Whooot!

I had my last final today! I am SO HAPPY!!!! Though oddly enough, next week I still have to go to one last class, but whatever. And right after that I'll be going up to visit my grandmother for a few days and that will be lots of fun too! Course, right after that I'm starting another semester but since I'm only taking one course it won't be as insane for me. I'm also going to look for a job, hopefully in a pet store. So lots and lots in store this summer! I am SO EXCITED! (In case you couldn't tell.) And now I'm gonna go shluff for the next three days. (not quite...but almost)

100th Post!

I've been blogging for almost a year and a half now and I finally reached my 100th post! O'course, I kind of didn't really update during 2006 so that might not count, right? Whatever. I'm just excited that I finally reached this landmark and hopefully I will continue blogging for a long time to come.
I really, really don't like phones. I am not good with auditory, and that's all a phone is, no facial cues or body language to give me hints. Sometimes not even human tone! I have an issue with my hearing, it's not very obvious if talking to me in person, but I have a tendency to think your saying one thing, when actually something entirely different is being said. For example: my mother says: "I need you to empty the dishwasher." I might hear: "I need you to empty the fishwasher." I usually mentally correct it so quickly it's not noticeable unless I mention it. But on the phone, it's not as easy for me, so I have to keep asking people to repeat things and it makes me uncomfortable. Actually, the woman who diagnosed me with this said that because of it I would have trouble reading. Eh...not so much. I'm a very avid reader, it's just I REALLY HATE PHONES. What brings this up? I spent an hour on the phone today trying to figure out what went wrong with some tickets I bought. Ugh.

Pesach II

For the Seders it was just us, no surprise there, and we didn't finish until about 2 in the morning both nights. I am SO sick of matzah at this point, and still have several more days to go. On the upside though, I don't HAVE to eat it, at least not as much of it as at the seder, so that's good. I have my two finals this week and then I am finished with them, which is very exciting. So, yeah, this week, I am busy.

Memorable

Another memorable and strange quote from my mother: "Yay! I'm so excited! My bacteria arrived!"

Chag kasher v'samayach.

My Brother's OCD

It's rather hard to explain, or understand OCD to someone who doesn't have it. There's no rationale behind it, except that there is something chemically wrong in the brain. The OCD person's thought process when they are doing their compulsive behavior is: "I have to do x, y, and z, or something bad will happen." With my brother, it's not as bad as some type of OCD. There's OCD where they feel compelled to check and recheck the locks on the door, or that the oven/ stove/ lights are off, and they will check a lot, around 20 - 50, whatever their "magic number" is. My brother's problem is that he views certain things, people and places as "contaminated." Meaning if he comes into contact with them, or goes someplace contaminated he has to shower or wash his hands afterwards. An example of things "contaminated"? The gunb range, kayaking, fishing, mountain bike riding....these are all things he LIKES. So imagine if you will, someone walking in our house, who he views as "contaminated", our house is not a contamintated place, and probably the least contaminated is his bed in his room. So....imagine someone comes in, and they accidentally sit in his chair, or touches something that he can't "de-contaminate," he flips. Absolutely flips. Part of our problem is that since we can't tell who is "conatminated" or not from his perspective, it makes it rather hard to have guests. There are other factors in my family not having guests, and another major factor is how busy my mother is with her work, she can't deal with guests, but I"YH, next year....Anyways, that is why we don't have guests on Pesach for the Seders at least. I'll hopefully have CJ over for lunch for one of the days though. She's not contaminated, before you ask.

Venting Frustrations

I had a rather frustrating day today, fortunately it all ended well, but my biggest issue is Florida Drivers. I know, I know, I have vented about that before, but seriously, people do not no how to drive! Turning signals? What turning signals? I'm in the right turn only lane, but I'm going to turn left, and block those people that actually need to go.Crossing over for lanesof traffic at 60 mph, when the speed limit is 45.... I think that about covers it for now. Idiots.

Pesach

So this week, we're just starting to clean for pesach. Crazy, no? Well, considering that we won't be having any guests, or family (none of mine is religous), the cleaning and cooking can be done in one week. It'sjust a little bit more insane. At least there are no little children running around so there is no real chance of crumbs, or having kids stick chometz in the strangest places. (the air duct for example) THough I miss having guests, it's just not really been feasible these last few years, everyone's too busy, and then....there's my brother with his OCD. *sigh* Well, when I have my own home, I want to have guests often. Oh geez, I just realized I have my stats final on Pesach...or not....eep, right AFTER pesach. Oy. I can't wait till this semester is over. Just a month! Actually not even, more like 3 weeks! YAY!

Story (cont.)

"Smin," my father rebuked, frowning a me. "Don't interupt your mother." I shut up and listened. "Well, you do know your father's family," she said, looking at me, willing for me not to make this, whatever it was, harder than it already was. This was true, I did know my father's family. Of course, my father's family only consisted of his parents, as he had no siblings. Ny grandparents doted on me. Since I was their only grandaughter, they would have spoiled me to bits i'm sure, if my father hadn't taken a hand. My grandfather was the villages swordsmith, and i got my sword from him. Only the best for his grandaughter. My mother's side however, was another stroy all together. She had never once spoken of them, except for accidentally ltting slip bits of information here and there. From what I gathered, she came from a very large family, who all lived together in gigantic house in the city. I got my looks from my mother's side, the same vibrant red hair, my green eyes, and my rather spunky personality.

Done for now, well, now we know how she looks, and ext time we'll find out what her mother's family wants from her. Yay! Comment people, I need to know if I'm doing this right!

Story (Cont.)

We came home, still arguing over who's fault it had been, and dropped off the meat in the kitchen for Mother to deal with. Then we went our seperate ways until we were all called in for dinner. Dinner was as usual, a noisy affair, all of my brothers coming in from a long day outside, and jostling for food, yelling to have things passed to them, and generally behaving like mongrels. Not that I was any better than them, mind you, my mother had almost given up that I would ever use the manners she had so painstakingly knocked into my noggin. In all the chaos, my mother suddenly gave me a look and said, "Sminetra, I need you to stay after dinner. I...We, your father and I need to talk to you." At those words, my brothers started to snicker and elbow each other, thinking that I was undoubtedly in trouble...again. My mind raced, trying to think if I had done anything recently that was bad enough that my mother wanted to drag my father into a lecture on my good behavior. I came up blank, I could think of nothing that would require both of my parents needing to talk to me. I helped clean up after dinner, looking at my mother curiously all the while. She seemed to be getting more and more tense. Her green eyes had darkened, and the skin around her eyes had tightened with worry. Finally, after the last dish had been put away, I went back to the table to sit and talk with my parents. "Sminetra," my mother stared. "Smin," my mother suddenly smiled, her face transformed. I started to get very worried. My mother never called me Smin. Ever. "Smin, I recieved a letter from my family today -"
"Your family? You've never spoken about your family before.."

Ok....that's it for now. I had writer's block before. I hope you enjoyed.

Food Fight

Perhaps one of the weirdest things I've ever seen, but I had to share.
An abridged history of American-centric warfare, from WWII to present day, told through the foods of the countries in conflict.

For a breakdown of the actual battles portrayed in the film, visit:
http://www.touristpictures.com/foodfi...

For the official cheat sheet (breakdown of the foodstuffs), visit:
http://www.touristpictures.com/foodfi...

Frum Meets World

There's a blog that I sometimes read called Frum Meets World, and perhaps this post would best belong there, but whatever. It's funny how in college there are a lot of people who are actually Jewish but not religious. For example, a few semesters back, I was in Biology with a guy, and it turned out that he was not religous, but the rest of his family where, they were all sephardic, and very religious but he wasn't. I don'teven recall what brought it up, but I was somewhat surprised when I found out. This semester, I found out that the guy I sit next to in Stats is Jewish, his family is also religious, but he himself is not. I was absolutely floored when I found that out, absoloutley nothing about him externally would have told anyone he was Jewish. Whereas the girl he sits next to, and I sometimes chat with has no clue about anything Jewish, and asks me to elaborate on what stuff I can and can't do, can and can't eat etc. So I told her about shabbos, and she shook her head and said "I could never do that, I like going out too much." I also recall walking in one day, eating an Entemann's brownie, and she said "Is that Kosher?" I looked at her and said "Yes, I should hope I know what is kosher, otherwise I'm in big trouble!"
Done rambling for now.

Anonymity on Blogs (specifically mine)

In all honesty, this blog is not written very anonymously. I know of at least one person, (you know who you are) who I know very well reads this thing and if you live in florida, you can probably guess where I live, though there are really only three cities that have a nice large frum Jewish population. So all in all, I'm not really that anonymous, and I am not completely open perhaps with what I think. Which leads me to the next question, which is why do I write this blog? I think that anyone who has a blog should think about this from time to time. It's a place to put down my thoughts, to sometimes vent, to entertain...myself and others I guess.