Category Archives: Attitude is everything

Nerdy, Social Butterfly Pioneer Discovers Top 30 Novels in History

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First and foremost, thank you to everyone who left comments on my last post and for the emails and IMs!!! Everything said was soooo helpful!!  This is a BIG decision and I only have 6 days to decide so it was nice to get input.  THANK YOU!!!  :) One particular thing said by Emily really touched home with me, “Crying doesn’t make you weak; it makes you human.”  That’s something I need to remember.

Today, in an attempt to figure things out, I met with the Director of the Dig. Comm Dept.  It was encouraging AND discouraging all rolled up into one!  Oh boy – what a trip.  Ok so the bad news is apparently this is a brand new program and as such they have no support staff, no internships, and no clue. :) The good news is that BECAUSE this is a brand new program I can turn it into whatever I would like.  CC+4′s encouraging words were, “Sounds like you’re going to have to be your own Pioneer.  All the great ones are.  No worries.  You are the one who is going to make your career not the classes at school.” He’s right.  And I guess great minds think alike because I had already discussed with the Director which classes outside of the department I would like to take AND the possibility of my heading up a committee or club for the department.  lol.  A nerdy, social butterfly pioneer. Hmm … I guess it could be worse.

In social butterfly news – Captain Charisma wants to catch-up tomorrow.  And then I’m supposed to catch-up with the Ultimate D.B. on Friday (though FM says it doesn’t matter how much UDB tries – he shouldn’t get another chance – we’ll see…)  Sunday I’ve been invited to a couple parties.  Oh and today, besides playing Dr. Phil to some girl he had a crush on during a short cruise over a month ago, (poor CC+4 – he can’t seem to get rid of me)  CC+4 put me on to the song “Hot Thing” by Talib Kweli – it’s hot.

In nerdy news - tonight – instead of watching TV like normal people do – I took Modern Library’s Top 100 Novels in History and cross referenced it with Radcliffe’s Top 100 Novels in History.  By assigning numerical values to each list I discovered the Top 30 Great Novels in History (the lists only had 44 in common and the last 14 weren’t ranked particularly high.) SO – yeah – fascinating isn’t it?  Oh wait …

FYI – I plan on reading all 30 – or re-reading as the case will be with a few of them.  :) Here’s the list for my fellow readers – ordered  according to ranking:

  1. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
  2. Ulysses by James Joyce
  3. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
  4. Lolita by Vladmir Nabokov
  5. The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
  6. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
  7. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
  8. 1984 by George Orwell
  9. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
  10. Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
  11. Native Son by Richard Wright
  12. Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
  13. Animal Farm by George Orwell
  14. To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
  15. As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
  16. The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
  17. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
  18. Sons and Lovers by D.H. Lawrence
  19. All the King’s Men by Robert Penn Warren
  20. Go Tell it on the Mountain by James Baldwin
  21. A Passage to India by E.M. Forster
  22. On the Road by Jack Kerouac
  23. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
  24. Howards End by E.M. Forster
  25. Tender Is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald
  26. A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
  27. The Wings of the Dove by Henry James
  28. The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
  29. An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser
  30. A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess

Have a happy day!  I haven’t forgotten about pics for SYTYCD – I’ll try and get to that tomorrow.  :)

Gossip

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There are those who gossip Whisperand there are those who don’t – and I believe it is a character-defining quality.  Those who gossip lack character.

Now that’s a pretty strong statement for me to make and I feel the need to clarify what I mean when I use the word “gossip.”  Information sharing and gossiping are two very different things.  For the sake of your attention span ;) I won’t give in-depth explanations of how I differentiate between the two – let’s simply say that in my mind gossip Whisperis:

  • sharing information with the intent to harm;
  • sharing information recklessly without concern for the harm it may do;
  • sharing non-essential personal information with or without the intent to harm which may do harm because of its sensitive nature;
  • spreading indirectly sourced information;
  • or spreading or suggesting any information that you do not KNOW to be true.

So back to my previous assertion: Those who gossip lack character.  And “character” is something you ought not to lack.

My friend “Frenemy #1″ is a gossiper.  WhisperAnd though she usually sticks to the facts (though still gossip)- as of late – and probably because she has always had a thing for CC+4 – she’s stretching her “facts” a bit (which btw – that’s a sugar coated way of saying she’s a big fat liar.)  I live my life in a way which dispels her gossip and so I never have to worry about a tarnished reputation.  But this time her gossip impacted someone else in relation to me – CC+4.  And that’s just not cool.  When she drags people I care about into it … well … that’s when I kinda go from lamb to lion. Lion 3

I don’t even think CC+4 cares about the gossip – he hasn’t mentioned it to me.  Or maybe he’s sparing me from the drama back home??   I don’t know – I only know it’s a small world with FB and I found out anyway.  The gossip?  It was the kind which called the shared religious values of CC+4 and I into question.  Shocked 7 And in a predominately religious community such as SLC – that’s some of the worst gossip around.

The thing is – I’m not perfectly polished in that area of my life anyway – and I could stand a little burnishing (score!  WOTD used in a sentence again ;)) but the things she said were untrue and quite frankly a little malevolent. 

I am going to let this one go.  And while I let this slip under my radar – I’m finally going to let Frenemy #1 aka Mrs. Know slip under the radar as well.  Scott Pete has been encouraging me for a long time to cut her out of my life – and now that I’m like maturing and growing and stuff ;) I think I’m finally ready.  I don’t need people like that in my life.   Especially when there are sooooo many wonderful people out there. :)

A Down and Up Day

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First and foremost I want to tell you that I have this extreme paranoia that when I eat grapes I’m also eating spiders.  And you know what?  I have a really good explanation for this which I am NOT going to share at this particular juncture.  :) Juncture?  You mean a particular point in time (especially one that is critical or important)?  Yes that’s exactly what I mean (which is why I used the word silly!)

The particularly important point in time I’m referring to is RIGHT NOW.  And RIGHT NOW I have more important things to discuss.  Like the REAL LIVE FARMER I met tonight at the Establishment (A Salsa Club.)  He almost had my heart until he said his dream job would be to sell pot for a living.

[awkward silence]

Alright-y then – I’ll let you guess how long it took me to excuse myself from that one.  (if you guess more than a minute – you are wrong.)  lol.

This morning was pretty rough.  :( I set my FB status to “Daisy is homesick.  Very, very homesick.”  I felt the prick of tears more than once and finally had to go for a walk to clear my head.

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I’m in Sydney now – thinking about home isn’t productive.  Especially since I’ve only been back for 2.5 weeks.   2.5 weeks?  Oh boy – we’ve got a LONG way to go.  In fact, I’d almost say it seems my time in Sydney is interminable (score!  WOTD – word of the day – “interminable” was just used in a sentence.)  hooray!

Ok back to being homesick.  This is my home now.  This is where I live.  And it’s time to LIVE here.

My FM and his GF took me out dancing tonight – part of Operation Help Daisy Make A Name For Herself in Sydney.  I’m not sure if it was just being with them, experiencing a little taste of Sydney’s night life, or all of the hot men that checked me out ;) but I had a wonderful evening and YAY I’m not as homesick.

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And as far as Operation: HDMNHS – someone at the Salsa club tonight actually asked my flatmate, “Is her name Daisy?”   CRAZY!!  She recognized a picture of me from Facebook.  Oh why oh why haven’t I gotten an acceptance letter from the Uni of Syd yet?  Digital Communications is like PERFECT for me.  I even get recognized at Salsa clubs in SYDNEY from pics on FB!!!!  HAHAHA!  Seriously – LOL!  I love it!:) I may have started the day feeling as dreary as the sky above – but I ended it with a smile on my face.

A night with those you love

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HAPPY VALENTINE’S DAY!!!

Want to know what I did tonight?  I canceled my plans and spent the evening with my flatmates.  Wait what?  I had Valentine’s Day plans?  Kind of.  I was supposed to catch up with a “friend” this evening.  And it just so happens that this “friend” is a guy I’ve gone out with several times and who was the original star of The Days of My Life In Bondi 2026.  For those of you who missed those posts – he was romantic, hot and very, very smooth.  ) We kept in touch while I was away on holiday and when I got back we went on a “date” – which you may remember from the post BUGGED!?  Oh yes.  The Ultimate D.B.  He went from hero to zero.

A pic from my morning:

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Ok so this is the part where I skate over why I even considered going out with U.D.B. on V Day of all days.  Let’s just focus on the fact that I canceled.  ) That’s the important part.  And it’s thanks to 3 people.  # 1 – Govind – my new kindred spirit.  He took my own words about substance and long term goals and SHOVED them back in my face. Oh and we went to the coolest park today!!!  Here are some pics:

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And then it was thanks to # 2 & 3 – My FM and my FM’s GF – who expressly forbade me from seeing U.D.B. again and told me that THEY would be my V Day plans. Oh LOL!!!!  ) My FM’s GF said, “Valentine’s Day is for being with people you love.”  So you know what I did?  I canceled and spent the evening with people I love – and it was great!

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