Almost the End.

So today has been decent thus far. I don't have anything to complain about or cry about yet, so I'm going with that's a better start to the day then not.

I found out the date of my boyfriend and his friend's deployment: April 15th. Definitely not ready for that to be here as fast as it's going to come, but that's one step further into this deployment being done. I found out also that they can't get extended while they're in Afghanistan. That is pretty exciting news. 10 months with Andrew tops. :) I know that he's still in a lot of danger none the less, but 10 months is better than 12. February of next year could go ahead and start working its way here.

But I can't stress on the days to come. Anyone who knows anything about the military knows that you have to take everything one step at a time, one day at a time. This is probably the most effort I've ever put into a relationship, but I know the outcome will be worth it either by me still being with him or by the lessons I have learned while we've been together.

The past 111 days of my life have been really eye opening. Going through a deployment together just as a couple is a really scary thing, especially for Andrew. I can only imagine what's going to be going through his head while I'm here at home doing my own thing. Just because they deploy doesn't mean life stops. I have a lot of respect for the relationship I'm in and I'm not planning on that changing. Regardless of the news we've gotten about this deployment and the way Andrew has changed since, my feelings haven't changed. I've been there since day 1 taking all the slack and stress that he could throw at me and I'm not planning on being uprooted anytime soon.

SO I'm hoping that this weekend works in my favor. He has three left, including this one .. But he will be home in New York as of the 2nd of next month for 5 days. I wish that I could say that I knew that everything was going to work out, but I guess that's why life is so exciting .. You never know exactly how it's going to turn out or where to go from there.

I guess this is the time where I decided to pick the road less travelled to see where the hell this all is going.

-ld.
<3

A Doll's House Character: Trait or Title?

If I had to pick anyone that I liked out of this play, I'd pick Krogstad. I don't want him as a friend, but you have to admit that this guy is smart. He wants to keep his job since his reputation is still ruined, so he is holding the loan he granted Nora above her head as blackmail to keep his job.

I don't exactly like what he stands for. He stands for blackmail, distrust, and being a disloyal person. I can appreciate the guy wanting to keep his job since he doesn't have any other options. If you think about it and you were in the same situation Krogstad was, I think anyone would have done what he did in blackmailing Nora. If I didn't have many options left to keeping a job, especially in an economy like ours, I'd do whatever it took to make sure that I kept my job.

I also am still trying to understand the relationship between Mrs. Linde and Krogstad. I think that could change one or two opinions about Krogstad, but I don't remember exactly what happens in the play since I read it in 10th grade.

-ld.

Meet the Parents

Let me tell you something. Meeting the parents of someone you love is probably the scariest thing you could ever do. Walking up and seeing how they treat their child, then here comes the little diddy-bop that's going to take them away for the rest of their life. Mom is always the one that cries and dad just stares at you like, "Really? That's what you're pulling? (Good job man.)"

I met my boyfriends parents this weekend and it has been a revitalizing experience. I've met parents before, but none of the other guys had really mattered and I couldn't see myself dating them for that long anyways. (Yea, that sounds a lot worse than I meant for it to, but whatever.) Andrew's mom is a little old lady from New York that eats you alive with her words and most definitely could back it up in a fight. Her husband is Andrew's now step-dad, Mark. He's a very quite, laid back individual that, when he gets a beer or two in him, opens up for the entire world to know. Both are very entertaining none the less, it was just interesting to see how they all acted together as a family.

On a side note, I haven't met the two sisters yet. I guess they are bigger determinates than the parents since Andrew is so close with the youngest. He is the oldest child of the family, but him and his 16-year-old sister have a bond like no other.

Anyways, meeting the parents is one of those experiences that you enjoy because it's over with, not because you had to go and do it in the first place. Hopefully everything went well in their eyes since I probably won't know till tomorrow how I did.

Aha.
I love how we're on scales now of how much the parents like us.

Hmm.
-LD

Crawling Deployment

So I continue to cry about this deployment on here like it's no one else's business .. But more stuff has developed since the last time that I want to put on paper.

Andrew is an artilery man. He shoots off artilery on Lejeune for a job and trains harder than grunts. (Grunts are infantry, 0311's.) But for this deployment, he is going over not as an 0811, but as an 0311. He will have had a little over two months of grunt training before he deploys to the Heldman Province of Afghanistan for between 10 and 14 months. We've been having a lot of scuffles lately about him wasting my time and how he might not come home. I don't know if you've ever had someone tell you that they think they're going to deploy to die, but it's very hard to swallow. He has trained in artliery, infantry, and he is also doing the job of a corpsman. (A corpsman is a navy doctor.)

His family is coming down for the weekend and I can't even explain how nervous of a time that's going to be. I'm finally going to meet his sisters and his mom, three of the most influential people in his life. We're going up to Charlotte either Friday or Saturday and I can't wait. It's sort of a big step to meet the parents that live in New York 17 hours away.

All I know is that I'm going to stay here and faithful for the entire deployment. I have assessed the risks and am ready for the challenges. I want to make this last forever. I've finally found someone that I think I could spend the rest of my life with and I'm not going to let this deployment change anything.

If anyone knows anything about true love, it's never fair. There are points and parts that make it worth it, but it's never fair .. Especially in the military. Our spouses and significant others are taken away from us at a moments notice and there is always a chance that they might not come home.

Regardless, when it's your time to go, it's your time to go. I'm going to pray daily that he is safe and that his commanders know what they're doing enough to get him safe and back home in a few months. No time or distance can seperate me from something I love.

-LD

Outline for Prompt 1

I dont know about anyone else, but this outline was a little hard. I'm still formulating a bunch of ideas for the first essay prompt .. It's going to be quite the paper. I decided to not do my outline in a formal manner though because when I write, my ideas don't just fall in line, so I don't think my ideas for my outline will do that either.

Keeping that in mind, here is my outline for the first essay prompt.

Claim: Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery" and Franz Kafka's "In the Penal Colony" describe in great detail two comparably unjust traditions specifically through imagery and language.

Structure:

1. Intro

2. First body paragraph - Speaking to "The Lottery"

3. Second body paragraph - speaking to "In the Penal Colony"

4. Third body paragraph comparing the two with the literary terms they use in each story and also comparing the traditions.

4. Conclusion

Topic Sentences:

2. "The Lottery" is a story of a small Puritan-like town with a tradition of stoning a member of the close knit community.

3. "In the Penal Colony" is also a story of a gruesome tradition where commandents are pierced into the skin of the condemned by the use of a machine.

4. Both stories involve traditions that have been carried on for generations without a thought of it being wrong.

Warrants:

-Both stories go into great detail the thoughts behind both traditions. Kafka goes into great detail about the machine that is to be used on the condemned man and Jackson goes into detail about the little boys piling up the stones in the play yard and the description, in depth, of the box the names are pulled from.

-Kafka and Jackson both have one character that either speaks out about the tradition in speech or in thought. The explorer thinks to himself about how wrong the tradition is just like Tess speaks out to the community about their tradition right before she is stoned.

-Both traditions involve the death of someone. Specifically, neither parties in either of the stories knew why they were being sentenced. Tess was drawn randomly from the box and the condemned man would only find out his sentence once it was pierced in his skin.

-Both stories were published and recieved negative feedback for being outrageous and too .... to be published. (I can't think of the word that fits where the .... is.)

-Flashbacks are sort of used in each story. The tradition of stoning is brought up and spoken for when Tess says something about it and the machine tradition is spoken about in a flashback manner by the officer.

My outline will continue to grow as my paper is written. These are my starting points and the core of my paper. The events that were described in the story will be noted and translated to fit the "imagery" and "language" categories that the prompt asks for.

-LD

Hmm .. Really?

Street fights are NOTHING like what they are in the movies. A bunch of drunk people start slurring words over a misread glance at a girl and it ends in a bunch more drunk people hitting each other till the hot dog man and cop seperate the fight.

Long story short, it is NOT a good idea to bring a bunch of alpha males to a club, watch them drink the night away, and then proceed to watch them start what appeared to be the biggest fight of my life. Some short guy glanced at me while I was having a panic attack. (Yes, I have agoraphobia, therefore I panic when I get stuck in crowded places and don't have a way out.) SO .. From there, my friend looks up, sees this glances and goes after the guy. I hear them exchange words while the rest of the friends start to group up.. Then the first punch is thrown.

From there, it was an all out blood bath basically. Some guy hit my girl friend in the chest and about got thrown over a car by her boyfriend, another guys jacket got ripped, I cut my hand in two places .. And we all made it home safely. :)

So words of advice,
Never drink and fight. People who throw drunk punches look awfully stupid and tend to be the focus of laughter the following morning.

:)