As you all know, I'm a very intolerant, unreasonable, mean person. I have intolerant thoughts all day. And today, as I was sitting in a lobby waiting for Tim to get out of his botany lab, I wrote some intolerant thoughts down, just so I would remember them and be able to write them down here. Now, there you see effort in order to perpetuate my intolerance. I am lazy in all the wrong ways.
Actually, these aren't all annoyances. Some of these are just observations.
Sam's mentioned in his blog (CommonPlaces, to your right) that people who write blogs might be, "a little bit keen on themselves." And just in case there was any question about this, I thought I'd clarify: I am in fact a very self-centered person, and this blog feeds my egotistical, selfish thoughts. Actually, that is something I worry about. I notice that the word "I" or any "me"-related word seems to pop up in every sentence I use. So I try and eliminate this egocentric world I'm in...and I can't. In the end, I've resigned myself. I think that almost everyone is this way. It's been shown that people remember anything better if they relate it back to themselves. It's called the self-reference effect. So I wonder, does anyone else have this nagging sense of self-centeredness? It makes me feel very...uncaring or something. There I go again: me me me. :-P
You know, even when the weather here is cold, it's really not that cold, but it FEELS that cold. So you may see on the weather report, 8 celsius or something, but do not be deceived. That is not as warm as it may sound. The actual university is on a bit of a hill here, and the wind tends to whip like nuts, especially the way it funnels between buildings, building up force. There's actually one point on the top of about...61 steps, where the wind is (to me) notoriously bad. I have to hold on to the railing to keep it from tossing me down the steps. It's especially bad when it's just snowed, and everyone goes up and down them, packing it into smooth ice that's very rounded: ideal slippage. Anyways. It was a seemingly cold day today, and I was bundled up. However, I walked outside at one point today--and it was perfect. It felt balmy. And I realized that it was because the wind wasn't tearing around, ripping the warmth from me. I'm certain that Ben and Julie have a very excellent sense of the ripping cold wind, from being at St. Andrews. Whew! Now that was an icy wind. Granted, Anne and I didn't have jackets...(smart packing).
You know what really bugs me? When people who are perfectly healthy and strong use the handicap button on the powered doors. Why do they do that?? Why don't they just push it open? It's not like there's something in their hands. Just give a little push. I especially hate it when I'm sitting in the lobby of the building that the lazy door pushers are leaving, and the doors stay open, both of them, forever after they leave. It's not so bad when someone enters/leaves without pressing the button, 'cause generally the outside door is closed before they fully open the inside door, or vice versa. But when they push that handicap button, and both doors open at once, and they stand there like that for so long, the wind zips into the building, and sucks out all of that nice, heated air, and it takes at least five minutes for me to heat up properly again. At which point some lazy person comes along and pushes the handicap door button. I think it's funny that I'm complaining about other people being lazy. Ha.
You know what else really bugs me? Handicap doors. I know that some people actually need them, but for a selfish person like me, that doesn't stop it from bothering me. I never use the handicap door buttons (see above paragraph), but if I want to go through one of those doors, they resist being pushed open. I actually have to push much harder with a handicap door than a regular door. The regular doors swing so nicely and easily. And before you go excusing the healthy handicap door button pushers: There are several non-handicap doors for every handicap door we have. And before you tell me: Well why don't you just do through the non-handicap door? Let me say, I try. But it's hard to identify which doors are the handicap ones, and which aren't. Sometimes I try and go through the non-handicap ones, but it's tricked me, and it's the power door! Aaaaaagh. Ohhh, the trials I suffer.
You know what's crazy? The weather in Antigonish. It seems like every area seems to say that the weather is unpredictable for that region. In Maine, I never really noticed that the weather changed that much, despite the fact that there were many touristy t-shirts making jokes about it. In Antigonish, though, that actually seems to be quite true. I've been standing beneath a rain cloud with sun everywhere else around me. Today, it was cloudy and snowing on one side of a building, sunny and snowing on another, and cloudy and raining on the other. That was weird. Perhaps this is a common quote for any area that thinks it's known for it's unpredictable weather, but my French professor said it while we were talking about the spring-like weather yesterday (today, btw, there are two in. of snow on the ground). She said there was a saying that went, "If you're in Nova Scotia and don't like the weather, just wait a minute." I thought that was funny. :-[
Today, French class was odd and fun. It felt like a high school French class. We worked for ten minutes in pairs on two exercises, and then went up to the board to write our answers. I reaaally like that. It's very low stress. I get a chance to think calmly in my head. Normally, the professors just walk around and randomly pick students to perform exercises in front of the class. That is just TOO stressful to me. I get scared, and my thoughts run in all different directions. Before you know it, I'm conjugating etre wrong. That still happened a little bit today, but that half an hour or so of low stress work felt fabulous.
Well, that's about all the griping for today. And I know, I need to work on being more tolerant. :-P
