Mosquitoes

So I went for a run and ended up getting my first mosquito bite of the summer.

I researched mosquito deterrents and bite relief and found a few helpful websites:

http://tipnut.com/how-to-prevent-mosquito-bites/

http://tipnut.com/over-40-mosquito-bite-itch-relief-tips/

http://www.tinymosquito.com/protection.html

and found out that some people are allergic to mosquitoes:

http://health.discovery.com/centers/allergyasthma/allergy/allergies_qa.html#mosquito

http://www.getridofthings.com/get-rid-of-mosquito-bites.htm

Stupid mosquitoes...anyone know the reason for their existence?

Movie Review-Night at the Museum 2: Battle of the Smithsonian

Saw this movie earlier this evening and enjoyed it.  Ben Stiller wasn't annoying and it was a good soundtrack.  A little cheesy, especially with Abraham Lincoln, but some of it was funny or exciting.

Remembered to keep my mouth shut this time! :P

6.1/10 on imdb.com, i would agree.

Movie Review-Taken

Loved it.  I was the one talking through the whole thing, gasping at the action scenes, mutttering "Was that REALLY necessary" when there was too much violence, and so forth.  I love seeing movies in the theater because it really does make them so much better and more intense.  When I saw Mission Impossible II at home after seeing it in the theater, it was a letdown.  I hate how movie tickets are getting so expensive now though.  You're lucky if you get tickets under $8...and gas prices are going up again! uhoh...

In one of those moods...

where I'm starting to overthink everything.  It's been a rough week, what with school almost over for the semester and some rough patches with my boyfriend.  And then my friend randomly spazzed a few minutes ago accusing people of being ungrateful children.  And I've been sick all this weekend.  And my lakehouse burned down.  So yea...life is interesting, like usual.

It's very important to realize how much we actually do have and how little we really do know, just like that poster noted on my last note.

love ya'll & hope this week turns out well.

another post? how silly!

My friend just told me that Judaism is not a religion worshipping Judas.

Now I knew that, but it strikes me as an interesting question-where did Judaism get its name?

Couple clicks later, here's our answer!:

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Where_did_the_word_'Jew'_originate_from

Yes, answers.com sponsors me.

Kidding.

It's freeware, I believe, so I don't have to cite it?

Another Adventure

Went downtown this afternoon to do some tutoring.  Hard work, but I think we made some progress.  I've been trying to contact one of my old teachers to get more information on teaching Italian, but she hasn't yet responded.

Apparently, I got ambushed by a creep after writing that post asking people to comment.  I suppose I walked into it.  Whatever.

I miss you, CRC.

Does anyone know anything about QuickBooks?

A Warning to Meself...

http://lifehacker.com/5210528/the-importance-of-monitoring-your-online-reputation?t=12064098#c12064098

I have to be nicer.  Oops. And my name will remain anonymous.

New post, new week

hey all.

who reads this blog?!?! If you see this post, write a comment on it!! please. lol.

chi legge questo blog? Se lo vede, scriva dei commenti, per piacere. :P

Quien lee este blog? Si lo vee, escriba un commento, por favor. :)

and to get totally ridiculous, i'll auto-translate into german, polish, and whatever other languages have free translations.

because I CAN...and because I'm quirky

In Dutch: Wie leest deze blog? Indien u dit ziet, schrijf een commentaar alstublieft.

In German: Wer liest dieses Blog? Wenn Sie dies sehen, schreiben Sie eine Bemerkung bitte.

In Portuguese: Quem lê este blog? Se você vir isto, escreva um comentário por favor.

In Russian: Кто читает этот blog? Если Вы видите это, напишите комментарий пожалуйста.

In Polish: Który czyta ten blog? Jeśli otóż ten , pisać pewien komentarz podobać się.

In Norwegian: Hvem leser denne blog? Hvis du forstår denne , skrive en bemerkning behage.

In Finnish: Joka kuulua nyt kuluva blog? Tokko te hiippakunta nyt kuluva , kirjailla huomautus haluta.

Does anyone even speak finish anymore as their first language? Sorry, very ignorant. Inform me please.

that's enough

wait, no.

Latin: Quisnam lego is blog? Si vos animadverto is write a ineo commodo.

and OMG i almost forgot!! FRENCH!!!

French: Qui étudier ça blog? Si vous voyez ça , écrivons une faire des remarques s'il vous plaît.

There. Now we're done. Now comment! :)

What to write? What to write??!?

TIRED.

Watched the movie Amazing Grace with my parents.

Found out that Walgreens' ran out of jelly beans and that there really aren't any chocolate lambs. I don't know what my mother was thinking. :(

Hoppy Easter every1! :P and do NOT, I repeat, NOT, eat Peeps.

Sorry peeps' creators! But your product made me ill & I will never forget that.

'night/good morning (for you europeans...)

FOUND OUT I MIGHT BE ABLE TO TUTOR SOMEONE IN ITALIAN DAILY!!! ah!

So...I should add pictures?

Pictures are difficult to do legally, but I'll start adding some freeware ones, I suppose.

Testing...

Example one:

Ok, didn't work...try again.

Mangos!

Cool.

Obedience

Oggi la nostra classe d'italiano ha discusso il [plot] e il messaggio di quattro favole: Cappuccetto Rosso, Bianca Neve e I Sette Nani, Cerentola, e La Sirenetta.  Quest'ultime tre sono stati composti in film dal Disney. La prima, la terza, e la quarta dimostrano il tema dell'obbedienza....che i figli devono obbedire i genitori.

Oh...plot=la trama

Oddly enough, my friends also discussed obedience today...and how hard it is to control kids.  They seem to think that parents need to be really strict, and this force will convince children to be good.  Most of them were scolded severely, and "even" spanked or belted when they were young.  I was too, but I don't believe in hitting kids.  There's got to be another way.  Not that it's easy or anything.  I'm a college student currently, and just beginning to think about having kids and how to properly raise them.  I would love to be a nearly "perfect" mom who rarely gets upset, but I'm not so sure that is realistic.  It's just that I've so often observed mothers yelling at their kids, and I usually cringed.  Not that I want my kids to have control of me.  I want PEACE, gosh darn it! haha.  I know kids need to learn that there are boundaries they must not cross, but how does one enforce them?  How do you get a protesting child to go to sleep?  I learned in psychology last year that once a parent caves in to their child and reinforces whining or other bad behavior, the child will continue the behavior that led them to receive a reward.  But that requires great willpower!!

I trust I'll know soon enough; after all, my mother did a fairly decent job.  In the meantime, I need to get some sleep.

(Note: Due to this picture, this blog is now rated PG-13  But you really should be 13 to look at this anyway...or most websites nowadays, so yea.)

Road Trip sans Car

Went downtown this afternoon to clear my head because I had a 4S panic attack.  My roommate, without meaning to, drives me nuts sometimes.  Latest bad habit?: drumming her fingernails on everything in sight. Gah.

If you haven't figured out who this is yet, I don't think you ever will.  Well, unless I actually come out and tell you.  But I won't do that! It's more fun this way!

So my latest assignment for quicktutor.blogspot.com is to find information on pros and cons of pharmaceuticals.  HOW GENERAL CAN YOU GET?!?!? Do you just mean drugs in general? That's what pharmaceuticals are!   Now I can understand a discussion on the evils of pharmaceutical companies, problems with overdosing on drugs, or using too many drugs for little problems, but just the general topic of pharmaceuticals?  That's basically the same as asking, what the pros and cons of medicine are!  Is you see this, Rishi, THAT is why I refuse to do this assignment.

Back to my story of going downtown-i will only tell you the educational details since that is the purpose of this blog. 

-I found out that the Cook County Library is open Monday through Friday, but on Saturday, it is open exclusively for attorneys.  I think I would like to visit it someday.

-Macy's is open until 8pm on Saturdays.

-You can play musical instruments on the Red Line subway platform.  Do you need a liscense? THAT would be a good question to get answered!

-There are a bunch of places that have "free" wifi downtown, but you may need to purchase something before using it.  Personally, I think that's a great deal.  Food + Internet=HEAVEN! ha

McDonald's wifi is supposedly fee-based. :( Ridiculous.  They have so much money and can't afford to give people a break? Not nice.

-Honestly, I think Braveheart is over-rated.  Yes, it is an epic movie, but serously, some of the scenes are ridiculous from a health and survival tactics student's perspective, in particular that scene where Wallace falls into the lake and is flailing his arms everywhere.  STUPID!  Wait until you are in the water to use your energy!  (Unless you arrogantly think you are that strong and capable of endurance.) *shakes head* Oh, and that reminds me of my position of torture-from the tortured person's perspective-"If you're going through hell, keep going" (Winston Churchill)!!!! Otherwise, it's pointless. And speaking of William Churchill, I used him as one as part of my heroes project in 8th grade, LOL.  And speaking of 8th grade, I did a project on the book Left for Dead: A Young Man's Search for Justice for the USS Indianapolis.  THAT (again, lol) is an interesting story from what I can remember (which is little, unfortunately).

endorsement of Amazon,  sorry: http://www.amazon.com/Left-Dead-Search-Justice-Indianapolis/dp/0385730918

And this reminds me of the movie The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, because the scene where he goes off to war appears to be similar to that of the USS Indianapolis situation.  Not sure though, so I'll go look it up on IMDB.com....one sec.

Drat.  Too much time wasted on IMDB, to no avail.  I spotted a confirmation of the reference on Amazon (yet again!! this blog is a repetitive mess! so sorry)...please do look into the story.  Not the MOST INTERESTING EVER, but certainly worthy of a movie or something.

That's all.  Ta!

Under pressure...

leaning down on me...leaning down on you...doo doo doo doo.

hey guys.

up for another post? well ready or not, here it comes.

Couple things...

1. Yesterday, I heard a bit of a catfight while in line to get something other than the umpeenth pizza or sandwich from my school's alternative to cafeteria food.  School food is ok....as long as you don't have it every day.  Which most of us have to do.  I'm surprised the people who claim they can't eat the food here haven't tried to sue the school.  Maybe there's no suitable law they could cling to, but I heard that the school immediately caved in when a lawyer was even mentioned in this one person's claim.  

Anyway, back to the story.  Even though I'm 50% Polish, I only know a few words.  Pathetic, right?  I think so, even if you don't.  Not that it's exactly my fault.  My Polish dad doesn't speak it either, and we never really hung out with our cousins often enough to pick up more than a "czesch" or...in this case..."Jestes s'winia!"  (You're a pig!)  Of all the insults, they used one I could understand. Ha. Suckers....thinking they could get away with it just because they were speaking Polish.  See that's one of the things that kinda bugs me about some immigrants.  They use their language to their advantage and insult us Americans, under the impression that we won't understand.  Well that won't work on all of us!!! Nope.  Ah...foreign languages...that aren't so foreign anymore.  It's kinda cool how so many people are learning the basics of languages now.  Almost everyone (well at least us educated, snobby people) knows some Spanish, French, German and Italian.  Now we just have to learn Arabic and Chinese so we can stop the terrorists!

(just kidding. sorta)

2. The difference between to, two, and too for the people on Yahoo! answers that apparently don't know how to think.

To: what form of speech is this? hell if i know. but it is NOT the number and it does NOT mean "also".  essential for infinitive verb translations....such as "to swim"=nadar (in common? spanish...wow so many dialects it's INSANE!!)

Two: the number. One, TWO, three..etc.

Too:  You wanna go too?  OR, more morbidly, Will you, too, SHUT UP!?!? (just another person to shush rather than "Will you two shut up!?!? if you are trying to angrily shush 2 people at the same time)

Wow.  Apparently Gary is a bad influence on me.  As are most people.  b/c i'm an angel...yep yep!

Ok, let's go with one more.  hm.

No. I'm tired. Bye! :P

So happy...

I ACTUALLY GOT OUT OF LAB CLASS AFTER ONLY 1 HOUR!!!!!

yea. that's all folks. :P

New post

Ok, so I need to post again.

We watched Johnny Stecchino in Italian class last week and we had to write a summary and review of it for this week.  I found out that there really is no decent summary of the movie in English online, so maybe I'll have to be the one to do the translating from the Italian wiki about it to the English stub.  We're looking at sonnets now and will soon be moving on to something else...we move quickly in that class!

Biology today was interesting as usual.  We're learning about animals and evolution and it's actually rather cool.  We learned the difference between a "boy scout push-up" and a "marine pushup":  boy scount pushups are easier because the exercise is just a movement between two resting spots-one with elbows extended all the way and the other...ah i don't remember. and then marine pushups don't involve resting positions at all-the arms aren't extended at the top and at the bottom, they can't touch the ground...or something like that.

and avira antivirus protection apparently can't connect to the internet even my other applications can.  weird.

ok well i'm going to do a crossword puzzle, answer a question or two on y!a and then go to bed.

'night all! :)

hey

So it's spring!!!  Here in Chicago, it's beautiful weather...60 degrees outside; it's wonderful.  I almost went downtown yesterday, but I unfortunately suffered a mild setback when I realized I had walked down to the train line without my wallet!! ARGH!  haha.  I freaked out for a second because I thought I had lost it, but I hadn't, thank goodness.

So how does this have anything to do with education?  Well...as a matter of fact, it doesn't.

BUT, it's a nice introduction to an educational topic!  What's that, you might ask?  GRAMMAR and USAGE OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE!!!
YAY!!!!!

haha. unfortunately, I'm not kidding.  I have a quota to fill of blog entries, and they all must have SOMETHING to do with education.  I intend to do my part to educate American fools.  haha. Am I one of them? Quite possibly.  Whatever.

OK, so I'd like to begin this post (well, "the meat" of this post) with a translation of that first paragraph into Italian! (Because I can.)  Then I'll get all nit-picky and describe my failures to write in good English for the rest of it.  Then I'll call it a day.

Allora....e' primavera!!  Qua a Chicago, fa bel tempo...60 DEGREES fuori; e' stupendo.  Io stavo per andare in centro ieri, quando ho saputo che non ho portato il mio WALLET!!! Che schiffo!!!  haha.  Sono diventata ALARMED per un momento perche pensavo che l'abbia perso, ma non l'ho fatto, grazie a Dio.

Ok, so the words in caps are words I couldn't remember.  Let me go look them up at wordreference.com.  Brb.

Ok, now SUPPOSEDLY (b/c you can never be too sure)  Degrees=GRADI (oh yea, now i remember.)  Wallet= PORTAFOGLIO (lit. carries sheet...weird) and ALARMED=allarmato/a.

Va bene.

Well, change of plans.  I have to go asap, so I'll end here.  Bye! :)

new post, lol

so i've had my bf and my bff look at my blog and they like it!!! YAY!!!

and i'm supposed to write more frequently, so here's another post.

hmmm...

well while i'm thinking of something to write about, i'll go do something slightly "productive"-answer a question for someone on y!answers' homework help. that'll give me something to write about.

in the meantime, savor this tidbit:

Q: How do you pronounce this name: La-ia?

A: Ladashia.  Classic.

Got that from my friend Dan.

tt4n

ok, answered this one: 

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20090321105729AA1fMVC

Q (basically): What's the difference between science and technology?

What do you think?

And now, I simply must get out of my room b/c my roommate's irritating me!!! gah, 4s.

Pretty interesting question I just answered for someone on yahoo! answers

I thought this was an interesting predicament and I managed to solve it!  My explanation needs some work, but I thought it was pretty cool.

Testing...Crossword Puzzle App

Loading crossword puzzle. One moment please.

House, Crossword Puzzles, and other Stuff

So I'm working on a crossword puzzle from my local newspaper and watching back-to-back episodes of House, M.D., arguably one of the better TV series today.  I figured I could fill you all in on the random, possibly useless information I've learned.

1.  I found out about the TV show "The Facts of Life", a series that aired from 1979 to 1988.  Supposedly there are now DVDs of the episodes.  More info at:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Facts_of_Life_(TV_series)

2.  I finally found out that the Taj Mahal was not a wedding present but rather a memorial and mausoleum.  More info at:

http://www.pbs.org/treasuresoftheworld/a_nav/taj_nav/main_tajfrm.html

3. "numbers pro", 3 letters may be "CPA": Certified Public Accountant

There's an American Institute of Certified Public Accountants; their website is http://www.aicpa.org/

4.  Alfred Noyes (1880-1958) wrote "The Highwayman"

Website to check out: "Poem of the Week"

(this specific link is to the poem "The Highwayman")

http://www.potw.org/archive/potw85.html

There's more, but I'm bored.

Oh, and by the way, there a bunch of great websites that can help you out with crossword puzzles.  The one I generally use is OneAcross.com.

Update! LOL

So it's now March 2, almost a month since I last posted.  Sorry.  I'll try to be a little more frequent about posting.  Sometimes I just don't know what to say though! LOL.  This is a shout-out to whoever's following my blog...I am still alive and well!! haha.  Later.  P.S.  I'm trying to work out the mobile text-put on blog-automatic-ocity feature that blogger has...so hopefully that will seriously increase the number of posts I do here! :)

Oh & another technological detail: my boyfriend just introduced me to the Google Chrome internet browser.  It is AWESOME!  My only complaint is that sometimes the tabs get confused and become seperate windows.  I have to figure out how to avoid that.  It's sort of annoying.

An actually educational note is that my italian friend and I plan on starting an online English-Italian school...it's just in the beginning phases though, so we really don't know exactly what it's going to be like.  It should be exciting though! Let me know if you want to be involved! :)

Another post!! :)

I saw the film Little Miss Sunshine last night with my friends. Here's a short review.
This ridiculously hilarious movie is the story of a dysfunctional family from New Mexico that travels in a Volkswagon bus to California so their daughter can participate in the finals of a beauty pageant.

The most well-known actor is arguably Steve Carell. I thought he was the most "normal" one in the family apart from the girl. My friends joked that it would take her years of therapy to overcome the mental problems caused.

more information available at http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0449059/ where it was rated an average of 8.1 out of 10 stars with more than 100,000 voters.

What do I think about it? I am not surprised that it received an "R" rating, but I am surprised that it received an 8/10! It was a good movie, but I don't think it was that good. Probably more like a 7/10. It's not a movie you need to see unless you're into dysfunctional family stories or love comedy movies. It's no classic, but a good movie all the same.

Argh! My next door neighbors in my dorm room are making farting noises for sheer pleasure...ew! haha. Guess I'll just have to turn my music up louder! :P

Currently listening to "Don't Stand So Close To Me" by The Police through deezer.com. I wonder who they're talking about...or maybe I don't want to know. I love the band though.

Happy travels! :)

First Post

Hey you guys! (or whoever actually reads my blog) I don't have much time for blogging, even if it's all schoolwork related, so my posts won't be so frequent. But here's to telling you that I'm alive and well and will indeed be doing some posts.

I saw two films last night: W. and Nick and Nora's Infinite Playlist, so I'll give you a quick review of each.
W. is a comedic biography of George W. Bush. I enjoyed it even though I'm a republican and Bush-respecter. It helped me understand why people think he's an idiot and how his advisors may have taken advantage of his incapabilities.
more on it at http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1175491/ , rating is PG-13...I basically agree b/c I'm not sure if kids under 13 know enough about the presidency/ Bush to enjoy it. But if you do, and you're not 13 yet, that's great. More power to you.

N&N's IP is basically a chick-flick/comedy. It's the story of one night in New York city. Issues include gay rights and drugs, the former primarily supported and the latter displayed as disgusting. I'm surprised high school students were allowed to go out all night by their parents, but whatever.
more on it at http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0981227/ , rating is PG-13, though I think 13 is too young to see this one because it's pretty crude and there's a lot of sex.

Keep on rocking.