There was some important information in the evaluating sources links. The first one made a point, that print sources are very useful, and more reliable than internet sources. I think that using the internet for research is just so easy now that other forms of information are used way less.Also, if you are careful on the internet, and know how to use reliable sources you should be safe finding valid information. There are several ways to see if something you find in the internet i credible or not. Sources are what make a research paper and you cannot have a good one without good sources. It is crucial to be able to pick out and find the right facts is your paper is going to be credible.

I have no idea what i am going to do my research paper on. I like doing research papers, especially if it's something I'm interested in. I want to pick something that i don't know much about, but that there is a lot of good information available on. I want to pick something that others will find interesting too and something that is relevant to out time. I think picking a topic will be hard so i want to make sure i pick a good one.I'm going to have to research topics.

Lent

Tomorrow is ash Wednesday and its hard to get to mass. I have to go to the 5:15 service and i have class until 5:15 so I'm going to have to leave a little bit early or something. I'm used to mass being a part of school. I've never missed a holy day of obligation because we've always had school masses. I wish i went to church more often here, there is a beautiful church right across the street from me. I have to start getting my shit together and prioritizing my life. I need to start taking my medicine everyday and keeping a good schedule. For lent i am going on an intense diet, and hopefully i can keep up with it. I want to loose 25 pounds by June and that will be preety hard to do living off of a meal plan. I'll just have to find time to work out. I am also going to drink only one soda a day, and i am going to significantly cut down on the time i spend on facebook because i think that it's a problem. Hopefully Lent will be a time of change for me this year.

hahaha

haha i love Paula Deen

Glass Menagerie

I couldn't go to the play on Friday because i had to go home for the weekend. I went to the last showing on Sunday at three with my older sister Rachel who goes here. I really like the set up in that theater. I sat in the second to last row so i was really high up in the chairs. I actually started to like the play at the beginning. It was very well done. The show was pretty long for my liking, its hard for me to pay attention or sit still like that for that long. The second of the play just kind of annoying. that guy was so over enthusiastic he just kind bugged me. Any the mother annoyed me from the beginning. I could see some of myself in the girl because i get very anxious over stupid things. I also still don't really understand the ending. I think that guy is a prick if he just left his family like that. I see why we went to this play, it was a unique telling of a personal memoir.

blahh

I don't know what i was supposed to be writing in here. We were switching from Unit 1 to Unit 2. I want to get my paper back tomorrow so i can fix it up. I can't believe that we are almost at mid-term of this semester. I have 17 credit hours this semester and i feel like i have less work than last semester. I'm pretty sure it will all be catching up with me soon. I can't wait until spring break. I was going to go somewhere but now i just want to go home.

The Circus is coming to town! I hate the circus and if i find a ride i am going to go to the demonstration against tomorow. The circus teaches children hate and violence towards animals. They waste the animals life for their own profit and it makes me sick. Barnum and Bailey's circus has blatantly displayed abuse and the government has done nothing to stop it. I think that animal slavery is sick

Practice exam

I think i spent about 90 percent of the fifty minutes on my first essay. The practice exam definitely showed me that i need to get my shit together before Friday. I've started going through the chapters and highlighting anything important. I've also tabbed all the chapters and have wrote in some notes. I still have alot to do before the test. I just want to know the book in and out before the test. I've basically just been rereading through the stories one by one. Hopefully i do good and hopefully the questions aren't too hard.

sooo funny

Essay Study Questions

1. The setup of “The Dew Breaker” is very unique. Unlike in most authors, Danticat uses a number of different narrators to tell the story in pieces. Each section has its’ own voice. Each section has its own set of characters and its own significance to the novel as a whole. The separate stories aren’t in any sort of chronological order. They each abruptly begin one after the other. Her way of writing engages the reader into the story on a different level. The reader can see the different stories through the eyes of the different characters. To read something like this was is more affective in relating to the characters. It’s kind of like trying to take a walk in their shoes. Instead of getting an outside view of what happed you get a personal account, even if it is fiction. This book makes you think. It is like a puzzle, you have to put it together as you read it. I think that this style of writing definitely has a deeper impact on the reader.
2. The order of events in “The Dew Breaker” is set up in a unique way. What comes at the end of the story chronologically appears at the beginning of the book in the very first chapter. In the first section, “The Book of The Dead”, Ka’s father confesses his past to his daughter. Then the different chapters have their own stories of the victims of the Dew Breaker and how they were affected or just stories that relate to the story as a whole. The book slowly reveals how it all comes together. The book ends with the last of the horrible crimes that the dew breaker committed. I found the structure of the book to be very powerful. It really makes you think which keeps you engaged in the reading. Seeing this story in this different way makes you absorb its significance. If “The Dew Breaker” was written in chronological order it wouldn’t be very good and it wouldn’t really make a lot of sense.
3. Each of these characters have their own significance. Eric appears in a couple of the sections. In “Seven” he is the Husband who is being reunited with his wife. He is a janitor and his roommates are Dany and Michael. In water child he is the ex lover of Nadine and the father of her unborn baby. Nadine is a Haitian RN who is far from her parents in Port au Prince and morns the loss of her aborted baby. Nadine was one of Eric’s side women while his wife was gone who didn’t mean anything. Michael, the roommate is also mentioned in “Monkey tails.” Dany, the other roommate, is the main character on “ Night Talkers.” He goes to visit his Aunt back in Haiti to tell her that he thinks he found the dew breaker in Brooklyn. He lost his parents at a young age in a fire. His Aunt dies while he visits. Beatrice is the bridal seamstress. She lives her life in fear and is obviously damaged from her past. She also says that she has seen the Dew breaker in Brooklyn and that he is following her. Freda is the narrator of “Funeral Singers.” She is trying to get her high school diploma while she is twenty two years old. The Dew Breaker has affected all of them in some way (Freda, I’m not certain about) Their lives are all affected my their past and the different characters are connected through the stories. Ka’s father is the dew breaker. He was one of the torturers and even if he did not directly affect each of these characters he is connected to them all in some way.
4. The dew breaker tells Anne that he is one of those who escaped. In the book it says that , : One day he would try to make her understand why he’d put it like that. In many ways it was true. He has escaped from his life. He could no longer return to it, no longer wanted to.” The dew breaker did some horrific things that is certain. Maybe Anne wanted to save him or fix him. He helped her get to New York, they became friends and then it turned into love. Ka was their angel. We don’t know if she has made the connection that the dew breaker was the one who killed her brother. That was in the past. And it haunts their lives but this is also a story of forgiveness. She loves the man that did these things, but he is changed now. Time may not be able to heal all things but it can definitely make it better. His actions still affect the lives of many and there are so many people in real life that were and are affected by what really happened in Haiti. The last section brings us back to the very beginning of the story when Ka was on the phone with her mother.

me me me

there's this thing going around on facebook where you have to write 25 things about yourself and then tag 25 of your friends in it and they have to do it. here's mine :

1. I went to catholic school for 12 years.
2. I might miss my dog a little bit more than my family, and I feel bad about that
3. I’ve had major issues with my hair my whole life, but I just got a new hair cut and I am trying to work it
4. I’ve taken 6 different medications for ADHD and I think might have finally found the right one
5. Caffeine makes me tired, I swear
6. I bite my nails a lot, and even though I try to stop sometimes, I don’t think I ever will
7. I hate it when people wear red and green together when it’s not Christmas, or any other holiday colors
8. I have horrible anxiety
9. I miss home a lot more than I thought I would, since I was always trying to get away
10. I miss my friends even more. And I miss a lot of people that I never thought I would.
11. I’ve had two jobs and I feel that I have worked wayyy too much, especially last summer.
12. I love piercings and I want to get more but my body always rejects them
13. I have some alignment problem with my right hip and it really hurts sometimes.
14. I can’t and don’t really wear heels
15. I kind of hate being so tall
16. I spend far too much money on dumb things
17. my favorite color is purple, for now
18. I don’t ever really ever study or do a lot of schoolwork. I usually just do the minimum amount to get decent grades and that’s how it’s always been.
19. I wish I could be more productive
20. I really need my alone time
21. I have only a few friends that are close and a lot that are just…regular ones I guess
22. I try not let myself trust anyone too much
23. I’ve been single for almost a year now, and I think I want it to stay that way for a long time
24. Whenever I want something really bad, I get it, and then I don’t want it anymore.
25. I love sneezing and I get really upset when I can feel one coming but then it goes away.

I haven't done too much yet to personally prepare for the exam. I've read the book and done the stuff that we've done in class. this week has been so heck tick for me i've just had so much to do so i will probably put aside time closer to the test, like maybe Sunday, to really go over the material. I have been trying to reread some of the sections just to clarify some things and to remember everything because it seems like such a loooong time ago that i read the book.

I've taken alot of essay exams, especially in high school. I like them, I just hope i am well prepared for the questions. The handouts were pretty straight forward and simple. They said things like make sure you answer to question and plan ahead. I'm pretty good at structuring essays. I think an essay exam is perfect for this book because there are sooo many facts and names that it would get confusing trying to memorize little details for a multiple choice test. I think we are spending a lot of time preparing for the test in class, maybe even too much. I guess some people need that though and all it will do it help. Some seem to be worried about the tie limit but i am not. maybe that is because i always take tests very fast. So fast that i get embarrassed to turn them i early so i wait around till someone else does. I have alot of stuff that i have to write into my book before we take the test, whenever that is

yes!!

i just watched the Grammys and there were some amazing performances. The moment that made me happiest was when blink 182 announced that they were back together. I was screaming! I have loved them forever and i may be a loser but i don't care and i can't wait for them to release some new songs. I got back from visiting UVA this morning and i slept all day even though it was beautiful outside. I had a rough night. UVA's campus is so different from ours it seems just to be more of a collage campus. The grounds are so pretty and everything just seems classier haha. The people dress so different from the the people here at VCU. Everyone looked so plain and dressed up it seemed strange. I don't think that there is anything you could wear here that would be shocking because everyone dresses so wild.I kind of like it.

so awesome

this is the paper i turned in

Stranger
I could heard the beep of the door alarm go off and the luggage rolling across the tiles of the kitchen floor. My older sister was texting me, even though she was in her room which was right across the hall from mine. She was asking me if I was going to go downstairs or not. I told her that I didn’t know. It was really dark outside and I was tired from the basketball practice I had had earlier in the evening. I was already perfectly settled underneath my covers ready to go to sleep, or at least I was pretending to be. I heard my younger sister was yelling for us from the bottom of the stair case, telling us that he was here. She and my mom had gone to the airport earlier to pick him up. He had just flown around two thousand five hundred miles from the west coast of California all the way to our east coast home in Virginia Beach. My dad was on a business trip that week and would be returning next day. My anxiety had been building up as usual and I was feeling very uncomfortable. I did not want to go down the stairs but I knew that it was something I just had to do. I pulled myself together as best as I could because I didn’t want to give off a rude first impression.
I absolutely hate awkward situations; I either don’t put myself in them or I avoid them in any way possible. When my parents told us about the visit we all seemed to be pretty uptight about it. I played it off like I was cool with it, but I had been nervous about this for a while now. None of us knew if this would turn out to be a good or a bad idea, it was just something that needed to happen either way. The whole situation was so strange to me because I didn’t really know what, why, or how things had happened in the past. All I knew was that I had never met this man before. He was a complete stranger to me.
I knew next to nothing about him, except for what I had seen in a picture of him when I was younger that only showed him from the mouth down. He was very tan and had a T-shirt with hieroglyphics on it which gave me the false impression that he was some sort of Egyptian. I didn’t have a clue as to what he would look like, how he would talk, or what his personality would really be like. I had really only herd his name, Kenneth, a couple of times throughout my life and it was never used in context to something I understood. I had heard him being referred to as “the guru” by my grandmother and aunt because he was an ardent follower of the many alternative health concepts and practices of Edgar Cayce. He believed in things like rubbing Castor oil all over your body to cure various liver conditions and eating one meal a day of strictly raw vegetables. Since my dad was a doctor, I could see how he could easily get into an argument with someone like Ken.
I was tired, but I made my way down the stairs as I was trying to listen through the walls. I creeped through the kitchen where my mom was sitting. She didn’t say anything she just gave me an awkward look and then a smile. I made my way through the sun room, and finally to the doorway of the guest room. I could see my little sister Eden holding his hand as if they were ending a greeting. He was very tall, over six feet and also very lean and in shape. This was probably because he did not own a car and instead used a bicycle as his only means of transportation. He definitely looked much younger than his seventy years of age. He had on jeans, a nice grey sweater, Birkenstock sandals, and some weird blue hat that sort of looked like smaller version of a beret. His grey beard was cut short and his eyes were very wide and teary. His nose was pretty large and protruding and the tip of it slanted downward, sort of like my dad’s nose. Overall he looked pretty goofy, like a character in some funny story or a man you would stare at in a store.
I had no plans for what I would do or say at this uneasy moment. We were both smiling as I stood there still. I then took his hand and introduced myself. He repeated my name, “Adrienne,” back to me. I guess my little sister had escaped from the room without me even noticing. It was just us two standing there and we were looking at each other dead straight in the eyes. It is really hard to describe, but the look on his face was filled with much joy, while at the same time it also seeming to have some sense of sadness buried in it somewhere. The room was filled with such a strange vibe. I went in for the hug out of instinct I guess. He smelt very earthy, like patchouli or something. I could tell that this moment meant a lot to him and I could see that he had been waiting for this for a very long time. I could sense that we were feeling some of the same emotions. They were so strong and overpowering but also unable to be differentiated or categorized. I held him tight, and while we were still in that moment I realized that this wasn’t very awkward at all. I felt a huge relief. I could hear the tears in his voice as he said very lightly into my ear, “granddaughter…finally… my granddaughter.”
It was rather late and everyone was sleepy so I left him and said something about seeing him in the morning. My older sister never came down that night, which is so like her because she is very shy. I made my way up to my room quickly so that I didn’t have to run into anyone on the way. I shut my door and let it all out. I was crying because I had to, because my feelings were uncontrollable. I felt happy and strange. I was somehow more contempt than I was before but I was also more upset because I was confused and angry about why this was happening now, when I was seventeen years old. I wondered why I had never really had a real conversation with my dad about why he had not seen his father for over twenty five years of his life.
I still do not know why my grandparents got divorced. My grandfather left his children right before my dad went to college and neither left or gave financial support to any of his family. He hasn’t had a real job since he retired from the military before the age of forty. He has never remarried, but has gone from one younger girlfriend to another, living with them instead of ever making a home of his own. He has been to more places than I ever will go and he seen and done many things that I will never even know about. I couldn’t tell you if my father has forgiven him or not. I will never forget the look in his face as he greeted Ken that next day. All I know is that he is still the only one in my family that has yet agreed to see or talk to him.
In those few seconds of a hug, I could feel a life of lost time. Every now and then we get a letter or an email with updates on his health or hobbies. My older sister says she hates him and that she would have been fine never having met him. She thinks he is a stubborn asshole. I am pretty stubborn myself; maybe that’s where I get it from. Maybe that’s where my father get’s it from too. I don’t know if I will ever see Ken again. He is very old and I don’t see myself going to California by myself any time soon. All I know is that the blood that runs through my veins is his. Without his existence I would not be a part of this world. He is a stranger, but I love him.

...

My favorite and only blog i read is Perez Hilton. I usually hate celebrity gossip but Perez's blog is actually funny and interesting. He always has the juiciest stuff and i always look to him to see if a rumor is true or not. Like a couple months ago, i saw one facebook that Little Wayne was shot dead! i clicked a link that showed an article about his killing and and it looked very legitimate. I looked all around the internet for more information because i was still in doubt but shortly enough i looked to Perez Hilton and he has already put the rumor in its place. His blog has a topic. This one doesn't. I never know what to write about in here so i just try to think until something pops up in my head. I just checked Perez and found out that Lilly Allen in coming on tour to the U.S.! What would i do without him!

www.perezhilton.com

"Parallel Play"

"developmental stage of social activity in which children play with toys like those the children around them are using but are absorbed in their own activity and usually play beside rather than with one another.Children in this stage may comment on what they are doing or imitate what another child does, but they rarely cooperate in a task or engage in dramatic play or formal games with others." ( http://social.jrank.org/pages/452/Parallel-Play.html)


After reading this definition, i really appreciate the title of the essay. It really fits the syndrome that the author has. I don't really understand how Asperger syndrome is anything more than a type of personality. The author is obviously very intelligent he just thinks an interacts socially a little bit different than normal. But what is normal? I can relate to this essay even though i don't have the syndrome myself. I supposedly have mild obsessive compulsive and anxiety disorders and I also have now taken seven different medications for ADHD. You never know what someone might have wrong with them or what they have to deal with every day.
There is a ton of outside sources included and a lot of them were things i didn't know about, more like references. The style of writing sort of shows the personality and even way of thinking that the writer has. I think the essay is trying to communicate his own personal experience to bring understanding to people who may not know about Asperger's or other " syndromes" and to relate to those who do.

January 31

So this Saturday was my nineteenth birthday and it was pretty fun. I had a crazy weekend but it was weird having my birthday here at school. It was the first birthday I've ever had with out my parents. There was no family dinner or anything like that so it was kind of strange. It's sad i feel like every year my birthday gets less and less important. When i was little it was my favorite day and now its just a special day. I guess we just get less excited about some things as we get older. It's also gets harder to have fun.