Now that midterms are over I finally have a chance to sit back and think about things.  Things that are finally allowed to sink in and soak up a while.  I’ve reached the point where I can be compared to a sponge, saturated in every pore, and now I must start letting the stagnant water seep back out.

First, no matter how great my roommate is, and how thankful I am to have a good roommate, no two people are ever perfectly compatible.  She does a lot of little things that just don’t make a whole lot of sense.  For instance, she will throw cutting knives together with the rest of the eating utensils all in a heap.  This dulls the blades of the cutting knives and makes nicks on the other things.  Also, her sense of style is pretty good, but her sense of decorating sucks.

Second, brick walls are not soundproof.  Even though my apartment has brick walls, I feel intimately connected with my neighbors’ lives.  The girl in #2304 just had a messy break up, which she blamed on her boyfriend, but the night before the screaming match over the telephone she was making out with some wannabe Abercrombie and Fitch model.

The chick in #2302 moved into these apartments to be closer to the university, but actually I’m pretty sure the move was made to get out of her parents’ house.  I met her mom, and that lady is super defensive of her daughter’s high standards.  Little does she know her daughter is consistently out until 2am.

The Australian exchange student down the way just spent a couple thousand dollars on a new laptop, but all she’s going to use it for is checking her Facebook.  What a shame.

A girl who I almost roomed with, also had a recent break-up.  But I saw that coming because she slept with a random guy the very first weekend of school.

Third, I am no longer sure of what I would like to be when I grow up.  One thing is for sure though: I hate writing essays.

Fourth, nothing really makes up for family.  I’ve tried to create a family, but it doesn’t work.  Ninja, my beta fish, is very affectionate, but he is only a fish.  He hits his head repeatedly on his fish bowl every day because he hasn’t quite figured out how to eat his food.  He had it figured out for a while by using his dorsal fin to keep the food circling in the middle of the bowl until he could eat it, but now he seems to have forgotten his trick.  I love my computer, Stapplin, and I can make him talk to me, but he only says what I tell him to say.  I had a rat, but she bit me.  So much for love.

Over the weekend I went to a swim meet with my camera. Swim meets are good to practice photographing because:

1. You have to not only be quick with your finger, but you also have to practice anticipation and timing. Swimmers only breathe every so often, and unless the swimmer’s face is out of the water then it’s a boring picture.
2. A wide range of emotions are present. Nervousness, excitement, determination, disappointment…it’s all there.
3. A lot of swimmers like being in the spotlight; they aren’t camera shy.

That being said, I shot old friends but I went to the meet to shoot emotions.

Johnny, looking over a list of his opponents’ seed times:

Daniel, after gaining a couple seconds on his personal best:

Jamie after being told that he dropped 10 seconds (!) off his previous personal best:

1. Go as a press person with a big camera lens.

2. Dress impartially (i.e. don’t wear red).

3. Find the media room.

4. Be sent to the media will-call booth.

5. Be denied media access, but be sure to get a hint of where to go to gain access.

6. Find a sympathetic gay man in charge of ticket sales.

7. Explain plight to sympathetic gay man in charge of ticket sales.

8. Wait patiently until sympathetic gay man in charge of ticket sales appears with front-row ticket in hand.

9. Thank sympathetic gay man in charge of ticket sales and use the phrase “You’re fabulous!”

10. Enter stadium unquestioned.

I was homeschooled almost my whole entire life––ever since first grade. People ask me a lot of questions about it, mostly because I think I’m more approachable than the average jumper-wearing, loudly-conservative, homeschooling mother.

1. Do you have socialization issues?
   No. When I was younger I was part of a very active homeschool group. If I went to every activity that was offered, I would never have the time to do book work. Then there were church activities on top of that. When I was in high school I swam for the public high school’s swim team. I went to Friday night football games. I was editor of a newsletter. I volunteered. I worked summer jobs. Once I started taking college classes, I earned extra credit because I participated in discussions so much. I don’t think I had a problem.
2. How does your school work?
   My parents would pay a few hundred dollars every year to Christian Liberty Academy in Chicago. That school would send a box of workbooks, teacher manuals, and scantron tests. My mom would teach me things, I would do the workbooks, and when I was ready I would take the tests. Then my mom would send the tests back to the school to be graded. Sometimes the workbooks had to be sent back too. After grading, the school sent us report cards. I earned a real diploma, too.
3. Do you wear pajamas all day?
   No. My mom wouldn’t let me. Once I got older and could make my own decision about that, I found that I worked faster if I was not wearing pajamas.
4. Do you ever wish you went to public school?
   When I was in 9th grade, a lot of homeschooled kids that I knew started going to public school. They wanted a diploma, or a better chance at scholarships, or their parents were afraid they couldn’t teach them well enough for college. But after watching those kids for a year, I’m glad I didn’t go. It seemed like they wasted so much time, and I got to do all the extra-curricular activities that the high school provided anyways.
5. How did your mom teach you enough math to prepare you for college?
   I really can’t answer that question. I hate math. She hates math. We struggled through elementary algebra (my school provided an online tutor). When I was 14 I tested into College Algebra at a local college. I don’t know how I did that either. It turns out that College Algebra is the highest level math that I need for a Journalism major. Most community colleges make you take placement tests, and those colleges also offer math classes for people who failed 7th grade math. Also, most community colleges are homeschool friendly and they’ll let 13-year-olds take college level classes (as long as they have okay placement scores). Check into it.
6. Math is one thing, but science too?
   No, not science too. I wish I had a better science background. I took a couple biology classes at the college, and let me tell you, I failed that first test that involved a lot of chemistry. I ended up staying in the class (even though more than half the students dropped within the first week), keeping my 4.0 gpa, and learning what biology is really about.
7. What was a typical day like in highschool?
   8am: Wake up, do chores, eat breakfast, get dressed
   9am: Family devotions
   9:30am: Start school– Theology, Math, English, Literature, Government, History, and Science
   12pm: Lunch time, leave for college
   1pm: College class - usually Spanish or Biology
   3pm: Swim practice
   6pm: Dinner
   7pm: College homework
   10pm: Brain shut down time
   12am: Bed time
8. Did you like being homeschooled?
   Yeah. Overall, it was fun. I don’t think I will homeschool my kids, just because I don’t have the patience. But I’m glad I was homeschooled.

If you didn’t have a question answered, feel free to ask.

I made the switch from Blogger to Wordpress. I did it. It was quick, relatively easy, and about as painful as a light shower in Seattle.

I had been looking around at hosting plans for a while; trying out themes; reading other bloggers’ cross-over stories. I would go to sign up, and then I’d pull back out.

Tonight I decided that I don’t have any hobby right now. I quit World of Warcrack, I don’t collect stamps anymore, I don’t really buy clothes (I’ve spent a total of $45 on them this year)… It just made sense to me that it might be okay if I spent some money on what I like doing. So I did.

Things about Blogger were just getting under my skin.
1.  This new “Blogger Beta (oh we’re just kidding, we’re not in beta any more but now we’re going to make web design a royal pain in the rear for anyone who likes to code in html)” didn’t work with me. Originally I made the switch, then I switched back to Old Blogger, then I switched to the new Blogger, and then I found out that some bugs were still there but I couldn’t go back to Old Blogger any more. It was frustrating and confusing.

2.  Blogger has served me decently well since 2004. In 2004 I tried lots of different platforms (livejournal, xanga, even geocites to name a few), and found that I like Blogger best. I wasn’t interested in paying for anything. I didn’t know what CSS was. All I knew was that Blogger looked the best and acted the best. But now I do know how to use CSS. And I do know more about MySQL, Apache, etc., and I think that I would like to further my education. The best way to do that is by hands on playing around. You can’t learn html out of a book. Basically, I was feeling Blogger’s limitations.

3. I was constantly aware of the fact that Blogger owned my site and not me. Stupid Blogger logos are plastered everywhere. There’s the infamous navbar uptop. The credits in the footer. The .png on the sidebar. It was like a bad disease.

4. I wanted to take the next step and use a website as more than just a blog. In the future I would like to put my website on a business card. Or perhaps develop a photo page. Or post a resume. Or anything, really. But Blogger just wasn’t giving me that (plus, .blogspot.com looks tacky on a business card).

We’ll see how this Wordpress thing goes, but I’m keeping my eye on the Habari Project.