We are such nerds XD

DH and I are off of school and work all next week (we both work at the school). So what are we doing? I'm getting a head start reading one of my textbooks for next term and he's watching a documentary on the Appalachian Trail. Learning is fun. =)

No more shelf tags!

I work at my campus's book store, and every semester we have to put new shelf tags on the shelfs for each class/book so students can find the ones they need. So far in preparation for Spring, we have done and redone them all three times. >.<

Anyway, all the tag shifting had made it's way into my dreams. I had to shift them, but the shelves were in a maze. I was at Winn Dixie at like 2am, and met one of our teachers (who happened to be Alec Baldwin) who handed me a stack of like 75 tags he "forgot to give me earlier". so I had to go back up to the school, at night, with broken headlights and no street lights, to reshift the tags AGAIN because Mr. Baldwin just couldn't live with the books he had chosen before. Luckily my lovely DH woke me up at this point...

I'm just glad I am now officially on vacation, so if Alec Baldwin *does* show up, they can deal with him and his 75 shelf tags without me.

I'm BAAAAAACKKKK! (maybe)

I recently came across my old xanga, and upon reading some of my posts wished I still just wrote random stuff like that. The 2006 me didn't care who did or didn't read it. If writing was a waste of time or if someone would be offended by what I said (which was kind of a problem, once the secret service showed up but thats a story for another day). Because I'm not anonymous I feel like I must self censor to some extent, but maybe I had been extending that a bit too far.

This Black Friday we bought me a laptop, mostly for school. And let me tell you, it has been a miracle as far as writing notes goes. I do think maybe I could use some typing classes though because I keep hitting the caps lock key by accident and my fingers only seem to find the right keys about a quarter of the time, but that's just as true on my desktop as my laptop, I suppose. Anyway the point is I will have more opportunity to write things as they come to me.

Plus I will most likely have more free time for the foreseeable future. That's partly because tomorrow is my last final so I'll be out of school till like the second week of January or something like that. The other reason I'm not sure I want to talk about right now. But with more time (and less WoW) I might can convince my self to write out my feelings. That might help my anxiety which is always a good thing.

I ended each of my old xanga posts with random song lyrics, half of which I don't even recognize. I'm not sure if thats lame or not in this world of non-emo grownups.

Life in a Medieval Village by Frances and Joseph Gies

This is a paper I wrote on the book mentioned in the title of this post for my The Making of Modern England class. I thought it was kind of interesting, maybe you will too! :)

Life in a Medieval Village was very different than life today. Back then there was a distinction between cities, towns, and villages that has since all but disappeared. Each settlement had a Lord that ruled over it, who held distinctive powers over his people. What those powers were varied between the free men and those termed villiens. Their system of justice also varied significantly from ours, although you can see some of it's influence today.

So what is the difference between a village and a town? Well, the easy answer is that a village must have a church, a town, and a market. However, the villagers themselves saw it much differently. You lived your whole life in a village. You worked, you played, you loved, you fought, you were born, and you died, all in the same community. While it might be necessary to venture to a town to get some supplies not abundant in your village, it was usually a very tight-knit band of people who shared resources. There were some instances of private wells, but it was far more common to have a community well shared by the whole village. Mothers in villages were much more likely to nurse children themselves, rather than hiring a wet nurse as was common in towns, cities, and castles. Nor did they employ the services of a doctor, rarely a barber (who in towns or cities combined the services of "bloodletting" and dentistry with shaving). Almost everyone farmed for sustenance. Occasionally you would find someone who was primarily a baker, a miller, a carpenter, but normally people took on these duties along with farming. In a town it was more likely to have specializations and people who did no farming at all.

Something towns and villages had in common was the Lord who ruled over them. The Lord very rarely stayed in the village. It was more common for a Steward or Bailiff to reside in the manor house full time. The Lord was basically the "consumer of the village surplus". One village might even be shared by multiple Lords. Peasants were offered land in exchange for work on the Lord's demesne or for paying a cash rent. He was also in charge of the manor courts, which was the primary judicial house of the area. The Lord had the privilege of holding monopolies on some activities - such as baking bread or grinding grain - which were resented and evaded, but strictly enforced by the manor court. All the villager's sheep were folded by the Lord so their manure would fertilize his demesne. If a villager's house was in disrepair, the Lord saw to it that it was repaired through the manor court. When house or property switched hands, the new owner must pay the Lord an entry fee proportional to the land acquired. One area of life the Lord stayed out of was peasant marriages.

Villagers were primarily separated into two groups, those who were "free" and those who were "villiens". If the Lord's demesne was small, there would be more free men in the village. If it was large, the village would be primarily composed of villiens. While a villien was virtually a slave to the Lord, the villagers themselves made little distinction. Villiens were able to buy, sell, inherit, etc property just as well as their free counterparts. Where they differed was in service to the Lord. Villiens were required to work a certain amount of days on the demesne (depending on how much land they held themselves - either 117 or 58 1/2 days), had to pay more fees, and owed the Lord his "best beast" upon death. All transfers of land had to be approved by the Lord, and when marriages occurred the villien bride or her father was required to pay a merchet. They usually only had contact with the manor court, rarely dealing with the Church or royal courts as might their free neighbors.

In the manor court the steward presided, but the ruling was left up to a jury. Those who were brought to court were ordered to "be at your law six-handed", which meant he must bring along 5 other men to attest that his account was true, or having not witnessed the act in question, that he was a trustworthy person. They were then ordered to find people to guarantee their appearance in court, called pledges, which was a uniquely medieval process. If the plaintiff or defendant did not show up to court, his or her pledge must pay a fine. The parties were allowed to settle out of court, but still had to pay the Lord a fee for a "license to agree". The most common punishment was a fine. Rarely were villagers sentenced to anything but, unless convicted of a felony which belonged in the realm of the royal courts. Along with the fines villagers could be required to pay an additional fee for damages. This was true in the case of personal injury, property damage, or slander. One of the most common fines concerned the brewing of ale. The frequency of these fines leads us to believe that they were being used in lieu of a licensing fee, since the Lord did not hold a monopoly on brewing.

Villagers lived a simple life. Filled with manual labor, they were not plagued by some of the same problems we are today, or even their city or royal counterparts. Although many of their traditions have been lost, one can definitely see the influence village life has had on humanity. We still live in villages, hamlets, towns, and cities even if their distinction is not as strict. We are still tried by a jury of our peers. We still strive to capture that community atmosphere. Gone are the days of Lords, of free men and villeins, but without them we would not be the people we are today.

How To Write Good

1. Avoid Alliteration. Always.
2. Prepositions are not words to end sentences with.
3. Avoid cliches like the plague. (They're old hat.)
4. Employ the vernacular.
5. Eschew ampersands & and abbreviations, etc.
6. Parenthetical remarks (however relevant) are unnecessary.
7. It is wrong to ever split an infinitive.
8. Contractions aren't necessary.
9. Foreign words and phrases are not apropos.
10. One should never generalize.
11. Eliminate quotations. As Ralph Waldo Emerson said: "I hate quotations. Tell me what you know."
12. Comparisons are as bad as cliches.
13. Don't be redundant; don't use more words than necessary; it's highly superfluous.
14. Profanity sucks.
15. Be more or less specific.
16. Understatement is always best.
17. Exaggeration is a billion times worse than understatement.

Stolen from my The Making of Modern England professor, Patrick Brennan.

Congratulations are in order!

Today my wonderful mother will graduate from Gulf Coast Community College, receiving her AA degree (technically she graduated in December, but they only have one ceremony). This might not seem like a big deal to everyone, but it's a huge step for her. She dropped out of the 9th grade to work for her father, then married my sociopathic father, had 2 of 3 children, and never worked again. Through my father's abuse she was taught to believe that she wasn't able to have, wasn't worth, a life other than the sad one he provided for her and us girls. This is just the first step of many to prove how wrong he was. So congrats Mom! You deserve it.

Out of chaos comes beauty

I have finally inserted a title into the brackets left open since this blog's conception. Whether said title is catchy or not remains to be seen. :D I like it, which is I guess what matters. Mostly I'm just happy to have something up there other than [Insert Catchy Title Here] hehe.

And it matches today's theme, since I feel rather discombobulated. I have a few things I feel like writing about but none of them really go together. I don't feel like writing two or three different posts that only have a paragraph or so each so I'm just going to lump them together.

First order of business: Warhammer 40k. My husband has been playing for a while now with our friend John (who happens to be the future husband of my friend Jessica, whom I have known since 3rd grade) but I've never played before. I'll go over there with him sometimes and chill with Jess, play with the kitties, or watch them, but never play. Not because they won't let me or I don't want to, I just don't have any pieces or models or whatever you call them.

Well last night I played for the first time and it was pretty fun. I got to play a "shooty" army of Space Marines with my own tank and a robot who looked like the Iron Giant. It's a really, really long game though. I let Josh finish for me because I got tired and just sat on the couch with Izzi instead. That takes less concentration, something I'm rather laking at 3am. Next Tuesday (I think?) there is supposed to be some really big game with like 5 or 6 people playing and I'll probably give that a go as well. Then I'll actually understand how you do stuff better which will probably make it a lot more fun. Yesterday I kinda just felt like a dice roller, with Josh and John making all the tactical decisions.

Second order of business: school. I got my paper back from Dr. Phillips. I knew it was going to be an easy A, but I didn't know how easy. I'm not joking when I say I'm not even sure if he read it. When I got it back there was a rubric inside the title page. Well, if you could call it that. There were only two criteria to be graded: paper length and number of sources. Our grades were number of pages (up to 15) x 3 + number of sources (up to 15) x 3 + 10. So if you had at least 15 pages and sources, it looked like 45 + 45 + 10 = 100! Yay! I looked through the whole paper and he didn't make a single mark. Not one correction, not one "good point!", nothing. One of the guys who sits behind me said he used 16pt font instead of the standard 12 and got away with it. When Phillips said our papers were going to be a buffer for our test scores he meant it.

My first final is on Wednesday and I'm supposed to be studying for that right now. The rest are next week. I need to find a new job. =/

Don't you wish your teacher was as lax as mine?

I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by. -Douglas Adams

Well it's that time of year again... "What time?", you ask... term paper time! *Gasp*

This year I only have one paper due, but it's a long one coming in at 15 pages. Has to be on a president or to do with the election process in America. Not really my favorite subject, not really looking forward to it. So I put it off, and off, and...

Crap! It's due next week! *run* *panic* *faint*

Or, that would have been my reaction if it wasn't for dear ol' Dr. Phillips whom I love so very much. <3 (<--- see? I put a heart 'cause he's my favorite. :D)

It was due yesterday and I'm still only on page 13. I really could have finished it last night BUT meh... I didn't. Didn't have to. You know why? Because I went to class on Monday to find out that he is taking this week off for Spring Break (since he mostly teaches at GCCC, which is off this week) and to just kinda drop it off at his office at some point by the end of the week. Honestly, I could turn it in day before the end of the semester and he would take it without a problem, not a drop in grade or anything. Because he's just that awesome.

I won't though, I'll finish it probably tomorrow and turn it in by the end of the week. I'm almost done with it and putting it off any longer is just going to make it harder to finish. Plus otherwise I think Josh might have a heat attack.

Do you believe in science? She's perfect chemistry...

Today was much better health wise than usual. Although I'm starting to feel slightly dizzy/lightheaded now, I was able to get up this morning and drive Josh to work. I also stopped by Dr. Phillips office to talk to him about my degree.

There are about 70 million sociology classes available this summer and fall, yet I cannot take any of them. It says they are for distance learning majors only. I find that funny since I'm a Social Science Interdisciplinary major and the definition of Sociology is :

the science of society, social institutions, and social relationships

You see that? Should be right up an SSI majors ally. So I found out how to get into those classes since I would like it make it my secondary discipline. Apparently I just have to harass the sociology advisor until he's so sick of me calling he gives in. :D

While I was there Dr. Phillips also did a graduation check for me. Turns out I'm farther into my degree than I thought. One trip to my advisor and I'm three classes closer to my degree requirements. If I take the sociology class at GCCC this summer as a transient student I will be left with 30 elective credit hours (after taking the rest of my history and 3 more sociology at FSU). That's 10 three credit hour classes of anything I want! That's half of my required 60 hours needed to graduate. This means I can take even more history and won't have to settle for other random classes that I won't find interesting. It also means I can get a jump start on my Master's degree, taking pretty much only 5000+ level classes my final semester.

Freedom to choose the classes I actually want feels pretty amazing.