conquering the world one oxymoron at a time
Archive for August, 2004
August 23, 2004 at 10:00 pm · Filed under pictures
So I finally got around to posting pictures from Weaver’s July 31 wedding: wedding pics. Jenn’s wedding was a week after Weaver’s, but knowing me, I forgot my camera, so I have no pictures from that.
Also to note … read Shadow Puppets, the last book in the Shadow series by Orson Scott Card, and I didn’t like it that much. It was like Card just stopped and wanted to get the book over with. The focus was too much more on plot, and even then, the plot was not the most intelligent or made the most sense. So Card’s rep has gone down in my mind … so it was like watching The Village, great start but disappointing supposed climax.
August 18, 2004 at 12:13 pm · Filed under life thoughts, hobbies
Perhaps it’s fate that the Ender/Ender related books were brought to my attention by a friend this summer, and no other summer, or any other time at all. It fits that I’m reading these now, thinking about the future of my own world, but perhaps more so, the future of me and those immediately around me.
And of course, leave it up to me to realize only that somehow these books are important to my life at this point, but be so bogged down by the junk running through my mind that I can’t sort out any coherent thoughts as to why. If nothing else I suppose, Shadow of the Hegemon made me think of my own ambitions, their worth, their likelihoods, and their motivators. And of course the ultimate questions surrounding love, the perfect love, the motherly (fatherly) love, the companion love, the love love, and ultimately I suppose, hope.
Reading these books makes me almost proud that we still have living among us people like Orson Scott Card. It makes me want to meet him, talk to him over dinner, pick his mind. But for what purpose? Only to stupidly say “gosh, love the ideas you got across in those books”? I would have nothing of value to contribute to him, nothing to throw across his path that will stop to make him think. All I can offer him is the undying respect and awe that no doubt countless other mindless readers, overwhelmed by the feelings conjured by his words, have already offered.
I’ve never read the forewords, afterwords, prefaces of any book as carefully, if at all, as I’ve read the ones accompanied by Card’s works. Likewise, I’ve never been motivated to read any, let alone several, non-fiction works until now. Perhaps I’m jumping on to the elusive bandwagon that I’m constantly trying to avoid, jumping on to fit in, to declare that yes! I’m a true Orson Scott Card fan! But I can only hope that I know myself well enough to truly believe that I’m doing it to edify, and to achieve some of my own ambitions for the right reasons.
August 10, 2004 at 9:11 pm · Filed under grad life/MIT
My parent’s recent obsession is hounding me that I need to learn to cook. My mom thinks that I will either a) use up all of my stipend money eating out all the time or b) starve to death because I won’t know how to cook or c) I’ll get so busy with school, I won’t even eat at all. All three are equally ridiculous (though I can’t deny the higher possibility of option a happening), and if option c really did take place, I won’t need to know how to cook because apparently I won’t eat at all.
The rise of this concern of theirs stems almost entirely from their perception that I do not know how to cook. Now, I don’t claim to know how to cook everything they cook me to eat for dinner, but I very well can cook in order to stay alive. Ryan and I even made plans to have a cooking date once a week, and alternate being the chef. My parents insist on sitting me down and going through step by step some of the stuff they cook me, which really isn’t the stuff I’d want to be cooking anyway when I’m on my own.
Anyway, I promised my mom that I won’t starve to death, that I’ll eat my vegetables, and then within a year, I’ll be a great cook. I don’t think she believed me. She simply said that these 5 years of school in Boston, I shouldn’t neglect learning to cook as one of my major priorities.
August 4, 2004 at 12:27 am · Filed under dating/relationships
So I went to my first wedding this past weekend. Well, not my first wedding ever per se; I seem to remember a couple my parents took me to when I was much younger. But this was the first wedding of someone my own age (my age is something I may start concealing really soon). During the reception, Weaver came up to the group of us govies and said, “Hey all, I’d like to introduce you guys to my wife.” Wow, that phrase could not have sounded more out of place. Weaver, married! Imagine that! It’s pretty amazing that we’re all in this new phase of life now, where friends around us are actually really getting married.
The wedding itself was small and very cute, quaint. The minister was wonderful, funny and very down to earth. I thought he sounded like he was going to cry. Jessie beamed the whole way through the ceremony, while Weaver looked so nervous and high-strung. It was a great chance to catch up with some old friends as well. Everyone was still the same old, same old. We’re all doing different things now, but personalities are hard to change!
Learned some more exciting, makes-me-feel-old, news: Katie Folz is engaged, and AJ is proposing this weekend. *sigh* Makes me wonder when my day will come. But I guess it’s better not to think about these things.
