The Endless Pursuit of Useless Knowledge

To do lists and the lack there of...

2007-09-10T17:29:00.000-07:00

So the last two weeks have been a bit of a blur. Labor day, homecoming, progress reports. It seems like my time has been measured out for me. I decided that tonight I should start taking some time to get the stuff done I've had to put off for the last few weeks. I decided to head to Panera, eat a yummy dinner, and cross off all of the stuff on my to do list. Here I sit, 2 hours later. And you know what I can cross off my list? "es." Yep--that's it. Instead of having inboxes to empty, I now just have one inbox that is overflowing with overdue emails. The weirdest part is the stuff I spent time replying to, deleting and moving around. I went backwards in time and watched a relationship in reverse, from the last email we swapped to the first awkward "let's do dinner." It was weird to think about the emotions, thoughts, etc that went into those emails and how all of that flips around. I doubt this is interesting to anyone else, but it's just so strange to go back and think about the way things were as compared to how they are now. It's not really sad or depressing, just strange. I'm always a bit fascinated by the way human emotions can change so quickly and without real warning. At least it's a change of emotions. I think the worst is when the relationship is gone but the feelings are still lingering. Well--that's all I have to say. I have 30 minutes before I'm forcing myself to go run--motivated partly by the pre-running Laurel pictures I also found lurking in my inbox. I better get back to filtering through old emails.

Ask not...

2007-08-03T07:12:00.000-07:00

I'm currently sitting at Panera, looking for pictures of famous speechmakers. I'm planning on putting them on one of my bulletin boards this year. As I started thinking about this plan of mine, I was brainstorming with my mom. We were trying to think of famous speeches. We thought of FDR and JFK and MLK. As we discussed this, I said, "Ya know, it would be really nice if we could come up with at least one good speech maker who didn't cheat on his wife." We laughed about it, and the more I thought about it, the more I started analyzing it. I mean, look at Bill Clinton--totally sleazy, but extremely persuasive. When he gave his famous National Prayer Breakfast speech, even I wanted to believe he was truly sorry. I wonder if there is a connection. Are good speakers more likely to also be unfaithful? Or is it just a random coincidence. Or is it that by the time you get to a place to make a famous speech you have lost enough of yourself that you can justify cheating? Who knows? We did think of one guy that we thought might have been a bit more...whatever--Lincoln. The other sad fact was that after 2 days of thinking and talking about this, I couldn't think of a single famous speech made by a female. I think that says something about "equality." There must have been women who could have made incredible speeches, but they were never visible enough to become an integral part of history. Maybe those kinds of speeches were made, it's just that no one documented them or put them in a history book.

The Label Peeler

2007-08-02T08:56:00.000-07:00

I wrote this poem a while ago, but sitting around with my friends Nick and Crae and talking about writing made me think I should actually put some of my writing "out there." So here ya go:

The Label Peeler

She sits uprightly
in her safely-stylish jeans,
wearing a sweater in the shade of blue
that best brings out her eyes
with tidy diamonds clinging closely to her ears.

Her beige pea coat and matching scarf
are placed neatly on the back of the chair.
She sits with legs crossed,
ankles wrapped,
and hands clinging tightly to her bottle.

She nods at all the right points in the conversation,
politely laughing when needed.

As she drinks her cider beer in short sips,
her fingers wander over the label.
Only close observers recognize
this slight slip-up in the otherwise
perfectly-portrayed image.

Within minutes the label will be on the table,
and the bottle will be as bare as her frustration.

This is just to say...

2007-07-31T21:39:00.000-07:00

So I wanted a place to post my random thoughts and observations about life. I'm not really arrogant enough to believe other people really want to read my thoughts, but I felt the need to put them somewhere other than my head. Kind of like that thing in Harry Potter where you can pull out your thoughts and place them somewhere else for a while. So if you've ever wondered, "What thoughts are floating in Laurel's head?" You can stop by here and find out. With that said, my first thought is that "Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me!" podcasts from NPR are absolutely wonderful. I've recently become addicted to podcasts, and I think the NPR podcasts are my favorites. Well--with that deep thought, I'll sign off for now. Goodbye. Laurel