2009 Year in Review

2009

Another year has come and gone, and so much happened in 2009 that prepare yourself for a very long post. Some of us got what we wanted and lost it, some of us lost what we thought we'd have forever, and it seems that in the last half of the year, most of us were looking to the future with the hopes that it would give us something that would make us feel again. For purposes of drama-control, I'll leave out most of the personal stuff and stick to the big events.

So lets start at the beginning...

1. Congratulations! It's a Blog!
Yup...I started this blog in 2009!!! I've had many posts and comments and I hope you all enjoy reading about my crazy antics as much as I enjoy living them. Here's to another year of documenting all of my sparks of brilliance and flashes of insanity.

2. RIP Jesus Crab
Okay, so if you weren't aware, MD and I had a pet crab at the beginning of the year...his name was Jesus-Crab because I thought he was dead for the first three days, but then he came back to life! It was a miracle! Unfortunately, he really did die six days later. I apparently suck at being a Crab-Mother.

3a. A New World Order
On January 20th, 2009, Barack H. Obama was inaugurated as President of the United States. It was a lovely ceremony filled with much hope and joy from liberals and eye rolls and threats of moving to Canada from conservatives. Of course, the real star of the Inauguration was...

3b. Aretha's Hat.
I don't even need to comment on this...just look at it!



4. Glambert loses to that other guy....
Okay, so Adam Lambert didn't win American Idol, but you know he's going to be the bigger star than that other guy who did win. Later in the year, his antics will amaze (and appall) many viewers.

5. Lady What? Goo Goo? No...Lady GaGa.
2009 Seemed to be such a huge year for Lady GaGa. Every song she released was a hit, from Just Dance, Poker Face, Love Game, Paparazzi, and Bad Romance. The hits keep coming and I have to admit, I have learned to really respect and enjoy her music. Don't hate, but she is incredibly talented. Go to youtube and look up "Stefani Germanatta" if you don't believe me.
Also, her performance at the VMA's wowed the crowd and the many Lady Gaga costumes on Halloween solidified her as the pop culture symbol of the year.

6. Free Iran!
This is actually one story that I'm really sad to see get ignored....all of the protests and the energy and spirit of the country wasn't enough to beat down the system. No matter what your stance is on our foreign policy, having a moderate Iran is in everyone's best interest and the young people of Iran who were fighting hopefully didn't get their spirits crushed to a point where they won't keep trying in the future. I'm still holding out hope of seeing a free Iran in my lifetime.

7.Mountain Adventure Weekend.
For those of you who were there....hmm...it certainly made for some interesting stories to tell later.

8. Greece Summer Adventure!!!
I didn't expect myself to miss Crete as much as I do sometimes. I know that I will get back someday, but probably not soon enough. I highly recommend going to a study abroad (it doesn't matter where) at least one time before you graduate because it really is amazing.

9. RIP Michael Jackson.
If you know me, you know my opinions about him and I'll leave it at that. I was in Greece the week after it happened and even there, people were playing MJ music constantly. It was surreal. The King of Pop is dead.

10. 10/15/09-Never Forget.
Everyone will remember where they were the day America stopped working and watched an empty balloon....yup, Falcon "Balloon Boy" Henne totally killed his parent's game when he announced during a live interview that they were doing it for a show. Indeed, his "parents" (if you can call them parents) staged an elaborate media hoax to win themselves a reality show. They got their 15-minutes of fame and a nice jail sentence.

11. Tiger Woods becomes a Cheetah!!!
Sorry for the lame joke; I was actually really upset about this because I love Tiger so much. I love how he let all his anger out on the course and didn't pansy around like that idiot Phil Mickelson. Anyways, the illusion is shattered and he is apparently off to rehab for "sex addiction". Good luck, Tiger!

12. The Christmas Bomb Plot.
Whoa that was scary! I hope you all kept up with that/ are keeping up with that because it's some serious business. This isn't looking good for Obama's administration and might result in some serious firings within his cabinet (watch out, Secretary Napolitano!).

So, here's to a bright new year- may it bring you happiness, peace, comfort, and whatever else 2009 left you wanting. Awake, arise, or be forever fallen.

Real Talk: Religion.

Let me start this post by saying that I am Catholic, and I converted to Catholicism a few years ago from a quasi-non-denominational Protestant background. Many have questioned my motivation for converting, and I must admit that there were times during the process that even I wasn't sure that my intentions were completely correct, but after almost two years of being Catholic, I am happy with my choice and know that it was the right decision. But, this bit of background brings me to my first point:

1. What makes us do what we do? Or, are our decisions really our own, or does God make them for us?

I am one of those people who likes to believe that everything happens for a reason, because without this reason, the world is in Chaos and the notion of God is somewhat defunct. Sure, I suppose that the universe could serve under God the Creator, where God creates us and lets us run wild, but I find several problems with that, which I will address later (perhaps not in this post).

If we are operating under the reality that everything happens for a reason, then no matter what I could have done, I would have ended up Catholic. In fact, Catholicism had tried before to get me, long before I went to college and met the people who helped me join the faith.

The first time the notion of Catholicism entered my head was when I was fourteen years old. We were discussing Romeo and Juliet in my freshman English class when we started discussing an aspect of Catholics' faith. I cannot really dive too deeply into what this is, exactly, but that class made me think about the world completely differently in a very profound way. It took me years to realize just how different my life could have been had that conversation not happened.

During my Junior year of high school, I was having one of a long string of faith crises, in which I just wasn't getting what I wanted to out of organized religion. I still remember clearly sitting in chemistry with some of my friends, discussing this issue, and they all recommended that maybe the problem wasn't me, maybe I just wasn't going to the right churches, etc. The thought of Catholicism hit me then, and I thought about giving it a try. Unfortunately, at the age of 16, I still really wasn't that good at making decisions for myself, and my friends were able to quickly talk me out of it. Could that lingering thought have been another attempt by Got to send me in this direction?

Three times is the charm, however, and the next time Catholicism entered my life, I was fully prepared to give it a chance. During the year-long RCIA process, many people (particularly my father) didn't quite understand why I was doing what I was doing. Many people thought that I was doing it to get someone's attention, and I cannot deny that my friends played an important role in my conversion, I will not say that they were the only reasons. I can be confident that my decision was based on my own will and conviction because on Auguest 26th, 2007, my second Mass, I had an amazing experience. During Communion, a friend I was with told me to cross my arms and go up for a blessing, and I did. When Father Wall put his hand on my shoulder in blessing, I felt this overwhelming sense that this was where I belonged. I almost started to cry. That was the moment I decided that Catholicism was for me.

So, to the point- why did I become Catholic? Could it have been entirely my decision, or was it God's plan the entire time? Were the previous two experiences simply coincidence? I suppose the answer lies in whether you have faith in a God who is an active participant in your life. Following the "everything happens for a reason" notion, my experiences in high school were not just chance, and were building up to my eventual conversion in college. My conversion was meant to be. It was inevitable and I fully believe that God willed it.

But if God willed it, why did it take three times before you converted?

Because God gave us free will. We always complain about how God is making our lives unduly difficult, but have we ever given thought to how we are making God's life difficult, too? Just because something is inevitable does not mean that it can simply be. God wants us to evolve and develop into who he wants us to be. Surely his job would be significantly less fun if he just created us to be perfect and to be exactly who he wants us to be. I believe that God wants us to realize things for ourselves, instead of him simply telling us things. He will give us clues and hints as to where he wants us to go and what he wants us to do, but deep down, it is up to us as to the timeline of our progression as souls and how we get to our final destination. This brings me to my second topic, which I will discuss in a later Post: God the Creator vs. God the Enabler.

A True Flash of Insanity And Other Things

Next time my instincts tell me to stay home, I'm staying home!!! (Told you it was a flash!)

ION (In Other News):

1. The Emilie Autumn concert rocked my provebial socks off. No, really. Check my FB for some fantastic pictures. Within the next week (and by next week I mean THURSDAY!) I will try to get those pictures up on here as well. If you are unfamiliar with Emilie Autumn, I highly recommend that you become familiar. Even if you aren't into goth rock/ industrial music, she is extremely talented and worth a listen (or two...give her two listens because she might scare you a bit on the first go-round).

2. I had a realization...it is very hard to end a parenthetical expression () with an emoticon (as seen in this beautifully demonstrated example ;-) ). <-- See?!! You see what I mean??? Sigh...

3. I've been spending a lot of time in Swain recently, working on things, etc. I wanted to share with all you lovelies one of my recent projects. It's due Monday so if you want to leave comments (YES PLEASE DO!!!) as to how to make it better/ what you think, let me know! It's for my motion graphics class and is a mash up of two of my favorite things ever: Hamlet and Emilie Autumn.


Now, this project has given me a new understanding of my professor's favorite phrase: What New HELL is this?!

See...we use this nifty program called After Effects (which I love and adore), but for some reason, no matter what I did, it crashed on me a lot! And it wouldn't load my footage when I would re-open, despite reconnecting the lost footage. The footage still played in other programs, but AE was just not having it at all....thus, the project took forever to complete (the worst part is I lost six hours the first night because I didn't figure out how to beat AE at it's own twisted game). Add to that my own personal insistence that this project be as close to perfect as I could get to the image I had in my head of this, and you're in for one long night.

Hell Week(s) are going well...I already have one of my papers turned in, and I still have to finish the History Paper, which is going...not at break-neck speed, but it isn't dragging. We are (according to the syllabus) in competition with one another for grades in this class, so I'm trying my best to crank out a really amazing paper. I'm learning from this semester that I have become one extremely competitive person. Hopefully this is a good thing because I'm going into an extremely competitive field when I graduate.



Oh, and expect a semi-deep post soon about my views on life, the universe, and everything (but no, really).