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leaving for germany tomorrow at one! eeeeeeeeeeek....

mint, black magic, and children's books

so i was helping my mom with the gardening (and by that i mean shuffling around in flip flops lugging a bag of fertilizer from the front of the house to the back of the house for about 3 min.) before the rain started. anyway, i was looking at the back of my house - gosh, i haven't been there in years - when i saw ..

well actually, before i continue on that. isn't it incredible? that there are certain parts of my house that i haven't explored in years? since i went off to college? since i grew up and didn't play outside in the dirt anymore? i've been taking my dog for walks lately (i'd say jog, but who am i kidding, i jog at a leisurely fast walk pace) around my neighborhood and i see houses with kids i don't recognize [new families]. i mean, they were an essential part of my childhood and it doesn't seem that long ago (fine, 10 years), so how can they not live there anymore? these kids i remember in elementary school are now in high school trying to be all cool (heh) and oh, just wow!

oh yeah, so... in my mom's backyard i saw MINT! fresh, mint leaves. mmmm... i don't know if many people knew this (i barely remember this), but i remember at one time wanting to live in the wild, hehe, be one of those resourceful youths, and study herbs and learn how to make polutices and fend for myself with whatever concotion i could create. :)

mmm...

:snaps out of daydreaming: actually, my mom said that it had been there for months (doh). anyway, i'm looking up recipes using fresh mint. i'm so excited! i watch alton and rachel [alton brown, rachel ray] all fancy with their fridges and inside are these zip lock bags with fresh herbs wrapped inside damb paper towels, and now i am joining this elite class! whehehee!

i can't wait to have my own kitchen and then i'll go pick these herbs and store it in my fridge. hah, i even saw alton have a little velcro ziplock bag inside his. maybe i'll do that too...whehehee. can't wait. :)

but anyway, seeing the mint made me think of a book i read when i was little. (and by little i distincy remember 6th grade.) it's the book that made me want to know more about herbs and basically be able to fend for myself in the wilderness. i can't find it now, i've been trying to google it on and off but i just can't find it. it doesn't help that it has a generic title, "black magic" or so i remember... and i *think* my memory serves me correctly.

anyway, it was about this orphan or something, and she grows up but she learned all about herbs and using it to make medicine. hrm, and then somehow she ends up working as the nurse for a princess or something, and teaches her what to do. but it ended up having something to do with black magic and the bubonic plague because she eventually had to fend off the "black death" with the herbs that she gathered, and something about how the children would sometimes be posessed. man this sounds dumber/scarier than it actually was. it was pretty fascainating. i remember one part about having this elaborate sketchbook with blank pages and how she'd go around gathering herbs and sketching them and writing down their medicinal properties..

man, maybe this is why i'm like this. i see so many familir qualities. wanting to have a sketchbook and start/write down useful information. i remmeber the notebook was pretty...it probably had a ribbon for a bookmark too.

you know what, maybe it wasn't called "black magic" but more like "black death" or something...agghh... i'll continue searching for it.

anyway, i realized that there were a lot of great childhook books in my youth (hello, laura!) [laura ingalls wilder] and i want to be able to remember them/peruse them in my leisure. i find them particularly... soothing. mmmhrm.. and i know i definitely need it in times like this.

therefore, it is now my side hobby to find books that i read as a youth that i loved! books that i checked out in the library but now that i am working can now buy! muwaha!

so i definitely first started with "where the red fern grows" by having my brother buy it for me for my 16th? 15th? some birthday. hibisca bought me "little town on the prairie" for my 18th birthday i believe. actually, well those series are a bit specialier to me. i actually asked her not to buy it for me bu tshe didn't listen but oh well, i still love it anyway. :) but yeah, i find that whenever i am particularly stressed, or have done something noteworthy and congratulatory then i buy myself one of those books in her series. so i have to ration it out because i already have bought some. heh, i actually only have a few and i'm eyeing one in paritcular that i really want to read so i better do something praiseworthy soon! haha...

but yeah, so i remembe rreading "rifles for watie" when i was little which also made me realize that i loved the genre: historical fiction. or well, i at least like those. i really ought to stop saying i like particular genres when i only read a couple books (cough, <5)>.<

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WHY does "black magic" return all these books on african americans and the showbusiness? gagghhh..smalls, you're killing me...

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okay i give up. i'm going to post it on one of those blogs aka goodreads that says, "what's the name of that book" and hopefully someone will reply back to me. it's a pretty nifty idea.

self confidence

hrm, so another thing i noticed last wk (or so..). i meant to write it down but never got around to it (something about my compute ris just so slow...those scans, gagh...i s'pose i should be happier since i haven't had any viruses yet but anyway)

so i think before i tried to, hrm... increase self confidence by learning/doing more things. i figured i could gain confidence that way because i would be more confident about this and that. HOWEVER, i realized that the more i knew, the more i didn't know (some pithy quote, somewhere...)

anyway, i think it is more of just trying to increase self confidence with what i do know/have. hrm...now how to go about doing that. i've tried writing down good qualities about myself but at times, that just seems kind of lame. heh. i always end up writing about things that make me happy, that i love. silly me, always digressing :P

breakdowns

so lately i've been getting a lot more, "mini-breakdowns" where i just feel flustered, hopeless, ... [...], ...

anyway, i was thinking about it today and i realized that the reason they sort of, grow worse (i'm thinking of a word that begins with e --- not exorbitant, maybe.hrm...) is because i stop breathing!

so, when i get flustered, i used to just say whatever came to my mind, rash things that i didn't really mean. anyway, over the years i learned to control myself, purse my mouth together, furrowed eyebrows, and just think whatever i was thinking but kept shut. it has worked...reasonably well i s'pose. but i think i mostly breathe through my mouth (assumption 1) because when my mouth is closed, then i have to breathe through my nose, which i assume is not as effective (assumption 2) and thus, less oxygen than my body is accustomed to and i feel ... flustered, etc.

i mean, i really do feel nauseous and that things are, hrm, "crashing down." it's just a thought.

visa form griefs

so i really don't like filling out forms, idk, the only pleasure i get out of filling them out is filling out the really easy stuff like my name and birthday. and that's only because i like looking at my handwriting.

heh, i remember i even started filling out my gatech app because i liked handwriting so much...and then it got to more difficult things like essays and i decided perhaps it was time for the computer age to kick in.

:sigh:

filling out an app for a visa now. hopefully i'll get this done in time before i leave. i can't believe it's coming up so soon. march is almost over. i think in general every first few months of the year pass by so fast.

wow!

:sigh: i really don't like filling out these "official" forms, i really just wish someone would double check them for me so i don't mess up. actually, i usually do. i guess that's one more thing about being indepdence i need to learn about, just depending on myself. yikes!

so the one good thing about this is that i need to go to the police dept. to get a "police certificate of good conduct" and well...heh, the police dept. is right across my work place. i believe it's 15 numbers down (11460 vs 11445) so at least that part's not a pain.

gaghhh these forms. plus the german ones are ridiculous. thank goodness they have german and english words on them because they're so ridiculously long (compound words). i mean, the longest word in english, antidisestablishmentarian, looks so puny by comparison to, oh idk...work agency...or something. >.<

more musings, this time on compliments

House Episode "Social Contract"

House: It's funny how people cling to insults, or what they think are insults. (approx.)

I told this to my friend, upon which he replied back a similar story his father told him, "If you're being judged and 99 judges give you all positive reviews and 1 judge gives you a negative review, it doesn't matter, you're still going to remember that one negative review the most."

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All this just makes me wonder - why is it about compliments/advice/words from other people that stick out to us so much?

I mean, is it because we think they can see something that we can't? But then, often times, if we hear something we don't like, isn't it, well, "they don't know us that well." Or something like that. I mean, there's always something more that you can rationalize with. You can keep talking on and on until they can see it from your point of view. So then it can't be something that they can see that we can't.

Hm, I mean is it just because we want to know that we're not alone in our opinions? But then again, so we keep prodding at such and such direction, we keep hinting and nudging them to say something. You know, slyly lead the conversation to said direction until we hear it. But then those are just so...empty. I think we've all felt it when we've "fished for compliments," I mean, it doesn't satisfy.

I mean it's so blatant when somebody asks a question that you don't really need to answer it, "Don't you think this fits me really well?" Hrm, let me think about that one.

Maybe that's where a lot of our problems come from as well, our opinions are already nested inside our questions and we're not really asking questions to hear what the other person has to say but more of, to confirm ourselves.

But why do we need to confirm ourselves? Why this need to not be alone in our own judgment? Is it because we don't think we have a sound judgment? Okay, this is for most people alright.

Yeah I don't know why I like other people's compliments more so than when I can say them to myself. I mean, I know exactly what I want to hear, and I can tell myself as openly and as honestly as I can because well, I'll know if I'm not telling the truth. With others, this is limited. So why do I like it when people say the same things [I could tell myself] better?

Yikes!

past, present, future life

so yesterday my manager asked me about GHP - WOW that was a quick rush of memories -

okay so i tried to be dramatic but it didn't really work. heh. but she did probe me further as to what it was like, etc. and i realized (once again) how hard it was to describe something without experiencing it yourself. sure you can say you're off on your own and it's like going to college, and you love the atmosphere ... but it really is so much more than that.

hrm, oh well. we did spend an hour talking about it though (pity it was when i was leaving or else i could have clocked the hours lawl). well, it was a continous flow from ghp to high school to advice about that to jobs afterwards. heh, her friend's son's future to my future to futures in general.

anyway, she asked me if there was any advice i could give on ghp, or even hs classes. oh right, and then i talked about her daughter's futures which included middle school.

so my advice was basically to take as many fun classes as possible in hs. and by that, i guess i meant honors and ap classes. i wish i hadn't cared about grades as much back then and just took all the classes i wanted to then ... i mean, looking back on it now, i don't think it really matters.

ESPECIALLY middle school classes. man, i can't believe i worked my butt off in lang. arts and none of those grades carried over. just math and language (i was sure to advise her to tell her daughters that to make sure they had good grades there).

oh yes, but back to it. hrm, i realize now that i should have taken hrm....everything. i just want the exposure. we had ap art history... we had auto shop class... man my school offered a lot. :)

which is why when i get back to tech i'm going to take advtg of... oh wait, hah...what classes again? :P my goal when i come back (spring 2010) is to take joint classes at emory. MMHRM! i want to take some of their philosophy/ethics classes there. that would be nice i think.

mmm and of course dance class.

heh... i was proud of myself today. while we were talking i asked my manager what she thought i should do for a future (she was recommending that to get higher up, i needed to specialize, not necessarily a masters in a technical field but maybe even business) but she told me my strengths. hearing praise is always nice, but i guess hearing it from her was nice because i wasn't sure how she felt about me after i came into work late a few (...) times.

she said my strengths was that i picked up things very fast, especially technical skills (that made me feel good). she also said that one of my strenghts that engineers didn't have, was that i could communicate with people very well.

i guess that led to how i told her i wanted to be a field service engineer. for those that i haven't described it to, the way i heard of it was you work for a company that specializes in something, say, pacemakers. then you work with the company who makes the pacemakers, with the hospitals and doctors that you're trying to sell it to, and also with the patients that are using it. so you need to have the skills to describe to everybody how it functions and what it'll be doing for you. i would enjoy that.

but then she pointed out that after a few years, you would probably see the same things over again and it might not be as interesting. that was where she told me that if i wanted to get further i might have to specialize. sigh, all this is so far away. i hate wanting to get ahead, and yet i know i need to. something about me... always pushing.

hrmm...

on another note, reading my friend's blog about how he wanted to be a man after God's own heart was very... encouraging, to say at the very least. it's the happiness and at peace that i seek for but don't know how to ... obtain?

and it's fitting when i listen to the song, "on fire" by switchfoot

"But everything inside you
knows there's more than what you've heard
There's so much more than empty conversations
filled with empty words"

i know i've felt this time and time again.

actually, the whole l yrics,

They tell you where you need to go
They tell you when you need to leave.
They tell you what you need to know
They tell you who you need to be.

But everything inside you
knows there's more than what you've heard
There's so much more than empty conversations
filled with empty words

And you're on fire
when he's near you
You're on fire when he speaks
You're on fire burning at these mysteries
Give me one more time around
give me one more chance to see,
Give me everything you are
Give me one more chance to be near you.

When everything inside me
Looks like everything i hate
You are the hope i have for change
You are the only chance I'll take

And I'm on fire when you're near me
I'm on fire when you speak
I'm on fire burning at these mysteries.

I'm standing on the edge of me,
I'm standing at the edge of everything I've ever been
And I've been standing at the edge of me, standing
at the edge"