Running for the end of the year

So it's been over a month since I last ran--so I ran today, since tomorrow will be back to cold and Tuesday will be snowy.

2 miles; 22 minutes. against wind people, around the reservoir...not so bad,...but still bad...

rest easy all.

maybe it runs in the blood...

Oh Terrelle--this is why you attend THE Ohio State University.

"Research is the most used resource to finding out something you need from school papers to things you want to buy. Research is also used to find cheaper shopping supplies. For instance one store may have had a pricey type of material one was looking for and the other store you researched was a couple dollars cheaper. Coming out of high school I was thinking to my self what I wanted to do for a living and what I wanted to major in to start the quest for my job. Research is also used to find shopping cheaper shopping supplies.

I used the research process to find out what type of job specific major I wanted to major in and what type of job I wanted to do when I graduated from college. I researched different types of jobs, Criminal justice, business, communications, and education. I came up with criminal justice but couldn’t decide between business and criminal justice. I did research on business and did their pros and cons. Then, I did the pros and cons of criminal justice. I came up with in the business world you can either have a good chance at the type of business you want to start or a bad business that won’t sell or bring in money.

Another part of my research I did was the most important factors in the business, was what they want for what they can afford and is there a profit that can help me out to make some extra money.The availability of the job openings, the job entails, the pay hours. I looked up also whether I would have to be in school for along time or not to get a job. Also my personal enjoyment in the job would I love to do every day I woke up to go to work.

With out research I would not have been able to get these types of information for the job that I want to do for the rest of my life. If one would just go and do something with out researching first they could’ve missed something that could have later benefited later on or benefited one more then the other."

Care. Love. Live.

In this short Life/That only lasts an hour/How much-how little-is/ Within our power

So Emily Dickinson was right, perhaps to think about and dwell on that which most human beings are never really ready or brave enough to deal with. And I guess I pause for a moment, in times like this, as there have been more accounts than I would have ever anticipated in the past two and a half years: My grandmother, my grandfather, my colleague, my cousin, and as of today, a girl in my dorm's brother. My urge to call my own and tell him that I love him feels forced, and I paused for a moment, trying to validate whether I was going overboard in the way I have reacted. But there is no such thing. If anything, while it may take some event like this to remind me, to keep me on my toes about what not to take for granted, to make me more earnest and honest and humble about what I have been given, and for how what God has given, that he could just as easily take away, I am reminded of how blessed I am--so I pause, and will try him soon...to let him know that I am full of love for him, for his love for me,and while our relationship may not be conducive to the affections that some sibling relationships involve, we have our ways of showing them.

I'm brought back to the sense of urgency that being with family is important--and I long for that company. for that feeling when we can all come together, despite situations and circumstances, and just be family; be loved and be accepted.

It only seems fitting that my classes just finished reading Truman Capote's account, "In Cold Blood". If I may, what is so hard about grieving, about the outlook of death and life, is that, in the end, life continues, it has to. As Dewey starts back from the cemetery, "...he walked towards the trees, and under them, leaving behind him the big sky, the whisper of wind voices in the wind-bent wheat."

So, maybe if I can leave with just another ED poem:

I sing to use the Waiting
My Bonnet but to tie
And shut the Door unto my House
No more to do have I

Till His best step approaching
we journey to the Day
And tell each other how We sung
To Keep the Dark away.


It's been a hard term so far. and tiring. I don't think I've ever felt so worn. But we survive...and we keep on.

Yikes how time flies

it's been 5 months since my last post. I've spent the past week in a haze, possibly influenced by the following:
a struggling varsity team and a 3 game losing streak
having to decide on a car, settling either way
lack of peaceful, restful sleep
the horror of an impending root canal
and general malaise for a certain college football team that can't seem to "REBUILD" fast enough. It's emotionally exhausting you know, maybe like a relationship at times...one way one moment, another way another moment. find some consistency will you blue?

In any case, the paper grading has been extraordinarily and shamefully unproductive, and the overwhelm is sizably large...

I wish for the days of summer. I have a window tab that is permanently set to the British boxed collection of Harry Potter books. I also just finished reading pages 279-302 of In Cold Blood and have begun to wonder whether the human disorders that Dr. Jones has observed in Perry are also somewhere in me, not for lack of love. but maybe...
super tired...
and in need of a house keeper.

twoferftwo

21 minutes. maybe 2.5miles...UGH. I need to see a orthopede...maybe tendonitis?yucky...

First time in a week...

3.25 miles. 28 minutes. UGH.

you know you are doing a bad job of covering up the pot smoking when...

you walk in a little dazed, you have mud streaks and dirty sneaks that don't look like yours from trailblazing in the backwoods of your school-you have undeniable munchies-you forget the most important of your appendages: your phone-you heave everything you can in sight, not to mention the strange spasms of ideas and talk that are happening in your head--that you have to sensor...and most of all--your dorm faculty knows.

PS. even the smartest don't think: episode in class this past saturday: Sophomores reading an Allen Ginsberg poem, and the name 'Walt Whitman' comes up.
"Who is Walt Whitman?" one curiously asks.
"I know," this one girl says, "He's the one that makes the boxes of candy at walgreens."
????
"Wait, wasn't Whitman like a famous romantic poet?"
?!?!?!okay, on the right track....but COME ON!
"No, dear student, Whitman, as in Walt Whitman, was NOT a chocolate maker. He is not the same Whitman of the Whitman Sampler boxes..."

"HE'S NOT!? " shock and awe. both ways. Exeter: Raising tomorrow's leaders; the best and the brightest. I have to keep telling myself: it's just high school still. They're just teenagers. Lather rinse and repeat.

The BET

So on Sunday, my parents took me, Sharon, Patrick and Mia to a japanese restaurant in Daehak-no. It's a good place, if you're ever out in Seoul and in need of a hearty japanese meal. My dad is a regular here, and so he proceeded to order among many tasty dishes, what he deemed his favorite, fried chicken. For those of you who have experienced Baden Baden, or bonchon chicken in the NY area, it's a similar feel, but BETTER. So he ordered one dish too many of this chicken and we ended up with leftovers. Dad wanted to get them wrapped up and then take them home to eat, but we all objected: would he really want to eat fried chicken, the day after? Would he even remember to eat it again? He insisted--I can admire my dad for this, since he never likes to see food go to waste--and even though the restaurant policy was that they couldn't really allow for take out bags, they still wrapped the three pieces of chicken in foil for him.



Just for size reference...the package in relation to a grapefruit.


In jest (but not really) I proposed a bet:
"Hey Dad, I bet you 20 bucks that you won't eat that chicken."

"NAOOOO..... ehee." My father shot me a look that said, 'don't start with me.'

"Come on dad."

"Joanna." Fine. I knew he wouldn't really eat it the next day, but he was bent on taking it home, so much so, that after the waitress had brought the package back to him, he picked up the bill and left. Sharon called after him, "Dr RO! aren't you going to take your chicken?"

And I said to Patrick, "I already won the bet...."

Flash forward to today. This morning, as we were getting ready to leave for Chejudo, my mom was cleaning out the fridge and noticed a foil package. "Uh, eegheh moh yah? What is this?" AHHA! It was the untouched chicken.

Laughing, I turned to my dad, and said, "I won the bet TWICE!"
To which he responded, "Bring it here."
NO, he didn't eat it. WHO WANTS TWO-DAY OLD Fried chicken?

The pride. the pride of the korean man....

So I figured I would try to collect sayings that my parents have said--they are well known for their 'unique' phrasings:

But today, my father asked a close family friend (who works for the govt. and has certain security clearances): So, ____, can you tell me some confidential information today?
"uh..." (uncomfortable pause and laugh, with abrupt topic change)

and then later at dinner...

"I bot! I bot today for obama!--" ( my mother emphatically exclaims)
"err, you mean, you VOTED for Obama?"

and then my father proceeded to say the same thing TWICE...while mentioning to my mother,"Your words are contagious."

classic.

Kinda Blue...

So it started to snow again today, after a two-day run of 40-50 degree weather. Those fluke days from even my time in Michigan, some random day in February when the bleakness of a monotonously grey-smeared sky was suddenly sliced through with a huge blue blot of promise and light, and everyone seemed to crawl out of any rendering of a crevice, crack or opening and sprawl out to bask in the long awaited streak of warmth. So hot, in comparison to the days prior, that you could see the condensation evaporate off the blades of permafrost grass and soil, the bricks that lined the quad expanded and released vapors of that paralyzing cold. Almost like that exhale you take in exhausted relief, because when you might have just about lost hope--there it came, to save you from what would have been a grief-ridden sigh.

And it's hard to explain--this snow. On the first day of March, the start of the spring, or at least, that inbetween month that somehow can't seem to make up its mind--so in frustration, lets down the white ice, but gently and firmly. There's no way to escape it. and there's no way to embrace it either, except. On a day like today, it just seems fitting, to feel the release of nature on itself...to see the extremes act in harmony.

Today, I've begun to realize how much I have struggled with myself, and how small it seems to be, in lieu of all that I have struggle to confront, to acknowledge, to own, about my life. I think I still take it upon myself more harshly that with all my good intentions, I still could not have written one more letter to my grandmother, or made one more phone call to my grandfather, or spent one more hour with George. And it's selfish, I know, but whether it would have been for my own sanity, for my own feelings of integrity, I think ultimately, I sense that I have missed out on one more opportunity to be taught, to have learned, to perhaps have grown up a little more by way of the experiences, words, and presence of those I have loved and respected.

So then it is with a heavy heart still, that I realize how much love takes time. That love requires so much more of the giving. and how much I lack the ability to love. To love my relatives, to love my students, to love myself...and at times, I believe I can't be loved as a result. Don't get me wrong, it's not a plea for pity...but if anything, I guess, I'm trying really hard to believe that I can truly live out the following words of Theodore Roosevelt: "Do what you can, with what you have, where you are."

And in trying to understand the circumstances of my life, this is where I am. I am mystified by the secrets and unheard stories of my family, of even the tidbits that I am now beginning to hear and see about my colleague. And I am eager for spring to come, so that I can finally play a round of golf with the golf team for George.

It's supposed to snow all throughout tonight into the morning tomorrow. But it's okay. It'll be beautiful and quiet, and just the way it should be.

funny time with lucas

Can we just cherish this over and over? I still get the chills...

nah nah nah-nah, nah nah nah-nah, hey dub-yuh--good bye....

Things that would be really nice to have right now:

he has no clue....

GRRR....