Attentively Attentive to all Things

I usually do not have any problems with Walmart.  I see them as a necessary evil, and so I do shop there for groceries, etc.  I'd rather have a Target, but I digress.... So today I went to Walmart to print out some pictures for Dave's Valentine's Day present.  My dear friend Sara, who is an excellent photographer, kindly took pictures of myself and Caris at my house a few weeks ago.  Today, I went to Walmart to have these printed, so I could frame them for Dave.  When I arrived, I was asked for a release to reprint the photos.  I was confused, as these prints were not taken at a professional studio, but in my living room.  When I explained this to her, I was told I could not have my pictures unless I had a written release from the photographer.  Umm...excuse me?  After explaining again that these were not from a studio (to which the guy standing next to her said "they're studio, they have to be") I became a little angry.  The girl wait...

....and I'm already behind.  This is not my fault, however.  I have only one class that I can actually do homework in, and that would be my film class.  The textbook for my ethics class has not arrived, and my professor for Shakespeare has had a power outage due to the storm, and cannot send me the syllabus because it's on her desktop computer. *sigh* So technically I'm not behind.  It's still worrisome, however.

In defiance of the continuous winter weather we keep having, I have changed my blog look to something flowery and summery. Take that, Old Man Winter!

So the adventure began Monday night when it began to rain.  As night fell, that rain turned to freezing rain, and proceeded to cover everything in sight.  Tuesday was mostly uneventful, until the sleet began later in the evening. After making an emergency pot of chili, we spent the evening watching the electricity go off and on, waiting for the  moment it would go off and not come back on.  That happened at 10:55pm.  *sigh*  Power outages don't bother me too much, because when you chose to live in the country, you have to learn to deal with these things.  What I don't like is power outages during the winter, when the temperature outside drops into the single digits.  That's what we were facing today.  We emptied the contents of our fridge and put most of it outside in a sheltered place so it wouldn't spoil.  After the genius idea of using our ice-covered gas grill burner to heat up lunch, I kept adding wood to the upstairs fireplace, and...

Sense and Sensibility Bicentenary Challenge 2011 The Diary of Colonel Brandon , by Amanda Grange Colonel Brandon happens to be one of my favorite Jane Austen heroes, and Amanda Grange's look into his private thoughts makes him even more my favorite.  In this heartbreaking, yet amusing tale, we learn of his history with Eliza, his first love, and her daughter, seduced by Willoughby.  Grange portrays Brandon's heartache so well with so few words, exactly like the soft spoken Colonel Brandon we all imagine.  His quiet love for Marianne, and his generosity to Edward create the character we all know and love.  I was moved by his grief at losing Eliza, but shed tears as Marianne accepted him at long last.  His fellow soldiers in India and in England, and his insufferable family complete the story of Austen's quiet Colonel, and give us an idea why he is the man he is.  A wonderful read for any Jane Austen fan, but a particularly delightful one for lovers of ...

So I went to the doctor today.  Who cares, you might think to yourself...people go to the doctor everyday. For me, going to this doctor in particular, makes my blood pressure skyrocket.  My OB/Gyn is a wonderful doctor, and I have Caris because of him, but my blood pressure rises because of the anxiety I always get when he starts wanting to do tests on me.  My paternal side has a strong history of cancer, in particular a great aunt had uterine, ovarian, and cervical cancer.  You can appreciate my anxiety, yes?  I obviously have no symptoms of that deadly disease, but all it takes is a fleeting thought of it to send me reeling.  The last several times I was in his office, it was happy, baby on the ultrasound visits, and talk of bed rest and delivery. My reasons for going today are not a secret...I want Caris to have a little sister or brother.  However, I've learned from the past that it's best if I pay a visit to the doctor and get the prescribed c...

So tonight I attended the first Aurora meeting of the semester.  I really enjoy these meetings, mostly for the discussion that I don't get being a distance student.  Well, tonight, the discussion turned interesting, and I had to bite my tongue at some remarks another student made. These remarks pegged her as young, and lacking knowledge of the literary world.  I'm not claiming I have extensive knowledge, but over time, I've learned a few things. So it went like this- we critiqued a short story this evening and it was obvious to me that either this author did not have a good grasp of grammar, or English was not their first language.  I leaned towards the language, just because of the errors I saw.  It was a story about a woman having her forty-first birthday, and feeling like she was no longer pretty, and that her husband no longer felt attracted to her.  This woman tried many things to preserve her youth, and decided the night of her birthday to stop at a...