Dream Silently

Spring, it’s here, finally. How do I know this? I can get away with just a t-shirt and not shiver to death. Walking out of the house the transition was smooth; I didn’t hit a block of cold air, if that makes sense?

Today is proving to be just as boring as previous days. The Home Show is this weekend or it starts at 2 today. I’m helping run our booth tonight only. There’s hardly anyone that shows up on fridays. The busy day is saturday, but I have prior plans so I got out of it. Trust me, it’s so hectic you wish you weren’t there on saturdays. What is the Home Show? It’s to get the local community to realize the different things they can do to their homes by gathering as many vendors (preferably local) in one spot. It gets people ready for building season. Why is NRCS there? We provide technical assistance and guidance in areas of soil and plant concerns. If you’re planning to build, I highly recommend contacting us for soil specs since we provide that information for free. Of course, this should never stop the home owner from getting holes dug and checked by a Geotech firm.

And that’s it in a nutshell. Oh, I’m house sitting again. That’s over on Sunday. Its for the same person as before.

And now, I’m going to sit here and stare out my office window at the pretty sunshine.

*sighs and shakes her head*

For your reading amusement…

1. What time is it? 2:25pm

2. Name: Y’all know me as Lady Lore or Lore

3. Age: 23

4. If you were a skittle, what color would it be? Purple… they have purple skittles, don’t they?

5. Live with both parents: Nope, been on my own since I was 18… though, things may change this summer.

6. zodiac sign: sagitarius ALL HAIL ZEUS! jk

7. Hair color: Brunette

8. Eye color: Light brown with flecks of green

9. Height: 5′5″

10. Favorite Color(s): purple, blue, brown, black, earth tone and dark jewel colors.

11. Glasses, contacts or neither: Contacts and Glasses …I so need a new pair.

12. Shoe Size: 8.5

13. Piercing/tattoos?: Just the ears

14. Birthplace: Lebanon, Oregon

16. Siblings: 1 blood sister and then a few step siblings who I don’t keep in contact with.

******HAVE YOU EVER*****

17. Cut your own hair?: yes

18. Drank? yes, i am a college student stereotype

19. Smoked a cigarette? yes, not a habit though

20. Ditched one of your friends? yes

21. Skipped school?: yes

22. Bungee jumped?: one day

23. Went to a concert?: yes! Saw Offspring for my first concert. Totally rocked.

24. Kissed someone of the same sex? Yes

25. Kissed a stranger: Yes

26. Stared at the stars for hours? yes… then again, I’ll stare at my ceiling for hours if I find it amusing.

27. TP’d someone’s house?: Yes

28. Won something?: Yes, best prize? I won me a PS2 last summer.

30. Been rejected?: Who hasn’t been?

31. Been to a funeral?: Yes

32. Used a lighter?: Yes

33. Been on stage?: Yes

******FAVORITE*****

35. Food: tomatoes!

36. Ice cream flavor: this half baked ice cream by Ben & Jerry’s

37. Sport to watch?: Hockey

38. School subject(s): Math and Literature

39. Breakfast cereal: Kellog’s Special K

40. Number(s): 9 and 13

41. Book: Dragonsbane

42. Movie(s): Why can’t books be plural?

43. Show?: Scrubs

44. Drink: Alaskan Summer Ale

45. State: Alaska

46. Place: Valdez. I love sea ports.

47-48? guess this isn’t a true 99 questions, huh?

49. Fav type of music: Rock

50. Letter(s): Q … I have no idea why, I just like how it looks.

51. Fav restaurant: Sourdough Sam’s

52? is missing as well.

53. Holiday: Halloween

54. Name for a son: Ian or Ryan

55. Name for a daughter: This changes constantly, currently Iris

******DO YOU PREFER*****

56. Chocolate or Vanilla? Swirl!

57. Hamburgers or hot dogs? hamburgers w/cheese and bacon.

58. Long relationships or one night stands? long, though I’ve sometimes wondered if one night stands are more advantageous.

59. Dogs or cats? Cats

60. Scary movies or comedies? Scary Movies… the comedies now a days are just plain crappy.

61. Silver or gold?: Swirl!

62 Croutons or bacon bits? uh… swirl? :D

63. Love or Lust? love

******FIRST THINGS THAT COME TO MIND******

64. Hedgehog: rodent

65. School: Cute guy in Economics (*blows teasing kisses to Joe*)

66. Green: the notebook sitting next to me

67. Cow: Moooo

68. Canada: I’m driving through there this summer.

69. Mouse: Tom’s current problem

70. Hand: pain from being stabbed with the file

******THE PAST 48 HOURS, HAVE YOU******

71. Watched a movie? yes

72. Talked on the phone? yes

73. Cried? no, fortunately… though PMS symptons should be kicking in soon.

74. Thrown up? Came close… there was something really raunchy in the garbage I took out.

75. Drank a glass of water? yeah

76. Talked to one of the opposite sex? yep

77. Read a book or magazine? yeah

78. Watched TV? yeah

79. Looked in the mirror? yeah

80. Taken a shower?: yeah

81. Taken a picture?: No

82. Listened to music? yeah

83. Kissed someone? No :(

84. Done your Homework? yep

85? another missing number

***DO YOU BELIEVE IN….******

86. Heaven? No

87. Aliens? Why not? We can’t possibly be as alone as we think we are.

88. Fun for the entire family? Heh, yeah

89. Freedom of speech? Of course, as long as the speaker isn’t basing things off ignorance.

90. Love? Yeah

91. Magic? Define it please.

*******SOME RANDOM STUFF*****

92.Last movie you saw in theaters? Umm… that was so long ago.

93. Are you listening to music right now? Yeah

94. What are you wearing right now? Clothes, I do work in an office.

95. Do you like your middle name? Yes, and I wish to pass it on to my own daughter like my mother did with me

96. What is the best thing since sliced bread? I really don’t have a clue.

97. What’s your GPA: If I share my GPA, then y’all will stop thinking me as bright, smart, and intelligent. >_> I could just give you my high school gpa since I’m a UA Scholar according to that: 3.8 on a 4.0 scale . I am never sharing my college gpa.

98. Where do you want to live when you’re older? I don’t plan that far in advance. Let me get a new job first!

99. What time is it now: 2:35pm

This homework assignment sucks. Mostly because of the page restrictions (2-3 pgs). I couldn’t go into great depth or define things things as deeply as I would have liked. On that note, please don’t flame me until you’ve read and understood everything that I’ve written (ask me questions before jumping to assumptions). To my vegan and vegetarian friends: this is not a smack in the face to you. I hold no disrespect to you for your choice. These are simply my opinions.

The instructor (or the question I chose) deals with the rights of animals (as in, do we eat them, use them for clothing, hurt them for pleasure, etc?). She wanted us to give our two cents on the subject.

—

When you’re young, the world is an adventure. Children show off humanity’s curiosity in the oddest of ways — catch a grasshopper or pull up a flower; examine it in anyway possible, which usually required observation with dissection. As we grow older, we become more sensitive to the things around us. We move away from our, then “barbaric”, acts of exploring the world. With this growth — this new revelation — we have to ask ourselves: where do we fit in the grand scheme of things?

Animal cruelty and the rights of animals has always been a heavily debated topic. Do animals have rights? Should we eat animals? Use them for clothing? Peter Singer doesn’t think we’ve a right to treat animals the way we do. Then again, it is clear from one of many essays that he has written on the subject that we should become vegan and repress our natural instincts. Our natural instincts date back to our ancestors. Our ancestors hunted for their meat and gathered their food. Meat was a necessity for survival. It certainly could feed a family longer than gathered fruits and vegetables.

While some of Singer’s points are valid in the area of animal cruelty, I do not agree with him when it comes to using animals as a means to an end. By science, humans are omnivores. What is an omnivore? An omnivore is a creature who must eat both meat and plant in order to survive. Yes, it’s proven that a person can substitute the need for meat with soy products. However, this isn’t that great healthy solution everyone thinks it is. Over consumption of soy products can cause digestive problems later in life. It also affects the thyroid, which can lead to involuntary weight gain and a sluggish physical life (Daily Health News). Some individuals who turn to vegetarianism have such an imbalance in nutrient that their skin turns yellow, their bones brittle, and they have no meat on them causing them to look like unhealthy toothpicks. Surely, by these simple observations, eating just plants cannot possibly be the solution to decreasing animal cruelty.

As it is, if vegetarians are so concerned about meat eaters, then shouldn’t they be concerned about eating plants? Aren’t plants sentient creatures just like animals? Granted they cannot cry out distress or move about on their own, they have natural instincts (to grow and reproduce) and provide an important role in our ecological system – just as animals do. Thomas E. Hill believes that by saving plants, we save animals as well. By not tearing down our rainforests, by not turning that front lawn into an asphalt eyesore, we are helping everyone: nonhuman and human. It’s been scientifically proven that plants provide the valuable exchange between carbon dioxide and oxygen. Oxygen is so valuable; I have to wonder if we shouldn’t ban the eating of plants! I think I would rather be able to breathe air than be concerned about wrongly eating animals. The defining question raised then is what defines a sentient being?

The main requirement for living is the need to survive. Both plants and animals demonstrate this — animals by the need to reproduce and eat, plants by the need to absorb nutrients from soil and spread. Do we not find ourselves in a catch 22 then? By giving up one thing, in favor of another, can prove just as harmful as keeping both things. Everything connects to form a balance, which helps the world function. By neglecting one part of the world by increasing the consumption of another (more plants than animals), we find that the balance becomes upset. Therefore, by denying our natural instinct to eat meat, we cause another thing or sentient being if you will have it, to suffer.

This is not to say that being vegan or vegetarian is bad. Animal cruelty, however, should be the concern, not whether or not humans should eat animals. Testing products like make up, drugs, shampoos, etc on animals is wrong. Keeping beef cows pinned in a stall so they can’t move is wrong. Puppy farms and kitten farms are wrong. Stomping on chickens to kill them is wrong. Finding the alley cat and trying to light him on fire is wrong. Not eating meat isn’t going to solve the above listed problems. If anything, the controversy over to be a veggie verse a carnivore overshadows these more horrendous acts of cruelty, since most will look to it as an escape goat before they’ll openly admit their son/daughter likes to kick stray dogs.

What is the solution or the middle ground? Where is the impartial median that lets everybody do his or her thing? The answer is not that simple. However, one thing is for certain. Out of all the sentient beings on the planet, humans are quite clearly the superior species in terms of technology, creativity, and thinking. We are destroyers and builders. Our actions and decisions are what cause future solutions or problems. As the superior species, we have a responsibility not to ourselves, but to everything: plant and animal alike. This responsibility should be taken into consideration when it comes to deciding how to solve the problem of animal cruelty or even protecting our environment.

—

Edited Thursday 11:09am: I didn’t realize that blogger had messed up my dashes and apostophees (sp?). I’ve fixed that and my apologies. It looked fine last night when I posted it.

Nothing *twitch twitch* to do! The high point of my day was answering questions on how to run pipeline calculations and how to do hydraulic and energy grade lines (hgl and egl respectively). So, instead of having something productive to work on, I’ve been playing around on deviantart and neopets. I am such a slacker.

Jeff hasn’t been around because of a spur dike project going in on the Nenana River (down in Nenana… I helped survey that). I have no clue where he is today. Nobody ever tells me what’s going on. I truly cannot wait until I get a new job.

It has got to be better than this.

Well, I suppose I’ll type up that ethics assignment now so I can say I finished homework at least.

My skin is burning on my hands. I’m afraid to rub lotion over my skin because I know it’s going to burn like all hell, making it feel worse than it does now. Ugh, to suffer or suffer worse…

Today was extremely busy. I’m tired. My body hurts everywhere too. I looked like a puppet going up and down stairs today. I did lunges at the gym (haven’t done those in… well… eons). And I really wish Joe was here to give me a massage. My shoulders are so tense.

On other news, instead of trying to saw and stab my fingers to death this week, I’ve been trying to smash them to smithereans! Don’t ask, you really, truly, don’t want to know. The piece I’m working on, which is a celtic cross variation, is coming out gorgeous. I have to finish filing off sulfer stained metal and set the stone and then it’ll be finished. Carol was asking me how I was planning on the display finish. I told her I had no clue that I was playing around with ideas in my head. She said she had some silver chains that may look good with it and that she would bring them in on wednesday :D.

I feel special :O

Some more other news, I picked up the sims 2 expansion: open for business. I have found out that I suck running businesses. Then again, I probably should give myself more time to play too.

And so, I leave you with new art!

Spiralling Love (done in apophysis)

Pirate Dreams (done in daz/pspx)