My instructional design job has got to stop working me 10 hours a day!

Two things I have noticed:

1) One of the "option jingles" that we can choose to have as background music on the trainings we create in my instructional design job is a rip-off of U2. It has the same chord sequence and guitar effect of "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For," but played differently.

2) Never let someone else write your curriculum (very ironic considering my daytime job is to write curriculum for other people). They will have a bunch of mistakes that you will then spend hours emailing your students about the corrections.

So I find it highly ironic that I am the new Avon designer. I have to create the training materials for Avon Representatives to help them sell their products. We are talking about me here! Someone who doesn't wear makeup, doesn't dress fashionably, struggles to write things like "beautiful and romantic ingredient stories." Now I have to fill my writing with it. Yuck. The universe is against me, I tell you. I will probably be creating their materials for the next two years (thank goodness they won't be the only projects). Agony.

I am catching on to the software program. I still have 80 small assignments to grade. I have gotten things off my to do list, but I am still a little overwhelmed. I am to the point where I like doing instructional design though. It is fun. I even don't mind the writing I have to do. Now that is shocking.

Well I started both jobs Wednesday. I am feeling a little overwhelmed and anxious about learning the software for my instructional design job and grading the 72 items that are waiting for me after the first three days of class. I know it will take some time for me to get into a schedule, but hopefully in a week or two it will be easier.

It is my last day of freedom. Both of my jobs start tomorrow. I'm spending the day running errands and trying to make my to-do list as small as possible. Hopefully there will be a little sushi thrown in later on.

A friend sent me this from a site about funny facebook conversations. I got a kick out of it.

I found this comic and thought it was very funny, although I have always found "The Yellow Wallpaper" a little too close to my fears about mental illness.

Good news!
I got a job. I will be an instructional designer-creating trainings for companies. I will still continue to do BYU-I as well because the instructional design job is contract work that varies between 30-40 hours a week.

Well, after posting about Undiscovered, I found the album at DI and wow, is he ever an INFJ. Every second of the album confirms it. Where was this back in 2005 when I needed it?

Wonderful World




The Last Goodbye

The Pieces Don't Fit Anymore

Call the Police

I am currently reading My Antonia. There was a quote I thought particularly applicable to me. I felt this while doing my thesis, but I couldn't express it in words-I couldn't quite put my finger on it.

Although I admired scholarship so much in Cleric [his mentor in college], I was not deceived about myself; I knew that I should never be a scholar. I could never lose myself for long among impersonal things. Mental excitement was apt to send me with a rush back to my own naked land and the figures scattered upon it. While I was in the very act of yearning toward the new forms that Cleric brought up before me, my mind plunged away from me, and I suddenly found myself thinking of the places and people of my own infinitesimal past. They stood out strengthened and simplified now, like the image of the plough against the sun. They were all I had for an answer to the new appeal. I begrudged the room that Jake and Otto and Russian Peter took up in my memory, which I wanted to crowd with other things. But whenever my consciousness was quickened, all those early friends were quickened within it, and in some strange way they accompanied me through all my new experiences. They were so much alive in me that I scarcely stopped to wonder whether they were alive anywhere else, or how.

I have been scanning in my scrapbook. I thought I would display some of my more bold moments from my childhood. Apparently I thought I was hot stuff, even with my ginormous glasses. And apparently I liked to cook even back then, when I was making use of my new Christmas present and Strawberry Shortcake doll.

Thanksgiving with the family was lovely. Now it is supposedly back to the grindstone. I hope my students are getting back to the grindstone. I, however, discovered that two of my favorite shows are not going to be on netflix instant play anymore: Ballykissangel and Shakespeare Retold. Sad. The good news is I will have more time for more important things. :)

I thought I would post one of the most beautiful pieces of music. Ever. Dido's lament by Henry Purcell (with a perfect baroque-style singer as well).

For my birthday I got a journal with all kinds of crazy questions in it. I think I will just randomly pick questions from it and post them every once in a while.

What I wish to drop and never pick up again: socks. They are always on the floor where I toss them when I go to bed and always have to be picked up in the morning.

I thought this was funny. I do love Christopher Walken.


 
I was reminded of this reading when I stumbled upon something similar in this glorious treasure of remixes of U2's music. The apple fruitleg version of "I Still Haven't Found I'm Looking For" is hilarious. It takes a bit to get into it, but then it is similar and pretty funny.

Well, BYU-I has asked me to teach basic writing instead of freshman writing. This most likely means one thing-I will actually be teaching two sections next semester. But whether this means they like me, are indifferent, or think I am doing a bad job where I currently am, I am not sure. It is great for me because this is the class I want to teach most, and it will make me more marketable for community colleges.

Here is a trailer for a movie I definitely want to see. And here's to hoping the rating will be appropriate-those Irish and their love of colorful language.



I've read the book that it is based on and really enjoyed it.

One of my favorite English mistakes:

I was watching Murder on the Orient Express the other day and some funny lines reminded me of me. I generally presume to know more than I do, much to my detriment when I am found out as this British gaurd is. A habit worth breaking I would say.

British guard: The church of Santa Sofia is absolutely magnificent.
Poirot: You have seen it?
British guard: No.

British guard: The... The crossing [of the sea on the ferry] should be pleasant. The Bosporus is always calm.
Poirot: You have crossed by the ferry?
British guard: No.