flammable money

this is the story of a bank error and much more money than i have. so...once upon a time i walked into my bank (i know, it's crazy!). i was going to deposit a paycheck but when i talked with the teller the first thing she said was "umm...do you know about your account?" ...apparently not...

she told me that i owed about $500 and i had another check for the same amount trying to come through. yeah, i've never, ever used checks. at this point i was slightly concerned.

it was time for an expert. i ended up talking to a woman who handles this sort of thing. she called several people and sent a fax and discovered that the bank had gotten confused. they had accidentally switched the bank accounts of me and someone else who, though we had completely different names and the rest of the numbers were different, had the same last four digits in their account number as me.

the problem was fixed pretty quickly with a fax and phone call but the banker woman told me that if i didn't ever use my checks and i wanted to get rid of them then it would be best to just burn them (as opposed to shredding them). lucky, i was going to a bonfire that night.

to do list...

hello to my readers. :-) i'm sorry that i haven't written in such a terribly long time but there's been lots of things happening (like that whole business of actually living the life that i've been given). soooooo, i've decided that it might be good to write several blogs in the next few days or weeks chronicling the last two or so months of life.

these blogs will include, but are not limited to, the discussion of how i lost $1000 ish (but not really) and burned my checkbook, the continuing saga of thomas the hemophiliac, the beginnings of a very peculiar courtship, something about caves, normal life, stuff about toothbrushing, lots of driving narratives, an old story about a certain necklace and the continuing of epic deeds performed by such gentlemen, and the near-death experiences of finals week.

this blog, then, is just a list of things to write about so that i remember them later when i come back to them...and it's a trailer so that the later blogs seem more exciting and interesting to those of you who haven't been told these stories yet.

now i'm AWAKE!

today was one of those days that will go down in the history of my life as, well, abnormal. it was a learning experience. here's what i learned:

1. when you have a paper to write you should write it.

what you shouldn't do is procrastinate until the very, very last second then decide that you're too tired then go to bed at midnight, wake up at four, drive one hour still wrapped in your blanket, get to school, take a half hour nap, then start your paper.

2. when you finish your paper just in time for breakfast you should eat a well balanced and healthy meal

you should not drink a red bull and a cup of coffee with your breakfast. if you do this there are certain side effects that may occur, including but not limited to laughing spontaneously at the color of the trees and the fact that trees do change color, dancing in circles down the avenue of the eagles in the early morning, being an abnormally obnoxiously happy morning person, not being able to stay still in class.

actually, i think that's all the really strange things that happened today...everything else was classes and work with two half hour breaks (just enough to write a blog! :)

but here are some other things for you to remember not to do:

try to read the signs on the other side of the road (i'll explain this later probably)

watch a squirrel for as long as it watches you

try to catch a chipmunk

eat the berries from the trees in the quad

can you think of anything else?

(p.s. this will show up on my facebook but i'm not visiting facebook for a bit so if you'd like to comment you are most certainly welcome to and i'd appreciate it but i won't get it for awhile :)

i spoke too soon...and i forgot some things. i have a new mission! objective: brush my teeth in every public bathroom on campus. i'm so close already! mwahaha!

also, another amazing thing that happened was at work (yeah phones!) i called a guy and he picked up and started talking to me. we ended up having a twenty minute conversation about life and theology before my boss came over and told me i should ask him for the money and end the call. lol, it was wonderful but weird (he had some interesting ideas).

(i hope this hasn't been published to facebook yet...i hope it wasn't published twice but if it was then maybe it's just extra incentive to read it! ;)

redirected...again

i realized today that my life is lived in the redirections. my official schedule is very nice. it's 4 pages on microsoft excell of color-coded 15 minute blocks...and that's just monday through friday. my revised schedule is scribbled on five notecards (one for each day) that i carry in my back pocket at all times. my real schedule is never written down or recorded and doesn't make very much actual sense.

in fact, this blog is a redirection that has been redirected several times. i was supposed to be at a symposium about heroes that i didn't find out about until this morning but that i ended up not attending (though i did really want to) for...a few reasons. about the time the symposium started i just happened to have to work on htag awareness week stuff and then buy garage sale price stickers and then take someone to the center for the arts and then i could have gone to the symposium 30 minutes late but why not write a blog about getting distracted instead? as i sat down to write the blog a good friend of mine entered the room and we talked for awhile and then, of course, i had to accomplish important and official internet obligations (like playing on facebook).

but where would i be if i didn't allow distractions and redirections and unplanned excursions? i honestly have no idea (no one is ever told what would have happened), but i do know that my life has become more entertaining and exciting since it became unpredictable. the fifteen minute blocks on excell are very neat and structured but i, in fact, am most certainly NOT as you could probably tell because nearly all of my previous blogs are about redirections too. it's the road less travelled on and the one that leads to thousands of microscopic adventures within the span of each and every day.

this was a facebook note titled "my thoughts on a fine misty morning"

so...waking up this morning and walking outside i happened to notice that all the world was grey and that it was cold (not the good kind but the kind that makes you feel a little bit sickly) and that everything was wet and that there was a fine mist all around. grumble, grumble, grumble...it's one of THOSE days. as i started my day, two thoughts began to bother me. i'll tell you what they are (because i know you're curious ;). in c.s. lewis' book that hideous strength there's a couple who says something sort of like 'we like all weather, when you're a child you like all types of weather but you learn to dislike certain types as you get older,' the second thoughts were lyrics: 'this is the day that the Lord has made, i will rejoice and be glad in it.'

mmm...yeah, if You want me to rejoice then give me a better day to do it. i guess this is the day that the Lord has made and i guess i should rejoice and be glad in it, but sometimes it's so easy to see the day as something else to trudge through or a duty/obligation or something like that. but i felt like God wanted me to rejoice in this day despite and within the weather...i didn't want to (p.s. it's a BAD idea to argue with the One who created EVERYTHING). then i realized: oh, wait, why am i discriminating against this day just because i think that the weather is bad? where did i learn that this weather is particularly bad anyway? it's very refreshing and kind of exciting because with this type of weather i don't know what's coming next. it's the weather of adventures and mysteries.

so i guess i can rejoice in this day, and in this weather. you should try it too (it's' fun)! :-)
i wrote this note this morning, i'm editing it this evening (because i'm a busy and productive college student right?). i did end up rejoicing in the day (with the Lord's help :). it was funny how good things got once i stopped focusing on what i thought was ugly in the day. i put on a hoodie, grabbed a hot chocolate, and took a walk about campus and asked God to show me just what was so good about this day. that's when i noticed the water droplets on the grass and all of the leaves (i don't know about you but to me water droplets are one of the most beautiful and entertaining things in the world :), it was gorgeous. then i realized why i associated this day with adventure and mystery...lol, the rainyness made me think (a little bit) of the fellowship of the ring when the hobbits are coming to bree and it's raining and what's more adventurous than a quest? :-)

also, i began to realize that i really liked the cold because it didn't seem like such a cold cold anymore, it seemed to be the happy fall cold that bids us all to drink hot apple cider. after that, i started to realize that the fall smell was still there despite the drizzling and that made me happy...yeah, i started to see a lot of beautiful things in the day after that, and i DID rejoice! maybe i should do this every day? ^_^

this is a terrible story

i actually wasn't sure if i wanted to write this down or not but it's already written in so many places i might as well add one more. want an explanation?

mmkay so, for one of my classes we're interviewing a person each week and then writing a summary of the visit (it's so that we get used to, ya know, talking 'n' stuff). me being the intrepid social work major that i am, i visited and then wrote (but turned in the paper two days late...fashionably late? ...i didn't know it was due!)

i thought that it was pretty good and felt confident about it, but today i made a realization...throughout the whole of the paper (at least i was consistent!) i use the WRONG name for my interviewee. i turned it in yesterday.

moral of the story is: if you're terrible with names like me, don't write important papers.

"what's up" "oh, ya know, same old same old"

i haven't written a blog in awhile. you can rest assured, though, in knowing that it isn't because i haven't had anything to write about. it's actually because i've had far too much to write about and i was trying to decide what things i should actually make into blogs and what things i should leave as interesting memories in my own head...then i realized that i should just put everything into one blog with lots of mini-blogs included. so...here it is:

something old, something new, something borrowed, something...umm...purple?
new stadium in ashland! crazy stuff guys...we have a new stadium and it's...NEW. it's not actually finished yet but the first game that we played in it was saturday and i got the magnificent opportunity to get paid to go (by being the entire game day field crew for the marching band). this certainly was an adventure because i didn't know what i was doing (turns out it's not really a difficult job) but the reason i'm writing about the game is because i used to be in the marching band so watching from the sidelines when i wanted to be on the field was not as entertaining as i wish it was. to be honest with you, i love marching band. have you ever had that feeling of painful nostalgia that makes you wish very hard that you were doing something else? yeah, that's a bit like what standing on the sidelines was...but the game was WONDERFUL and the day was PERFECT and we won!

terrible sue
saturday night was an...experience (but really, it was lots of fun :). me 'n' some peeps were watching movies at my house and we heard a cat outside. brando' opened the door thinking he'd let our cat, goldie, into the house and yelled "there's a foreign cat on our porch!" i like animals. i don't like to see things of any sort suffer. i get excited about pretty much all living things. i ran out onto the porch. sure nuff' there was a white and grey cat chillin' on our porch. so...i went inside and got some milk for it. then i got some catfood. then i got it a blanket. then i brought it a bowl of water. then i went about thinking of a name for it, brandon suggested tiramisu and the name stuck. later we discovered that it was a boy cat and later it was called terrible sue (despite the fact that he's the nicest cat EVER!) and later it never left so i guess i adopted a stray this weekend (i think that pretty often i just do things and my family is like "wait what!? WHYYYYY!?")

lol, texting
remember when i said that saturday night was an experience? this is part of why. among the people who were at my house on saturday was a guy that i had never met before. apparently, halfway through the night he and one of my chica friends were texting each other (while sitting next to each other) and he said that he thought that he might have romantic type feelings for me (not in those words) so my friend told me this and then we all got to have a nice discussion on being just friends and appreciating each other's friendship. but i don't mention this just because, i mention it because immediately it made me start to think about the nature of love (i'm in a philosophy of love class...this is what we do, lol). i had known the kid for less than five hours. how can you decide you have romantic intentions in less than five hours? my conclusion was that he wasn't looking for a person to have feelings for, he was looking for qualities and characteristics.
that scares me. guys, just so you know, if a girl ever asks you why you love them (if she's anything like me at least) then the correct answer is "i don't know, but i love you and i always will" or some variation of that. because if you're loving someone for their personality or their character traits or their looks or any of those things, what happens when those things change? what happens when they fail you? aaaannnd...moving right along...

the fatal yellow curb
my fears are confirmed. there really is a set of secret driving rules that i never learned. i broke one. apparently it is illegal to park next to a street curb that is painted yellow...even if the curb is so crumbly that you can't tell it's yellow. yeah, i got my first parking ticket on monday. it was exciting.

humility
i have just learned (at least a little bit) to appreciate the humility that is inherently a part of living as a homeless person. when you brush your teeth in public bathrooms or sleep on couches in common areas or live out of your car some people will look down on you (i know...shocking!) and it takes a lot of pride swallowing to do any of the above mentioned activities...ever. it takes a realization that lots of things are more important than the way that you look or what other people thing about you or the "dignity" that you think you deserve. it also takes a lot of struggling to realize that not everyone will want to help you and that, when they don't, they haven't wronged you. they don't owe you anything at all; in fact, they're doing you a great favor simply by considering helping you with your life even if they decide that they don't want to.

and that's an updat on my life up to this point...i hope that you've found it interesting. :-)

"but i still love technology, always and forever"

you may not have known this but yesterday there was an epic battle on the ashland university campus. this is how it went down:

i was minding my own business on the internet (that's important...i didn't elicit any sort of troubles on my own) then my computer was like "HA, i'm going to be ridiculous" so it kicked me off of the internet and said "you are now on the remediation list...so there!" if you aren't quite sure (i wouldn't be if i hadn't been on it before) the remediation list basically means that you can't get internet until you meet these standards of internetness that you failed.

i thought "silly computer, i was already on the remediation list so i shouldn't have to fix things again...plus the thing that you're telling me to install is already downloaded and in use." but after a bit i uninstalled it then reinstalled it then restarted the computer then tried internet again.

my computer said "you still FAIL!"

so i said to my computer "well, you may have beaten me, but i'm hardly an adversary...i'm not even a threat to a cell phone really. but i have backup! mwahaha!"

i took my computer to the i.t. help desk and waited half an hour and they put it in its place...the internet doesn't control me, i control the internet! yeah!

so...this blog is basically a shout out to the information technologies people and all of those other wonderful people who are actually technologically literate because they make the world a much happier place for people like me who most certainly aren't.

sidetracked...

i'm easily sidetracked. i meant to go home half an hour ago (yes...i really do have a home, i just don't ever use it because it's an hour from school [where i have to be every day]) i got distracted writing a blog...not this one, a different one. then i decided to go to the rec center to see if i could get tickets for the football game on saturday (to watch the marching band :) ahead of time. then i got really distracted.

on my way to the rec center, i came across three young boys. they had been biking and one of them fell, scraping his knee pretty badly. when i come across situations like this a strange conflict rises in me. this is the conflict between my momish side that says "HELP!" and my social worker/teacher side that says "maintain appropriate social distance and certainly don't look like you care too much."

it makes me sad that this is my reaction. it makes me sad that i don't feel that i can help people or care about people because it might be viewed negatively because there are so many people who only want to take advantage of others. but setting that aside, i was now very distracted from my mission to get football tickets.

eventually, i did take the boys to safety services to get bandaids...though they couldn't give out any alcohol or neosporin for fear that they would get sued (...really? again, people aren't allowed to help other people anymore! so sad) and i did go to the rec center...but i didn't get football tickets. now, i'm going home after getting sidetracked for the fourth time. :-)

because i parked in front of a fire hydrant...

this morning i realized that i can't parallel park. i never learned how and i'm not brave enough to be willing to sacrifice other peoples' bumpers so that i can practice. knowing this, i parked in the only clear place on the street. that place happened to be in front of a fire hydrant. i thought that this was probably illegal but there wasn't a sign saying that it was so i did it despite my better judgement (there seems to be a whole set of unwritten driving rules that i don't know about so i just end up confused and really freaked out sometimes. maybe i'm the only one who feels that way?). then i went to class.

during class one of the dorm buildings caught fire...somehow...

that's when i decided that i should move my car (i wasn't blocking the fire hydrant on the street with the fire, it was across campus don't worry)

on the way to move my car i was stopped for probably fifteen minutes and i'll tell you why. there was a falcon (of some sort) chillin' on the quad with a pigeon in his talons. he was just hanging out, plucking at his meal ocassionally and watching the people go by. i took out my phone and got as close as possible to take a picture. then stood and watched him for probably ten to fifteen minutes then went to experiment with parallel parking again.

i've decided that life is a string of small adventures (not a string of problems!...though sometimes adventures seem look suspiciously like problems) and when we take the time to enjoy those adventures for what they are everything is much more exciting. :-)

bruises and bed frames

i like bruises. that might be strange for me to say considering that i'm a woman, but i'm a woman who grew up with four brothers. bruises make good battle wounds and good stories. so...i'll tell you the story of the bruise that is on my arm. it's not a bad bruise but its story is great.

i spent the night in the dorm room of some of my close friends last night. they have a futon...very exciting. :-) after a lot of manipulating furniture and moving things we unfolded the futon so that it was a bed. then, as i laid there i realized that it was terribly uncomfortable because the mattress stuffing was crowded in some places and almost absent in others. my good friend jennifer suggested that i roll around to distribute the stuffing more evenly...so i did...a little too enthusiastically.

i ended up rolling off of the bed so that i was on the floor with the mattress and the metal frame slid somewhere to the side. my first reaction was to laugh hysterically. jennifer's reaction was more practical and helpful. she ran over and picked up the flowers that the bed frame and i had accidentally spilled and grabbed some paper towels to clean up the water from the vase. nothing was broken and as we cleaned up i realized that i now had a bruise...and a good story to tell. (but the futon never got the chance to be a bed because it turned back into a couch after this incident :)

just another day?

this morning i actually felt homeless for the first time since unofficially becoming sorta homeless. i was awakened at 6 in the morning by the cleaning lady in the basement of one of the buildings (one of the safe ones :) where i had spent the night on the couch, lol. thankfully, for the last two years i have made it my business to get to know all of the fantastic cleaning people and safety services people (just because they're really cool) so it wasn't as strange as it could have been and it was actually decently entertaining. after deciding that i wasn't going to find any other safe place to snooze on campus i ate breakfast and went about statring my day (i've been told that brushing your teeth and getting ready for the day in public bathrooms gets old really quickly but to this point i'm ok with it :)

i'm on a mission to have no "just another day"s. it's a tough job but somebody's gotta do it right? i just hope that i'll switch places enough that tiredness won't be able to track me down until after the end of the semester...he hasn't caught me yet!

drivin' like Jesus

so...one of the things about being a vagrant is that i travel a lot. in fact, very often i have an hour long drive to school and back. so what do i do to entertain myself during those hours? well, lots of things that we won't get into now but lots of things that we will.

one of the decisions i made before i started this whole being a hobo thing was based on the fact that i like Jesus a lot (in fact i love Him more than anything) but before the pegs of judgment start to click into place in your brain i have to tell you that (though i'm not proud of this fact but sometimes it can't be avoided) i've fallen asleep in church several times and i often get really annoyed by church folk (we can be really ridiculous a lot of the time)...i'm not big on religiousness 'n' boring ritual.

anyway, the decision that i made was to drive like Jesus (i decided that that was the only way i'd be able to wear a Jesus sticker on my car and not be ashamed of myself). but before i tell you what trying to drive like Jesus has done let me tell you the type of driver i've been so far.

i think that when you're in a car and you think that no one can see or hear or know you, you do all kinds of things that you wouldn't otherwise do. most everything that i'll mention are things that i'm very much not proud of (you do the same stuff don't judge!) but i don't think that Jesus would speed constantly or do things just to spite people because they honked at Him and He's annoyed or get really angry at people for the slightest perceived offence or accidentally not acknowledge the other cars on the road or conform to the subtle demands of the cars around Him or most of what else i do while driving.

i think that Jesus would follow the speed limit (the only law that nearly everyone gets angry with you if you obey) and see the people in the other cars as people instead of cars and be respectful to those people but not obey the demands of the other drivers and lots of other...stuff (i'm still figuring all this out)

we'll see how this goes...wish me luck; i'll probably write to you about the results of this experiment.

the story begins...

when i was little i was a girl scout for one day,being readied for anything and everything that might happen never really interested me. now i get to learn to be a girlscout for two years. i'm not the most girly girl and most definitely not the most organized. i've spent the majority of my life not being prepared for anything, i've most certainly never made a concerted effort to be prepared for everything. but now i find myself having to do just that.

and i am doing just that because now, and most likely for the rest of my time at college (2 years) i'll be living quite a bit out of my car. you see i can't afford room and board at my university so i became a commuter...which means that i commute. but the drive is long so i'll be spending much of my time dorm hopping (though my primary residence still has to be my parent's house or i'll be breaking the law).

this blog is my story. i hope to keep you updated on the little quirks and big adventures of living as a hobo on a college campus. it'll be a fun ride, thanks for joining me!