New Year's Eve and this blog's 1st Anniversary

I'm not big on new year's resolutions; however, it's been exactly a year since I talked about ice cream which precipitated this blog. So I'll talk about what's gone on since that fateful dream of vanilla ice cream that started this whole thing. What has changed since? I still work at the hospital. But I have started going back to school. I don't feel as listless and hopeless. Despite some nurses (ahem...a tall, leggy Russian one at that) rolling their eyes at me upon discovering that I'm not taking nursing but something as 'useful' as English Literature, it's been ok. I survived. My God. 2011. I wonder what's in store this year.

Please let me have the Fulbright.
Please let me have the Fulbright.
Please let me have the Fulbright.

post-semester thoughts

It was a hard semester. I realized a few things though:
1. I missed school.
- While working at the hospital environment since 2007 gave me invaluable people and life skills experience, I really, really, REALLY missed school.
2. My brain actually still works.
- Didn't know if I could be in an academic setting. I mean, it's been almost ten years since my undergrad years. (Oh, snap...people will realize how old I am!!!)
3. I still can't write academic papers for shit.
- I practiced an unorthodox brand of writing that apparently had a name called "performative writing" (read up on Peggy Phelan). But sometimes, it's just plain old sloppiness. Got a lot to learn. I need to master the MLA or APA style of citation...

Anyway, I got an A- for one of the classes. I don't know about the other one but so far, it's looking like a B+/A-.

A Breath of Air

I've been pulling hair, teeth and other non-appendage-like substances from out of me the past two weeks and will probably do so in the next two because, it is, tuh-duh-dum-!- FINALS. I'm only taking two graduate classes. But, man! Those two classes are kicking my butt. I'm taking two medieval literature courses - one on Chaucer and the other on Apocalyptic Medieval Literature. Fun. No, really - fun.

Now, some friendly words from our friendly (and deceased) neighborhood Spanish Jesuit and baroque writer, Balthasar Gracian:

Aphorism #82 Drain Nothing to the Dregs, neither Good nor Ill.
A sage once reduced all virtue to the golden mean. Push right to the extreme and it becomes wrong: press all the juice from an orange and it becomes bitter. Even in enjoyment never go to extremes. Thought too subtle is dull. If you milk a cow too much you draw blood, not milk.

The Junk Touching

I went with my sister down South last month. The Delta flight from JFK was a very "intimate" experience so to speak. Pardon me. It wasn't the flight itself that was intimate. I mean, of course, it would be intimate in the sense of being 30,000 feet up in the air with 200 people where if you stuck your foot in the aisle, you'd get cursed at (silently) by the flight attendants for tripping them or maybe they'd just end up taking the emergency exit or something. No, I mean it in the sense that the security was in your face, in your boobs, in your butt and, literally, in your everywhere. It was very disconcerting. I tried not to think about it. Anyway, both of us were singled and were taken to the side. My sister started whimpering and crying (though it's kind of funny because she actually knew before we even came to the airport that this is the new policy) and I was just chatting away with the TSA officer like we were girlfriends or something. Don't get me wrong. It really was very uncomfortable. But what could I do?

What would you do???

The Shack

I heard of The Shack from Nathan Bransford's blog and one of my co-workers. They said it was a good read. So when I found myself in an airport at Atlanta, Georgia on my way back to New York, I ended up buying the book. I must say, I was surprised. It's one of the best reads I've had in a while.

The book jacket says it all:
Mackenzie Allen Philip's youngest daughter, Missy, has been abducted during a family vacation and evidence that she may have been brutally murdered is found in an abandoned shack deep in the Oregon wilderness. Four years later, in the midst of his Great Sadness, Mack receives a suspicious note, apparently from God, inviting him back to that shack for a week-end.
Against his better judgment he arrives at the shack on a wintry afternoon and walks back into his darkest nightmare. What he finds there will change Mack's world forever.
In a world where religion seems to grow increasingly irrelevant THE SHACK wrestles with the timeless question: Where is God in a world so filled with unspeakable pain? The answers Mack gets will astound you and perhaps transform you as much as it did him. You'll want everyone and you know to read this book!

The phenomenal journey of this book began when William Paul Young decided to write a story about what he felt his children should know about his own dark night of the soul. No, according to him, he didn't have a child who was abducted or killed, but that he had that Great Sadness that his protagonist had. Then when he gave it to his friends and family to read, the story kept changing hands so much so that they encouraged him to publish it. In fact, two people from California that time when it was still in its bound format wanted to fly to Oregon to meet his protagonist personally thinking that Mack was a real person! So there is a current of energy, a kind of consciousness that this book raises that have people itching to pass it on. That's amazing. No publisher, religious or mainstream, would touch this book when Young tried to submit. So he and three other friends decided to open their own publishing company with only one book - his. Their first print was 11,000 copies and it was sold within two months. This book that didn't fit in to any category has found success much like Twilight (not that I'm a huge fan).

I'm not laughing at self-publishing now.

Another Day at Work: The Armenian Mafia

My head was swimming over the week-end. Besides the drama I had with a supervisor who was extremely rude, there was other news/gossip floating around. Apparently, one of the workers at the hospital was very involved in medicaid fraud with the Armenian mafia. It's national news. I've seen the girl. She is one hot Spanish mama. But it doesn't mention it in any of the news articles I've read. Maybe she's trying to cut a deal with the Feds. Apparently, she was on her way to work last week when the Feds showed up and cuffed her. As I heard this, I kept thinking of the Russian spy girl who made the news. They have the same vibe. Anyway, she was supplying the mafia with information about patients coming in to the hospital.

There's a lot of action where I work. Damn.

Paper Topics

Philippe de Champaigne, St. Augustine (Los Angeles County Museum of Art

This may be foolish but I've decided to write a final paper on St. Augustine. Yikes! It's a 20-page monster. We read his conception of the third paradise/heaven for class. My one-page commentary on him wasn't the best work I turned in yet somehow I'm stuck with him. He's just that intense. Why couldn't I do something easier? I was even thinking of incorporating Buddhist thought comparisons into the mix. Sigh. Any suggestions?