birthday card

So this is what I made for syl-towns birthday. It doesn't have a front or anything; it's more of a display. I must say I'm pretty impressed with myself. This day I watched disney movies, which I found super inspiring in my creativity here.

I found the idea for this from the martha stewart craft blog, although the one they made looks a lot different from mine. You will also notice that it is made with magazine paper, due to the fact that I had no construction paper. I still like how it turned out though.

I also just had the oddest virtual experience. I watched glee with my parents through skype. It was adorable.

textbooks

So I have been accumulating numerous textbooks over my past four years of schooling - most of which are now being deemed irrelevant, meaning I can't sell them and they are about as useful as a doorstop (which when you think about it can be pretty useful).

Anyways, I am pretty pleased because I am going to be able to sell one back to school...yaaayyy!!! I need money again. SOO broke.

It got me thinking about high school textbooks though. So much easier to just sign your name in a book for a year and not needing to worry about its irrelevance the next year. I also loved being able to see the names of all the people that had the books before me. Even now I can peek into a book of my cousins and see the name of one of my classmates. There have even been reports of my name being spotted in textbooks. There is nothing better than old textbooks though. For me...the more drawing the better. I love it when people write notes, especially about other people or teachers.

Going to a school like mine was also interesting because everyone knows so many people that went there...from cousins, grandparents, aunts or siblings...there was always someone who received a textbook from someone else's family member. It's weird to think that someone else had that book before you.

When I used to take out books from the library I secretly laughed at the fact that I had been reading that book in the bathroom and that the next person taking that book out would have no idea. Problem is that I never knew where the books I was getting came from!!

remote controls

Has anyone ever looked at their 11 remotes needed to operate their TV/entertainment system/DVD and all that and thought, why so many. Even a universal remote...to much....

it's not necessarily the number of remotes I concern myself with, but the number of buttons on each remote. Even with one remote for everything there are always waayyy to many buttons. Like there are so many things that are just useless and there are numerous buttons I have never touched before. I guess there is someway to program them, and maybe one day I will figure that out. But honestly there's only a few buttons you really need.

A channel flicker, volume control, the numbers, mute, the sleep function is fantastic, and then the buttons to change the input so that you can watch DVDs...there is no need for anything else because people don't use it!!!

Someone maybe just needs to give me a lesson on everything

school sucks

welll......

I have reached that point where I just need to be finished school.

It's weird because in high school I never hated school this much, especially when it's two months longer, oh yeah...because I never did any work.

I must say I have worked really really hard this semester and the grades have finally started to reflect the effort that I have put into some of my classes.

I have been in school for 17 years oh my life...that's all I know how to do...

...and I have another semester, in germany... apparently a bunch of the classes are going to be 100% finals. As long as I get 50s I'm good though because my brock marks are only reflected on a pass/fail basis. Score one for me!!!

automatic soap dispensers

So I get it in public places where nearly everything is automatic, but why do you need an automatic soap dispenser at home...are you not already washing all the germs off your hands anyways?

Are you worried about there being too many germs for the soap to handle?

Stupid stupid product...good try marketers!

shopping in the town of buffalos

So I went shopping yesterday. I spent a little bit more than the budget...oops. I got some sweet stuff though. I'm happy that I got a few great little things. I got a great little necklace from forever 21 for $1.50.

I find it so strange that as soon as we cross over the river people have such a different accent. I don't understand!

I was really disappointed with the service levels I got. When I was in victorias secret I told the girl I was looking for a bra and she's like, here's one that is in my little area. Go see the women at the fitting area who was not at all helpful. She asked how much I was looking to spend and I said no more than $45 and she looked at me like I was crazy. I wondered if I was absolutely nuts for thinking I wouldn't have to spend my entire wallet on a bra. So She sent me to the fitting rooms for someone else to help me. I tried the one she gave me on while being in a terrible mood because it's not at all what I wanted. This girl pretty much sent me to someone else to do what I wanted her to do. I wanted a new bra and so I kept looking around and was approached by someone else who did not help at all. She did nothing more than I could have done on my own. She basically went to the two closest bras, asked my size and picked out some bras. I was not pleased. The bra that I actually found was one that I found myself. As I was walking to the change room I was finally approached by someone that had passion with the store. She was telling me about some of the features that one of the bras had and how it spent three years in development. She made me feel not as angry about the service levels. Then when I went to check out they were trying to sell me a victorias secret card, and I replied no "I'm moving to Europe" - how cool am I

It sounds waaaayyy scarier to say that I'm moving there as opposed to just "going there"

Next story....

I was in papaya and went into the fitting rooms with becky and sylvia was waiting for us to show her our outfits. When we were finished and didn't like things, we just left them in the stalls because there was no one there and I just didn't really care. So as I was walking out some biatch and the door asks where the stuff I tried on was. I said that I left it in the room, and in a snarky tone she responds,"you're supposed to bring it out" and I had about three hundred come backs I wish I could have used, some more horrible than others. Many started with some mean words. I wish I would have used "I don't work here", and maybe just reprimanded her for her attitude. The first thing that came out of me is 'you weren't here' Whatever. She's dumb

After we were done in buffalo sylvia hadn't found a dress yet so we had to head over to marciano in Mississauga. We were talking to the worker in there and we said that we were from niagara falls, and the bimbo working there said that she didn't even realize that people lived in niagara falls. She thought it was just a little tourist area. Wow you are so stupid.

On the way back I was seeing all the apartments. It would be so strange to be driving down the highway and seeing your apartment in the distance but knowing that you won't be there for another 15 minutes.

how exams should happen

So in the real world, you are going to have very few opportunities in which your ability to memorize will actually benefit you. This is why I think that exams should be all open book, at least for business classes

You should be judged on your ability to find the correct information in the shortest amount of time, because that would be the best judge of how well you'd be able to use those skills in the real world. Of course I advocate teaching the fundamentals, but we already only retain about an average of about 25%. Why not learn better how to realize how the information can actually be used in the real world.

It's most often that you will eventually become very comfortable with your job and not need to utilize external resources after you become more familiar with the job.

cheetos

So it's exams, I want to eat all the junk food that I can. Some time last week I invested in a wonderful bag of cheetos. Today I was nibbling on a couple and I realized the following label. Made with real cheese....this got me thinking as most things do realistically... I guess that's why I blog everything (well not everything) that gets me thinking

My main questions though...is someone going to eat cheetos really concerned with whether or not they were made with real cheese. You know they aren't good for you and don't come nearly close enough to qualify as a milk product. Has anyone every justified a cheetos purchase by saying it has real cheese?

Question for you

Do you prefer the classic cheetos or crunchy?

Personally I love both but I always feel I get more with the crunchy.

Austausch

So my orientation for my next years exchange was today and boy do I have a lot of stuff to do. I'm really starting to get excited although I was faced with a bit of anxiety. I know that I do live away from home and have since I was 18. I do have a safety net here but I really don't think I have relied on it excessively. I think that my anxieties are coming from the fact that recently I watched both the movies taken and hostel. I didn't finish either of them but thinking about situations in which I can get captured and no one will know frighten me and I don't know how I would handle being in an emergency situation. I figure the chances of this happening are pretty rare but I am worried about sticking out to much. I just want to have a safe time and not die....to sum it all up!!!

I'm also worried about all my stuff. I love clothes and living somewhere is going to require a lot. Plus I'm going to buy clothes. I can't afford that many suitcases!!

I am watching the movie Food Inc, after starting to watch it in my MGMT class, which is so good because our prof realizes that business is not solely about making profits and that it involves real people with real feelings. So we never finished that movie in class, and I wanted to see the end. School...my last year at brock...is finally over. I've decided that I want to finish this thing.

Basically it's talking about corporate farming and it's so so sad that it is cheaper to buy crappy sugary processed food than to buy legit veggies. One thing that we were discussing in class is whether or not it is the companies responsibility to care for it's stakeholders or whether as buyers we should be looking out for ourselves. It is an awkward situation because we truly don't know enough details about where our food comes from, and realistically we don't have that many choices. That is really motivating me to consider my food sources much more. It's obviously not something that can be changed over night but I'm going to do small things.

Something else they mentioned was the number of people who don't know a farmer and that got me thinking as well. I think being from manitoba and the kind of background that I have I can't imagine someone not knowing a farmer. For goodness sakes my mother grew up on a farm. A guy I know went to the country for the first time 4 years ago and could barely believe the fact that there were that many stars once all the light pollution was gone. Things like this truly make me worry for my future children and grandchildren. It seems that there are so many people that especially out here in ontario find going into the country such a foreign experience and it's almost frightening. It's almost as though they are so stuck in the city they don't realize the reality of having a life outside of a city.

another thing

I love it when someone you haven't talked to and sometimes forget you are facebook friends with 'likes' your status.

It's like, 'hey, they still kind of care!'

shout out to mel if she ever reads this

related to today's awesome thing

So one of the blogs I subscribe to is 1000 awesome things. Today's awesome thing was breaking into your own house and I was reminded of a memory of doing this myself just last year.

So it was an amazingly sunny day...(by the way I may have blogged about this right after it happened, but that was the old blog)

....and I decided to sit outside and read my magazine because I just wanted to enjoy the weather. At our old house the door worked in such a way that you can lock the door by turning the little thing on the knob and then just shutting the door. I am a superbad creature of habit, and so on this day I, like I usually do, shut the door and went to sit outside. After reading my magazine for about 10 minutes I realized what I had done. I thought about it for a few minutes and did a holy crap I'm pretty sure I locked the door panic moment. I had that last glimmer of hope, but unfortunately the damage had already been done. I was locked outside. I also remember for some reason I was home along that weekend, or at least I was going to be home alone for the next few hours. I also wasn't dressed for a cold spring night. I knew that my top priority at the moment was breaking into my house. Luckily our house wasn't over safe and I remembered that the small little back window was not locked as we often opened it during cooking. As I was walking to the back I was praying that nobody had failed to lock it. I also wasn't wearing shoes either, and it's way harder to deal with stuff barefooted.

So I get back there and thank heavens it is open. It is an awkward window height though and the bottom is about mid-torso height. Had a chair been outside it would have been much easier. Sadly this was not the case, and I knew that my weight would be too much to stand on an overturned recycling bin. So I tore off the screen and opened the window. Cohen, the cat, was also interested to see what was happening. He would not make a great guard cat unless it meant face bumping to death. This cat had become accustomed to sitting on this window ledge because of it's comfort and view of many birds and of course as I have this window open he's trying to get out at the same time. Not only am I struggling to lift my body high enough to get into the window I'm also shoving the cat out of the way. If anyone had seen this from the back side they would have got a great shot of my ass with legs flailing away. Similar to lindsay lohan's character falling in the garbage can in the cinematic masterpiece mean girls!

Needless to say, I made it in safe and sound and then laughed at myself for the next hour. Then went back outside to keep reading...this time not locking the front door. Actually I kept my key around my neck to avoid such foolishness a second time.

old people

So I have been running into random old people lately. Last thursday we were at casa d'pizza in the falls with Bob, and I ran into some random girl from my classics seminar 2 years ago...then today I ran into the TA from that seminar. Both of these people I haven't seen since that. I had just a fantastic talk with my TA today though. He was so good and I honestly cannot say enough great things about him.

I was thinking about all the people I'm going to leave behind here at Brock and I'm not really that concerned about leaving everyone behind. When I was leaving high school I definatly was concerned about leaving people behind and losing friendships. I think that most people now I'm not really that close with, mostly just a conversation in the hall and I am just happy to leave it at that. Perhaps we'll be lucky enough to run into each other again in the future.

It really surprises me that I don't have some sort of daddy issues. I think that I often look up to male role models in my life, especially profs. I love my MGMT 4P90 prof so much, not in a sexual way, but in a dad you are awesome kind of way and I just want to impress them so much. The same thing goes for my finance profs too.

Do you ever sit pretending to do homework, every once in a while type some words

then realize 20 minutes later what you've been doing, or rather, not doing

presentations

So I will have one more class of actual learning....this year that is!

Every other class here on in is just presentations. It started yesterday and continued today. Today I had management and the presentations were just awful! One group had recommendations that involved increasing programs for CBC, while downsizing at the same time....and their target market was all Canadians.

Yikes...

I like it when the prof actually shakes is head things are so bad!

It just sucks having the hear all these presentations because you know that no one cares. I just hate that they are all trying so hard to be professional and meanwhile you don't wear proper clothes and you stumble over every word. It is waaayyy better if you read interestingly off your cue cards as opposed to mumbling and saying ummm every four words.