What have you done for me lately?

Was thinking of a title for this post, and this song just popped into my head. Not exactly the topic, but it's a cool song nonetheless...


Anyway, I've been home a little over a month now, and I've been pretty busy, and I continue to be busy. It's a pretty cool and hectic time, I'm sure you can imagine. Christmas is only a couple days away, and I'll be traveling to New York with a daytrip to Canada and back to Maryland before going back to Tennessee/Kentucky for a couple weeks and then onto my new life in Ohio. Sometimes I really wish I would have been able to get out of the military in July like I was supposed to so I wouldn't have to take care of everything right now, right in the middle of the holidays, but I suppose everything happens for a reason, so I will try not to fret about it too much. :) Something I really do miss about being in Iraq though is being able to study Korean. Hopefully, when everything settles down a bit in about a month or two, I'll be able to study Korean again. I know I'm going to have to work hard so I don't become distracted. 

I've been posting quite a bit on Twitter lately. It's really quick and easy to just write down what I'm doing and what I'm thinking or whatever. It's sometimes good for me to post what I'm doing to just keep track of myself too. I can barely remember what I did yesterday, let alone last week, so if I am trying to remember a date that I did something, I maybe could search for it on Twitter and find out when I did whatever I was thinking about. Twitter's also great to find out what's going on in the community. Weather, traffic and event updates, oh my!  

Now I've got to go to bed. Not many big plans for tomorrow, but I might do a little last-minute Christmas shopping. 

An instance where the Internet is NOT helping me.

Usually, I can do just about anything I want or need to on the Internet, although right now, I'm really starting to think that looking online for a place to rent is a bad idea. Although the Internet does serve as a good starting point to know where to look for a place, it's really difficult to just pick and choose from just looking at pictures or plugging in addresses to Google Maps. I guess I'm just going to have to physically go to my new city and do things the old-fashioned way. Just like I found my last apartment. Too bad it's going to be FREEZING!

Pharmacies are hellish

Pharmacies are one of those places that I dread going to. No matter
how few people there are, it always seems like you have to wait
forever to get your prescriptions. I would much rather self-medicate
than wait at a pharmacy. At least the one I'm at now has decent chairs
and there aren't too many people waiting. Then again, that is just an
illusion anyway.

--
Sent from my mobile device

This title has no inspiration. Sorry.

Well, I've been back in the states now for about two weeks. I had a lot of plans when I was in Iraq, and I still do, but the plans that I've put into action so far haven't necessarily went as beautifully as I had pictured them. Yeah, I know, pretty much everything is easier said than done, but it sure can get depressing sometimes when things don't go just right. I'm okay though. :)

I've got about a week left until I go to my new city to start looking for a place to live. I'm really excited about that. I've also got plans to visit one of the schools I'm considering applying to there.

I have just a little time left before they'll let me out of the military, so I'm trying to get everything squared away for that.

Gotta spend time with my family too. Haven't seen most of them in way over a year now and I've got a little army of new babies in the family to greet. They all look really cute in all the pictures I've seen!

Haven't really had much time for reading or studying lately, and I worry about that sometimes. Now that I'm back in the states, I really don't want to let myself lose focus and just quit studying and reading completely, but right now, I guess, those things are kind of being pushed out of the way. I really hope that it's just because I'm not really settled right now, and whenever I complete my move to my new city and start my new life as a civilian, I'll snap back into shape and be a good, studious student.

I can't wait for this week to be over so I can travel again!

Finally. Home.

Well, I'm back home now, and I'm so excited. My trip here was kind of sucky, but it was definitely worth sitting on an extremely packed bus for 12+ hours and not sleeping more than an hour at a time for a 48 hour period.

 
 

I've got a lot of stuff to accomplish, and right now, things are going kind of slow and not always the way I want them to, but that's life, I guess.

 
 

One of the very first things I wanted to do when I got back was to get my cell phone turned back on. I have Sprint, so when I deployed my first time, I called them up and had them put my numbers on the military suspension program. When I got back, I called them back and they gave me back my numbers, no problem. This time, however, they said that their system canceled my numbers and gave them away. So, I have to get new phone numbers. That sucks, because everybody I know has the old phone numbers, but I guess this might be a good thing because it's forcing me to change, and I'll be getting phone numbers for Ohio, where I'll be living for the next few years. I have to wait a few days before I get my new Blackberry though. (I'm really excited about that! Yeah, I know I'm a geek!)

 
 

Whenever we redeploy, the first seven days consist of a bunch of briefings and stuff so we can get our paperwork and medical stuff squared away. Most of it is death by Powerpoint, but the days are generally short, so it's not too bad. After that week, we should be able to go on leave shortly thereafter.

 
 

Thanksgiving is coming up, and I really have no clue what I'll be doing for it. Since I'm spending Christmas with Sean's folks, I get to plan what we do for Thanksgiving, but with the way things are, I don't know what's going on with my leave, so the decision will probably be made like the day before Thanksgiving, and I might have a super long drive ahead of me. Ugh.

 
 

Gas is really surprising to me now. The lowest price right now in my town is about $1.73. It's kind of hard to believe what I saw on the news when I was in Iraq about how expensive it got earlier this year. When I left last year, I think it was somewhere in the $2.50-$3.00 range. We've been driving Sean's car a lot lately, and I'm keeping my truck at a friend's house, because it's kind of a waste to drive separate vehicles all the time, but I'm really happy about these gas prices.

 
 

There have been a lot of changes in the past year…I went to the PX yesterday and I was going to go to Clothing and Sales that was right next to the PX, and the building was GONE! I'm gonna have to search for it today, I guess. It looks like they've completed some major road work in my area as well. One road, I know they've been working on for about the past three years or more, and now it's all nice and finished!

 
 

The weather is going through a pretty icky cold spell, I guess. It's snowing all over the place and it's absolutely freezing here. I really would have preferred to come home when it was a bit warmer, but oh well. I'm home, and that's all that really matters, I guess.

 
 

Ah, that reminds me of shopping! Last night, I went clothes shopping for a little while and got myself a pink peacoat at Gap. It's really pretty, and I'm really excited about wearing bright colors again. I'm probably going to end up buying a lot of sweaters too. I didn't shop for too long because Sean gets bored with it quickly.

 
 

I went to Wal-mart my first night back to pick up some necessities, and I got really overwhelmed by the selection. After reading this book, the way I look at making choices has changed dramatically. I was shopping for a new deodorant, and the selection was so vast, I ended up spending way too much time trying to pick out the best one for the best price. Luckily, I realized fairly quickly that the excessive amount of choice was eventually going to make me give up and leave without making a choice, so I just picked a deodorant that was good enough, and I'm a lot happier with that.

 
 

Well, I better get going because I'm getting distracted by other shiny objects, so I better get going. I'll be posting a lot more fun stuff now that I am back in the "real world!" I can't say enough how happy I am to finally be home!

Wannabe Extrovert

I'm a rather introverted and quiet person. Especially when I meet someone for the first time or if I don't know them very well. I'd much rather listen than speak. Someone asked me one time that if there was anything that I would change about myself if I could. I didn't have to think for very long. It wasn't anything like being skinny or pretty or anything like that. I would just want to be articulate.

It amazes me that I'm as interested in languages and people as much as I am because I am horrible at expressing myself. My mind works faster than my mouth or my pen, so I stumble on my words a lot and sometimes when I'm saying something, some kind of connection between my head and my mouth gets cut and then the word I'm about to say just doesn't want to come out of my mouth for some reason. Also, I have perpetual writer's block. If you have been reading this blog any, you can probably tell (yeah, I go on terrible tangents frequently as well).

I have been complemented about my writing style before, but I think my insecurities about speaking and writing really hurt me sometimes. I know this is something I must overcome somehow. Just how I'm supposed to do it is still a mystery to me, but I'm trying bit by bit to come up with ways to help get better at expressing my thoughts and emotions. How about these for ideas?

 
 

Ideas for breaking out of my shell:

Volunteer for charity or some kind of event

"People who volunteer are 42% more likely than people who don't to say they are very happy with their lives."

Read to children at a library (Reading is Fundamental!)

Force myself to write on this blog, no matter what it is or how crappy I feel it is.

Be more forward about meeting people and making friends.

 
 

After listening to the life stories of a lot of different people, I've decided that up until now at least, I've led a very sheltered and uneventful life. Sure, I've had good times and bad times like everybody else, but no matter how bad you think you've got it, there's somebody out there that has had it worse than you. I've been so very lucky to have had such a boring life.

A part of me wants to keep living this boring existence, but then another part of me wants to break away and live for adventure (whatever that is). Soon, I will begin to undergo a major lifestyle change. I am anticipating that change to be quite difficult at times, but at the same time I'm really expecting it to be quite liberating. Oh, I'm so excited! It'll be just like I'm reborn and I get to start all over again! Of course, I will be coming with some baggage, but who doesn't? Dealing with life's baggage is what makes life interesting, I think. I can never seem to fit it all into one neat and tiny container. Maybe that's why I like boxes so much. (Yeah, that's totally off topic, but I've been trying to pack my bags for the past couple days and I still have a bunch of crap that's not fitting in my bag as nicely as I would like.)

So I've decided that a major part of my new life is going to be spent working on trying to be more extroverted and adventurous. Maybe I should decide on religion as well…um…Religion'll have to be another posting. :)

 
 

Here's some touching quotes about change. Just the type of changes that I will soon be going through…

 
 

All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another.  - Anatole France

 
 

They must often change, who would be constant in happiness or wisdom.  - Confucius

 
 

If you do not change the direction in which you are going, you will end up where you are headed.   - Confucius

 
 

 
 

 
 

Thoughts on the Election

So, Obama won the election. Good for him. I don't know how good it will be for the country, but we'll just have to wait and see. I would have said the same thing if McCain had won. I'm really not the political type, so it didn't really make much difference to me who won, although I did think that Obama would be the winner either way. As far as I can tell, that's pretty much how the presidency goes: switching back and forth between the two parties every two cycles or so. Four years isn't really long enough probably for the public to get sick of seeing your face on television, so they reelect you for a second term and then by the end of the second term, the people are sick of you and your party being in the hot seat, so they give the presidency to the other party and so on. Maybe that's why people think politics is so exciting, because it's so dynamic and volatile.

 
 

I just really hope things get better for the country, from what they've been. I know a lot of people will either blame or praise Obama for pulling troops out of Iraq, but I think a lot of the troops would be going home from Iraq soon anyway, despite who's president. However, without any big advancement in other sectors such as technology or industry after we go home, like things that happened around the ends of WWI and WWII, I think we will probably be in for a bit of recession or depression anyway.

 
 

Hope for the best but prepare for the worst, right? Good luck, Mr. President.

그냥 Rambling

I don't really know what to write, but I'm going to write anyway and post this. I know it's being a little reckless, but I don't care.

 
 

Every time I think of writing a blog, I almost never know an exact topic, so most of my postings are ramblings like this one.

 
 

You know when you meet someone for the first time, and they just give you a bad feeling? There's this person that I know that has given me that feeling. This person has not spoken more than ten words to me I think, but from quietly observing their behavior towards other people, I can't help but wonder how these types of people survive in the world. Always disrespectful toward superiors and foul-mouthed. Also very confrontational. I'm not really one to judge people, but I just can't see a person like that succeeding in the world. Does this person even know how to smile or be thankful? I may never know.

 
 

Should I even post this? Maybe. Maybe not.

 
 

For the last few days, I really haven't had a lot to do…maybe it's been the last week…I don't know because my days seem to be running together. I keep promising myself that I'm not going to let myself be this dormant when I go home. I really hope I can keep that promise, because this is no way to live.

 
 

The weather is fairly nice now. A few days ago, it was cold and rainy, and I really wished it'd clear up. I really hope it stays this way.

 
 

Today is election day in the states. I voted. May the best candidate win. I am not a political person at all, in fact, I pretty much loathe anything to do with politics, but I feel that voting is pretty much a duty as a citizen and it must be done. And as a woman, my ancestors fought so hard for the right to vote that I feel that voting is an act of respect toward them. I do regret not being more educated about the candidates than I am, but from reading various news articles about the election, I figure I am probably a lot more informed about the candidates than a lot of people who don't even know who the current president is.

 
 

Well, I can't really think of anything else to write, so I guess I better post this before I get frustrated with it and just delete it.

Halloween

So. Today's Halloween. Hmm…Maybe I'll go as a Soldier. What do you think? Oh…but then I have to go somewhere, right? Maybe I'll go to the chow hall. Maybe not…I'm kind of afraid everybody else will steal my idea. Oh well. I'll just have to be more original next year, I guess. Any ideas?

Song of the Day: "Fool in the Rain" by Led Zeppelin

Today has been the first rainy day in I can't remember how long. When it rains here, everything turns to mud. The walk to and from work is terrible. It makes me wish I lived closer to work like the rest of my coworkers because they don't have to walk through all the dirt-turned-mud. I do like watching the lightning though. When I walked to work tonight, the sky was angrily flashing a million shades of purple and hot white. Just as long as I get to watch it from afar, thunder and lightning is actually really enjoyable for me. I think it probably used to scare me sometimes, but now not-so-much.

So, in the spirit of it being a rainy day, today's song of the day is "Fool in the Rain" by Led Zeppelin. This is probably my all-time favorite Led Zeppelin song.



Lyrics


One of my all-time favorite bands, Maná, covered this song in Spanish several years back for a Led Zeppelin tribute album. Here's a video of Alex and Fher talking about the song.






Lyrics (Letras)

Here's some other cool facts about "Fool in the Rain."

Song of the Day: "You" by Raheem DeVaughn

I discovered this song back in May of 2007. I think I was searching on Youtube for videos of the Korean pop star, Rain, to figure out who he was and if he really deserved to be in People Magazine's list of the World's Most Beautiful People. Turns out he probably does deserve it, based on this video…Anyway, the song totally rocks.

Lyrics | You lyrics

Check out more Raheem DeVaughn songs and his music videos on his Myspace page here.

Song of the Day: About

When I have nothing else to blog about, I'm going to blog about one of my favorite songs or artists. I have a bunch of songs on my iPod that I haven't gotten around to listening to yet, and my favorite setting is to put it on shuffle. Sometimes I come across a song that's awesome that I haven't heard yet or haven't really listened to the words closely before and it kind of strikes a chord with me. I'll post the song with the lyrics and hopefully a video or a link to the video. Enjoy.

Finally! A New Layout

Ok, I'm not completely satisfied with this layout and there's a bunch of bugs in it, but I think I'm done messing with it for a while. The archive button and search box at the top don't work, but I don't really know how to fix that yet, so if somebody knows, please comment and help me out! Thanks! Ah, and please let me know what you think of the layout.

우정 밖에 바라는게 없어요. 그냥 편하고 친하게 지내려고요.

There was a T-shirt I saw not long ago that said, "I'm shy, not anti-social. You can talk to me." I thought I should probably get that shirt.

 
 

I like chatting on the Internet sometimes. I've been chatting with people all over the world for probably the better part of ten years, off and on. Ever since I started using the Internet. I've met some really cool people through chat, although I have never really met any of them in real life. I think part of me has always been a little paranoid about talking to maybe the wrong person who will end up being a real weirdo or worse.

 
 

It's hard though. A lot of times, I go into chat rooms because I'm bored, and it's really difficult to find people that are actually interested in having a half-way intelligent conversation. I've never really been one for voice or video chat, so a lot of people shy away from me when I tell them I don't have that capability. I'm even a little scared about revealing my picture or receiving pictures of people. A lot of the conversations I've had with people in just regular chat rooms have been difficult. It sometimes seems like the only people online are foreign men who either can't speak English or they can't type and all they want is cybersex or they just tell you how much they love you and how pretty you are even though you haven't even shown them your picture yet. It's really fake feeling, and going into chat rooms when I'm bored is probably not a good idea anyway because this kind of interaction just makes me even more bored.

 
 

I think that the key though is to find a niche market that you are interested in, and you'll have a better chance of meeting some like-minded people. These days, I've been spending some time on Livemocha.com, a social language learning community where you can make friends that speak the language you're learning and you can chat with them and do language exercises and get feedback from the community on them. Sure, I've talked to a few weirdos on there, but I think the majority of my "friends" on Livemocha are pretty cool people who, like me, are trying to expose themselves to languages.

 
 

At this point in my Internet life, with social networking and knowledge sharing so important to the very existence of the Internet, I think I might be willing to meet some of my new found "friends" in real life. I've always been kind of a shy and quiet person when I first meet somebody, but maybe after chatting with these people for a while, I will have opened up to a few enough so that when we'd meet it wouldn't really be like meeting somebody for the very first time and not knowing anything about them. The way I see it, I probably have a lot more to gain from the experience than to lose…and hey…I might get some yummy meals or good sightseeing guides out of the deal. So…wanna be friends? :)

I think I've fixed one of my major problems with this...

My blog titles have been messed up for a long time. I think I may have fixed it, so this is a test...

Getting a new layout is going to take a lot of work!

Well, I found a bunch of cool layouts, but I couldn't get any of them to work the way I wanted them to, so I'm reverting back to my old layout for the time being and I'll try again soon. Grr.

Song of the Day: "Home" by Michael Bublé and Blake Shelton




Lyrics | Home lyrics

Today, as I was listening to shuffle mode on my iPod at work, I came across this song by Blake Shelton and it really touched me and made me want to go home even more. After doing a little bit of research, I realized that this song is originally a Michael Bublé song. I don't know which version I like better because they're both really good and the whole reason I like the song is the lyrics, but I think I like Blake Shelton's video better. Check out Michael Bublé's video here.

----------------
Now playing: Michael Bublé - Home
via FoxyTunes

Ok, I've finally decided to change my layout. It's a work in progress.

Got this in my email earlier today, and it does a pretty good job of summing up my life these days. The things I had just a minute ago tend to be thoughts, not necessarily concrete things though...now, what was I doing?

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Upcoming plans for this blog

I knew when I did it that deleting a whole blog just because of one person's negativity towards me was probably not the best decision, but I felt a need for a drastic change at the time anyway, and that was probably the most drastic thing I could have done at the time that didn't damage me very much.

 

I've been thinking a lot about what direction I want this blog to take in the future. I'm generally not the most creative person in the world, but I occasionally have the overwhelming urge to create something. I have the urge, yes, but actually starting and finishing a project tends to be very difficult for me.

 

Right now, I'm writing this posting from my Gmail account, and I'm not even sure if I'll be able to finish it or whether I'll just let it be filed away into my drafts folder. If it actually even gets to my Blogger account, that'll be a miracle.

 

Ha. It's a little ironic to me that it's always so easy for me to write about my insecurities about writing, but so difficult for me to write about much of anything else.

 

Anyway...I must stay on topic, and my original motivation for this post was to talk about my upcoming plans for this blog. I'm planning on getting a sweet smartphone when I get back home. I'll probably end up getting a BlackBerry of some sort, probaby a Curve. I'm making Sean get the same one, although he's not as in love with gadgetry as I am. I've never really used the camera/video camera on my phones before, but I'm going to make a concentrated effort to make more videos and take more pictures with my phone. I'm also going to figure out how to post those videos and pics to my blog here and to Youtube and Flickr and whatever other service I can.

 

The general subject of this will be my regular life, I'm thinking. I'm hoping that this will make me try and be more interesting. (Not to say that I'm not interesting already, of course. ^^)

 

I also want to do something about this layout I've got here. I've had this same layout since I started this blog, more than two years ago. Blogger has had a bunch of updates and now you can add a bunch of cool stuff to your layout, and with my current layout, I'd have to completely redo it in order to try out any of the cool new tools. So, someday, I'm gonna have to take some serious time and change the layout.

 

Plans, plans and more plans. I'm really excited to start putting these plans into action. My life is REALLY going to take a drastic turn very soon, and I'm SO excited about it...just being stuck in this planning phase is really starting to drive me a little crazy, I think. I really hope the next few months go by quickly but slow enough for me to thoroughly enjoy all the good parts!

 

------ Listening to "Pinhead" by The Ramones