One of my roommates, let’s call her M, is dating a questionable young man by the name of B. B used to live, for free, at a friend’s suite, but about half-way through the year moved in with M. So, he lives with us without paying rent–not necessarily a big deal.

The problem is he causes strife. Early in the year he filled our suite with smoke by smoking in M’s room. We called M out on it, and she denied that they had been smoking. Later, we called them out on it together and they admitted it. My two other roommates and myself were not impressed, as we had all previously decided not to allow smoking in the suite. M and B were quite forceful on the matter though and we ultimately agreed that as long as they smoked only in M’s room, right next to the window, with the window open…well, then, assuming we didn’t smell it anywhere else, we could live with that.

Then there was the infamous pickle debacle. I bought a jar of pickles. I went to eat some, only to find half of them were gone. I asked everyone in the suite if they had eaten my pickles (we’re quite strict on personal property, which, considering the size of the suite, is the only way to stay sane). Everyone denied it and M declared her boy could not possibly have done such a thing. I later asked B and he admitted to it. I, quite nicely, asked him not to do it again, as I’m on a food budget, but thanked him for his honesty.

Thus we come to our current issue. WEF2 sent me an easter basket. I’ve been saving the chocolate bunny, because I couldn’t bring myself to destroy it. M and B have, together, asked me three times in the past week if they could have it. I’ve said no each time. B informed me that I couldn’t leave such temptation out and not expect someone to succumb, and I responded that only a complete cretin would willfully ignore my wishes.

Today, after B and M asked again for the bunny, the bunny’s head went missing. Needless to say, I was very upset. I had been clear on the matter. Further, I had stopped leaving food in the fridge in Camisa (a common building in the suite area) because people inevitably ate what I left there. In response, I started leaving all my food in the fridges in the suites and only bought things that could fit without issue into the limited space. Now, it seemed, even my own suite was not safe for my items, even from my own roommates!

I decided that there was no reason for me to have to hide my belongings in my own suite from an individual that wasn’t even paying rent. I had agreed to live with four people–four people I trusted. Clearly, M’s judgment was questionable considering what she allowed the boy to get away with, but my suite agreed that she was too enamored to realize he was consistently acting inappropriately and treating her suite-mates and their belongings in a disrespectful manner.

Thus, I concluded that I no longer wanted B to live with us. He had never asked the suite before he moved in with M, and he clearly had a very different code of behaviour than one I wanted to live with. Since M lived with us, she had every right to have him as a guest–but if she wasn’t with him or if he wasn’t looking for her, well, there was no reason he should be in our suite. My other roommate agreed with me and admitted she’d been uncomfortable with him for a while.

We told M first. She went and told B. B came to us, smiling, gave an apology and then announced we were overreacting to a joke. It seems he hadn’t eaten the head of the bunny, but left it in my bed. I asked how exactly he thought I’d respond and it became clear that he hadn’t thought I’d think it was funny, rather it was a ‘joke’ because He thought it’d be funny. When it became clear his haphazard apology wasn’t going to change my mind or my roommate’s mind, he became angry. My roommate explained that she felt that he didn’t respect anyone in the suite or our property, and he quickly said that this was a pretty apt description. He then declared that he had never met two girls who were as selfish as we were and continued on the vein of personal attacks before finally being asked to leave by my roommate.

Is it unreasonable to not want another girl’s boyfriend to live in the suite if he’s not paying rent? Particularly if he makes others uncomfortable and has no respect for his girlfriend’s suite-mates and their property? I don’t think so, nor does my roommate, but seeing as we’re both quite biased due to our interactions with him…well, I ask the question to the Family.

On a side note, how do we make these posts private? There used to be that option, but I can’t seem to find it.

 I am basically just posting to post since its been so long, so it is most just a long babble about my life.

So, this is the 2nd to last week of classes afterwhich are my exams, which finish on the 25, and then 2nd year will be over! It is pretty exciting choosing classes for next year, they even have a Sci-Fi module for english next year which is wicked awesome. So now everyone is basically preparing for summer and exams and partying because most of our assessed work is finished now. I went and saw a play this saturday which was an adaptation of Cloud 9. It was pretty sweet. Hmmm, what else? I also saw this swedish movie call “Let the Right One In’ which was pretty good, if a little strange.  On another note, X-men Origins: Wolverine comes out this wednesday!! Looks like good fun to me. Now on to more important matters.

Finding a job here is proving to be a tiny bit more troublesome than initially anticipated but no worries, I shall prevail. The plan as of right now is to continue hounding stores until they give me a job. I think its a good plan. As a back up plan, I have been emailing a few online gmaing magazine asking if I could do online internships, have yet to hear back though. And another back up plan is to volunteer at the charity shops here over the summer so then I will at least have some more things to put on my CV, plus it makes me look better in general. Everyone loves charity. Now, concerning Erin and Morgan and the summer. Calum and Sammy are fine with Morggie being here as long as she doesnt yell at them (which I am sure you wont, Morggie) and doesnt eat their food. They also would prefer she sleeps in my room rather than the extra room in the living room/ couch but I think Morgan and I already discussed that. The issue with Erin staying is space. Calum and Sammy were slightly concerned with the fact that you were going to be doing you dissertation here, especially if you were staying in the living room room since they like to stay up pretty late playing games etc. They then said you could have one of their rooms provided you paid rent but even that wont really work due to our contract. We are only allowed to have 4 people living in the house at one time. If you were only staying a week or Morggie was only staying a week or so, that would have been fine because that is more of a visit. But seeing as morgan will be here for quite a long period of time and erin wants to as well, that wouldnt really be following our contract. So as of right now, Calum and Samy are fine with morgan coming whenever and staying for as long as she wants but erin can only stay a week or so. If you guys want to switch that, have erin stay, morgan just vist you can work that out amongst yourselves but even that might be a problem seeing as Erin needs a work space and quiet. Thats pretty much it. Im looking forward to seeing you guys later.

Cool idea, can’t wait to see if they can actually pull it off.

Achron

I’m listening to an interesting orchestra rendition of Metallica’s One.    It’s called Apocalyptica.  Search on iTunes.  It’s fun.

Also, I’m playing with JP as this is playing.  He seems to like it!  He now smiles through a lot of saliva.  Cute?  Every time I look away to type, he gives me a gruny, like - “hey!  I’m playing here, LOOK at me!”

hah. 

It has been 6 months since my last WExForce post.  I am married, nearly 30, have a son whose poor skin itches him often, and hate the IRS.  I don’t consider hating the IRS.  For one, it’s justified.  For two, it’s not a person.  I can hate a bureaucracy, can’t I?

So BIG news:  John Paul is a member of the body of Christ, having been baptized on Divine Mercy Sunday (last Sunday) at Holy Redeemer Church in Saint Louis, Missouri.  You’ll recognize that name if you were at my wedding, because it’s the same Church where Angela was baptized, received first communion, and was married to me.

Okay, my battery is about to die on this thing, but I’ve bookmarked this  “post new” page on my little tab above, so the hope is that I will renew my energies here.

Want to know what I get to do today?  Studying.  Driving.  Changing a poop or two.  Lathering a small squirming body with moisturizing cream.  Writing another hate letter to the IRS. Pondering the mysteries of the universe…

Speaking of pondering the mysteries of the universe.  I’ve been learning and thinking about something fascinating - technology’s role in God’s creation.  I say “God’s creation” because the idea is that matter has meaning.  That God designed a tree, and has a purpose in mind for the tree.  God designed everything, and has a purpose for everything - even human bodies (hence the Church’s teaching on sex, marriage, etc).  The interesting question, to me, is whether our technological society can use the world according to that design - by the very assumptions underlying our technology.  The assumption is that matter is just clay to be used for whatever purpose we have in mind - subject to ethics of course, but still - it’s just clay.

This may be a false assumption.  I may not be clear, so let me try to say it again another way.

We do place limits on our technology - ethical limits about how to use our technology.  Or we try.  Some of us.  But I think that there is a hidden assumption that we all make in the modern world, an assumption that is pretty dangerous.  The assumption is that the world is still clay.  There might still be ethical limits to human action (and therefore human technology), but the world is still just a meaningless lump of clay to be molded to our benign purposes.

What if the world doesn’t want to be molded?  What if the world isn’t meant to be molded?

Analogy:

You give a kid some Lincoln Logs.  He gets a wood grinder, puts all the pieces in, gets a fine dust, adds some pieces of cut up carpet and a little bit of glue, and makes a nice kind of concrete paste.  He uses that paste to make a really thin, but really high tower.  Now, the Lincoln Logs are meant to build nice log cabins.  They aren’t meant to be reduced to their elements and then re-synthesized to create towers!

Yet this seems to be what we do with nature, especially regarding plant and animal life.  Humans used to domesticate things.  We took nature, and harnessed it (literally).  In the modern era, we reduce everything down to basic substances and then synthesize something completely man-made.  I wonder what route modern science would take if it pursued biological domestication rather than material synthetics.

Cobra La?

Speaking of photos, Like a good little facebook weenie I went ahead and put together an “album” with over thirty photos from our R&R (or as I like to call it, “the rest of the story”). For some unknown reason, they all appeared on my facebook homepage as well as in the photo section.

I didn’t want them there. I only wanted them in the photo section. The only way to get them off my homepage was to delete the entire album, which I did. What did I do wrong? If I can figure out how to keep them off my homepage I’ll redo the album. Suggestions welcome.

Explanation of “purged Bolshevic” follows (in pictures!)

Tsk, tsk, a depressing window into the quality of your education, I fear.

Compare and contrast with a couple of WEF2’s Facebook photos of the canal cruise.

I feel like an purged Bolshevik!

The cruise was wonderful, the family (including the wee one) rocked…and now I am once more at school.

Math is kicking my rear, since it’s pretty much left geometry and algebra behind. I think we’re basically doing calculus right now, but since I never took calculus I can neither confirm or deny this rumor. We’re playing with logs and derivatives, and it’s painfully clear who’s previously had dealings with these mathematical oddities and who has not.

Seminar is interesting. We read Pride and Prejudice, which was fun, and now we’re back reading Kant. This time we’re reading his Moral treatise though, which is far more interesting than the mumbo-jumbo we read before break. Of course, the morality treatise relies on his mumbo-jumbo treatise, so there’s no real escaping it.

Laboratory remains uberly cool. Maxwell blows my mind. It’s just the right level of difficulty for me. Hard, but manageable if I keep on top of it. Of course, the math is nigh near impossible…but we worry more about the theoretical implications implicit in the math than actually utilizing the math. It works out quite nicely for me, I must say.

We just finished translating the play “Phedre” in French, and now we’ve moved on to Tocqueville. From the few pages I’ve looked at I envision pretty easy translating and very interesting conversations.

I also finally got my precept paper back. WEF7 will remember this paper well…I wrote it all in one night during Christmas break. Lovely WEF7 stayed up with me and dealt with my constant, “My brain is no longer working…does this seem logical to you?” rants. She was very, very helpful, and all that effort payed off, as the tutor quite liked it. Of course, the essence of Montaigne lies in his paradoxes and what he is attempting to get his reader to contemplate, while my essay delved into his presentation of faith rather than any actual attempt to figure out what Maxwell was trying to do with his odd writing style. But still, success!

My seminar paper (the paper worth a grade onto itself) is due in two weeks. Many, many people, tutors as well as students, have presented their opinion that any Junior who writes on anything other than Kant is a shameful Johnnie…which is deeply impacting my psyche, I must say. Kant didn’t speak to me. I didn’t leave a single seminar enthused about the subject manner. As hard as it is to admit, the text that yielded the most questions for me was Pride and Prejudice. But the shame of not writing on Kant would only be compounded by being female and writing on Pride and Prejudice! Hell, half the students at this school think it shouldn’t even be on the reading list!

My theory is that I’ll spend this weekend writing outlines for Pride and Prejudice and Kant questions, keeping my Kant questions based in his moral treatise. Hopefully after the next seminar on Kant’s moral treatise my decision will be clear.

On a side note, I would like to remind everyone that Sims III comes out in less than three months. The family cannot contain its excitement at this happy prospect, I know

And just in time for Easter!

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After an extended absence due to unfortunate personal issues (exacerbated, no doubt, by mounting despair over the national disaster that befell the country in November), I’m re-engaging. Not that the domestic crisis has passed, but because 1) there’s been some progress, or at least a way forward identified, and 2) you have to re-engage eventually, or things can get really weird.

I’ll be following this up with an e-mail announcing that, for my part, WExForce is open again and ready for business. I’m a bit disappointed that the remaining WEFers didn’t do a little better job in picking up the slack during the past few months. But that’s all in the past…

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Of course the big news is the coming of the littl’est WEFer. Welcome to Earth, WEF3.1! We got to see him for a few days, and I was very impressed. Those really are genuine smiles, which is pretty amazing, and he’s rapidly becoming attractive–clearly he takes after me!

WEF3.0 did (and is doing) a great job. Naturally, I’m also gratified on the choice of a name. I had no idea WEF3 and 3.0 had such a high regard for the father of the American Navy.

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Let’s see, I think I called Barak (NMI, unless he’s in Europe) Obama the first anti-American president, as well as a racist, a socialist, and a fraud. Let’s see how I’m doing.

1) Anti-American: Anyone who’s followed his remarks during his recent European travels shouldn’t be in much doubt about how he feels about America. Until, of course, he became president.

2) Racist: Hasn’t had a chance to demonstrate that one yet. At least, I don’t think he’s called anyone “a typical white person” so far.

3) Socialist: Next!

4) Fraud: How’s that post-partisan stuff working out? And the pledge to reduce (eliminate?) congressional earmarks?

I’d say I’m three out of four so far. Discussion?