Post by Stacey

On Friday, July 25, Mom was cooking biscuits while Dad and Greg were out and we got so caught up talking that she burned them! These biscuits were stuck together and as hard as bricks. They did not even break apart or bend when we beat them against the countertop. Luckily, she had another can to replace them.

The bird just loves corn. She is not even frightened either by the size of the entire corn cob or by its presence over her cage. She spent approximately an hour eating the leftover bits of corn off of this thing on Tuesday, June 24th.

On Monday, July 21st, Dad said that a man came into his office while he was busy, and asked permission to put in a candy machine (the kind that cost a quarter for one turn of the dispenser knob and gives unwrapped candies) for a "children's charity." Dad asked only if he had installed them in other county facilities. The man replied, "Oh yes, all over!" and promptly set it up. The man left no name or telephone number, and he never specified the charity. The machine, also is unmarked. Now Dad has a candy machine taking up space in his office which he has no means of removing. The guys at his work have been buying candy from this thing. Dad says that the machine has a solid-looking lock, but that the compartment for the money is merely thin plastic. He also tried a random key in it and it almost opened. When we asked him why he has been coming up with ways to get the money out, he said he was just curious and would never actually take it! : )

Yesterday, July 31st, was my last day of the summer semester. I took speech and communications 2. My final exam for communications was on Wednesday. The entire exam was written, not multiple choice. The teacher gave fifteen items to write a paragraph about, and a full-length essay at the end. For example, one of the items was "A Dead Canary." I had to write a paragraph about how the dead canary in Susan Glaspell's play Trifles symbolized Minnie Foster's vivacity before she married Mr. Wright. Or I had to write about how "Monster" represented The Creature's alienation from the world in Mary Shelley's novel, Frankenstein. That class consisted entirely of pulling weird ideas out of literary works. Take, for instance, Charles Bernstein's "This poem intentionally left blank." Here is the poem:

"This poem intentionally left blank"

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We can take from this that "the author is trying to make us face our uncomfort and problems in life." For the discussion of this poem, my professor had one of the humanities professors come in as a guest speaker. He had an interesting take on things. He said that a "text" is anything: art, writing, architecture, nature, life, etc. In writing, people generally beleive that the meaning is what the author intended, what is actually contained withen the text, or what the reader can take from it. Anyways, he thinks that there is more meaning in that blankness than in any other "text." Just what that meaning is, I never did quite grasp!!! On my final, I wrote that maybe the author was amused by how many things literary critics could pull out of anything--even a blank poem and maybe that's why he wrote it. Communications 2 was an "interesting" class.

Speaking of college, Greg is going to dual enroll this semester if there is still an opening in the class he wants. I am taking a computer graphics class as an elective and he is going to take it with me to get used to college. All he has left to finish his dual enrollement process is to receive his "B number" in the mail and wait another 2-5 hours in the advising office to get registered.