I left Clemson last Saturday morning at 3:30. I had a final the night before til 8:30ish. I loaded my car for another two hours, checked out, bought supper, went to the hotel with Daddy, and was in bed and asleep by 1. I got up at 2:22, took a shower, and drove back to Tennessee. Bubba graduated from Motlow that day at 11 on the main campus. (He's already been at MTSU for a year, but apparently there was some random elective he didn't have credit for at Motlow when he finished there last year. He transferred in credit and was able to graduate this year even though he's pretty much been done since last Spring.)That meant another one hour drive once I got back to the house. Not fun stuff. I'm at Krystals right now and these men are staring in my direction. Creepers...yuck yuck yuck! Anyway, we made the drive, Bubba graduated, and of course Uncle Rodney wants me to ride home with him. He's the over and under achiever of the family. He graduated from UT Knoxville, got accepted to law school, went for one year, and dropped out. Now he works for some company setting up their new branches around the world. He's in Ireland or Scotland quite often. But he's never been married...not even close. He's somewhat of a kasguabkb. So I feel like poop because I've been running on an hour and a half of sleep. He wants to talk about school. He wants to tell me how my major needs to be profitable when I graduated and HOPEFULLY something I also enjoy. While I think he's annoying and pretty wrong, I don't even care. I'm just pissed because I can't sleep on the way home. Yay the icky guys just left. So that was that day. I got in bed around 7 or so. Now this annoying man just sat right beside me with his laptop. Freakin a...Luckily this font is small enough that he can't read it. He just asked for help connecting to Wi-Fi. I kinda feel bad for talking about him, but whatever.
So the next day was a Sunday. I went to Murfreesboro to stay with Courtney. That's an hour and fifteenish minutes from me. Bleh... And Daddy called sometime around Sunday, but definitely before Monday, to tell me Jess, my sister was pregnant again and due in August. He had just found out. He said we couldn't have been more surprised if you told him it was going to get dark outside in a few hours. Yes, it's that sad and expected.
Monday - We went to Green Hills in Nashville to take baby Mac to the Apple Store. Her HD crashed again Thursday night, the night before the night before I left Clemson. That's also a lot of the reason I haven't blogged. It doesn't feel right doing it from any other computer. Mmmmm these Krystals are good. I may have to follow this up with a trip to the Elk River Coffee Company. They have wireless there, too. Though I bet Amanda and Ali will call me as soon as they get out of school around 1. They'll come later in this entry. So Courtney and I set out into an almost unknown area of Nashville, at least to us. It was actually close to Downtown, but anyway. The trip should've taken about half an hour. It took almost two because of one wrong turn that I was told to make. Exit 3 off of I-24 splits to Hillsboro Pike and 21st Avenue. Pick a lane, any lane. They're the same road with a different name at either end. I need the left lane but was instructed to take the right. Bad day. I learned a lot about Nashville, though. We stopped once and asked a lady for directions. She told us very clearly where to go. We needed to turn onto Woodmont Street. Well we get going down the right direction look for it and see Woodsomethingelsebesidesmont. We both assumed she just had the last part wrong and took a left. There were really nice houses as she had described. But it brought us right back out where we had started when we got off the interstate. Later we found out there was a Woodmont Street just a little further down. We asked for directions at a gas station finally. The 21st Anenue part of the exit took us left on the road. We needed to be going right. The entire time we were only two or three miles from the place. Schwatev. We made it. I was told that I would be called when baby Mac was ready, and I'd have to come back to get her. Sweet. I'd beast Nashville when I came back. I took Courtney back to her apartment near MTSU and drove home. Next was Ashton's, my nephew's, second birthday party. That was fun. He was adorable...and big. Jess, his mom, wasn't even there. Not surprised, again. But he threw his play golf balls into the bushes only to hunt them out, point me to them, get me to climb in and get them, and have him throw them in again. He used the plastic clubs to wail at huge bubbles someone else was blowing. Fun stuff.
Tuesday - Tuesday was Brandon's day. I got up around 7:45, got dressed, drove to Columbia State's main campus (about an hour), and saw Brandon G graduate from the radiologic technology program. He was pretty. All scruffy and whatnot. Very scruffy. I'd never seen him so fuzzy. Anyway, T-Jo and Spencer were there, too. His possee. We ate at Zaxby's after the commencement and waited for his pinning ceremony at two. That ceremony was cooooool. There were only 21 people in his program, so it was personal for everyone there. The professors gave out superlatives of sorts. Brandon got the Lightbulb Award, because one day it just clicked on. That's a very Brandon award to get. I went home around five when all of the festivities were over. He and his boys were going to the cabin for the night, and while I'm the first and only girl ever allowed in there, that night wasn't for me. And sometime during the pinning ceremony, the Apple Store called and said baby Mac was ready.
Wednesday - I'm not even sure what I did. I was too tired to go get baby Mac, so I got a backlight for the clock and temperature controls in my car replaced. I read my book and lied across the couch in the Landers-McClarty Toyota Scion waiting area. It was nice. I saved a few page numbers in my phone of interesting quotes. And I went to the coffee shop, the Elk River Coffee Company. I know the name isn't needed, but it's soooo good. It's the best coffee place ever! And everyone should go! Okay, so it was my first time since I had been home. The only other times I was able to go were at night, and Lord knows I needed my sleep. So I always had to pass it up. When I walking to my car, Amanda and Ali scared the mess out of me. We went to a place on the square called The Blue Fish, I think. They always have cool pictures and stuff I want to buy.
What We Belive But Cannot Prove
Edited by: John Brockman
pages 51-52
"The instant we accept a given representation of the world as true, it becomes the basis for further thought and action; rejected as flase, it remains a string of words."
"What I believe, though cannot yet prove, is that belief is a content-independent process. Which is to say that beliefs about God-to the degree that they really are believed-are the same as beliefs about numbers, penguins, tofu, or anything else."
--- Sam Harris - graudate of Stanford University in philosophy, currently completing doctorate in neuroscience at UCLA, and author
pages 59-61
"Specifically, I am convinced that [humans] reached North America around 14,000 years ago, South America around 13,500 years ago, and Australia and New Guinea around 4,600 years ago, and that within a few centuries of those dates, humans were responsible for the extinction of most of the big animals of those continents."
"Every year beginning graduate students in archaeology and paleontology working in Africa or Europe or Asia uncover sites displaying an undisputed ancient human presence. Every year, such discoveries are announced for the Americas and Australia, too - but none has ever met the evidentiary standards of the sites in Afraica, Europe, or Asia. The big mammlas of the latter three continents survive because they had millions of years to learn fear of human hunters, whose skills evolved very slowly. The big animals of the Americas and Australia died out because their very first human encounters were with skilled, fully-modern hunters."
--- Jared Diamond - evolutionary biologist, professor of geography at UCLA, and Pulitzer Prize winning author
pages 82-83
"Numbers that are exact powers of two are 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, and so on. Numbers that are exact powers of five are 5, 25, 125, 625, and so on. Given any number, such as 131,072 (which happens to be a power of two), the reverse of it is 270, 131, with the same digits taken in the opposite order. Now, my statement is this: It never happens that the reverse of a power of two is a power of five."
"The digits in a big power of two seem to occur in a random way, without any regular pattern. If it ever happened that the reverse of a power of two was a power of five, this would be an unlikely accident, and the chance of it happening grows smaller as the number grows bigger. If we assume that the digits occur at random, then the chance of the accident happening for any power of two greater than a billion is less than one in a billion."
--- Freeman Dyson - professor emeritus of physics at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton and author
pages 111-112
"I believe that human consciousness is a conjuring trick, designed to fool us into thinking we are in the presence of an inexplicable mystery."
"If the illusion that consciousness is an inexplicable mystery is a source of human hope, I suppose there is a real danger that exposing the trick might send us all to Hell."
--- Nicholas Humphrey - theoretical psychologist at the London School of Economics and author
Thursday - I had planned to go get baby Mac. Courtney was going to go, but Ms. Rhonda had a doctor's appointment. Brandon was going to go, but Mr. Michael had taken off work and needed his help doing stuff. The weather was horrible when I woke up, so I was eventually content with chilling at the hizzouse all day. But if I got baby Mac back the next day, it would make me really really busy and rushed. Mommy came home from lunch and said she'd take off to go with me that afternoon. I could always go by myself, but it was stormy. Plus it's always nice to have a mommy around. So we left town around three and got her back. We stopped at Starbucks before leaving Nashville. I was dying because I still hadn't caught up on sleep, and Mommy wanted to try something new. She really isn't a coffee drinker. She'll make some at home a few times a month and that's about the extent of it. I, on the other hand, love it more than I should. I've made sure that I don't rely on it to get by because, honestly, it puts me to sleep some days. But I definitely indulge more than I should. Most every day. So we go inside. I have no idea where to order. It's laid out all funkified. Really I've only been in two Starbucks in my life. North Myrtle Beach twice when I stayed with Timofee over Spring Break and the new one that opened in Clemson after Christmas break. I'd always had my hometown coffee shop to go to, which is better than Starbucks, but anyway. I tell Mutti what she'll like, a caramel macchiato. I order the typical tall iced white mocha with an extra pump. I always get that warm or iced, and it was a particularly warm day. Mutti liked hers but said she'd go with an extra pump next time, too. Mine was as good as Starbucks can do and exactly as sub-par as I had grown accustomed. I talked about Worldwidemoment the entire time we were there. We headed back to the house and stopped at my favorite truck stop a few exits before our own. Daddy and I have spent a lot fo Sunday mornings there. The Tennessean truck stop is super yummy delicious. Exit 22 on I-24. It's not sketch. It's really nice with a good buffet and the best breakfast anytime. We ate hamburgers and hamburger steaks with fries and baked potatoes, no sour cream extra butter. Home.
Friday - I finished up my Mother's Day shopping. I bought the Hoops and YoYo card two months ago in Clemson. I saw Mother's Day cards out and was like snap! I thought it was coming up, plus Hoops and YoYo are always welcome. I was going to get Mutti a necklace she wanted, but it was gone. The place always gets them in so I got her a gift card for it. No biggie. Mommy also wanted to get all the plants out of our front flower bed by the porch because she doesn't have time to mess with them. She had said something about putting in rocks or pebbles and lawn ornament type things and only having potted, easy to manage plants. It sounded like another project that would never happen unless she got a kick in the toot. I got her another gift card to a place that sells all kinds of rock and such like that. Gift cards seemed really not loving, but the idea behind them was good. That night was Tara's graduation at the Von Braun in Huntsville. Courtney and I went and ate at IHOP afterward. Yummy stuff. Chocolate chip pancakes and the second best chocolate cake I've ever had. Back home around midnight.
Saturday - I began unloading some of the boxes in the living room. I re-created the collage I had on the wall in my dorm in my bedroom at home. I moved sparkly cut-out stars from senior year's "Evening with the Stars" top 10 banquet to make room for actual pictures, one a guy from my town took of a pair of old timey glasses on a Bible opened to the Song of Solomon where one lens on the crease makes a heart, and one Benj took outside the venue the first night I ever saw Mae. I got the hammer and nails and left them out for someone else to hang. I'm very capable of such things, but also very bad at them. I don't like to measure, and my wall would look like the peg game at Cracker Barrel by the time I finished. Saturday night I went to Courtney's to watch 27 Dresses. I had seen it in theaters. It was good. A nice chick-flick that I needed. It was storming when I left, tornado watches in every county within 50 miles of me. And sure enough I was alone when I got back home. The satellite was cutting in and out and I couldn't find a radio station not playing music. The scanner I didn't know we had starting beeping and reading alerts. It scared the mess out of me. I unlugged the computer and TVs and all, put on my shoes, grabbed a pillow and a flashlight, and prepared myself for a long night. Momma was out in the middle of nowhere, and her phone didn't have service. Bubba's was going straight to voicemail. Daddy was in Texas. And these storms had already killed 20 people in Oklahoma and Arkansas earlier in the day. BIG FUN! I figured everyone was camped out for the night because no one needed to be driving in that storm. The thought of blogging annoys me. I can't believe I've written all this. Eventually Momma calls me back, calm as all get out, and says she's a few minutes from the house. Freakin a. I wasn't so much scared as I was tired and anxious, but tears welled up in my eyes. It was only for a few seconds and that was as far as it got, but gosh it felt good to know she was coming home. She laughed when she walked in and saw me loaded for bear. I was surrounded by safety. It was slightly comical, but I was sleepy. I immediately took off my shoes, changed into PJs, brushed my teeth, and went to bed. It was like no tornado could ever touch the house with Mutti in it.
Sunday - Mother's Day! Everyone woke up late. We gave Mutti her presents. That went well. She loved Hoops and YoYo. We decided to go eat at Ding How in Huntsville, Momma's favorite Chinese restuarant/resturant period. We (Momma, me, Bubba, and Jesse) all went in one car because, as Bubba said, it would "defeat the purpose of Mother's Day if we [took] separate vehicles." I didn't mind Jesse, Bubba's girlfriend, going even though she wasn't actually part of the family. She practically is, but still. The problems started when she didn't want to see Iron Man again when Momma mentioned it. She and Bubba decided they would see a different movie. Freakin a. THAT defeats the purpose of Mother's Day, you stooge! So I got annoyed. Then the one car decision made me mad. If the movies start and let out at different times, that will be quite inconvenient. If they end up having to go to a different theater, that'll be impossible and he'll get all pissy. Whatever. Get in the effin car. Let's go. We're crossing river bridge and Bubba decides he needs to go to Hibbets to get ball pants. He has a game Monday and won't have time after work to get them. Freakin a. Momma stops even though we're in a hurry because the movie starts in two hours and we have about a 45 minute drive to the restaurant. It takes him like 20 minutes. She knows getting upset will just make things worse. Then he decides he needs to go to Wal-Mart. I'm part mumbling/part yelling at this point. He's so disrespectful and self-centered sometimes. Luckily for him, he comes to his senses and decides Wal-Mart can wait. He's happy as a flower, singing as we ride down the road. I'm the one who's pissed now and will get blamed for ruining the trip if I keep it up. But I had no intention or want to calm down. I imagined hitting him on the head. I can't smack people. That seems demeaning, but I could pop him on the back of the head until year's end. I pout what I deem a sufficient amount of time and slowly get over it. We get to Ding How and it's crowded. We wait a few minutes and look at the kissie fish in the tank in the lobby. They were sooo coooool. I'm getting some for my dorm next year. We get seated and the waitress brings us all the complimentary water before taking our orders. She had three glasses in one hand and proceeds to spill an entire one on Momma. She stands up...and laughs until she cries. I laugh, too. Bubba acts all pissed and protective and gets annoying as always. We order number 81 with egg drop soup and no roll. We drink sweet tea. We leave. By the time we get to the movies, it's 3:15. We had planned to be there by two. All that we can see is Iron Man or Made of Honor. I don't care much either way. We decide on Made of Honor at 3:50. It was good. It was another needed chick-flick. I still think I need another. We finish off our traditional bag of Raisinets and liter of water. Yes, the Rave gives you an entire liter of Dasani. We leave. Mommy mentions she wants to try another caramel macchiato. There are two more Starbucks places before we get out of Huntsville. We stop and I order for everyone who is retarded when it comes to ordering such things. The drinks are gooood. We go hoooome. I watch more movies and Scrubs because Momma forgot to get satellite hooked up in my room. I think that makes 9 movies now since I've been home.
Monday - TODAY! Finally I'm here! Well BD called this morning and invited me to hang with some of her and her boyfriends new friends from school. Some guy he works with and some new girl from Texas she befriended. I got ready and came to Krystals, where I sit right now and have been for about two and a half hours. I passed Chad, BD's boyfriend, as I came in. He was headed to her house with lunch. Then Daddy called right after I ordered. He's in El Paso and woke up with his throat swollen shut. He had five prescriptions and needed to ask if he could use his prescription card anywhere. Then he called back a few minutes ago to ask me to put money in the checking account to cover his medicine. He said he feels fine except his uvula is about three times the normal size. Odd... And now I'm waiting on Amanda and Ali to possibly call because they mentioned they were both off this afternoon. We shall see. I may go to Bubba's ball game tonight. I haven't been able to see him play yet. I got a parking ticket at Clemson a few days before I left for parking in front of my building. Technically it's for service vehicles only, but kids park there everyday. EVERYDAY. I parked to run up to my room, grab books, and head to Jittery Joe's to study for calculus. I got a ticket, along with the four other cars parked up there. Whatever. It was $15. I paid it. And today I got a check in the mail reimbursing me. No explanation, just an official Clemson check. That parking man just got pwned! And maybe fired. What a stooge... And baby Macs INCASE cover came in today. She is now African American/black. Oh so sleek.
Enough for now. There's more. I know it. But enough and all aren't the same thing. Enough.
My collage in ze dorm. Holmes 219
Brandon G...
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