moocow in the city

one cow. many pastures.

2007

open pasture

Scheduling or Skittles, Taste the Rainbow

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Next Semester’s Schedule:

click here or none of this will make sense

which is really not as bad as it seems if you break it down:

Basically the days are in two different groups:

1. MWF
2. TR

And while they look stressful they’re actually incredibly relaxing:

Mondays/Wednesdays/Fridays:

I wake up at Six and get dressed. On my way to South Campus to catch the Inter Campus Shuttle I stop by the Starbucks and get my first cup of coffee (one of many, actually)…then I hop on the Inter Campus shuttle and jet to North Campus; listening to my ipod, drinking coffee, and ignoring most of the world…starting towards the winter I’ll be practicing my Arabic as I grit my teeth in the freezing weather…which started in October last year.

At 8am I have “Good Ideas in Computer Science” which is also known as “Math for those who really, really, really don’t want to take math…”; as the course title suggests, I learn about Good Ideas that happen to be in the field of Computer Science. I’d like to make some suggestions, such as “plug the computer in” and “always ask the customer ‘do you see a powerlight’ before attempting to provide technical support” or “do put up dilbert cartoon in your cubicle, don’t label the characters with the names of your co-workers.”

Then at 9am I have Breakfast at one of the many fine dining establishments on campus.

At 10am I have Phonetics being taught by Dr. Jaeger and then at 11am I have Structure of English: Grammar & Lexicon being taught my J.P. (who has a wonderful French Accent).

Then at noon I have afternoon Yoga which I’ll be doing at the Wellness Center in the Student Union followed by a half hour Lunch at 12:30.

At 1:00PM I have the Lab for Good Ideas in Computing…basically, playing around with C++ and Java Script on Mondays. The only change in the pattern is that on Wednesdays this is replaced with the UB Undergraduate Linguistics Society which

withfangs and I Co-Conveen and on Fridays it’s replaced with a two hour long massage.

Then at 3:00PM I have my office hours, and if students don’t need help, after I’m done doing whatever Scott needs me to do (check to make sure homework has been handed in, attendance, whatever) as his T.A.; I do either studying and/or homework.

At 4:00PM I have a nice dinner

From 5:00PM to 9:00PM I’m in the Gym with a multi-faceted Anaerobic/Aerobic workout comprised of weight bearing exercises, stretching/pilates, balance building, and conditioning routines.

9:00PM is when I have 1 cup of water per lb ‘lost’ during the workout to avoid the nastiness of dehydration and a small meal.

So really, it’s mostly a stress free day…and if there is stress, by the time I’m done with the punching bag, running and lifting weights at the end of the day…it’s all gone.

Then I head back home on the evening Inter-Campus bus to South Campus.

Tusdays/Thursdays:

The morning caffeine routine and commuting routine remain the same. Then at 8:00am is morning Yoga and at 9:00am Breakfast.

Then the real hardship comes in: one hour spent with the massage chairs at the Wellness Center and 15 Minutes with the real live masseuse who comes in once a week. How do I survive (the fact that most students don’t know that they can get free massages, use massage chairs, get free tea and chapstick and condoms and yoga and pilates…is beyond me; they honestly just don’t read the information packets or explore the campus…which is good for me, because it means no waiting in line, for anything).

Once I’m done suffering through an early morning massage with an herbal pillow mask on my face, I brave the cold light of day once again to go TA with Scott (you have NO idea how excited I am to TA for him..so much to learn…so, so, so excited).

Then at 12:30 I have a nice leisurely lunch at one of the atrium-esque buildings of the campus cafe in the commons or in the Department Lounge depending on just how social I want to be.

From 1:00 until 3:00PM I’ll be in Lockwood Library getting source material for my inedependent study with Wolf Wölk on Language Discrimination Against Speakers of African American Vernacular English (AAVE).

At 3:00PM I head over to Alumni Arena to take my Tai Chi class.

At 4:00PM I have dinner and then the afternoon routine is pretty much the same, just working a different set of muscles then I worked on the day before; except abs which I’m told by my personal trainer can be worked daily.

So mostly, it’s two actual classes, one gen ed class, TAing (which is a decent chunk of work), research…or being pampered with massage, pilates, yoga, tai chi and the gym…and, if I may, please let me just take a moment right now to thank the residents of the state of New York for paying your taxes…because those extra massage chairs, herbal pillows, scented oil defusers, and yoga mats have really made that much more of a difference in my daily routine and have contributed positively to my education as an undergraduate student of the State University of New York at Buffalo.

open pasture

Today’s To Do List

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SLEEP
(more sleep)
(…just a little more)
Catch up on e-mails and phone calls
Mail a Letter for a Friend
Book Future Travel Arrangements
Finish Scheduling/Resolve Conflicts
Two Labs
Major Paper Research
Aliyah Center Follow Up
Vacuum Bedroom/Clean Bathroom/Maintence
Write LJ Post of Spiffiness
De-stress

open pasture

Today’s To Do List

moocowinthecity No Comments

SLEEP
(more sleep)
(…just a little more)
Catch up on e-mails and phone calls
Mail a Letter for a Friend
Book Future Travel Arrangements
Finish Scheduling/Resolve Conflicts
Two Labs
Major Paper Research
Aliyah Center Follow Up
Vacuum Bedroom/Clean Bathroom/Maintence
Write LJ Post of Spiffiness
De-stress

open pasture

“If there is no struggle, there can be no progress…” Frederick Douglas

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When I went into my meeting with the Shaliach; I had set in my mind how much work I wanted to do; how much labor I believed (and still believe) is fair and what compensation I believed (and still believe) is adequate – not what the minimum requirements are, not what I could ‘get away’ with.

However, many of my family friends are pressuring me to do the minimum; are raising a thousand fears that I simply do not share with them…our approaches to life are so different. I respect their worry and their concern…but there’s something empowering about struggle (as anyone who has ever slipped into subspace can agree with and knows).

Without testing yourself, without becoming creative in the most trying circumstances, without pushing yourself…you will never know what you are capable of. I am in competition with no one but myself. My benefit is that I’m 22 which means that I’m already one year passed the age of majority (21) and soon to be 23…that brings with it responsibility, but also the luxury to listen to concerns and then judge whether you want to make them your own or not and to belay the ones that you disagree with.

I do not believe that anything in my first five years will be a cake walk, though I talk about it positively and with optimism; I do so because that is how one should approach anything that will be a difficult path to walk, any trying period. I have often said that if you know where you are and where you want to be, then you have already determined the outcome…you know that success is yours, there is no cause for worry or panic…you have dictated the ending…now you’re just finding the path that will take you there…existentialism at its most simplified form.

Quite frankly, I wouldn’t want it to be easy either, and that’s the point. I essentially walked into a negotiation, agreed that four years sounds perfectly reasonable for what they’re offering…and even if everything they’ve offered after four years is pulled out underneath my feet, I know that I’ll land standing…I have always had the ability to find some way to get through things, to network, to get what I want…just because I change location doesn’t mean that those skills don’t come with me or that they simply vanish.

They keep bringing up the case that I was only in Israel for a little under a month, so I don’t know what it’s really like to live there and what if I hate it…what if I truly detest it and that there’s so many intricacies to the language that I may never fully get it.

Addressing the first point, yes, I don’t know what it’s really like…you don’t get that until you take the dive and actually live there. It’s a catch 22 that allows those who want to have second thoughts or who allow themselves to be overtaken by fear to give themselves an excuse for not jumping. Unacceptable. You want something, you go for it. End of story. I cannot respect someone who lives their life wrapped in a safety blanket, living without risk – without risk, you can’t have success…the two go hand in hand…even if you spend 1.00 and win 1,000,000…you still risked loosing that dollar.

As far as the second point goes, if I hate it, if I loathe it, it’s four years…try living sixteen in the closet, after that, four years of anything…is nothing. It’s a challenge, it’s a test. I don’t run away from things that I dislike…I go up to them, I approach them, and then I dominate the fuck out of them. You just do it. You work through it. You take each second as an individual moment in time; and one second quickly turns into a month which in a flash turns into a year…and before you know it, you’re done and it becomes an experience, part of something I learned…part of what made me who I am.

For the third point: I raise you a 3.8 Linguistics GPA; and letters or recommendation from every professor I’ve ever had since freshman year, even in a three hundred person class, who have all remembered my name (even when we bump into each other at the airport – well, all except that art history professor, but he was banned from Greece for illegal digging, so we’re not going to count him) and what paper I wrote for them…I have more then enough faith, after five and a half years of academia and academic success, that I can pick up the language.

There is no job that is beneath my dignity (short term)…I have a vision for how I’d like to be living by the time I’m 40 and what I find acceptable professions at that age and how I want my apartment or loft or flat to look; but to get to where that is, I’ll work three jobs and stand on the corner at night if I have to; all with no shame. My Grandparents called any job “opportunity.” You do what you have to do, to get what you want; you don’t give up on something because it’s hard or it’s going to be difficult or the first four years will suck so you sacrifice the next ninety that will rock…you don’t look for the easy way out…and once you start approaching things as fundamental building blocks and experiences that will inevitably get you what you want…at that point, you get it.

…of course, when you ‘just know’ what it is you have to do; that has a tendency to freak people out…because so many people are unsure of where they are and what they want; those two points so necessary to remove fear from your life…though I imagine over the next four years after I make the move, all but my close friends will see the humble, quiet, observant side of me rather than the boisterous side…as what’s necessary to allow oneself to properly observe and to integrate and to fit in is being able to bring out your quieter and more endearing characteristics.

In other news though, I really do need to email my Shaliach today (after I fax her my Kibbutz Application) and ask her, in writing, to re-list my benefits, and also I do have serious questions about internet connectivity while I’m on a Kibbutz (not that I play Warcrack, but I would like to be able to know if I’m going to be able to send emails or not and how exactly that works in whatever place I go home to on the weekends…worse case scenario, I’m sure I can ask one of my friends to babysit my laptop).

Anyways, time to shower, then fill out the Kibbutz Application, then Breakfast with my Rabbi at 8am…I do have an actual post coming…at some point.

open pasture

“If there is no struggle, there can be no progress…” Frederick Douglas

moocowinthecity No Comments

When I went into my meeting with the Shaliach; I had set in my mind how much work I wanted to do; how much labor I believed (and still believe) is fair and what compensation I believed (and still believe) is adequate – not what the minimum requirements are, not what I could ‘get away’ with.

However, many of my family friends are pressuring me to do the minimum; are raising a thousand fears that I simply do not share with them…our approaches to life are so different. I respect their worry and their concern…but there’s something empowering about struggle (as anyone who has ever slipped into subspace can agree with and knows).

Without testing yourself, without becoming creative in the most trying circumstances, without pushing yourself…you will never know what you are capable of. I am in competition with no one but myself. My benefit is that I’m 22 which means that I’m already one year passed the age of majority (21) and soon to be 23…that brings with it responsibility, but also the luxury to listen to concerns and then judge whether you want to make them your own or not and to belay the ones that you disagree with.

I do not believe that anything in my first five years will be a cake walk, though I talk about it positively and with optimism; I do so because that is how one should approach anything that will be a difficult path to walk, any trying period. I have often said that if you know where you are and where you want to be, then you have already determined the outcome…you know that success is yours, there is no cause for worry or panic…you have dictated the ending…now you’re just finding the path that will take you there…existentialism at its most simplified form.

Quite frankly, I wouldn’t want it to be easy either, and that’s the point. I essentially walked into a negotiation, agreed that four years sounds perfectly reasonable for what they’re offering…and even if everything they’ve offered after four years is pulled out underneath my feet, I know that I’ll land standing…I have always had the ability to find some way to get through things, to network, to get what I want…just because I change location doesn’t mean that those skills don’t come with me or that they simply vanish.

They keep bringing up the case that I was only in Israel for a little under a month, so I don’t know what it’s really like to live there and what if I hate it…what if I truly detest it and that there’s so many intricacies to the language that I may never fully get it.

Addressing the first point, yes, I don’t know what it’s really like…you don’t get that until you take the dive and actually live there. It’s a catch 22 that allows those who want to have second thoughts or who allow themselves to be overtaken by fear to give themselves an excuse for not jumping. Unacceptable. You want something, you go for it. End of story. I cannot respect someone who lives their life wrapped in a safety blanket, living without risk – without risk, you can’t have success…the two go hand in hand…even if you spend 1.00 and win 1,000,000…you still risked loosing that dollar.

As far as the second point goes, if I hate it, if I loathe it, it’s four years…try living sixteen in the closet, after that, four years of anything…is nothing. It’s a challenge, it’s a test. I don’t run away from things that I dislike…I go up to them, I approach them, and then I dominate the fuck out of them. You just do it. You work through it. You take each second as an individual moment in time; and one second quickly turns into a month which in a flash turns into a year…and before you know it, you’re done and it becomes an experience, part of something I learned…part of what made me who I am.

For the third point: I raise you a 3.8 Linguistics GPA; and letters or recommendation from every professor I’ve ever had since freshman year, even in a three hundred person class, who have all remembered my name (even when we bump into each other at the airport – well, all except that art history professor, but he was banned from Greece for illegal digging, so we’re not going to count him) and what paper I wrote for them…I have more then enough faith, after five and a half years of academia and academic success, that I can pick up the language.

There is no job that is beneath my dignity (short term)…I have a vision for how I’d like to be living by the time I’m 40 and what I find acceptable professions at that age and how I want my apartment or loft or flat to look; but to get to where that is, I’ll work three jobs and stand on the corner at night if I have to; all with no shame. My Grandparents called any job “opportunity.” You do what you have to do, to get what you want; you don’t give up on something because it’s hard or it’s going to be difficult or the first four years will suck so you sacrifice the next ninety that will rock…you don’t look for the easy way out…and once you start approaching things as fundamental building blocks and experiences that will inevitably get you what you want…at that point, you get it.

…of course, when you ‘just know’ what it is you have to do; that has a tendency to freak people out…because so many people are unsure of where they are and what they want; those two points so necessary to remove fear from your life…though I imagine over the next four years after I make the move, all but my close friends will see the humble, quiet, observant side of me rather than the boisterous side…as what’s necessary to allow oneself to properly observe and to integrate and to fit in is being able to bring out your quieter and more endearing characteristics.

In other news though, I really do need to email my Shaliach today (after I fax her my Kibbutz Application) and ask her, in writing, to re-list my benefits, and also I do have serious questions about internet connectivity while I’m on a Kibbutz (not that I play Warcrack, but I would like to be able to know if I’m going to be able to send emails or not and how exactly that works in whatever place I go home to on the weekends…worse case scenario, I’m sure I can ask one of my friends to babysit my laptop).

Anyways, time to shower, then fill out the Kibbutz Application, then Breakfast with my Rabbi at 8am…I do have an actual post coming…at some point.

open pasture

I got a call from the Aliyah Center Thursday

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It’s time to take control again and be the only one/It’s time to take control again and be the only one/Cause I just wanna play with myself/And I don’t need anyone else/Rising with the sons of madness crossin’over the road/It’s time to take control again and be the only one/It’s time to sell your soul again and be the holy one/Cause I just wanna finish this race/And I don’t wanna lose my face/Looking for a new direction crossin’over the road/So welcome to the other side/Don’t be afraid to testify/It’s not to late to get you high/Reaching for somebody in your image world/Waiting for a sign of a change crossin’over the road” – Infra Riot – Soundtrack of Our Lives

Ahhh… Infra Riot, one of the best guitar heavy, driving songs ever…you really need a convertible with a kick ass sound system to appreciate it; well, that, sunglasses, a bunch of friends and the open road.

Anyways, I got a call from the Aliyah Center Thursday; I was in a computer lab and thus had my cell phone turned off; but I checked for messages as I was leaving. My application has been approved. Everything’s set to go…I’ll be in Israel in February! I’m bringing them my passport tomorrow; which means I’m leaving my apartment at 3am to get to their office by 9am so I can get to the eye doctor and get real sunglasses by 3pm.

Now the only things I have left to do are:

1. Go to my physician on Monday so he can fill out the last section of paperwork required for the Kibbutz where he’ll testify that I’m strong like bull.

2. E-mail my Shaliach because Garin Tzabar says that I’ll be too old for their program. First it was my birth certificate, now I’m too old…I think I’m going to just get a walker at this point and start harassing people while I barge my way into restaurants to take advantage of the early bird special; because apparently I’m well past hurling day. I’ll ask my Shaliach to contact them again on my behalf and see what she can work out…I turn 23 on Sept 2.

3. Finish the Nefesh B’Nefesh Paperwork.

4. Finish the year

5. Say my goodbyes

6. Mom’s Birthday on January 4th

7. Pack.

8. Get on a plane

9. Start a new adventure

open pasture

I got a call from the Aliyah Center Thursday

moocowinthecity No Comments

It’s time to take control again and be the only one/It’s time to take control again and be the only one/Cause I just wanna play with myself/And I don’t need anyone else/Rising with the sons of madness crossin’over the road/It’s time to take control again and be the only one/It’s time to sell your soul again and be the holy one/Cause I just wanna finish this race/And I don’t wanna lose my face/Looking for a new direction crossin’over the road/So welcome to the other side/Don’t be afraid to testify/It’s not to late to get you high/Reaching for somebody in your image world/Waiting for a sign of a change crossin’over the road” – Infra Riot – Soundtrack of Our Lives

Ahhh… Infra Riot, one of the best guitar heavy, driving songs ever…you really need a convertible with a kick ass sound system to appreciate it; well, that, sunglasses, a bunch of friends and the open road.

Anyways, I got a call from the Aliyah Center Thursday; I was in a computer lab and thus had my cell phone turned off; but I checked for messages as I was leaving. My application has been approved. Everything’s set to go…I’ll be in Israel in February! I’m bringing them my passport tomorrow; which means I’m leaving my apartment at 3am to get to their office by 9am so I can get to the eye doctor and get real sunglasses by 3pm.

Now the only things I have left to do are:

1. Go to my physician on Monday so he can fill out the last section of paperwork required for the Kibbutz where he’ll testify that I’m strong like bull.

2. E-mail my Shaliach because Garin Tzabar says that I’ll be too old for their program. First it was my birth certificate, now I’m too old…I think I’m going to just get a walker at this point and start harassing people while I barge my way into restaurants to take advantage of the early bird special; because apparently I’m well past hurling day. I’ll ask my Shaliach to contact them again on my behalf and see what she can work out…I turn 23 on Sept 2.

3. Finish the Nefesh B’Nefesh Paperwork.

4. Finish the year

5. Say my goodbyes

6. Mom’s Birthday on January 4th

7. Pack.

8. Get on a plane

9. Start a new adventure

open pasture

Stuff and Things…

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Class/School

I have class in about an hour; I turn in all four labs, then take an exam, and then I’m free until Tuesday. Tuesday morning I’m meeting with Dr. Jaeger to go over my final schedule as an undergrad which is a good feeling…after this semester, I get to learn outside of the context of a classroom and grades and I’m really liking that; I’m almost on burnout, though I think that I can attribute that to the fact that I’m not finding my summer class challenging at all, and overall I think if the University saw what was actually being taught in it, they’d bring the entire department under investigation…but it’s not a department I care about and I’ve fought the good fight here at UB for five some odd years, if someone really wants to take up the cause, they’re welcome to it, but I’m not touching it with a ten foot pole.

As far as Graduate School goes; there’s two masters degrees that I want (and M.A. in either Translation Studies or Linguistics and an MBA) one or both degrees I may get in Israel depending on the programs they have there. I honestly haven’t done enough research into what the universities have to offer and while it’s nice that I’m told my Masters will be paid for, there’s no guarantee that I’ll get into a program in Israel so I am keeping my options open all over the place. I very seriously want to do my doctoral studies in Australia, however. Of all the fieldwork programs, they have by far the best reputation of people I’ve spoken with.

As far as my response to why I want the degrees I want: it’s because I want to live in Israel, have the luxury of a gorgeous apartment in Tel Aviv; and some day a flat (for vacation) in NYC…I like money; it can’t buy happiness, but it can certainly make so many things that much easier. And while there may not be a huge demand for what I’m capable of doing in Israel, commuting via the internet or via airplane has never been an objection of mine.

There’s more than enough money in the world for those who are willing to figure out a way to earn it.

No Spoilers Here

So…as I was waiting to pick up my copy of Deathly Hallows There were these two girls standing in front of the store, yelling. What caught my attention is when I heard:

“I DIDN’T CALL YOU A COMMUNIST, I CALLED YOU EVIL!”

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