Whatta week

My RayRay is coming back tomorrow (Saturday) sometime. She (and her mom, two sisters, a niece and a nephew) left early Sunday morning to visit her grandparents and, other, various maternal relatives. Her grandpa has been very ill as of late. He was supposed to be out Tuesday-ish, but ended up spending this entire week in the hospital. They got to see him some, but it sounded like he was pretty well exhausted and not able to visit as much as I'm sure would have been ideal. But they did get to visit a lot with the grandma. I'll try to get Rnee (I still feel that first "e" is a bit superfluous.

They're probably approaching the Georgia-Tennessee border about now.

In the meanwhile, I've been spinning my wheels back on the home front. It's spring break for me -- the end of spring break to be more accurate. After this week, I go back to the daily incessant grind. I'm not looking forward to it. Honestly, the break wasn't that great; I don't feel relaxed. I may, in fact, be more stressed because now I have to find away to go back to face what I was so enjoyingly looking forward to leaving.

I did get a new video game. It's called Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. It's amazing. I was a big fan of the preceding game in the series. Unfortunately, I think I'd have been more relaxed just laying on the couch watching Judge Joe Brown. Not more entertained, just more relaxed. The game is almost like a job. Funner and more rewarding than my current job, yet I get up in the morning, I'm spend all my time inside the game working for one objective after another with the occassional break thrown in for food and restroom activities (activities is a silly word to use there). Sometime after the long day, I quit and snap back to reality for supper and such.

It was a lousy spring break no matter what. Especially with the cold weather. I had hoped to spend a little bit out at a park somewhere playing with my dog. The weather stopped those hopes. First it snows then it spends three days being just warm enough to be sloppy and muddy. Lousy weather. So, in lieu of a park, Cooper and I wrestled here and there and chased one another about the house in brief stints. A far cry from what I had planned on doing with him. I feel bad for him. Having no yard, he only gets to go out to soil the ground. We'd like to do more, but hey, it's winter in Iowa. Well, technically I think it's spring. But, ya know.

I spent the early week cleaning the house. Thanks to the early efforts, I only have to do a quick mop-up of the living area and perhaps 'cuum the downstairs. I'm still out on that one, it's kinda a hassle. I plan to go back to playing here in a bit and leave the final clean up for tomorrow morning. Tomorrow afternoon and evening is quality time with RayRay and I plan to make omlets for her on Sunday morning. That afternoon she has to go back to work. Which means I plan on spending that evening getting reacquainted with my homework.

I'm still out on my Stats course. I hate it. I hate it worse that I've ever hated any class (minus the chemistry class I dropped last year) at DMACC. I've hated classes at AIB and at ISU more, but that's neither here nor there. Few things would make me happier than to drop it. However, I think I may still have something approaching a C in it. Of course, there's no way to know for sure because it takes the instructor a month to check the stupid tests. The first test we got a C on. My homework grades and quiz scores are lower because I don't have the time to do them. If I knew where I stood at this point, I could make a better judgement call on whether or not to stay in it. If I fail the class I wreck my GPA and have to retake the class. If I can pull off a C-, then it'll even transfer. If I didn't have to work, it wouldn't be an issue at all. I could have time to concentrate on the stupid course. As it is, I'm going to have to figure out how to rework my downtime to incorporate the daily homework assignments. I can't do them daily. It's not possible to do. I've tried and failed. The same deal with waiting until the weekend. So Sunday, I have to sit down and make a concerted effort to refocus and plan. I also have to fight off the growing urge to just skip class. It's only four more weeks. That's like sixteen classes. If I sit in there and take notes, who knows.

Now for the saddest part of my update: Molly, our beloved hamster died. I found her when I went to clean out her cage. I think she managed to get herself wedged between the slide and the bottom of the cage, and probably starved because of it. There was still food in her cage, I just don't think she was able to get to it. I think that we only had her for a year. It doesn't seem like it was very long. She was quite ill a couple of weeks back. I took her out (again to clean her cage) and she was pretty stiff. She wouldn't hardly move at all. She wouldn't even drink and I doubted she'd pull through that time. I mixed a small bit of sugar in with the water I was giving to her and the next morning she was awake and active again, and eating. So, it's sad that she was able to make it through that, only to get stuck unable to get to any food. If you ask me, hamsters' metabolisms are just far too high for their own good. Imagine being able to starve after only a few hours of not eating.

This is the second pet I've lost over the last few months (Prowler was the first) and also Renee's second (one of her parents' dogs passed not too long ago).

Rest in peace Molly. We'll miss you.

Know what needs to be invented? An air freshner that you can hang inside your vents just above the furnace's fan so it freshens all the rooms at once.

Take it and run, just give them to me for free.

I am (in order)...

a husband
a brother/best friend
a friend
a son
a dog owner
a student
an employee


In total, Eric Gookin.

At the risk of sounding like Rob

I've decided I look too... puffy.

I've also decided the best way to deal with it given my lack of time available to actually exercise is to go on a crashcarb diet for 10 days. The research I've read indicates that's the optimal time to drop weight without suffering from it. Gives your body enough time to eat up 10 or so pounds of fat.

Told ya I was gonna sound like Rob.

I hate stupid people

In spite of my better judgment, I actually went ahead and did my homework before deciding to launch an entry. It's really becoming a hassle for me to tolerate my classes. I like the accounting class, but that's about it.

I had a 125-question mid-term last night in my microeconmics class. It sucked. I'll report how I did sometime next week. I'm still waiting on my test results from Monday's Accounting class and I have a stats test tomorrow (Friday) and two or three more econ tests to take this week. It's a lot of garbage.

To make this worse I have an idiot (more than one probably) in my macroecon class. Since it's an online class, this normally would be a relief. One would think my exposure to his idiocy would be dimmed; unfortunately this is a forum-heavy class. As such, I've had to deal with reading stupid people's posts. Generally, I stop reading the posts less than half way though and go on with my life. This moron, however, has decided to shadow me in this chapter. He's repeatedly spewed out some sort of socialist, whiny, "I'm the victim because something bad happened to me, and one day it'll happen to you so pity me now, and then we'll be co-victims when its your turn" tripe.

On one hand it's my own fault. I did respond to an entry about social security and welfare programs. I attempted to get across my point about the government's ability to process and evaluate actual need of people. I tried to explain I think instead of continuing to let bloated bureaucracy run the social programs of the nation, we should explore the idea of instead giving money to private charities and NGOs. As far as I'm concerned this government and other governments around the world have continually proven that this is one of the many things that the government just isn't any good at.

This particular woman was telling about how she and her husband made a major life decision (he joined the military) and they were forced to move. Since they had to move, she had to quit her job and so she was out of money. She then proceeded to complain about how they screwed up his pay and then their attempts at receiving aid.

I made the mistake of thinking this was a good point to bring up my thoughts on it. I did my spiel (though at the time I was either tired or in a bad mood, and it did come off a bit harsh, which I later apologized to her for) about the whole thing. Wrong. I had a couple of posts about how I couldn't possibly know what she was going through and how I'll never be able to understand until I'm in a similar position. First off, there's a concept called, "empathy." I may never have been that same situation, but my parents weren't wealthy people. I've slept through my fair share of cold nights. I was constantly in old clothes from my mom's friends or 10-cent shirts from goodwill. I've witnessed lights and water magically disappearing at 1:00pm. My grandma and grandpa never even had an inside toilet. I certainly have known people my *entire* life who've been on government programs and who are continually given the shaft and treated like trash. Hell, Renee's mom was a single mom of six -- that's right, six -- daughters at one point. I am not without empathy or concern for people who are having a rough time. Point being: My pedigree in this field may not be pure, but it's sufficient for empathy... even by government standards.

However, there's a difference when people actively make poor choices. They knew going into this situation what was going to happen. They knew he'd be moved out of state (Hello, there's no active duty posts in Iowa). There’s a definite risk there. It’s a gamble, but they knew she’d have to quit her job and they knew they’d have to stretch to feed their baby. I even gave them credit for recognizing they were in a dead-end situation and doing what they could do get out of it. I never said they shouldn’t get anything. I said everyone would be far better off if they had had a private organization to appeal to … or even better, a selection of charities to turn to. Then mayhaps the help would have been quicker and more tailored to their needs. Instead, they only really had one option available: the government. No one who has ever had to rely on the government for anything has come out of it pleased. Okay, maybe that’s a stretch, but they suck at seemingly simple bureaucratic things like renewal of licenses. How the hell can they be expected to carry out humanitarian aid on a regular basis? Give us a choice at where to spread our money around and give the people who need aid a choice at where to receive it from.

Anyway ever since that post this moron I was talking about has been following my entries and posting stupid responses to my posts. He’s an ass. I also find myself over simplifying my responses to him so anyone out there can plainly see where I’m coming from. He’s started to argue semantics. If this continues I’ll make his life suck. I rather enjoy games of semantics (The meaning or the interpretation of a word, sentence, or other language form). In fact, I sometimes find my enjoyment of that is more entertaining to me than the argument of principle or concepts (Renee knows what I’m talkin’ about). Sick, I know.

Now, about my last post: I’ve not bothered to read it since I hit “post” but I have a dreaded feeling about. However, by the time I had decided to go ahead and delete, Kara had already posted. That’s my rule regarding erasing entries. If someone has commented on it, I consider it to be too late to make any major changes or deletions. I did consider waiving that rule for the previous post has her comment had nothing to do with the update. However, I didn’t feel like reading it and I was short on time, so I decided to leave it be. I have the feeling that the update was at best disjointed and at worst rambling and a bit melodramatic. I had a lot to drink. Actually it wasn’t very much, but I ran through almost half a bottle of rum in three glasses of Pepsi and I did it in a span of about 90 minutes. So that combined with not having consumed alcohol for over a month, did me in and did me in quick. Not that I’ve ever been much more than a cheap date. Eventually, I may choose to go back and read it. More likely, however, it will simply sink down on the page and no longer think anything more of it.