alt shift¿

I didn't want to write about HWH, or Wednesday at all, because I saw my blog that day, and felt selfishness pouring out of the screen, but I dunno, maybe it's selfish (or a form of denial) not to. I didn't know him as well as I wanted to, though I'm glad that I did at all, and for as long as I had. Grandma told me once, the first time I had shown them the "warrior" shirts, that he really appreciated the word "grandfather" on it, instead of grandpa, and since this week, I don't refer to him as grandpa anymore (it's HWH in text, "my Grandfather" in speech). I had hoped that I wouldn't have cried the way I did while he could see me, because I didn't want to make it harder for him, emotionally, and I feel like I may have failed him in that regard (I am not asking/fishing for and do not want consolation on this point, it's just something I had to say sometime, somewhere). I'm glad Kenny and I were both there, I didn't want to be the only grandchild. I was surprised HWH managed to pull a face when he first noticed my brother there. I feel it speaks to who he was, that even though we had to let him go right about then, he lightened up in spite of it. I wish I'd had something to say, some poignant phrase to give, during any of the visits, not just the last. I just stood. What bothers me most is that I'm still thinking about myself.

I've finally been to each of my classes. In picking which ones I thought would be most interesting, I got the order totally wrong. American Government was awesome, and Japanese is totally frustrating. Logic is, wait for it-- in the middle. Our "exercises" for Logic were kinda lame, but it's still a class I look forward to. We (it was a group exercise) had to pick out the conclusions and premises out of some arguments, but I had forgotten (I feel it should have been more emphasized when we started it) to use "uniform language," which is just restating parts of the argument. We don't interpret or describe the points, we JUST find and restate it. So after everyone got the first one "wrong", we wised up and annihilated the others, with the exception of one, where the sentences were already in order, in that they contained the conclusion and the premises in respective order in one sentence. I said it looked like that, but because it was unprecedented in our five arguments, we did it like the others, and got the answers backwards. It'll be a tricky class.

Government was awesome, have I mentioned that? The people sound sort of stupid, but the teacher is exceptionally sharp, and can rein the class in quite expertly. The conversations were totally civil, and had glimpses of thought. Still, our ONE outspoken conservative is an idiot, and that's kind of disappointing. I want to meet more conservatives who don't use the words "Obama," "the government," and "socialism," as some catch-all phrases that are synonymous with what's wrong with the world, because I have yet to hear the WHY in all of the ranting. This woman's issue was that "the government" is just out to get our money, based on all the underage smoking tickets she paid to cover her teenage sons. We should all be able to smoke wherever we want, and at whatever AGE we want! Oh, and seat belts. As adults, we shouldn't have to wear seat belts, it's just "the government" taking away "our freedom" to be fucking retarded. Smarter conservatives, please! To credit my professor further, he asked "What about MY freedom to NOT smoke?" which was left unanswered, due to this woman's listing of where she could not smoke.

I've griped about Japanese before, and the problems aren't different, but there are new positives. Pretty ladies! Pretty ladies who comment on how they like my D&D bag (the Bag of Holding) because -they- used to play D&D! I was unsure of what to do for a while, but luckily, because there was teaching going on, I had a buffer. On our break, I did what I could to turn her passing compliment into a conversation, and I succeeded, because we are now acquaintances. Go me! The girl in front of me turned around and gave an unsolicited "Hi" too, so maybe I'll make more acquaintances Tuesday. I must latch on to these normalish pretty ladies before we get a group assignment! I will not work peacefully with the weeaboos! THERE WILL BE BLOOD O_O.

Actually, there IS one problem with Japanese I didn't address. The teacher said that Japanese is not a sing-songy language (that's right), but then proceeded to teach the pronunciations in a sing-songy manner (that's wrong). How did I notice? With my keen, detective-level senses, of course. Oh, and MOST OF THE CLASS WAS DOING IT THAT WAY TOO, HOW COULD I IGNORE IT?! Ugh. It sounds sorta like "dah Dah DAH dah Dah". Bold is accented. All I could do was be as monotone as Seanly possible, and be a little louder. I didn't want to draw too much attention, after all.

I gotta read 54 pages for Government by Monday, so recreational stuff is set aside for now, although I'm using the hour and a half between Japanese and Logic to read in the library, so I got through the rest of Plato, Aristotle, and might still be in the middle of St Augustine. There's still five other books I need to get through, and not just "I intend to read," but, "I need to read IMMEDIATELY."







Sean