I realized today that due to some interesting schedualing this week, i only have one more class which is tomorrow and then i am done for the week. I have to say i am pretty excited to hear that. this week has been pretty light on the homework for me and it has really been nice. i took it pretty easy today since i was so tired. I didn't end up getting to bed until about four last night. I was only functioning on about 6 hours of sleep yesterday too and i am looking forward to having a night with at least the required amount of sleeping that i am supposed to get. And then waking up with some delicious, delightful coffee. please remember that i am taking part in a caffine cut-back not a quit from coffee. *pause* don't judge me!!

sweet, sweet caffine

ok so i have initiated a caffine cut back today. i have to say that this has not been easy for me. I'm going without buying any decaf (yet) at least. I think it would do me some good to pick some up because two cups of coffee this morning simply did NOT fullfill my nutty, robust requirement for the day. Also, I have a headache and i know that is due to my lack of caffine. sad to admit but i will have to obtain decaf coffee i think because i love the friggin stuff but oh wow am I getting too much caffine. i shouldn't have headaches from a lack of coffee. Oooo that reminds me going to Dunkin to meet up with Jen tomorrow morning. this time, i won't even drink a pot of coffee before I go for coffee.

i went to dunkin donuts twice today. I think maybe that is a bit rediculous. I think i need to cut back on the coffee. I drank two twenty oz cups at dunkin donuts and a pot of coffee at my apartment. The pot of coffee was 8 cups so 8 cups times 8oz a cup is 64 ounces plus 40 ounces from dunkin donuts is 104 ounces of coffee in one day. 128 ounces is a gallon. Oh my god, i nearly drank a gallon of coffee in a single day. not a doctor or anything but i'm going to take a wild guess and say that I shouldn't gave that much caffine in a 24 hour period. I really need to consider switching to de-caf or something because i love coffee.

Jan 28th

No real intro here...let's just do this

Sunday Justin: I can't help but feel insulted today. Not sure why but...I just have that feeling. so anyway, lets move on. I ran into an awesome quote today in my ridiculous amounts of reading (886 pages so far this semester...not that I'm counting). The quote goes "Do something, my sister, do good if you can; but, at any rate, do something." I like this quote for two reasons. The first reason is that I'm somewhat of a punctuation enthusiast and the high occurrence of interjected punctuation really gets my blood flowing. The second reason is that this sentence really matches my mentality right now. I'm at a place where I feel that i can't concern myself with questions like "is this the right thing to do to get me where i want to be in life" I feel like i just need to do whatever. I would also like to congratulate the end of that last sentence for winning the award for vaguest sentence fragment of the year.

Jan 27th

*Whoosh* well here we are in Saturday. Let's see if this is a little more interesting that "waaaa waaaa it's cold and I didn't sell stuff."

Saturday Justin: So I went to the movies with my mom and my step dad today (which reminds me of how cool i am) to see "Night at the Museum". I had heard that it was no good but my Step dad said he heard it was funny so we went anyway. With the exception of a few good moments, my sources were the correct ones. If anyone is thinking, "A movie with Ben Stiller must be a side-splitting laugh fest" they are horribly wrong. I have honestly had yawns that were funnier than this movie. In the movies defense though, i have been known to throw down some pretty hilarious yawns.

funny yawns? WTF are you talking about you moronic jackass. let's see if you stop being so stupid on the next day.

for jan 26th

Ok so i missed a few days...what ever, i can admit my mistakes. the good news is i remember what i was thinking about writing for those days. so given this fantastic news, let's take a journey. Shall we? *Cheesy B-movie flash back special effect*

woah....here we are in friday...let's see what's on my mind...errr friday Justin's mind.

Friday Justin: I must say, work tonight was painful. I am the kind of person who can stay ammused durring pretty much anything but, oh my, there was no possible way i could not be bored when I spend four hours basically standing around in a sears wondering if customers will show up at any point over the given night. I think most of the reason for the lack of customers was the lack of heat. Not many are willing to brave temperatures around -5 (not even taking into effect wind chill) unless they really, REALLY have a good reason. i can't blame people for not venturing out tonight, but speaking as a commission sales person, it kind of sucks for me.

well i have to say that wasn't as interesting as i thought it might be. Let's continue our trip to saturday.

Scrubs

I really have to say scrubs is the funniest show ever. If there is any doubt over how much it is the best show i encourage anyone reading this to check out this link.
http://www.dailymotion.com/flash/flvplayer.swf?rev=1169698081&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.dailymotion.com%2Fget%2F14%2F320x240%2Fflv%2F1744317.flv%3Fkey%3Dca4a49055b06b17461920b255a47d10c1299595%26log%3D1%26log_blog_key%3D16vkay8GKJOih7jM9%26log_referer%3Dhttp%253A%252F%252Fumaine.facebook.com%252Fgroup.php%253Fgid%253D2211259957&previewURL=http%3A%2F%2Fstatic.dailymotion.com%2Fdyn%2Fpreview%2F320x240%2F1744317.jpg%3F20070122142936&autoStart=0&playerURL=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.dailymotion.com%2Fvideo%2Fx11dx9_scr0606&estatEnabled=1&estatClient=players_dm&estatSection=blog
On a side note, that is a massive URL. this is a link to the full musical episode. This episode features such wonderful songs as "Guy Love" and "Everything Comes Down to Poo". Also, I think paying attention to half of the crazy day dreams that J.D. has gives a wonderful insight to what is going on in my head half of the time. Actually, other than the fact that i hope i come off a little manlier than he does, I consider myself alot like the main character in this show. Well one other difference is I don't think i could really dig apple-tinis; but then i've never had one so who really knows. Enjoy this short dialogue from the show.
JD: ...the circle of life
Dr. Cox: OhMyGod You must stop watching the Lion King
JD: I like that baby lion cub. What's his name?
Dr. Cox: Simba?
JD: AHAH Trick question! You like it too!

Fin.

I did something that might sound a little strange. After listening to Aliens exist in class yesterday (i don't even remember if that was in the class that I'm supposed to be writing this for or not. The two classes just kind of run together to me) I had been spending a lot of time thinking about myself when i was 15-16 and blink 182 was a band that i listed to quite a bit. I took out a picture of myself from when I was a sophomore in high school and I took it in as I had done many times before, realizing how different i looked now. I then felt an almost uncontrollable urge to stand before the mirror in my bathroom and hold the picture up alongside my reflection so I could make a comparison about what i saw instead of half what i saw and half a mental image of myself. I took in my black sweatshirt with silver bone print across the chest and sleeves, my myriad bracelets, my hemp, choker necklace, my pink hair, my duct tape notebook scribbled with writing, and alongside this image was me today. I, for the first time, felt like i was looking at someone that I hardly understood. It's a bit bizarre to look at yourself and see, maybe for the first time truly see, the different personalities of yourself that you were trying on. We all feel like we are something different from the rules, but there i was looking back in time at what may have come strait from a text book on adolescent development. I remember that after this I went through a period where i was pretty intensely religious. I still think that I there is a core to all of us but i think i finally see how deeply it can get covered sometimes.

mouth

my mouth is a giant painful nightmare right now. I have a canker sore that has literally taken up half of my my lower lip on the inside. I get these things all the time. I really hate them. My mouth is even more pained by my wisdom teeth that are coming in. Fortunetly (i guess) i'll be getting these removed from my head over febuary break. My pain with my mouth is making it so I'm having an even harder time sleeping. I have been really not sleeping much lately. I know it shows too. I know that i look like death warmed over. I feel like death warmed over most of the time lately. Today all I have felt is throbbing from this canker sore. i've actually had to take pain killers to try to numb this but it still hurts. Salt (one of my favorite flavors) is now one of my greatest enemies. Too bad too 'cause i have some killer Cape Cop chips in my kitchen.

"well he seen this girl in a red dress. Dumb bastad like he is, he wants to touch ever'thing he likes. Just wants to feel it. So he reaches out to feel this red dress an' the girl lets out a squawk, and that gets Lennie all mixed up, and he holds on 'cause that's the only thing he can think to do. Well, this girl squawks and squawks. I was jus' a little bit off, and I heard all the yellin', so I comes running, an' by that time Lennie's so scared all he can think to do is jus' hold on. I socked him over the head witha fence picked to make him let go. He was so scairt he couldn't let go of that dress." Of mice and men page 41
Sometimes i feel like all of us are nothing more than Lennie. Just trying to hold onto something that we want. We don't understand what we are doing wrong all we know is what we want and we're too scared to let go so we just keep holding on. I feel like we're all just flailing our arms trying desperately to grab something stable but all we can do is miss and we'll only see where everything was when we look back at it in hindsight.

colts win

ok so if anyone is actually reading this (since i do have a link to it on my facebook) i am probably about to make a few enemies but I just watched the colts beat the patriots to win the AFC championship and I have to say I'm honestly happy that they did. Let me say, the patriots are my favorite team. so of course the question would have to be why are you happy they lost then. My reasons are three fold. first, the colts are my second favorite team anyway. Second, i want to see manning have the superbowl chance to put the exclamation point on his career as possibly the best quarter back of all time. And third, since the playoffs began i've been saying that though i am a Pats fan, if I were to pick one team to win it would be the colts. Everyone that i have presented with this prediction, from my family to people at work to friends of mine have scoffed at me quickly and said there was no chance that the colts could move past the patriots. So i'm glad that the Colts won this game and moreover, i'm glad that they had to beat the patriots to do it because it makes my prediction even more pronounced to all of the folks who have been telling me there was no way that the colts would be the team to do it while the patriots were still in the running. Of course, i am celebrating my geniuos call just a little too soon since the colts still have to run through the impressive line-up of the Chicago Bears to win the whole thing but I still believe they can do it.

I went cross country skiing today. It was the first time that i had been out skiing in quite a while. Last year there was really no snow for it and the same symptom has plagued the terrain this year as well. I didn't really go far. I just went out into the woods behind my mom's house and around the yard some. The wind was a bit fierce but still it was good to get out and ski. It seemed to channel a part of my essence that i fear i had been loosing touch with. Being in school and then working on the weekend makes it a bit hard to get out into the woods often enough and the school year happens to dominate winter which is my time to get out and enjoy the world. Maybe i sound foolish but I also think it was good for me to go out and ski with my mom. I don't see her much. Even if i come home for the weekends I am usually just in the house long enough to do some laundry in between going to work. I really want to find a head-lamp and go for a late-night ski tonight. i don't imagine i could go far with the insufficient snow coverage here in China Maine but still it would feel good to get out and do this. it's been probably four years since i went on a late night cross country ski. funny how we forget to do things we love sometimes

snow

there wasn't as much snow today as I had hoped for. Well, there is still more snow coming our way later but i had hoped for there to be more on the ground as I woke up this morning. part of the reason that i was anticipating the snow is that i am a winter person. I enjoy the look and feel of snow. I find there is so much beauty in the quiet quality that snow produces that so much of humanity has overlooked. i realize the other reason that i wanted to snow to come is that i was looking forward to a snow day. Doesn't that sound silly. A junior in college, twenty years old, involved in a semi-professional standing as and educator and i still do my snow dance in the living room. I think part of realizing ourselves as teachers is to realize that entering back into the scholastic institution says something about our departure from being students. We may be people who will never be able to fully divorce ourselves from the elation of the bell ringing for the last day of school and I think that's fine. I don't think we need to be "above" that feeling. I think we should always hold that field-trip-joy near to our hearts

i wake and move from the couch
Cold air brushes my skin
I drudge alone
to the coffee pot and
scoop in little black grounds
I find that I am not
good at making four cups of coffee
It seems no matter
how much of the grounds I add
the coffee comes out weak
like the coffee can't hold itself
all I want to do is make eight cups
like I used to
but If I did,
Your four cups would just sit in the pot

cold

walking down the road today i felt something quite foreign to me. The wind coupled with the low January temperatures felt so cold to me. I have always enjoyed the cold. There is something so clean in breathing in the frosty air. Little has ever seemed so beautiful to me as plunking down in a snow bank and letting myself cool off in the pile of fluff. But today the air felt angry to me. The Cold hit me in a way that I never experienced before in my life. The wind was biting. The sensation seemed new to me in not in a way that I enjoyed. I didn't seem to have the will to make the air a place of comfort. All i could do was hope that the cold would leave me be but to no avail.

revision

We are told that in life it is ok to make mistakes. We are told that rough drafts are ok and all we need to do is make revision to our mistakes. We are told that we need to sink before we can swim, but do we have a chance to revise our lives and our selves? Are there things in life that cannot be forgiven? If we are not shown how to do our lives correctly and it takes us a long time to figure it out but we eventually do can we truely be transformed by our growth? If we make the change and others can never see it does the growth count? Are we doomed to never amount to more than our flaws and our mistakes to those around us? Are there time limits in life? We are told that it is never too late but is this true?
I'm an optimist so I believe all of the positive answers. i believe that we can be forgiven. I believe that we can truely change. I believe that if a person is honest, even if there is a long time before that honesty comes out, they can be forgiven and they can discard their flaws. it's too bad we can't all have it figured out from the start, but if we can figure it out and make the growth, we can be bigger people.