My One-hundred-and-thirty-ninth Post

I'm cleaning out my drafts. Here are the snippets I found that might be of interest:

7/9/07
When I was in high school, I took AP Government, and I really liked it. In fact, I like it so much that at one time in my college career, I wanted to major in Political Science, get my MPA, and go run somebody’s campaign somewhere. Not so much now. But still. Studying the American Government had a big impact on my life. The problem was that, although I was very conversant in landmark Supreme Court cases, knew the rules for a filibuster, and could talk intelligently about the political spectrum, I really had no sense of current events. This was worrisome to me, because I just knew that the AP exam would somehow find my weakness and exploit it. So I found one quaint aspect of current government events to cling to: the McCain-Feingold Act (aka the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002). It was intended to tackle some of the loopholes surrounding the use of soft money and issue ads, as well as to address some of the other issues that had been surfacing in national elections.

9/4/07
I have never hated the first day of school this much. I'm usually excited and anxious and over-eager and all sorts of other good stuff. Today, I was just blasé in the worst possible way. Do you realize the only vacation days we have this semester are for Thanksgiving? I looked it up. I need to get a better attitude about my classes, or I'm never going to have the motivation to keep up with them.

Today also marked my first official shift at Job #1 in over two weeks (I've had a couple unofficial shifts, but some how they were different). I had to deal with a person that I have nicknamed "Condecending Bob," which was quite an unpleasant experience.


9/27/07
I was walking and sort of just thinking to myself when my attention was caught by the most appalling pair of shoes. These were not just some of weird fashionably trendy atrocities that exist out there. They were a more common kind of ugly. They were also well-worn and dingy, making them even less attractive. I spent about 30 seconds examining the shoes as I walked toward their owner, and I finally looked up just as were about to pass each other. When I finally made eye contact with the girl whose shoes I had been silently condemning, I found one of the prettiest, charming looking people I'd ever seen.


11/1/07
So my roommates freshman year were about as dramatic as you would expect 18-year-old girls to be. Consequently, they were heavily involved in the ward-wide drama of boy/girl relations. At one point, my roommate J was really mad at a friend in the ward for something he had done that had hurt another girl's feelings. I didn't think it was all that bad, but it did have most of the girls in the ward up in arms against him. J was all ready to storm over to his apartment and give him a piece of her mind when I pointed out that he could probably have used a friend right about then. She was adamant that what he really needed was to have her yell at him. I tried to convince her to take some time to cool off before going over to talk with him, but she didn't agree. At one point she asked me for one good reason why she should go over right then. I responded, "He's a child of God! He doesn't need you yelling at him!"


11/3/07
I hate the people in one of the areas I work with. They are elitist snobs who can’t abide anyone who doesn’t fit into their predefined constraints of acceptability. I’ve spent the last two years attempting to placate them and be their “buddy,” but you know what? I’m done. If they’re doing something that is inhibiting the productivity of my people, I’m going to yell at them. And they are going to yell back, and their unkind words will crush me. But I’m sick of trying to be nice but having them be jerks anyway. At least this way I can help out my people. I don’t care if this doesn’t make sense to you, but one more rude, disdainful comment, and I’m going to inflict serious injury on these people. But hopefully venting about it will get it out of my system so that I can be nice when I have to work with them again next week.