My Mind is not here

I don't know where my mind has gone. But it is not here. Maybe it is still sleeping. I should still be sleeping. There is nothing like sleep to get rid of a blue funk, to avoid homework and to help you stay awake when you have to go to class much later. I should not have stayed up till after 2 am. But I did. Remarkably, I have remained awake all day. I think it was the black tea. I have discovered it to taste good and have caffiene. Works quite well since I cannot have coffee with icecream for a while. I found an interesting read online to keep myself amused during history. Most of my fellow blogonauts have entered a hiatus of writing. I have a new blogonaut friend. Hooray. But that sad part of it all is that I stayed awake for all of class and didn't miss anything. Atleast I don't think I did. Just another discussion about just another atheist philosopher. (Thanks for that observation, Jon.) Now in Morality, the teacher likes to talk. And I can blog. We are supposed to be doing a presentation right now. But he's talking, and killing class time, so I think I'll be ok with it. Somehow, I think Plato is not gonna have as much of an impact here as it did at TAC. I've gotten what I need out of it, and no one will get much out of this class either. Happy Plato and Aristotle reading day!

Rain in February?

-It’s turned to snow now. Yesterday was nice weather. Colorado type weather. Warm, not windy, made inside feel stifling and hot, and windows were open all over. The fog moved in, and then the rain clouds. By the time I walked outside this morning, the ground was soaked and the rain continued all day. Sometime this evening, it turned to sleet, and now its snow. White, fluffy snow, coating everything, driving down through the glow of the streetlights and flies up your nose as you breathe in. Underneath all this white fluffy stuff is a layer of slush and water. It makes it fun for sliding around corners in your car, but sliding with the soles of your shoes isn't so easy. The snow is too wet, too heavy, and half the time it's not snow. If it cools down tonight, all the ice that forms will be fun in a bad way. But if it gets more snow and is all nice and fluffy, then snowboarding at Mt. Kato is going to be a grand adventure! We shall see. But it’s still odd to have seen rain in Minnesota in February, especially above all the dead brown grass and dwindling dirty snowdrifts.

In Minnesota They Play Broomball

Broomball, dear children, is a wonderful sport involving a broom and a ball. It is played on a sheet of ice such as a hockey rink or a frozen pond. The point of the game is to hit the ball with the broom and make it go into the goal. Who ever does this the most wins. (Note - this game is nearly always played in teams, so the team with the most goals wins.) Regular brooms are preferred for this sport, though people have considered using push brooms and there are some that would argue the advantage to being able to shove the ball further ahead while running down the ice. They are also useful for goalies and defensemen trying to clear the ball out of the area in front of the net. However, push brooms are rather inefficient in closed quarters and crowded spaces, thus the regular broom prevails in most broomball games. They have made special shoes for broomball that have special suction cups on the bottom of them, making it easier to run and maintain balance on the ice, which become slipperier as the game goes on. Most people prefer not to wear these shoes or spend the money on them, and spend most of their time running and sliding and covering great distances quickly. The art of sliding, falling, and using the boards or other people to stop one's self is a skill highly valued in the game of broomball. Though broomball is not yet an accepted Olympic sport, many Minnesotans hope fervently that it will become one in the coming years. If it does, you can be assured that every member of the United States Olympic Broomball team will hail from a small town in Minnesota.

In Minnesota They Have Ice Storms

Ice storms, my dear children, are atmospheric occurrences when ice sheets of varying sizes drop out of the sky and wreak havoc on the poor populations below. Minnesotans are dependant on ice storms to furnish the surfaces on which they play their favorite sports: Broomball and Ice Hockey. (No one in Minnesota figure skates; it’s not a real sport) Indeed, these fine creatures believe they have Mother Nature so well trained that she will never disobey, and will continually dump arena-sized sheets of ice into the same outdoor locations year after year. Why bother making your own ice, really, when the sky can just drop six months' supply into your outdoor arena? The problem arises when the ice doesn't fall where it is supposed to. As you can imagine, sheets of ice six inches thick and the size of an Olympic ice rink can cause quite a few problems and snarl traffic quite admirably. This, my friends, is why, when a Minnesotan complains about ice storms, you'd better listen closely and take them seriously!

Its Perfect Weather for Sailing

I went to bed at 4 this morning. At that time, you could already hear the wind whipping around the end of the building which is our wing and shrieking into the first floor vortex under our window where it was held captive by the corner of the building. Silly me, I thought it would dissipate by morning. Waking up at noon, the wind had not abated, nor was it displaying any signs of doing so. According to the internet {hooray weatherbug?} wind speeds were around 20 mph with a wind chill factor of 19 degrees gusting at 38 mph. YEAH RIGHT! That's down in Mankato, 10 miles away, down hill, away from the junction of the two rivers, and in a calmer area. On top of this hill, {sorry, you can't convice me that this is the "edge of a valley"} gusts had to be in the 60's. My baggy JNCO pants threatened to act as sails sweeping me off my feet, balancing the lift of my unzipped vest that flared out behind me like a pair of wings. Getting out of a car was fun, well, requiring a lot of energy at least. I didn't even have to close the door behind me. Not to worry, it isn't so hard to walk in wind. A slight lean will compensate for any balance inequalities. Simply beware when turning corners. That's when you will fall over! This miserable weather has made many girls fearful of walking outside and across the parking lot to the Caf. So, what do my roommate and I do? We open all the windows and watch our posters pull away from the walls, our pictures bend in half, and our plants nearly uproot. We must be weather elementals! Running shrieking in the rain, slipping, sliding and taking pictures in the cold, and inviting the wind to come inside and play, we aren't your run of the mill beings. All I have to say is: Its fun! But I wouldn't want to live a life of it. I will be like the National Guard, on call to play with the most serious of weather.

Just Get Away for a Little While?

The phrase of commercially influenced persons who begin to feel oppressed by their situation, "I need to get away from it all" causes warning signs to spring into the minds of psychiatrists and dollar signs to dance in the eyes of travel agents. Born of a generation constantly in motion and convinced of the possibility of buying one's happiness, escaping 'reality' seems to be the primary motivation in those actions of a person that deviate from the routine. This "need to get away" is also reminiscent of repression. Obviously being a modern trend, these tendencies and desires among humans bring fear to the heart of the less than casual. Will men eventually get to the point where nothing is faced up to, responsibility is taken for no situation, and diversion, vacation, and fiction are the primary pursuits of mankind? I, for one, would derive no pleasure from "having fun all the time." Yet how many do you know who would revel in a world in which the papers never had to be written, books never had to be read, alarms never had to be set for 8am, there was no drinking age, no driving age, plane tickets were free, and Margaritaville was an everyday place? Procrastination is like masturbation. In the end, you are only screwing yourself. Yeah, but its fun while it lasts. And what if it lasts forever?