The way this question was written gives me a religious connotation. I do not think I have such an experience. Religion was never forced or really a big deal in my family growing up. I went to church with my grandmother off and on until  I was 11 or 12. I went to church on special occasions & vacation bible school with my cousins. I studied with my Jehovahs Witness friend when I was 9 or so for a couple weeks. It was an interesting experience and she was wiling to talk to me about things I didn’t understand. Growing up my mom had books about health crystals and herbs around the house. I don’t ever remember being forced to think anything. I liked going to church to play and sing with my friends (all of these girls turned out to be mostly crazy when we got into highschool together.)

I have never had a deep seated belief in religion. I never got caught up on the spirit. I’ve tried pagan religions, and as with christian ones I never felt any real connection. Everyone seems to feel a spirit or a sense of warm fuzzies… I have never felt any of that, no matter how much I tried because it was a community I liked.  So what fills me with awe and excitement… just the world around us… I don’t need a greater being behind it or more of a meaning. Life and the world are brilliant all on their own.

Something that shakes my beliefs to their core? Alternate realities… or the fact we may not exist.. Imagine hearing this as a 10 year old…

On a time line there is the past the present and the future. The past doesn’t physically exist anymore because it has already happened, and the future doesn’t really exist because it hasn’t happened yet. So that leaves the present… but but the time the images and sounds reach your brain from your eyes and ears and other senses, they are the past…. so does the present exist.

Seriously Dad, WTF?

I do not think I have a tenancy to meat people randomly. I am not social, I don’t make small talk, I find it more of an effort to speak with people who do not have the potential to be in my life more than momentarily. (Strangers that I won’t see for more than a day.) I’m trying to think of a time where someone random has done anything that might have made an impact, either seeing it or hearing it or something just passing by even if I have not met them personally.

Last year at PAXEast, we went to a pannel of speakers (we actually went to bunch of them but this one sticks out) where Jeff Greene or Ken Levine said something that still sticks out to me.

… I should give  some context. I have grown up playing video games. I had an NES when I was young. I had computer games after that. Though they have not always been a huge part of my life, they were always around. In college I would watch my roomate, her boyfriend and the neighbors play a all the time. I would watch exes play. My husband plays. I am comfortable in the culture even though I do not play often myself. I am not very good, controlling the camera while walking confuses me. We listen to podcasts about video games and other nerdy things.  The gaming industry is my celebrity, but they tend to be smarter.

People do not understand games, but at one point they didn’t understand movies or tv or cars or whatever… No everyone understands art or literature. That is ok… games are not childish… but I understand if you were introduced to them when only children were playing them. Just look at how they have evolved… really…Its another medium of story telling.

AND NOW I can’t remember the exact quote but it was something along the lines of ‘there will always be someone old who does not get video games. someone who didn’t grow up with them as part of the culture. and someday they will all be dead.’

Being an adult sucks. Being an adult who has moved away from 90% of their friends and family sucks even more. Most of my friends have drifted away to some point or another. I can’t just show up, or call them on my way to the store for company. Now as they begin to have babies or continue to be less and less available due to work and being on the other side of the country that gap in commonality is getting bigger and bigger. It sucks.

I can think of two people  who I miss the most. One intends on having kids and I fear that will be the end. We do talk on a regular basis and are on top of the important things in each other’s lives, but when she does have kids… mommy time is much more important. One has moved so far away, we often are in different time zones with schedules that don’t match and play phone tag. And then one of us forgets to call or gets caught up in something and puts it off… and then… We haven’t spoken in 6 months…This really breaks my heart and I try not to feel less important but some people seem to be more worth the effort. In reality thats probably not very true.

Making friends as an adult, I have not gotten the hang of this. I have two close friends where I live now. Which is probably comparable to the percentage of friends I had in my home town. I nabbed them and held on from my first job here and even now I feel a little adrift.

Flipping through the channels one day a few years ago I landed on c-span of all places. Maybe it was because that was one of the few channels I had at the time. It is entirely possible that this was a re run… a quick search on google shows that she regularly reads portions of her books in C-Span. This just happens to be the book I caught. Sarah Vowell “Partly Cloudy Patriots”

This may be when I started to pay a little more attention to the world around me and the politics that are involved with being an adult. Her combination of historical facts and observations connecting to current day feed both the history teacher in me and the lazy young adult who gets most of her news from the Daily Show. I have read more of her books and will try and read any she writes, if only to feed my history needs.

But now I pay more attention to the repetition of history and how it has influenced the modern day. I voted a couple years after this was recorded. It was my first year voting. I had taken my AP US history class, I had taught younger students about random presidential facts and I paid attention in my 8th grad civics class. But I had not idea what I was doing voting. Just the same I made an educated guess and my family was proud that I had fulfilled my civic duty.

I dated someone once that did not see the point in voting and actively refused to be registered to vote. I was always appalled at this. I know some people don’t want to register to vote because they somehow think that it will register them for jury duty. In the state I grew up in, if you were over 18 it didn’t matter, you were in the jury pool.  I am still appalled that someone would not want to believe in at least participating in the process and attempting to make the world a better place no matter how futile it seems.

As always I can’t follow the letter of the law, I will need to expand on more than just one. In no particular order

• Stroke 9 – I first heard this band while I was in high school and their most popular song at the time was “Little Black Backpack.” I (and my friend V)know every word to every song on this album. My favorite was Make it Last. Their music has stuck with me for the rest of my life, being appropriate for many stages. Including bad breakups and young adult hijinks.
• LFO – YES the horrible boy band that brought you such songs as Summer Girls. The songs are dumb, but they are so dumb I can’t help but smile when I hear them. They make me think of girly young adult hiinks with Sexy.
• My wedding had two important songs – Radiohead “Everything in its Right Place” and Peter, Bjorn and John “Young Folks“
• I used to fall to sleep to an old tape of Metalica when I was in elementary or middle school – and stay up late to the country station when that didn’t work. They would play “when you say nothing at all” by Allison Kraus before anyone else had heard it. I swear I only heard it late at night.
• I would fall asleep to Norah Jones when she was first published and feel safe and sleepy.
• Baby its cold out side and Daisy

Some bands have changed significance over the years. During a less than healthy time in my life I was really into Incubus, but I did not like anything that I heard from their earlier recording. Now – I would much rather hear those than anything.

The song Float On by Modest Mouse, I ‘d only heard the radio version when it got really big one summer. Now? I’ve heard real versions and prefer those. I did not like the radio version… perhaps it was overplayed.

I have a hard time answering this one as intended. I do not believe that a life should be worth l living due to people or situations as these things can change, evolve or vanish. I feel that though there are many people that make life better and easier and much more wonderful, they are not the reason it is worth living. This can really only come from within.

I know that sounds horrible individualistic and it really takes away from life being a whole rather than the sum of its parts, but so many people are co-dependant that sometimes a person needs to recognize that they are the real reason life is worth living. Not that they are the reason the sun sets and the waves crash, but they are the reason to get up in the morning and the things they do have so much impact on the world. Even the potential to do good in your life is the reason for living.

So I’m going to write about me. While I have my faults, there are people who love me anyway. I try to have high expectations of myself and my conduct as a person. I try not to lie because this takes more effort to keep up with than it is worth and I try to be easy going for the same reason. This gives more time and energy to devote to other more fun and enjoyable things. Making other people’s lives easier, teaching them to fend for themselves, or really even doing little things like making dinner at night so someone else does not have to worry about it.

Things I am working on doing in the future to make life worth living. Letting my parents take a real adult vacation from having kids. What they choose to do with that time is up to them, but I’m kidnapping the littlest sister for a week and they can just be adults on their own. This also gives my littlest sister some much needed bonding time with her new brother in law and her oldest sister.

I have never really created a bucket list. There are a ton of things I’d love to do but penciling them in like a must do makes me feel like it is an appointment and guilty if I miss doing it. But it has been recently pointed out that I / we never end up actually doing things.

My list:
Go to Europe again.
Go somewhere in Asia.
Travel more within America.
Finish post bachelors something /training.
Feel confident that I am qualified for a good job.
Pay off student loans and car debt
Buy a house. Make it a dream house.

I really like to travel, I’ve been all over North America and over a little bit of Europe. I am a fan of good food and like doing museum and cultural tours. I’ve been to ruins in Mexico, presidents houses in the US and old churches in Florence. I would love to do more of this but right now it is cost prohibited.

Right now I have started back to school for a diploma as a paralegal. Part of me would love to be a lawyer, but i also would not want to take on that kind of stress in my life. As a paralegal there is a bit less stress while still being enough of a specialization that future job prospects seem a bit brighter. Which would probably make me feel more qualified to get a real job or a career. We shall see.

Last but not least, I think i want a house. I’m not convinced that I would want to settle anywhere but i really want to design a dream house.

Yep pretty horrible about getting these done on time.

Well lets use that as a lesson. I’m bad about time. Keeping appointments on time, remembering to do things and I’m procrastinator. I’d love to change these things. Its annoying to have to rush at the last minute to do anything and I’m sure it drives people mad.

Things I can do on time include taking my birth control. I have no desire for kids so this ranks up pretty high. I have an alarm set on my phone, otherwise it would never happen. However other alarms seem to mean nothing, including getting up in the morning or leaving on time for work if I do get up at a reasonable hour.

I’m bad at keeping any sort of schedule that does not involve an intricate set of alarms or reminders. I live by my google calendar if I can ever remember to stop snoozing the reminders. SNOOZE is my friend.

I should set my alarm to prompt math questions when snooze as well as when I’m going to dismiss the alarm, maybe then I might wake up enough to actually get out of bed.

This year I hope to be better about time, wasting it, using it more wisely, and being on time for appointments or remembering to do simple tasks like writing 250 words about pre-determined prompts.

I’m sure this will help with my homework as I’ve started classes for an additional certification… I should really start practising getting out of bed on time so i can get to work on time and then have time to actually do school work.

Ok i suck at keeping up with these, even if i set them up ahead of time.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_Games

AGLOA

In 5th and 6th grade I was part of a club at school that played games. We played math, English and history games. We were very good. This club helped me learn math and English concepts i wouldn’t see in class until was in high school. My teacher in 5th grade was the “hard” teacher and she was certainly the one 4th graders were afraid to get, but in reality she was amazing. Looking back, and having taught that age myself, she had high standards and expected her kids to adhere to the rules of the classroom. She was the districts’ sponsor for the club. We used the games in class as well.

Her teams were often first and second in the State for our age level.The kids we played with were mostly from innercity schools where as we were one of the few schools that were from the suburbs. This meant, when we traveled for monthly tournaments we went into the city.  I think this experience helped me not be afraid of the city like many people are.

When I was 16 I helped coach the younger kids. My teams won national tournaments. They were smart and wonderful. I think this was one of the last times I liked teaching and had to be one of the reasons I picked teaching social studies. I loved Linguishtik and Presidents to teach and to play. Part of me wishes I’d kept playing past elementary school.

Looking over the current state of the league, it looks like there were two nationals tournaments… and all of the teams i remember winning are not listed anywhere…It looks like there was the national tournament for AGLOA and then National Academic Games Tournament (NAGT), held annually at the Rock Eagle 4H Camp in Eatonton, GA.