Taibbi writes a lot of words about things and stuff. It makes me angry, but I'm not supposed to write about my feelings here. His argumant has a large Pathos component between his colorful metaphors and foul language. He also demonstrates, fancy word, ethos and logos via his impressive knowledge of the financial systems, crazy ideas, agencies, and public figures involved in this mess. CDOs and CDSs are imaginary constructs devised by evil people who used them to make money at the expense of honest people who pay their taxes. Taibbi breaks down these false constructs into ideas his readers can understand, so we know how investers and insurers snuck these things past regulators. Not that the regulators were paying any attention, anyway. How am I supposed to come up with 1000 words? I've never been a very wordy person in my entire life so far. This sucks. Kind of like the country's financial situation sucks. I don't like to swear, but I'm feeling so frustrated right now. I hate writing. I've never done this free-writing sort of thing before, but I guess it's kind of therapuetic, but I don't see how this is going to help with this assignment. Maybe I'll write enough to at least know what 1000 words looks like, but I'll probably just be discouraged.

I just got back from my 2nd day of class and 1st day of classwork for Composition II. It was a rollercoaster of I'm smart, I just said something dumb, I know this, I'll have to change this about my writing. This is going to be a tough semester.

I was cleaning up my room and picked up a book. Instead of putting it away I started reading. I'm up to page 86 now. This is part of the reason I have trouble keeping up with chores.

If you're wondering, the book is Quozl by Alan Dean Foster.

Baxter distracted me by knocking over a shelf. Now I have more books to pick up. Uh-oh!

I've been away from Livejournal since mid-August. I finally about caught up! All that's left is catching up with things at megamind_movie. If it's been as busy as was before, I have a lot of reading to do.

Today was beautiful. The sun was shining, but it wasn't hot, so I spent some time outdoors for the first time in a couple of months. I left the house to do some shopping and decided it was too nice to be inside. I went out the Bear Creek Trail area off of Cosmo Park. There are tons of little, twisting, intersecting side trails there. The only maps are at the entrances, and they don't even have a "you are here" dot. I could get lost in there pretty easily. It was wonderful to do some hiking.

I'm 3 weeks into school now. I'm only taking one class right now, "American Women, American Times," and getting my history requirment done. I got my first papers back yesterday. Full marks! 10/10 points on the one page paper and 22/20 points on the two page paper. The extra points are for taking the initiative to do extra research that wasn't required, or even suggested. I was kind of afraid of what the teacher would think, but she liked it!

I met this cute mantis Monday night at work. When I offered my hand she crawled right up my arm before flying off. I was surprised at the weight. Most bugs don't seem to weigh anything at all even when they get big, but this one did. I kinda want to have one as a pet now.

More pictures and a video after the ( cut. )

I put ice cubes in the cats' water bowl and they melted in under a minute. And yes, it's 4am, the AC is running, and so is the dehumidifier. It's just that hot here.

I bought 4 movies today at the grocery store for $1.49 each. None of them are anything I expect to be good, but I do think I'll enjoy watching them at least once. Tonight I'll be watching "Meet Dave" starring Eddie Murphy as a human-shaped spaceship that falls in love with a human. This should be stupidly silly, but fun.

I had quite the wake up call today. I heard a knocking sound from the front room followed by the roar of machinery. I sat right up in bed clutching the bedsheet thinking, "who's at my front door? What's that noise? OMG what's going on?!" I got up, wrapping the sheet around myself, cause I was only wearing my undies, calling out, "Hello? Who's there?" I peeked around the the doorway in to the front room. Can you guess what I found? The front door was as securely shut as ever and the vacuum was running. One of my silly kitties managed to turn on the vacuum!

I went to bed at my usual time last night, 4am, and woke up 2 hours later at 6am. By 6:45 I gave up on getting back to sleep. So far today I've been to the bank, got my mail from Mom & Dad's house, chatted with Mom, bought a tank top at Kohl's ($3.60 with tax!), payed my Kohl's charge bill, and picked up groceries at Sam's Club.

I'm having trouble keeping my eyes open. If I can stay awake I want to stop by the admissions office, practise using Mom's sewing machine, and I have choir practice tonight. Soooooo sleeeeeeepy. I dont' think I can stay up all day.