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Saturday, September 11, 2010
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CommuniTEE College (Part 1)
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Oh look, I found this neglected blog, left on the wayside. Sorry about that. Facebook makes it so easy to post dumb things easily, and without going into to much depth, which is right up my alley.
This past June, I decided that although I was still learning stuff at home, I could learn a lot more if I started college. So that's what I did. I took my GED and enrolled at Middlesex Community College in Lowell. I'm not a full time student, maybe I will be next semester, but at this point I am only taking two classes, English and math. Those are both fairly straight forward, and I don't think I will have any problem with either of them.
On September 7th, the school had an orientation for anyone who was interested. I really wasn't interested, so I opted out and ended up going with my sister Cass and my niece to a doctors appointment in Boston. I think I made the right decision, because instead of being dragged around Lowell with a bunch of college students at 9:30 in the morning, I got to see two Big Apple Circus clowns terrify and excite a group of little kids with eye problems and giant glasses. My niece was a bit wary of the clowns, even though they were blowing bubbles, which she considers one of the greatest things ever.
Wednesday September 8th was my first day of classes. Lowell is "fixing" one of the main bridges in the city, and will be "fixing" it until 2012(!) so the 3 mile drive to school took about 40 minutes, so that was lame, but I got there on time, and that's all that matters.
Although my decision not to go to orientation seemed good at the time, there was one thing I realized I really could have learned from it, that was, of course, the location of the bathrooms. I had a moment of panic, and would have felt like a totally dweeby-n00blet asking where the bathrooms were, and luckily I found them, crisis averted. I have a two hour break between my classes, so I checked out the school library a bit and then went and sat in the park for a long time. It was beautiful, and the weather was perfect. So that was most of my first day, we didn't really learn anything in class, mostly that our cellphones needed to be off, and that textbooks are stinking expensive.
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added by bofishie @ 8:42 PM
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CommuniTEE College. Part 2
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Day two at MCC was on Friday the 10th, and it started out nicely, taking only about 20 minutes to get to the school, rather then the 40 minutes it took two days before. We just went by a different route then the one we took on Wednesday, and drove practically all the way around the city, instead of through it.
English is my first class, we have maybe 22 people, and a nice, fairly young teacher. It was the 2nd class, so we didn't really end up doing any learning, except for about each other. The teacher gave us a few questions to ask the person next to us, it was an interview of sorts. The questions were simple things like your name, where you live, what you're interested in studying, and the weirdest thing you ever ate. My partner was, strangely enough, a lady who has recently started going to my church. For those of you who don't know, I don't have a very large church, it's small enough that I know everyone by name, but I didn't know this lady's name, I knew her kids and husband's names, because the kids had come to a childrens program we do at our church, but I'd only talked to her once, and hadn't had a chance to ask her name. But we recognized each other before class, and talked a bit, so we sat next to each other and ended up interviewing each other. Heather is from Dracut, she is coming back to school to become an RN, and the weirdest food she ever ate was pigs feet, and she likes them. I am Anastasia, I'm also from Dracut, I want to transfer to a different college come fall and go for Special Education, and the weirdest I ate was gefilte fish at a Jewish Passover meal, and I thought it was disgusting. Another girl in the class quickly stated that she was Jewish, and it is an acquired taste, but I think no matter how many times I ate it, I would still be grossed out.
Some of the weirdest things people had ever eaten included ostrich, pond water, and snake.
There were a few other weird foods worth mentioning. One guy who was originally from the Dominican Republic was talking about a soup, I can't remember the name, but the main ingredient was cow intestines, and another guy in the room was quick to mention "That stuff smells NASTY!" Someone said they had heard of something similar, but it had sheep intestines instead, The guy who had the soup asked "Wouldn't sheep intestines be considered haggis?" and our teacher was quick to say "No, haggis is from a lamb." Which is a rather absurd thing to say, and if you don't understand why, please, try not to be so dumb.
One kid recently came from an Asian country, and sadly I didn't heard which because some people were talking, but he said the weirdest food he ever ate was ghosts. Everyone kind of looked around the room at each other with a "What?!" sort of face, until another guy said "Do you mean...goat?" And yes, he did. He said it tasted like chicken and was very yummy.
Our group is very diverse, which I like, and everyone seems to be getting along very well so far, yet there is one kid who sort of stands out. For this kids sake I am going to call him Trevor, that's not his name, but it might as well be. Now Trevor really confused me the first time I saw him, I figured that he either grew up in the boonies of West Virginia, or was homeschooled. He didn't have an accent, so I don't think he's from down south, and the homeschool thing I'm still not sure about. We were going around the room, doing our interviews, and we finally got around to Trevor's partner. "This is Trevor, he's from Lowell, and the weirdest thing he's ever eaten is dog..." At this point I could see a lot of jaws dangling open, the teacher included, but she recovered and replied with "Dog? Where did you have that?" And here we all are thinking it was in some third world country or something, and he just replies "In Centerville." Everyone's jaws hit the table. The teacher, flabbergasted asked, "Is that, is that like...a restaurant or something??" To which Trevor says, "No, Centerville in Lowell. My friends friend made it into soup, and I had some."
The whole class was in shock, I kind of wanted to laugh, but I tried not to. My teacher just sort of stared for a minute and then said "Well, I'm not roasting my pug, next group please!"
 An artist rendition of Trevor, apparently he is close cousins to Edward Scissorhands. (Click to enlarge for more Trevor goodness!)
I'm all for eating meat, I have no problem with eating venison, or moose, or bear or anything like that, but this was just bizarre and freakish. Why would you admit to eating dog? Why would you even eat dog if you knew that's what it was?!!? I'm pretty positive I wouldn't, unless I was about to die of starvation.
Lowell is full of strange people, and community college pulls out a strange selection of those strange people. But I'm not complaining, I enjoy it, and I got a really good laugh out of this strange kid.
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added by bofishie @ 5:06 PM
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Tuesday, July 07, 2009
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I've recently been reading through the Fetafilter archives. The comments are rather confusing with the ever changing names, and bad spelling. One comment in particular stood out to me.
"Feta filter, the local online hangout for guys who cant afford low riders to fit in on the New York street alleys.
CHaz | 08.25.04 - 12:31 pm |"
And one post from October 2004 sounded vaguely familiar.
"Mmmmm...had SPAM this morning. Wonder who else in this town ate SPAM for breakfast? Betya we were the only ones. thus voiced
Mrs A @ 9:43 AM"
No one seems to have changed much since 2004.
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added by bofishie @ 11:00 AM
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Saturday, September 27, 2008
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Strange dream
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So I don't know what I did or what I ate last night, but whatever it was, man, it messed me up.
After drifting off to sleep, or dropping off the cliff of awake-ness into the dark sea of sleep, I started dreaming, and the dream went something like this,
So it is just me and my mom, walking down the street. "Tessa! The stock market just dumped and we need to get Raymond some new clothes! Like that Hollister hoodie you are wearing!" Mom said as she skidded to a stop, "Where do you think we can find some? Oh! Lets go to the Holdsworth's and see if they will give us any!"
The Holdsworths are a family who use to go to my Church, their daughter, Courtney, is one of my best friends, and is a walking talking Hollister advertisement, and she had a brother, Cameron, who is just about Ray's age.
So suddenly, we are there, and Mom says "Humm, it doesn't look like anyone is home." But she goes in anyways. We started wandering around the house, looking for Mrs. Holdsworth. We get upstairs to a bright pink and lime green bedroom. My mom asks, "Is this Cam's room?"
Humm, let me think.
We continued on, eventually finding it, and Mom starts digging thorough drawers. We found nothing Hollister for my brother, so we went downstairs, and attempted to get into the kitchen. The door was blocked for some reason, who knows why, so we went into the bathroom, which was just next door to the kitchen. The bathroom had a giant window in the wall that opened over the kitchen sink. Odd design for a bathroom, but this is a dream, it's not suppose to make sense. There standing over the sink, is Mrs. Holdsworth, Mom starts talking to her, and then gets on the subject of the stock market dumping. Mrs. H quickly asks if we are in need of any Hollister clothing, because she has WAY to many, and she would be willing to mail us a ton, so Ray can actually be in style, sorta. Huh?!? Once again, dreams aren't suppose to make sense.
My mother, now satisfied that Raymond will no long be a dweeb(in a good way), marches on out of the house. I look around, Courtney's house is now in the middle of a desert, and there is a racing track behind their house, a bike racing track. I see lots of people riding around on various types of bikes, like some that have tires that are probably about the size of monster truck tires with seats that bounce up and down, and some normal bikes, which people are riding top, bowling. We watched for a few minutes, and then I had to leave, because I was going to Nova Scotia. I said goodbye to my Mum, gave her a hug, and then walked off. At super sonic speed or something, because BOOM, I was in the Moody's, the missionaries I had really stayed with(in real life) in Nova Scotia, home. It was different from their real house, it looked like it had been made in the past five years or so, and they had a HUGE flat screen TV. I was sitting on the sofa, when Hannah, the oldest and most hyper of the three Moody girls, came up, and started talking at super sonic speed, I was talking to her when a rather large woman, in very bizarre clothing came walking up, and with an extremely thick southern accent says "Who are you?!?!" I didn't know what to answer, so I ran to the door that led to another room, which in turn, lead outside.
Once I got into the other room, I stopped, it was a lot darker then the room I had just been in, and blocking the door, was a weird chamber thing, with glass sides and wires falling out from it everywhere. Inside I saw two people, one was Courtney and the other looked sort of familiar, but I wasn't sure who it was. Court waved to me and said "Look at this thing! Its so cool! It can make you talk in a crazy New England accent! All you need to do is wear these PJ pants and then turn the machine on!" I looked down, she and her friend was wearing pink Pajama pants with words written all over them. She quickly switched the chamber on, and she and her friend started talking very very fast, in a very strong New England accent.
After a few minutes of me watching, they switched it off, and walked out. Courtney friend was no longer wearing the Pj pants, but was instead wearing a giant, poofy, pink, flowered princess dress. She ran up to me, and practically knocked me down saying, "DO YOU REMEMBER ME!?!? DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM?!!?" I seemed to be having trouble speaking, because all I could say was "Uhh...umm...no?" Courtney quickly said" You know her! This is Courtney! Her name is Courtney because I would never talk to anyone who didn't have that name."
I just kinda ignored them, and walked thought the chamber and out the door. Once I was outside, It was bright and sunny, the church I had gone up to on my missions trip(in real life, that is) was right there. I looked around and noticed that I knew(of knew of) a good deal of people who were walking around here, I saw the Cooper family, with probably twenty more kids then they actually have, Beka and Jenny Fearon, and Stephen Blake and Adequate Tim, who kept saying "I'm adequate, I'm adequate..." over and over again.
All of a sudden Nick Hajj comes running up "We need to get Andrew and Samantha there coffee!" In case you didn't know, I went with Nick, Andrew, and Samantha, to Nova Scotia. Panic washed over me "Quick! Lets go to the coffee shop!" So we started running, I saw more people I knew, Gretchen and Elisa Hilpert, but I couldn't stop to say hello, I could only wave, Kaeleigh Sparkman, and even more people.
When we were maybe two blocks away from the coffee shop, which was attached to a very large mall, Nick froze, and said "Oh no! Sid is in front of the door! We have to go around the long way through the building!" Sid is a guy from my sportsmans club, he is pretty strange, so avoiding him was something I probably have done in real life. We started running again, but to the other end of the building. We got inside and kept on running, when I looked to my left to try to hear what Nick was saying, but he wasn't there anymore, Lauren Sparkman was in his place instead! This didn't seem to surprise me, probably because it was a dream, and only things like Andrew and Samantha being without coffee could scared me then.
We ran past a McDonalds inside, and some lady with a southern accent said "How'd y'all get in here?"
We just kept running. Finally we made it into the little coffee shop, it was a very empty shop, they only sold coffee and muffins. Hot coffee, iced coffee, and blueberry muffins, that's all they sold. There was only one person there, he had bright red hair, that stuck up in some places and curled insanely in others, he had a very high pitched voice, made lots of funny faces, and had a very annoying laughter. Lauren and I kept copying his faces and then laughing hysterically. He though we were insane, but he gave up the coffee anyways. As he was going through the cash register I saw a state quarter, probably the coolest state quarter ever. I'd never seen anything like it, I wanted it. The guy was going to give it to me, I was so excited! But then, he turned to grab something stupid and irrelevant and dumped a whole bottle of glue on it. My beautiful quarter, ruined! I started bawling my eyes out. What a jerk! What a careless jerk! Why did he have glue on his store counter?!
I then woke up. Anybody know a good shrink?
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added by bofishie @ 8:08 AM
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Thursday, February 07, 2008
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Oreos, Pants, and Jane Austin
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So, the other day, I thought to myself "how long has it been since my last oreo?" The answer was, way to long. But there are some great people in this world, and one is super amazing. She got me a whole package of double stuff oreos!! And then I spill red juice on her white sweater...sorry Kathy.
Today I had school and the likes, Mom, Dad, and little Ray Ray are in Boston, so its Ted and me, and Drew and Amanda "studying". Teddy is playing with his Indiana Jones lego set that he got for his 7th(he's getting old) Birthday, which was yesterday, and I, like always am sitting at my computer, wondering what interesting things my friends might be doing, that would keep them away from the computer, and me.
The only information that I have on this is that Emily is wishing everyone a happy Thursday, and Kevin is around, and claims that if I leave a message, he might be there. I mean there are various others who I could talk to, but I freak people out a lot, and then we don't have anything to say, so I will let them be for now. Now heres something interesting, FedEx just pulled up, and the delivery guy is at our door! Ding Dong! I will let Andrew get it.
Okay, so maybe that wasn't very interesting. Anyways, so you probably remember the oreos from up there ^. How could you possibly forget! I mean, come on! best.cookie.ever. So I decided to eat my daily ration of oreos.
So I open the drawer, slide the package out, grab two cookies, and close the drawer. But I forgot a step, Me, being the fool that I am, forgot to slid the package in. I kinda yelped, then opened the drawer, shoved the package in, and slammed it closed. I couldn't bare to look,or to see how many cookies had been spared the misery of being smushed in a desk drawer.So I waited a few minutes, ate my two cookies, and sang along badly to some country song that i barely knew. Eventually I had to face the music, with tears in my eyes I slowly opened the drawer, and peeled back the cover of the oreos (Oh, and BTW they come in awesome packages now) and quickly surveyed the damage...
Oh! I just realized that right now (1.42) Becki is probably still in school, which is why she isn't on the computer entertaining me.
Random awesome fact about me! Did you know, that I am attempting to take up taxidermy? Yes, I am aware that I am a freak, even ask Jamie! But seriously though, its such a cool hobby! I am so cool, I went into my library and checked out three instructional books, two on beading techniques, and one on taxidermy. Now how rad is that!? I will be able to mount animals, then make them jewelery!
Anyways, back to my story, So it turns out, only one cookie had been harmed, and it was easily fixed, it was only that the cookie had gotten separated from the cream! So I decided to eat it, I could have easily fixed it, if i had teddy lick the cream, I could have stuck them together again, but I thought that eating it was the best way to go. And of course, since even numbers are best, I had to eat another one.
For about three or four days, every time I spun my chair, or shook it around a lot, I would hear this phantom jingling noise, it was really bugging me, because I couldn't tell where it was coming from. Finally today, I lost it, and started looking all over my desk, on the floor around my chair, and everywhere else imaginable, and then I finally noticed it was the button on Ray Rays pants that I have been meaning to patch for the past week. Who knew pants could make me that insane?
In other news, my phone needed to get more minutes, so it wouldn't expire and lose all peoples numbers, and my number. So now I have approximately a zillion million minutes, and think that will add up to a lot of text messages.
I am very excited because in a few weeks, I will be seeing a lot of my muffins(meaning good friends in this case)! Some of them are going to come laser tagging with me and my teen group, and some are going to come to my house, and I can't wait!
Me and Mom have been watching the COMPLETE Jane Austen, which means, all(or most?) of her books, turned into movies, every Sunday night for a while, and just last Sunday was one about Jane herself "Miss Austen regrets" which I think is code name for "Hurry up and finish Pride and Prejudice before it comes on next week and you regret not finishing it!" So I am trying to cram that in, along with the three other books I am reading, and the four other books that have to be back at the library fairly soon. Oh dear.
and I am pretty sure thats all I have to say, this is much longer then intended, but oh well, you people need to be informed. Until next time,
this is Sergeant Anastasia Anganes, Master Taxidermist, signing off
Also, I have Oreo cream on my pants. deeeeelicious.
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added by bofishie @ 10:31 AM
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Thursday, December 06, 2007
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Muffins!
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Okay, so two muffins are in a oven, right? One muffin says to the other muffin, "Gee, it's getting hot in here!" and the other muffin says, "WOW A TALKING MUFFIN!!"
Wow, that joke is pretty awesome right? I read it and it made me think of Muffin day(August 17th), which is the coolest holiday, ever. I Wish it could be muffin day every day, but alas it cannot it only comes once a year, and that is a very special time, to be cherished by all. Last year, for the first muffin day EVER, I was with the Cromptons, and that was awesome! Emily and Paul helped me write music for my Muffin Day song, I wrote the lyrics though, all six verses. Oh that amazing muffiny night we had muffins, they were amaxing. There were chocolate chip, blueberry, apple, and plain(if I remember correctly) and they were GREAT!! The next morning (post muffin day) we had muffins and cereal for breakfast, and then we went up the the Orths for our family reunion! But no one there was really in the holiday spirit, but thats okay! Because I was! Yeah! So in the Christmas spirit, I decided to put up some muffiny goodness. Enjoy!
Here is a list of state muffins!
Hawaii- The Coconut Muffin
Massachusetts- The Corn Muffin
Minnesota- The Blueberry Muffin
New York- The Apple Muffin
Washington- The Blueberry Muffin (again?)
You would think, out of 50 states there would be more then 5 state muffins. Well I am just proud to say my state has a state muffin
Here is a oat applesauce recipe that I have never tried, but think sounds good
In reading up about muffins, I read about some idiot who wanted to make "all-top muffins"
"However, the reality of muffin physics prevented the fad from getting very far"
Who would ever dream of making half muffins? its like trying to live your life with a half a heart or one lung! Or a half a muffin!
Well, Thats all I have to say about muffins(not really), I hope everyone has a Christmas full of joy, and love, and more joy, and lots of other stuff!
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added by bofishie @ 1:27 PM
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Wednesday, August 29, 2007
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summer
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So, summer is coming to an end, and its sad. But this was one of the best summers ever. Why? I really don't have a clue! Well, okay maybe I have some clue, but its not like I went to camp or Disney World or something. I think that is what made it awesome, I did nothing, or close to it, all summer.
You know the phone rings,
"hello?"
"Hey, is this Tessa?"
"Ummm, yup."
"Wanna hang?"
"Uhh, sure!".
With that, some definitions of "hanging" are
1) Having running races in the pool.
2) Washing a dog, then ending up having to wash a tub and a floor too.
3) Sitting by the road, in chairs made for 3 year olds, eating cookie dough ice cream(with chocolate chips)
4) Cleaning up Oreo ice cream cake that someone else dropped.
5) Watching 8 kids for 5 hours, then getting paid 7 bucks.
6) "Oh! That is my Mom's friend" *waves to car* " Oh wait, my mom's friend isn't a 500 pound, 60 year old man!"
7) Re-Enacting the most retarded scenes of High School musical 1 & 2 (which is pretty much the whole movie)
7) Conversations on the phone, without having someone on the other line.
8) And attempting to make the perfect summer meal, Mac & Cheese with hot dogs and a coke, for dessert, Oreos =]
Okay, so maybe that doesn't sound like nothing, but just remember these thing were spread out through out the whole summer. Also keep in mind that there were some days that all I did was sit on my bottom and use my computer(Yeah, you could say I'm pretty healthy). Only a few of the above were repeated! But other thing happened! Like Sarah Mangum held a Bible study for teen girls, and that was very very awesome. I went to the Lowell Folk Festival, and got a giant mountian dew. Went to a family reunion. I got to see people who I don't get to see very often (Courtney, Becki,Emily, ect.). Slept over peoples houses and had people sleep over my house. I helped in VBS, Dogsat, got glasses and turned 14!
So, some might say that I have wasted my summer, but to them I say HA!, and again, HA! This has been an amazing summer, and one I will never forget. So people, no crying about school, just think, pretty soon it will be summer all over again! (but sadly we all know that means a new High School Musical is coming out{that just might ruin summer for me}). For now, I gotta go but, NO worries! I shall be back, and hopefully soon. Happy schooling my friends and family, from my brain to yours.
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added by bofishie @ 6:07 PM
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Monday, July 30, 2007
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The Vile Village
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Although "jumping to conclusions" is an expression, rather than an activity, it is as dangerous as jumping off a cliff, jumping in front of a moving train, and jumping for joy. If you jump off a cliff, you have a very good chance of experiencing a painful landing unless there is something below you to cushion your fall, such as a body of water or an immense pile of tissue paper. If you jump in front of a moving train, you have a very good chance of experiencing a painful voyage unless you are wearing some sort of train-proof suit. And if you jump for joy, you have a very good chance of experiencing a painful bump on the head, unless you make sure you are standing someplace with very high ceilings, which joyous people rarely do. Clearly, the solution to anything involving jumping is either to make sure you are jumping to a safe place, or not to jump at all.
-Daniel Handler A.K.A Lemony Snicket, The Vile Village, A Series of Unfortunate Events
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added by bofishie @ 8:15 PM
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