Also...

I would like to submit that water polo has to be THE most difficult sport ever. I would drown...

Costco Excitement

Yesterday after I said good-bye to my best friend in the world I went with my mom to Costco. I love going to Costco. I looked at the books and movies but restrained myself from buying any...haha. But what I really went there to buy was a new backpack. I get bored with my backpacks and as a result get a new one at least every year sometimes more often. The only exception was the backpack I had for two whole school years. It was white courderoy may it rest in peace because the last week of school last year it broke and all my stuff fell out. So even more reason to not keep a backpack that long and feed my school supply addiction. But this new backpack is sooo pretty, it's brown plaid and sturdy and has a lot of pockets. It's a dream. I scoped it out 4 or 5 times at costco before I actually bought it. It was a long process but I'm happy with my $15 purchase. Big spender I know.

The other thing I bought that makes me even more happy is a 'teach yourself Italian' computer program. I decided to do this because I don't have time to take a 4 credit class that would teach me Italian, or the French I'm going to add to it. So I got myself a program and I'm taking my destiny into my own hands. I decided to do Italian first because I'm going to Italy next year after I graduate. Of course if you ask my father he will deny this saying that I have to actually graduate first. He's just in denial. It's statistically almost impossible for me to not graduate so...I'm going to Italy next year. So learning a little bit of Italian I thought would be valuable. I'm not going to know enough to really talk to people but maybe I can know enough to understand and maybe help myself out a little bit. Ha actually just last night I was talking about this to my dad and he pulled a scenario that would make me not graduate: my boyfriend could get me hooked on drugs and I wouldn't care about school. Haha possible I said but highly improbably. The boyfriend part or the drug part he asked?? Haha both. But bottom line, I'm learning Italian and that makes me happy. Then maybe next year I'll buy the French program and teach myself some French.

Day Dreamin

So this is just going to be a quick note but I'm a little confused. So I've been having some weird dreams lately. I mean they're amazing dreams, the kind you love everything about so you don't want them to stop, but they're just strange. I hadn't been thinking about the situations, although I guess they are always in the back of my mind, and they just caught me really off guard that I was having them. It's crazy both dreams I had, I had in the state of mind where you know you're dreaming and you can objectively think about the dream at the same time you're having them, so I got to analyze my dreams while I was having them and not wanting them to end. But I just don't know what they meant, if anything at all. Is this just wish fulfillment? Like a true dream this is just what I would love to happen if my dreams came true, or just a random neuron firing taking over my imagination...? I just don't know. Haha I hope that I'm psychic and this means that this will be my future. Haha but probably not.... But dreams have been on my mind none the less.

A Word

First a word about me. I love reading, especially during the summer because I can't concentrate on it during school. I was trying to remember all the books I've read since school ended and my count is up to 10...not including the books I can't remember (obviously) and the ones I'm currently reading. Unfortunately I've bought about 10 more books that are on my list to read. So along this line I just finished reading Eat Pray Love, which is my new favorite book. It's about a year in a woman's life so of course there are things that I didn't agree with but overall it is an incredibly enlightening book about all three of those things. But what I'm interested in at the moment is in the Eat section which takes place in Italy.

Side note: also after reading this book I am SOOO excited to go to Italy next summer I can hardly stand it and I'm going to also teach myself Italian.

But back to the point. While in Italy Liz (the writer) is talking to a man from Italy and he's telling her that each city has a word. One word that completely and totally descibes the city. Rome's word is Sex, Naples' word if Fight. Then he asks Liz, what is her word? This got me thinking, what is my word? One word that describes what I'm about and all I strive to do... Honestly I had no blinking clue as to anything that could completely describe me. How can one small word tell you anything about me? I understand how it can tell you one part of me but I kind of feel like I would be extremely boring if just one word could tell you all you need to know about me. I like to think I'm more multi-faceted than that. But then maybe I could pick a really fantastic word with a TON of letters so it says more.... Really I was just thinking all these weird thoughts because I had no idea what kind of word I would even start to pick for myself.

So after much thought and tribulation and conversation, I've come up with two options for my word. Well my word for right now in my life that I think is good enough to describe me! One of my choices is Learn. I love to learn anything about everything and anything and it's always been my ambition to learn something about absolutely everything. My second choice is Devour. And here's why; I have recently been discussing my reading with my Lauren. I said that the rate at which I devour different genre-d books actually kind of amazes me. But then I started thinking about the word devour, and not in a creepy way either, just in a verb kind of a way. I have this thing where when I'm terrified of something I just have to do it anyway, but the way in which I go about doing those things, or even anything else is sort of devouring them. I try to get through them, take all I can from them, and then move on to something new.

So those are the two things I think I boil down too. I myself and leaning towards Devour but I don't know. Maybe it will constantly be changing but I don't know if that's a good thing or not! Maybe you can tell me.

Moral Dilemmas

Mmm we all love a good dilemma don't we? Here's today's: Would you kill someone? Would you have someone kill for you? Would you torture someone? Would you pay someone a lot of money for information, even if you knew that money was going to finance awful things? Where is your line, and when is the situation right to say yes to these things? The way these questions are phrased you are the Pres and you're talking to me the operative.

The name of the game is this: You are the President of the United States, and you are giving instructions to a CIA operative. The instructions can be either yes or not yes. No in between, yes or no, do it or not. I'll put my vote into parenthesis just so you know how I score in this test. There isn't really a 'right' answer and that's what makes this hard.

Question 1 - Would you have me as a CIA operative associate with terrorists so that I can gain information that could save American lives? (Yup)

Question 2 - Terrorists aren't going to give me this information for free, can I use a lot of the governments money to pay this terrorist for information if he's going to use the money to get his family out of the terrorist ring? (Yes)

Question 3 - What if I don't know how the terrorist is going to use the money? (Yes)

Question 4 - What if the terrorist is going to use the money to finance an attack on an adversarial nation to us, say Iran? (Yes)

Question 5 - What if the terrorist is going to use the money to finance an attack on an allied country? (Not Yes)

A couple definitions. Assassination - a CIA operative killing someone. Act of War - a soldier killing someone.

Question 6 - Let's say pre 9/11 an agent has eyes on Osama bin Laden (who attacked the USS Cole) and he's in one of 5 tents. Would you as the President send a cruise missile and take him out? Remember at this time 1% of America knows who bin Laden even is, this would be an act of war. (Yes)

Question 7 - Still pre 9/11 same scenario but the other four tents are filled with the royal family of an oil rich country who we are allied with? (Not Yes - a real situation)

Question 8 - Same scenario as question 7, but post 9/11? (Yes)

Question 9 - Can I torture someone for information that could lead to American lives saved? (Yes)

Question 10 - We have a prisoner in custody who has been taking flight lessons, but he's not so concerned with landing the plane. Pres gives the order to have him tortured to find out his plans. An operative, the only one who can translate Arabic in the room, says he cannot participate in the torture and leaves. He is tortured and his video will take 24 hours to have translated by someone else. 18 hours later 4 planes crash into the twin towers, the pentagon, and the ground, killing 3000 people. When the video is translated you find the prisoner gave every detail of the attacks. Should the operative be prosecuted as dereliction of duty? (Yes - also a real situation)

My answers seem straightforward but trust me they weren't and there were many discussions on what would be the best. But this conversation is best debated and not dictatorialized so I will stop here and just let you think about it. Interesting questions though and something else to consider when you are electing a president. Can he make these decisions? One woman I encountered said Not Yes to every single one of these questions (except torture, she said that was okay as long as we weren't doing in the United States, so dang hypocritical if you ask me), and my friend and I decided it would be awful if she ever became Pres because we would all die.

It's the thought that counts

Today's thought was thought about 5 days ago but I kept forgetting the thought so it wasn't thought out at the right time so I could blog about my thought but now I've remembered the thought at the right time so I can write it down! Yay me!

Haha okay so here's the thing. I love starbucks! I get starbucks almost every morning and I don't know how I'm going to live without it when I go back to school. I adore the smell of the place and could be in there for hours just watching the people and listening to the (insert nerd term here) baristas be not so smart with eachother. It's awesome. I know their computer thing better then they do since I always have to explain where they need to ring me up when I order what I always get. My thought though is about their water. Ethos. So the stuff is $3 a bottle right, but you feel good about buying it because they donate to places so they can have all the clean water they need. YAY good cause!! But then we read the fine print..... for every bottle of water you buy, we donate a grand total of $0.05!!! Now doesn't that just warm your heart?!?!? I thought it might. So ya, bottles of water probably now cost about 50 cents at most to produce, and we're donating 5 cents from an already costly bottle of water. Just consider the irony.

Is it just the thought that counts?

Lacking Information

So I can't think of anything else to write about...and the thing I want to write about I haven't thought through enough. It's all about my generation and what we are like. But so far the article I'm reading I've only read a third of it and it's upset so I need to finish it first and then formulate my thoughts. But wait with bated breath because it's going to be good! We're going to save the world but the way we're described is incredibly wrong from my point of view. But more on that when I finish.

One thought for today: Happy Birthday Abbey!! And K is cute when she says my name.

Here however is a different thought that is shorter and less cognitively intensive then the one I'm trying to sort out. So McCain doesn't know how to use 'a google'. How impressive is that. Not only does the man not know how to use google he doesn't even know what it is. I wonder how incredibly mixed up he would be if we threw the wikipedia concept at him. Now I don't think this will effect the man's ability to be a presidential candidate but still you have to admit that's incredibly weird if not pathetic. How does someone not know anything about it? But at least the man is doing things unscripted so you know he's an actual person as opposed to Obama who won't talk at all without scripting.