It’s been awhile…

Hello again!

I have not been on WordPress in a long time and I’m sorry about that (although, it’s better than my old blogspot blog… I remember two back to back entries that started with “So it’s the beginning of winter term…”). A lot has actually happened with me-most of which created circumstances that were not conducive to me writing blog entries.

First of all, all I could think about after graduation was searching for a job. I realized mid-year that I had had a basic outline of my life goals planned for years-and that outline promptly ended on May 26, 2009 at the time of graduation. I have always planned to go to college and become a teacher. I chose elementary education because I love kids and could not choose one specific subject to teach (I love everything from math to music). Still, I didn’t really know where or what grade I wanted to teach. I was applying pretty much everywhere so I didn’t really want to advertise too much about my job status. Didn’t want schools to think a) she’s not getting any interviews so why should we interview her or b) she’s got a lot of interviews, we’d just be wasting our time since she’ll just take some other job.

In the end, I got offered a preschool job three hours away from home (six hours away from my college friends) that I absolutely love. I really like my new town (anything you need, but small enough that traffic is amazingly wonderful) and I was lucky enough to find a roommate on craigslist that is not only completely sane and without any murderous tendencies, but fun to be around and great to live with. She’s even introduced me to some of her friends in the area. Friends are something I’m in sorely in need of in a new town, but not something that I’m the best at acquiring (I know I’m a good friend-nice and sweet and all that-but you all probably know that I’m extremely self-conscious).

The condition of my hand as I write this entry.

The other big thing that happened in the past couple of months is my little hand accident. So… I decided to eat breakfast for once in my life (honestly, I value sleep more than I do food) and even though I was being as safe possible, the bagel was stale and the knife was dull. Inevitably, the knife slipped and cut my hand instead. Fortunately, I missed the nerve and artery but I completely sliced my tendon. I’ve been in physical therapy all summer (it’s important to keep in mind that permanent nerve damage or massive blood loss would have been a much worse case scenario).

That’s pretty much all the exciting events of my summer. I hope I’ll have more time to update you with my new adult life!

-K

Good Movies

I’ve had a bit more time to myself than usual so I’ve been taking advantage of my Netflix subscription. Here are a few of my new favorites.

Penelope:

I’m a sucker for fairy tales and romance and I really like the message. If you’ve got netflix, watch it here.

Benny and Joon:

 Unique and hilarious–you can’t go wrong with Johnny Depp. It deals with the issues in a way that makes an entertaining movie. If you’ve got netflix, watch it here.

And finally, for a cute, family friendly Disney movie…

Wall-E:

Watch it here. So cute! Plus it has Hello, Dolly! clips (my first favorite movie) which, incidentally, you can find here.

Enjoy!

-K

The Neat Company

So I guess that this going to become a bit of a tech blog, but don’t worry, it won’t last forever–hence the name “Random Ramblings.”

I recently came across a website called “Uncrate;” a site that displays items that are for sale. Now this is a dangerous website for me because as everyone knows, I love to shop. However as most of the items on the website are too expensive, free or not at all interesting to me, I shouldn’t end up actually spending too much money. Still, after seeing a specific product, I felt it was worth a mention in this blog.

The Neat Company - NeatDesk Scanner and NeatWorks 4.0

The item in question is the NeatDesk Scanner. This product is exactly what I have been looking for to organize my life. Mom can attest to this as I already told her the secret to my crazy organizational system that I am planning on using when I teach. This product allows you to scan and back up anything that you want (equal to or smaller than a normal 8×11 piece of paper of course).

This means that you can scan all of those papers in your house, those receipts that you get when you shop as well as anyone’s business card. The scanner scans both sides in color (worth the high price already in my book) and then uses text recognition software to upload the information into an organizational software program.

The great thing about this software, in my opinion, is that it allows you to stow away all of those old papers for easy reference. I have always had trouble organizing anything in real life, but if you look at my computer, you will see that it’s a whole different story. I thought I might scan my documents into my computer and then organize it there, but NeatDesk took it a giant leap forward. The best part about it is that  it makes the task simple for anyone to do.

Edit: I accidentally submitted the first sentence without finishing the post. Oops. Also, this took me a long time to write, so I’m going to submit this now. Hopefully it makes enough sense.

2nd edit: I reread it and fixed some typos/formating/etc.

Kindle DX

Kindle

I said I was going to go to sleep and I will after this post. However, I really wanted to talk about this.

So, everyone knows that I’m a hopeless techie and a hopeless shopper. I admit that I do often want things that I do not need.

I’ve always thought that the Kindle was one of the coolest things ever, but I’ve realised that no matter how much I like it, I really don’t need it. I disagree with all of those people who believe that the Kindle is silly and “will never replace books.” I would like to point out to these people that replacing books is not the point of the Kindle. Most people will still like to have a copy of a book. The purpose of a Kindle is convenience, storage and portability (for the library, not just the book).

To tell you the truth, the Kindle was made for people like me. People who can’t use the library because they just end up buying the book anyway (I never do return books on time). People who oftentimes read multiple books at the same time because they don’t always have the attention span for one thing at a time and really want to read different genres and read about different subjects right now. People who like to test out books and enjoy the convenience of instant gratification.

I could go on forever.

There are so many wonderful features to the Kindle. I could have my entire library with me–read whatever I want! I could browse a bunch of different books whenever I want; even read samples of the book before I buy it. I could browse the internet as long as I don’t want to watch videos or see sites in color*. I could look up any word with ease–something I never do when reading a book, because I just want to read the book, not search for a dictionary. I could get newspapers delivered to my device wherever I am and they wouldn’t  clutter the house. And of course there is the benefit of free books! I love free stuff…

Even better, they recently came out with a large version that is good for pdf files and easier to see. I need to remind myself that I don’t need it and that it really is too expensive. However at the same time, I know that this device would be perfect for me. I might even start reading again–something I’d rather not even admit isn’t really happening at the moment. I miss reading, but for the past six or so years, it’s taken so much effort to find books that I want to read. I think that this might help me get back into the swing of things.

I need to become an intellectual in my personal life again…

-K

*Not entirely sure about this one, but from what I’ve read it seems to be true.

Edit: Updated for typos and clarity

I cried today

This post isn’t as melodramatic as the title sounds. Today was actually a pretty good day. I spent all day with people that I love dearly and had a chance to reminisce and hang out. I even cleaned my room–pretty much at least.

The only problem is that soon college is going to end and everything is going to change. That’s not all horrible, I’m glad that I’m finally going to be able to say that I am a college graduate and will have that teaching certificate that I worked so hard for these last four years (woo-hoo!), but I loved college. I loved the fact that my only real responsibility was to learn new things, I loved my Ed classes, I loved my professors; I loved my friends, loved that I could always just turn a corner and have someone to talk to (shout out to all my wonderful roommates that have put up with my incessant talking). I’m going to miss all of this.

These thoughts all came up this morning during SAI’s Senior farewell. I’m not the type of person to cry even if I’m sad-actually, I usually cry when I’m stressed which is what I feel was the case today. Everyone else was crying and saying such wonderful things. And then when I finally got up there, I was overcome by the emotion of the day and public speaking.

Anyway, I’m kind of tired, so I should probably get to bed. I’ve got lots of essay writing to do this week!

Night!

-K

Edit: Funny thing, apparently I update every week on Sundays… Strange, I thought I was being inconsistant. Maybe I’ll try to make this a trend or something.

Taking on Responsibility

So this weekend was a big one! The days preceding it were as well. I had plans every day — and if you know me, I don’t usually do plans. I’m too random for that. 

On Tuesday, we did a writer’s workshop lesson and the first draft of the reflection was due on Wednesday. I then had to read and review the papers of my peers and we discussed them on Thursday. Finally, I had to turn in my final draft by Friday. Great example of the writing “process” don’t you think?

 

 

Flier from the sale

On to the next subject. SAI drama. We had been planning on having a garage sale on Sunday and communication had begun to fall apart. It appeared as if it was* going to fail. People had begun to try to guilt people into volunteering and donating items and people were getting angry. I didn’t think that it was a lost cause, but everyone who was emotionally involved in the issue was just too stressed out to continue with it. It was cancelled.

 

However, I felt that we were so close to getting at least one fundraiser in and the stress had simply carried everyone off like a runaway train.  I knew that we could pull it off! So I asked the person who had organized the event (J) if she would mind if I continued with it. She said it was all mine if I wanted to deal with it.

I set off and tried to figure out what I could do to organize it and get it ready. To improve communication, I set up a few spreadsheets on google docs to try and organize volunteer times and donations. I then wrote an email to the chapter that included the links. I then realized that we would need publicity and got that set up as well. All in all it turned out quite well. I’m happy with the event and really hope that the group will continue with it next year. Finally, I’m surprised that it went so well. I’m not the type to generally take on responsibility. I’m not too organized. But I did it!

-Kristi

P.S. I also had a choir concert on Saturday. It went very well, but it was kind of sad… It’s my last concert!

 

*Grammar question: In AP English, Mrs. Sherman enlightened me to the fact that the English language has a subjunctive tense (surprise, surprise, it’s not only the French who are tortured by “la subjunctif”). Anyway, you use the subjuctive to express doubt. In this case this means that it should be “If I were” instead of “If I was.” However, for some reason it sounds wrong to me here. Is it just my lack of practice with the tense?

Paper writing

So, I have a research paper to write this week (the first draft is due on Monday). It’s my last research paper of college! Yay!

For my paper I am supposed to study writing or the teaching of writing in some way. I had trouble coming up with a topic at first, but Mom helped me a bit and now I am going to analyze writing in the form of blogs. My professor seemed very excited about it when I talked to her and I’m enthusiastic about it as well.

So for anyone that reads this, if you are willing,  I would like you to respond to the following questions to the following answers (Comment or email. I need to get my research somehow…):

For the bloggers:

1. Do you consider yourself a writer?
2. Why did you start blogging? Has your purpose changed?
3. What is your vision/purpose for your blog?
4. How has it helped you?
5. How has it affected your life?
6. Is blogging easier/harder for you than other communication options?
7. How does blogging affect your writing?
8. Do you have a following?

For anyone who is reading this:

1. What blogs do you read? Why did you choose them? Why do you continue find them interesting? (link if possible)
2. What subjects do you gravitate towards?
3. What makes a good/bad blog?
4. Anything else you would like to mention?

-K

New Blog

So, I’ve been (very) irregularly blogging on blogger for over a year now. Unfortunately, I haven’t really liked it all that much. There were some features missing that I really wanted in a blog (for example: the option to have private entries–No offense, but sometimes I don’t want to broadcast everything that I write to everyone). Now I could avoid this problem by creating my own website with my own blog, but right now I don’t really have the time to put into it and at this point in my life I definitely don’t have the money. So instead, I am going to be writing on here.

We’ll see how this goes, I may stay here and I may go back.

Sorry for the boring post.

-K