Centennial Middle School Project

I've started a blog for the work I'm doing there. Check it out.

http://cmsp.blogspot.com/

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Sarah Lee, pie hater?

This was another exercise we did from my intro to fiction class.

We had to take a small statement and write a story about it from another character's point of view.

Here was our statement:

"Sarah Lee confesses hatred of pie."

"Welcome back to a Currant Affair. Our top story tonight, a shocking confession from the confectionariess Sarah Lee. Let's see the video."
"I hate pies. I just loathe them" she bluntly said in a press conference earlier today.
A reporter raised his hand. "Why do you hate pie?"
"There's no creativity left in pies. Sure we have desserts and there are main dish pies, but there's nothing innovating in them right now."
"But aren't there almost infinite combinations for desserts and main dishes?"
"Maybe but the genres are old and tiresome, they're still just basically desserts. Why the public won't accept anything else I don't know?"
"What kind of things have you tried?"
"First we looked at salad pie. The concept was too baffling for John Q. Public. Then we tried drink pie."
Some of the reporters shuddered.
"You can imagine how messy those were."
"So what are you going to do?"
"Well, they can keep using my name to sell other non-pie products, but I'm thinking of sellilng off our pie division. Mrs. Smith's has expressed interest. I'm just sick of pie."
The video ended and cut back to the studio.
"There you have it folks. How this will affect our sweet tooths and the company's stock value are yet to be seen. Goodnight."


I broke the ice and read my aloud first last Friday when we did this.

Character Perception Exercise

This is an exercise we did in my intro to fiction class.

Choose one of the following settings:

a. a bank
b. a fast food establishment
c. a librarian's convention
d. a Yanni concert
e. the bus

Then choose one of the following characters to perceive and act in that setting:

a. a young woman who's just been diagnosed with terminal cancer
b. an old man who's just committed a murder
c. a middle aged man whose marriage proposal was recently rejected
d. a young girl who's overheard her parents talking about divorce
e. a poor woman who just lost her winning lottery ticket.

Do not directly refer to the situation preoccupying your character (e.g cancer, murder). Instead, reveal the character's feelings through perception and his/her interaction with the enviroment. First, second, or third person limited (the narrator can only see into the head of one character).

Try and guess where I was headed. I will warn you that I didn't get to finish.


Jamie meandered into the auditorium taking a seat alone and near the back. I was late and by the time I got there ther were only seats left at the front.
Jamie was my dear friend and we went to grad school together. She looked down and depressed --something unusual for her. She was normally a happy go lucky personat least in public who would and could help anyone find almost anything especially in periodicals. If she was upset here, today, it must be really big. She normally would discretely take care of any problems she might have out of sight.
But she had to be here, she was giving a seminar the next day. Hopefully her composure would be back and whatever was troubling her would have passed.
All through the talk I kept glancing at her trying to figure out by her body language what was wrong. I'd been around her enough to sort of tell (we even dated contrary to office politics).


That's it. I told you I didn't finish.
Two of the ones we read in class had were both about rejected middle aged men at Yanni concerts. I didn't know enough about Yanni to write about him.

We thank you for your support -- Bartles & James

News

Let me tell you of a rollercoaster. First my financial aid was blocked becuase they thought I had graduated. This was on 8/31. So I had to fill out a form that took 3 days to process. So that happened and then they tried to deposit my refund into a nonexistant bank account. So I had to wait for that to come back. Finally on 9/2 I picked up my check and went to Wells Fargo. I had an account with them and it was closed (and another account which I owed a lot of money). I was willing to pay what I owed them but they wanted me to pay both accounts off which was more than I could pay at the time to make a new account. So I had to go to Compass Bank. I opened an account there but they had to hold the check for 7 business days so no $ until 9/14. :( So I'm still waiting. I had to agree to pay $100 more for the tablet pc I'm getting because I am delayed in paying for it.

Good news though. Friday I got word that they want me back as a tutor. Yes! So I'll be doing that. If I bone up on my math again, I can get more hours. The problem is I'm quite rusty.

I'm going to start posting the exercises we do in class for my intro to fiction class. I hope they don't seem subdued (becuase I am). They could be because the class is at 8 am.

Right now I feel that my computer science past has broken off and feels distant (including what I've learned). It seems to be fading. I feel more attached to writing and english at this time. IT work no longer interests me.

But there is something odd. Taking english classes is interfering with me starting/working on projects. Or maybe it's just that I'm keeping busy.

I am using CS though to make a word game that I invented. I'm using Python to process some words. Basically it goes like this:
You have a contiguous chunk of a word (3, 4, or 5 letters long) and you have to try to guess words with that chunk in it. BTW, the name of the game is Vofragulary and there will probably be a version written in flash eventually.

Example: nve a word with that in it: invented.

DO NOT STEAL MY IDEA.

You get points for guessing multiple words with that chunk.

Tomorrow (ie later Sunday) I'll post an exercise from my fiction class.

Growing Pains

Last weekend was a whirlwind. I had an intimate conversation with a female friend. We both revealed things we had never shared with anyone else. I went first and she replied back, but I didn't handle it well and was mean and very judgemental. I knew I was being rejected, but I handled things poorly becuase I was being selfish. I wasn't clear about that until friend, much older and wiser than me helped me sort through things and see that. I'm trying to work on that.

What I said in the conversation made me feel extremely vulnerable. After my mishandled reply to her own confession, I didn't want to deal with any of it and didn't check my email for more than 12 hours.

I feel ok about the rejection, but talking with her is an irritant to me still. That's why on my suggestion we are having a time out. Two weeks hopefully should do it.

I have more to say (hopefully not judgemental knee-jerk reactions) and I still care a lot about this person, but I need time to heal. I don't take rejection well. I never have.

It has been suggested to me that I start looking elsewhere.