Mencken Man to the rescue

Dear fellow classmates,
I am losing participation points because I can't figure out how to respond to shit posts like this 4 times a week:

This is very true that we have to have some sort of a starting point. I mean if we didn't have those that gave us what we have based all our therories on we would not have come as far as we have in the study of psychology.

We do have to have a a base point and it was a shame that some of it has been by trial and error at the expense of others. But even today we have those that are willing to be in study groups to help find answers to medical trials and to me these are the true pioneers that have paved the way for all of use to lean from.

because with out those willing to put their lives in test groups we would have to rely on what we find out using animal tests and some of those can not be true because all animals are the same make up as a human.

Sincerely, fuck you.

OMGBBQ

Note to all my fellow students, I'm tired of reading your juvenile posts and assignments. If you want to write like a 12-year-old girl texting her BFF's about how dreamy Edward is, that's fine, in your personal life. If you choose to do so in your academic work, then don't expect anyone to respect your answers. While you're at it, try also not copy/pasting from Yahoo answers or wikipedia, answer in COMPLETE sentences, answer the question, don't write 200 words about how your dog helped you discover your love of psychology.

Here's some excerpts of some of my favorites from this week.

Question: Think of as many major philosophers in the western tradition that were primary contributors to the formation of psychology as a formal discipline. From the list please choose a favorite. Discuss why he/she is your favorite!

Answer 1: I think that Ivan pavlov is very interesting, him and his experaments that he was doing to discover the digestive system and how it works and this helped him to discover much more.
Ivan Pavlov worked to unveil the secrets of the digestive system, he also studied what signals triggered related phenomena, such as the secretion of saliva. When a dog encounters food, saliva starts to pour from the salivary glands located in the back of its oral cavity. This saliva is needed in order to make the food easier to swallow. The fluid also contains enzymes that break down certain compounds in the food. In humans, for example, saliva contains the enzyme amylase, an effective processor of starch.

Answer 2: One of my favorite philosophers is Charles Darwin he strongly influenced our knowledge of life on Earth. His theory of evolution by natural selection explained where the diverse kinds of living things from and how they adapted to their environment. His theory was simple life on earth is the result of billions of years of adaptations to changing environments. This of course went again everything the church in the western world taught and his theory was and still is very controversial. His works influenced not only psychology but many other sciences such as zoology and anthropology. His way of thinking of evolution was the only theory that actually provided and scientific explanation of the human life.

There have been some decent answers, and I'm not saying mine are perfect, hardly, but I at least give a shit about sounding like a total retard.

Homey

I've been working.. lots and lots of working lately. Almost 40 hours for the last 4 weeks. Doesn't sound that hard but a lot of it has been being called in on my day off or taking other employee's shifts. Plus it's Christmas and the store has been a mess, people are slobs, I've been asking for an armed guard to watch my bead aisles. People steal so much!!

Also been getting to hang out with more people from work, awesome people. Princess is warming up to a couple of them. I took her out to Petsmart for the first time yesterday, she was nervous in the parking lot and when we stopped by Michael's to say hi, but then she was fine in Petsmart. Must be the food smells.

School starts up again next Wednesday, for 1 4-hour class then off again for 2 weeks. I could have finished the class by the time we get to the second day. Annoying.

Everyone has been getting sick, I'm trying really hard not to, but some days I get no sleep. Tonight will likely be one of those nights. I've got to write a paper for the first class and I don't have any days off till the day of the class. We're also open till 11pm all this week and I close 3 nights, which means getting home at almost midnight. It's been nice having some extra money though, since I was barely covering bills before. My great-aunt sent me a check to help me out and I used it to buy some bookshelves so I could unpack the boxes that have been sitting in the bedroom since August. That made me really happy :)

A co-worker of mine lives 4 houses away and her teen son was upset that I had no furniture so he grabbed a friend's love seat and brought it over one night. So the house is getting homey :) Looks awesome with the Christmas Tree up in the front window too :) Next week I'm going to Ikea to get some floor lamps for the living room and 2 extra bedrooms. Then maybe I'll start hanging some pictures.

My brother, D, wants me to come move to Colorado soon. He makes a good argument but even if I wanted to go asap I couldn't till this class is over at the end of January. Plus I have to figure out what to do with my stuff and my parents have to deal with the house. I dunno!

I've been eating this song alive lately: Kings of Leon: Sex on Fire.

Ding Dong..

Tonight was the last day of my first class. Our learning team presentations were due, 15 minutes on Ethics & Values and how it relates to career success. My group consisted of me, A and J. Neither one was very good about responding to messages, emails or phone calls. Or getting their work together in time, hell even if they did get it done in time, it wasn't very good and required lots of editing. For the presentation, A told me on Saturday that he had everything ready but his references and would post it on Sunday. By Monday night I hadn't heard from either A or J so I sent them both an email saying that if I didn't have A's section by 10am that I would be writing everything and they wouldn't get credit. I spoke to J on Monday and got most of his work set, but it took quite a bit of hand holding to get him to do his references in APA format as required. He originally didn't think it was a big deal that we didn't have A's work because he thought that the teacher had said that we wouldn't be penalized for group members lack of effort. Then I explained to him that while the individual group member wouldn't get the grade, if we only turn in half of a paper, we'd only get a 50% grade. Then he asked *ME* what *I* was going to do. *sigh*

So I ended up doing the work for A's section. Then when I got to class he was there and tried to turn his portion in to the teacher who sent him to J and I. We told him that we would let him say whatever he wanted at the end of the presentation but that we each did our research and were going to talk about our own parts. I'm so glad that class is over, I hope to never see some of those people again. Some were cool though and I'll be seeing the nicest of them, a married couple, in my next class. ++ they also live in my town so if we get to choose our own groups I know I want them, both because they do their work and it's good quality and because we can meet in person easier.

I have 2 weeks off till my next class, then 2 weeks off for Christmas. I don't work tomorrow so it'll be my first day off in a month that I don't have to spend all day doing school work, just chores :)

Where am I?

I haven't had much to write about lately. Work is getting really busy for Christmas, I have two more weeks left in my class. If I'm not at work then I'm at home playing with Princess or doing homework.

I've got 2 more bracelets to make for Christmas presents, then I have a necklace & earring set to make on commission and I keep forgetting to call my Great Aunt's friend who wanted to order something. :/

Today will be a long day at work, the weekly truck is in and they said there's supposed to be a ton of bead stuff on it. Still, I get to play with beads so that will make it better :)

This week in Niki's history

I was scheduled to work 17 hours this week but I've been asked to stay and called in to work for a total of 28 hours this week. Fantastic! Sadly though I found out yesterday that I'll be working Halloween night. I bought so much candy to hand out because I haven't had a Halloween in years. Bummer :(

I worked 8 hours yesterday instead of 4, and I work 8 tonight instead of 4.5. I was able to come home for an hour yesterday to feed Princess and let her out. I dunno if I'll get half an hour or an hour today though. I'd leave her some food but she eats so fast it'd be gone before I left.

I had orientation on Tuesday for school. It went pretty well, I met a few people and the teacher is funny. He reminds me of a calmer, less angry Lewis Black.

Oh Happy Day!

On Sunday I drove an hour to the Apple store to get the fans replaced before the warranty runs out next month. They didn't have the parts in the store so they mailed it out and would mail it back to me at home. They said it could take up to a week but I got it back this morning! I'm so happy :) I'm getting caught up on all my downloading, spreadsheets, websites that were too hard to open on my semi-iPhone. I'm also reorganizing all of my music, deleting stuff I really don't like so hopefully the Genius play-lists will be better.

My esty bracelet showcase went well yesterday! I sold 2 bracelets which paid for the cost of the showcase + a little bit extra if you subtract the cost of materials & shipping. My sale ends tomorrow and then I'll be going over all my prices and trying to make them a bit more fair. I think I'll do an earring showcase next month!

My second day of work was on Monday. I was stocking the bead section for 4 hours. I loved it.. my quads are pretty sore from doing squats the whole time. Squat to box, unpack item, scan for shelf label, stand to place item. I got to know the store a bit more, got a few compliments on my hair too. Always nice! I work again tomorrow, another 4 hour shift. 8 1/2 on Friday! Then another 6 on Saturday. :) Not too bad for my first week. I still need to get a username & password for the employee website so I can put in my direct deposit information and schedule a few days as unavailable when my mom & brother are coming in for a few days.

Monday was also the Canadian Thanksgiving! So Happy Thanksgiving to all my Canuck friends & family. Have lots of Turkey for me! I'd bet they ran through forests of maple trees just for you :) Mmmm maple drizzled pumpkin cheesecake.....

I had the day off yesterday so I took Princess in to the pet salon across the street to get a bath. Whatever was on her fur when I got her has been giving me a rash but I wanted to give her some more time to relax here before taking her. They said she did very well, was completely silent which they thought was odd for a malamute. She was a bit afraid of the dryers so they dryed her a bit and let her air out. She's so fluffy and clean :) No more rash! They always give the dogs a cute little scarf and hers is brown with pink flowers on it. Very cute.

While she was getting bathed I went to buy her some new toys. She needed a tough ball to play fetch with. The one the neighbor gave her was destroyed in an hour and I can't trust her with it by herself or she'll eat the pieces. It glows in the dark. :) You can imagine what the yard would look like if she did eat it! I bought her a kong ball, a $2 stuffed squeaky toy and a supposedly untippable water dish for her crate. She still doesn't seem to know about the water bottle I put in there and since I work 8 hours on Friday I was worried she'd get too thirsty. I saw her go into the crate last night to drink from it so I thought that was a good sign, but today when I went out for 10 minutes to mail the second bracelet I sold yesterday, she had tipped it over. /sigh She's a stubborn one.. but at least it doesn't hold a lot of water and half of it stays in even when it's upside down, because of the lid.

I've been trying to decide if I should get a few decorations for Halloween. I definitely want to hand out candy this year, it'll be so much fun! I don't know if I'll get many visitors though if I don't put up some kind of decoration. I work at Michael's so I'm constantly around all kinds of ideas.. Maybe I'll pick up a little something tomorrow. I still want to go to a fall festival or farm event, or something. I have coupons for free pumpkins and apple cider and all kinds of nice fall stuff. I just haven't wanted to go alone.

I have my school orientation next Tuesday. Should only take an hour they said. I spoke to my advisor this morning and asked her about my transcripts and what classes I'll be taking. She said they'd only received one of the two transcripts but it wasn't in the computer yet. I'm really quite confused that they would let me start taking classes before I even pick what classes I want to take.

Officially a student, again

I got a call from my advisor, my financial aid was approved. I don't know how much yet, they have to wait to get my transcripts from my previous colleges. I'll be starting on the 27th though. I'm so nervous :/ 2 weeks? What was I thinking? I don't know if I can do this. If I should do this.. I have so much debt already, not to mention more than enough stress with what's going on with my husband and I, and trying to find work still. UGH!

$ $ $ $

I had a meeting with my advisor at the nearby University of Phoenix campus today to go over everything and fill out the financial aid paperwork. I spent a good hour with her, she was very sweet, answered all of my questions, told me that another campus would be opening in November and it would be a bit closer to me than the current one. I'm hoping all the aide comes through.

I had to lock Princess up in her crate because even last night I went out to the store for 30 minutes and she caused havoc in the dining room. She was pretty pissed at me when I got home and kept trying to nibble me to death.. but it's so cute it's hard to be mad. :)

It was such a windy but nice day today. This morning was strangely warm, a bit humid but it felt good being outside with Princess. Lately I've been having to wear a light jacket in the mornings. Then it turned cloudy with so much wind, it knocked over everyones trash cans.

On the way home from the appointment I stopped to treat myself to 5 Guys hot dogs & fries. The manager of Michael's was in there and I saw that she recognized me and she said hi, but I'm not sure she knew why she recognized me. I was supposed to get a call early last week about work but never did. Maybe this will spark some action, but still I wish it was more hours.

Good, Bad or Stupid?

So I decided to talk to a rep for the University of Phoenix about getting a degree and what my options for financial aid are. The woman I spoke too seemed confidant that I could get approved for enough to cover 1 year which is 8 5-week classes. I'm thinking of getting a Bachelor of Science in Psychology. Classes would be 4 hours once a week. I don't know what the hell I'm doing, I'm nervous as hell and worried I won't get the money, or it'll be too hard, or what kind of job I can get after. I still want to take some side courses and learn Spanish and jewelry techniques and maybe some secretarial courses.