once more to the lake…

Im not feeling well today.  I stayed home from work and i’m not feeling much better.  I’ll probably miss class as well. 

I read our assignment and i’m wondering where the ”chill of death” statement in the last sentence came from?  I’m wondering if something happened to the narrator’s father during a trip which he thinks will happen to him.  Or maybe something happened to him during one of his trips to the lake as a child and now he thinks his son might be in danger.  Who knows?  Happy does I bet. 

I wish this school had a comic book appreciation class that I could get credit for.

Depressing News

I’m so annoyed with all of the news about our financial meltdown.  I won’t get into it here but I did find an interesting article from BBC about why this has progressed to such a sorry state. 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7525724.stm

As far as my revisioning goes I’ve been moving paragraphs completely around.  I intially tried to just use two parts as a compare and contrast and now I’m thinking of moving my one large paragrah as my third.  This is where I made my assumptions about what Percy is trying to say.  I still needed to work in the common and complex into this section and that is for me the hardest part.

Wednesday

If there was an award the most creative title of a post I think I would win.  Well I finished my very rough draft on Monday.  I sent the first part to Happy and she did give some suggestions that helped to focus the draft.  I will probably save most of those corrections for the final paper though.  I had alot of my ideas written down but it still took some time to get them somewhat organized.  I’m still not too crazy about the results but we’ll see how it goes.  I’m looking forward to tonight’s class but I’m dead tired.  It’s been very busy at work.  The bad part of working for a communications company is that there are times that you are on call.  So if something isn’t working right you will get a call at any and all hours of the night.  I’m also thinking of setting up a trap in my room.  My five-year old always manages to sneak into our bed sometime during the night.  I came back to bed after getting a call out around 2 and there was a little crumbsnatcher laying in my spot.  I may have to consult with Sandy about the trap.  A cage, a stick, and some cookies should do the trick.

another day

My place has been turned into a boarding house! My girlfriend’s friend from Michigan has been living here for two weeks. They met while taking graduate classes at Wayne State in Detroit. She was determined to stay and find a job close to home but finally gave up and found a teaching job in Spotslyvania. My girlfriend’s mom has also been here since early last week. Add all that with two little kids and it’s been a chore to find a moment of peace. It’s hard to start and stop every 20 minutes. I feel like I get nothing accomplished.
I did start out pretty good getting after my rough draft. I have most of my common reader section complete but I need to try and finish the complex side tonight. It’s there but needs to be put together. I had an interesting moment today when I was going to use the example on page 49 about the complex sightseer exploiting the other tourists as an example. After I went over that entry with the following paragraph where he states “for the complex man this is the weariest, most beaten track of all”, I came to realize that I misunderstood what he was trying to say. So I need to do some re-writes on that already and use that part for the complex essay. I definitely helps to re-read Mr. Walker. I’ve found you may have read something and it put an idea in your head but when you go to write it doesn’t turn out to be what you thought.

Thesis support

Hey, I thought I published a response to some comments about my last blog but I don’t see it?  It seems like the only time I have to do stuff is when I’m tired and half out of it, usually post 10 o’clock.  Anyway, I’m finding the thesis development for Percy’s essay to be an interesting process.  It seems the support that you have to make for your thesis is simply your take on it.  That’s obvious but what I’m trying to say is that it isn’t grounded in facts.  I suppose it doesn’t have to be correct or true, but you do have to approach it by trying to convince your audience that your thesis is valid.  Doing this about a philosophical or non-traditional essay definitely makes you think.  So far I’m finding it easier getting thesis ideas for the complex reader essay than the common.  I’ve noticed some people have posted comments about the reading and how it has helped them in tackling the writing assignment and couldn’t agree more.  I’m finding myself trying to jump ahead to the next chapters about analyzing the thesis.  Probably not a good idea because I have plenty of work on organizing my results from the techniques in chapter 3.

RE:RE:Reading assignment and this “thinking” stuff

Hey thanks for the comments.  I guess I need to be better at expressing sarcasm.  I’m not all that upset about the basketball “scandal”.  I should have dropped one of those winking emoticons at the end of that rant.  Being a Michigan slappy I may have become somewhat jaded after the NCAA took away all the wins during Michigan’s Fab Five era.  That investigation found that the players were given alot of money/gifts from boosters.  So compared to that, the text messaging seems pretty tame to me.  I do like the way the NCAA is craking down though.  The ex-Indiana coach did amaze me that he would be dopey enough do the same thing at two different schools.

Reading assignment and this “thinking” stuff

My girlfriend, was making fun of me for reading my textbook the other day.  She said, “Cmon Tom, nobody reads their English book”.  I suppose she feels she can give me this advice since she has her bachelors already.  For me though, I have to say that the reading has been helpful.  I was familiar with most of the strategies from Ch3 but I had never heard of freewriting before.  It was actually pretty helpful, imagine that.  For me it is necessary to have these strategies laid out because writing was always such a chore for me…still is I guess.  I’m somewhat leery of stating this since hearing our Happy’s comment about writer’s block.  I am a big fan of the dot-dot-dot though.  I need to work on that.  I have to agree with her comment though.  If you read the book it shows you the techniques to overcome these problems.  That is why I appreciate the textbook because it does help you to focus and organize your ideas.  This has always been my greatest hurdle in writing.  My girlfriend also likes to get on me about wanting to keep my books from my previous classes.  As soon as her class was over she would run to the bookstore and get her cash back.  Sometimes she wouldn’t even buy her book.  You get what you put into it I guess.  

Oh No, I just read the “Athletic Issue” email from Ed Ayers regarding the scandelous behavior of our basketball coaches!  The shame I feel write now being apart of this university is hard express.  I think I should take a break from this blogging before I write something regrettful.  I also think I should probably get back to work.

Loss of Creature

No major epiphany yet for The Loss of Creature but the class last Wednesday gave me some ideas for the assignment.  We’ll see how that goes though.