Dangerous Places: Grocery Stores

(This song really has nothing to do with the post except for the line about candy… still a good song.)

Grocery stores are dangerous places…

There are just too many ways to justify a purchase.

“I’ve never tried this… it would be an interesting experience.”

“It’s on sale this week! If I get it now, I ‘save’ money.”

“It’s useful… I need to eat.”

“It’s food…I NEED this to survive.”

Okay… maybe the last one is questionable… especially if it is something like candy.

As Gavin DeGraw says, “we can’t survive on candy.”

Maybe these are all questionable… depending on the person but for me… grocery stores are dangerous.

I’m not really drawn to buying clothes… or jewelry… or anything like that.

But food?

I always seem to stray from my lists and get a tad bit more than I mean to.

It all gets eaten though… that’s good, right?

I need to practice writing lists and actually sticking to them… maybe put some blinders on?

Rorvig

… Rorbig… Rorving… Rorzig… Roring… Rorwig… Rorpig…

It’s amazing how creative people can get when spelling a name.

The list above doesn’t even include the interesting ways both my first and last name have been (mis)pronounced.

This is only a small  collection of the different misspellings I have seen.

Let me tell you though… it has started quite a few interesting conversations.

Many of which consisted of “where in the world did that come from?!”

One of which ended up with a teacher calling me “viking” for pretty much the rest of the school year….

Vincent – Don McLean

I was Vincent Van Gogh.

Not really… though I played his part for a project in my high school French 2 class.

There I stood at the front of the class, bandage over my ear, holding a pallet of paints, and attempting to tell Van Gogh’s biography in French.

All-in-all… it was a bit rough.

I think it was during the research for that project that I stumbled across this song…

I may have even played it during my presentation… I can’t remember.

It had to be 10 minutes long and I was in need of filler… so I probably played it.

“Starry, starry night…Paint your palette blue and gray… Look out on a summer’s day…with eyes that know the darkness in my soul”

Expensive Skyping

If I haven’t mentioned before, I’m a student at the University of North Carolina at Asheville (UNCA)… taking many of my Mechatronics Engineering classes from North Carolina State University (NCSU).

In other words, I’m a distance education (DE) student.

It’s a fantastic program… I really do enjoy it…

But let me tell you… that’s an expensive Skype call.

It’s not exactly Skype… the school uses another program (the name has left my mind for the moment)… but it’s the same concept.

The schools call each other and, once connected, the professor lectures us through a video conference.

There is even about as many technical problems as I have had with Skype calls!

In reality, there is a lot more that goes into the programs than just a Skype-ish call.

There’s the help of TA’s at UNCA, NCSU, and other schools that participate in that particular class…

There’s the homework/exams… some online… some on paper that have to be scanned and submitted (usually online)…

There’s all the people that go into making the video conferencing programs work.

In other words, DE requires a ton of communication between people that  would normally probably never talk otherwise.

One of my favorite things about it is (at least through NCSU’s program) you can access and re-watch the lectures later.

This especially helps if you’ve had that one day where you were just not all there in class… trust me… there are definitely those day.

Isn’t it amazing how technology can change things… for example… our education options?

Want more information? Visit:

http://www.engr.ncsu.edu/mechatronics/

http://www.engr.ncsu.edu/mechatronics/what-mech.php

Short Film Procrastination

Just finished the first week of classes up at UNCA…

That first week always feels like a month as you get back into the routine of school.

Recently, I have gotten into watching short films on youtube…

There are so many of them… some amazing… some quite odd.

Here’s just one of them… you can decide what you think about it.

I should probably stop procrastinating with them before school really starts up…

White Owl – Josh Garrels

I happened to stumble upon this song a couple years ago and every so often, I listen to it on replay for hours.

Not only that but I also thought the video was neat. Haha

“Like an owl you must fly by moonlight with an open eye, and use your instinct as your guide, to navigate the ways that lay before you, you were born to take the greatest flight.”

You can do it!

Remember… No matter what comes your way… whether it is school, family, friends, a relationship, a job…

YOU CAN DO IT!

You are one of a kind.

Each one of us bring something a little different to the table.

Each one of us changes the world into what it will be in the future.

Go out and conquer the day… or make peace with it… whichever you choose.

Have a great first day of class, my fellow Bulldogs!

Here we go again…

I’m headed back up to college today.

Back to a different schedule… it’s time to shed the summer mindset.

I’m headed back a day or two early since I have on-campus job training this weekend.

I’m ready to see friends and get back into the school routine…

Even though I will miss everyone back home very much.

I’m also ready to live in a new residence hall!

Here I come linear algebra, statics, computer programming, circuits… and ballet.

I live with Elsa.

Guys… I just need to tell you something… I live with Elsa.

A very tiny Elsa…

I feel like there are a lot of people living with Elsa’s right now.

Many… many Frozen obsessed little girls (and little boys) out there.

When my parents bought this little Elsa dress for my younger sister… she was thrilled.

One of the first things she did after putting it on for the first time was run up to dad, yelling “dad dadadada” the whole way. When he looked up, she puffed out her chest, threw her hands out and sang “dooooooooooooo!”

SHE HAD TRANSFORMED INTO THE ACTUAL ELSA!

She’s not always Elsa though…

Sometimes… I live with Batgirl Elsa!

I also live with Batman!

Sometimes he’s Batman… sometimes he’s Spiderman, Captain America, a tiger, an elephant, a pumpkin, a Ninja Turtle… you name it.

Give a kid a costume and they transform into another being. Haha