i live in ohio

Ohio is a pretty cool state. I know that it is usually used as the stereotypical plain boring soulless place in tv shows and etc. One time on Arthur, Arthur's family was having a family reunion and at one part Arthur tells his class about it and that some of his relatives came from Ohio and the whole class goes "OoOoOoOooo Ohiiiiiiooo" in the most sarcastic ever voice, and that made me sad, when I was little. And also that they brought him maple syrup from Ohio, which I don't think that's even a thing here? Or at least definitely not something we are known for.

But yeah. I like Ohio. We get actual seasons, hot hot way too freaking hot summers and winter and feet of snow and so on. There are a lot of interesting things here too. I think that can be said for any place or town, no matter how much people complain or say that their town is boring and THERE'S NOTHING TO DO! but there is. There is, at the very least, a lot to learn, a lot of local history.

I've always been enthralled by that kind of stuff. When I was 13 or 14, there was this little camp or week long activity thing at one of the historic old homes near the library; the house is called The Hickories. It was ridiculously neat. We learned about the different styles of houses and architectural features in the area and what life was like in the 1800s or 1900s or whatever time period and we made some foods that were made back then: some kind of cornbread and a maple syrup candy, which okay maybe we do do things with maple syrup, all right? I don't know.

The whole week was very fun and nerdy, but I was and am a nerd, duh.

Also Ohio, just northeast Ohio, has Cedar Point and Geauga Lake or Six Flags or whatever it's called now and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Great Lakes Science Center which is one of my favorite places ever.

And right near there, there is an old World War II submarine in the harbor, the USS Cod. I went there on a field trip in high school, and it was one of the neatest things I've ever experienced. There was so much stuff packed into that tiny space, every part and place having a function and made to be of maximum efficiency. We had to almost crawl through some of the doorways, and there was a lot of ladder climbing. It even had an ice cream maker. To think that all those men lived in there, that that 312 foot piece of steel and whatever had everything needed to sustain them and fight and travel and submerge, that it was built in 1942, that it still exists and is a thing anyone can walk through and see now, that is so awesome to me. Everything is as it was then. It's like a time capsule of life, a weird eerie glimpse into what it was like to live on, and plus the old technology, it was so freaking fascinating. If you want to see some stuff about it, here is its site, and really check out the virtual tour; it gives a pretty good sense of what it is like to be in there.

Another thing Ohio has a lot of is canals. We went on a field trip to some of those too once, and again, it was cool EVERYTHING IS SO COOL. We went to a lot of shops and got to ride a canal boat. I don't remember much other than that but I do remember that it was rad and that I want to go there again.

One more thing I just remembered that I will talk about and then I will stop; I'm sorry; a lot of this is probably bland and very vague for people who are not me, but all of these old memories have popped into my brain and I am going to take an Ohio history course this semester, which I guess is what made me think of all this etc etc ok.

Johnson's Island was a prison camp for confederate prisoners of war that is in Lake Erie. I did a report on it in junior high and was always fascinated (how many times fascinated and interested I need more words to say things with. with which to say things) by all of it. Like in the winter when the lake froze, men would try to escape by walking over the ice to what is now Cedar Point or Sandusky or Marblehead. After the war, there was an attempt to make it a ~pleasure place~ and it rivaled Cedar Point for a while until the buildings kept catching on fire and they gave up. A few years ago I got to go up there with my family and it was cool and creepy to see all of the stuff there, the cemetery and little visitor's center that had a lot of artifacts and letters and documents and such. Most of the island is private property now though and people live on it.

CONCLUSION: Ohio is cool and history owns and there is history everywhere and you should check out your city or town or area; there is a lot to learn and it is rad.

i just typed a bunch of stuff

I want to be more positive! I feel like I get caught up in bad and unchangeable or just petty petty things and it's dumb to do that and it makes everything hard and awful. Cynicism is so easy and it is simple to resort to that and it distances you from a lot of things and detaches you from emotion and also irony and all the layers and layers of meanness and coldness and depreciating things until you are so far away that you're numb to everything and your feelings are buried so deep under so many layers of crap that it's suffocating and lonely and I don't want to be that way any more. I want to be grateful and earnest and direct and encouraging and I don't want to make fun of people or the things they enjoy or taunt or mock.

Mostly because my conscience is ridiculously harsh and uptight and I feel guilty about and over everything for forever and pathetically so; I can never forget the crap I've done to people. I am a guilt hole. Haha that sounds gross or something.

But so yes! Be more encouraging! Be nice! Find the good in things! Appreciate the things you have!

For the past week I have been wanting SO badly to go to the beach or mountains or rivers or somewhere expansive and huge and overwhelming and nature is so calming and beautiful and gahhh I gotta get out of the city and away from pavement and street lights and look at the stars and take in the radness of life and the universe is pretty neat.

I do not know what this says even I just typed the things in my brain; they are probably not coherent!

list

Things I did today:

• Woke up at 10:30.
• Made a pizza.
• Walked up to computer repair place with my computer. They are just going to do stuff to it to make it like new again; I have everything backed up, so it shouldn't be a problem. And it will be ready on Monday! And it was only like dollars 90!
• Got a frosty at Wendy's. I love you Wendy.
• Requested transcripts to send to Cleveland State for college thing.
• Read a lot of House of Leaves.
• Went to Big Lots where I got a few good movies for dollars three each; one of which is The Squid and the Whale, which, I think, is from where the very rad band Noah and the Whale got their name. Also I bought silly bands. Ok. They glow in the dark and are shaped like mythical creatures and rock music instruments. Ok. I felt bad/embarrassed about buying them because the cashier was like 30-40 but then I saw she was wearing some too so.
• Went to the post office to mail something but forgot my debit card so I just weighed it and figured out how much the postage will cost and will put a bajillion stamps on it later.
• Read more of House of Leaves which is freaking me out more and more and aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaghhh gasps. No no no no!
• Wrote a blog (it's this blog!!!!!!!)
• Watched The Squid and the Whale (We are gettin all crazy messing with the fabric of time and continuums are being ripped to shreds, watch out!).

Also interspersed in there are a lot of twitter refreshings and tumblr checkings and etc.

Oh also also Andrew and I exchanged many computer weepings and gnashings of teeths.

And I drank a lot of milk.

today was somewhat a little bit productive

Ok so it's 1:25 in the morning so this is late but not really because I have not slept yet, or I have but just for like two hours; a nap.

I just paid for and finalized my application to Cleveland State. I had it all filled out earlier, but the payment wouldn't go through, but it did now! I have very little time to get everything in order with this. I didn't think that applying would be necessary this semester but apparently it is, and also I need to set up an appointment with a counselor from CSU and actually go on campus to discuss classes that I can take through LCCC that would be transferable, so this is going to be stressy as classes start in like two weeks and I don't know even if the ones that I can take will be not full by then so.

But I applied! And so now I must wait.

Also figured out what probably needs to be fixed w/r/t my laptop thanks to Mr Bill Dr Noise which is that the hard drive is going bad. Going to take it to a place that apparently is good and does free diagnostic-y things to make sure which I wish my mom had told me about earlier but what can you do.

Man, I don't know what else to say. I read a bunch more of House of Leaves, and it is really frustrating. I know a lot of people really like the way it's laid out and all but honestly it's ridiculously distracting. I just want to be able to READ but all the stupid backwards text and footnote footnote footnotes running in tiny columns, sideways, reversely is driving me freaking insane. It took me a good 10 minutes a few pages back to trace the footnotes within footnotes back to their origin to find where I left off in the story and keep reading. Just. Come on. And now I'm reading a bunch of letters and one that is a few pages long is encrypted so that the first letter of each WORD actually spells out the message, and not the words themselves. Which takes a good bit of effort to read; I've resorted to writing them out. I know the section is probably available online somewhere but I did not have access to a computer etc arghgahhhhghhh annoying book.

objects or ideas or places or people

Thank you for your suggestions everyone.

• Goats: I like goats. They make cute faces and noises and sometimes they have cute little beards. And the Mountain Goats, duh. They are little garbage disposals. I want a goat in my back yard; I would feed it glue and milk it and make soap.
• Number Two Pencils: They are ok. I used to always wonder why they were number two and not number one or number fifteen or something, but then I took art classes, and they're 2B pencils, right? That is what that is, isn't it? I'm not really sure, but I don't want to know either, so don't look it up on google or tell me. Just. Be cool. Number two pencils always the enigma. Please.
• Shoes: I LOVE SHOES!!!!!! I always buy just running shoes, though. They are nice and they make you feel all tippy toey and like you could do a jig any time, any where.
• My Favorite John Green Video: Yes I like my favorite John Green video! It is this one. But my mom said no.
• Bagels: I like bagels. I eat them all day long. They are good with peanut butter; they are good with cream cheese; they are good with eggs. Bagels bagels bagels.
• Fortune Cookies: BOGUS!
• Airplanes: I could really use a wish right now wish right now wish right now. Not really. I have flown on one airplane to Kansas and back and I liked it. I would like to fly on more airplanes for longer distances. And during the day, though the night was pretty too.
• Mice: I love mice because Sara doesn't like them at all and they make her do hilarious tweets on twitter dot com.
• Beaches: I like beaches. I've only been to beaches on Lake Erie, so my beach knowledge/appreciation is pretty limited. But they are good places to take pictures and to smell rotting fish and to step on rotting fish with your bare foot :(

Again, I thank you for your suggestions of words for me to give my opinion of. Where is that last preposition supposed to go? I do not know.

Thank you and good day.

ok so

~*~this is just copied from tumblr, hence the lack of capitalization; i didn't know or think it was going to turn into that big of a mopey rant/whatever, so it's good enough to use for beda too, i guess~*~

i've waited way way way too long to choose something to do w/r/t school and i still don't know but it's come to that point where my unwillingness and apathy are trumped by absolute necessity, but it turns out i waited too long in this case because classes start this month and i don't know what i want to do, or rather i just decided.

it's not what i want--i don't want anything. i have no drive or ambition whatsoever.

but so ok i've decided (not really but i'm not going to keep making this distinction, it is what it is. this isn't making any sense probably i'm sorry but i'm completely freaked out and lost and scared and i need to just say things) that i want to go for a ba in english (i guess) which hopefully, ideally, will be two more years of school.

and then start on a masters of library sciences etc etc whatever, hopefully through the university partnership program that the local community college i've been going to offers, through Kent State.

so i talked to a counselor at LCCC to discuss things about what bachelors program i should go into or w/e; i don't know any of the technical terms for any of these things, ok, and she said it would be best to ask the Kent people what would be ideal or the best preparation for pursuing a library masters thing.

so i did that and they replied and said that they didn't know if they would even be offering the library science masters partnership thing in two years, or whenever i was ready to enroll, but that something in the liberal arts field would be best and computer somethings courses also.

which ok that is. ok. i don't know.

none of the partnership things through lc really are liberal artsy, except for psychology through cleveland state, but i don't think that would really be very relevant at all.

and plus i just discovered that most of the university partnership program things require applications like 4 weeks ago, so i can't even do that for this upcoming semester.

but cleveland state has an english program, obviously, a normal type thing, and they have some kind of campus or center in westlake which is not too far away (all of this frustration and these problems stem from my complete lack of independence and self sufficientness and laziness and apathy and fear and fear and fear, so like going to an actual college that is not near here is pretty much completely out of the question, at least in my mind).

but i don't know what courses or things are available there, and what online, and like i said it's too late for this semester anyway.

so my mom says that i could find some classes here to take at LC this semester that would work and transfer and count to the bachelors at cleveland state and that i need to find out if that's possible and but what ones are and how do i tell that and there are so many things and my mom just keeps saying 'call people, ask them, find out' but i don't have any idea of who to call or what to ask or what to say when they need more information about anything from me and i am completely incapable of all of this or rather, actually, too stuck up in my fear of people and phones and change and talking and doing things for myself and making mistakes or seeming dumb or not having the answers to anything. i have no idea where to start or don't want to think about what i need to do to GET an idea of where to start. my mind is so screwed up and i don't know how to do so much or i don't want to think about any of this ever and i don't want to grow up

old people elderly old old old

This entry is brought to you by Very Tired Valerie(tm) and the letter P.

I don't know you guys I've been asleep for the past twoish hours and once again have awoken to blog. Really very incoherent and I don' know you guys.

We went to concert at a park place that had an amphitheater and when we got there it was like 500 old people and two children. I was lured into going by promises of 50s music, which hey 50s music is pretty good and cool. I did not know that this was a geriatric band. I am not being mean in saying that either. All of the band's members were probably over 40. They all were sitting down, the lead guitarist in an actual literal rocking chair. That was very disappointing. Then they said their name. It was totally incomprehensible the entire show and I had no idea what they were saying until my cousin Abby oh so unnecessarily called out for a flyer for their tour dates from an old lady walking around handing them out to people. They were called the GeezeCats. Geeze Cats Dot Com, Son. So there was that, strike two in what turned out to be a night, an avalanche, an unending roll of strike after strike after strike after strike.

I don't know where I'm getting these stupid sayings from or why I keep employing them so idiotically; nothing was even really bad, just pathetically old and feeble and I felt like Hank Green at that banjo concert in Florida with like how could this even take place without at least one elderly person keeling over.

So anyway the place was very full and but we had plenty of room to spread our blanket on part of the hill to the side of the stage because it was just angled enough for the old peeps to not risk attempting to balance/steady themselves there in folding lawn chairs. A lady right below us actually did half fall over in her chair onto another old lady next to her, it was p funny.

And whatever whatever, the band played so generically and blandly and my sister and cousin Abby and I spent the time taking weird semi-unintentionally model-like pictures and playing with silly putty that got all stuck all over and on my silly band, which did I mention my other cousin gave me one, an orange one that is a cat, when we were at breakfast at Bob Evans the other day. Bob Evans.

Blob Evans.

We left before the concert was over.