And about how I don’t even feel all that well-rested from summer break because all I did was work, and how I don’t even have anything to show for that because all my money went to paying for things like $100 access codes and, occasionally, tacos.

It hasn’t even been that long since summer started. Okay, it’s been a good three months, but three months just doesn’t feel as long when you’re almost 19 (hey, my birthday is next Saturday!) as it does when you’re 6.  I wanted to get so much more done this summer than I did- I wanted to read more, do more, spend more time with my friends, but fall just kind of crept up on me.

Oh, well, it’s not like I actually hate school. In fact, I’m actually kind of looking forward to this semester, despite my three lab classes- hey, it means I can spend more time on things like doing experiments and writing lab reports and being science-y and less time writing detailed analyses of modern literature (and I do like literature and books, you should see my bedroom- more on that later- but it’s not really relevant to my major).

But it’s only been four days and I already wish my friends were back and I would even go back to working 40 hours a week if only I didn’t have to come home and do homework and reading and pay for textbooks and tuition and go to lectures…

Viva el verano…. if only.

Unfortuantely, housing was a little more cramped this year- we only had a 9-bedroom house (Because apparently finding a 10 or more bedroom house on Hatteras Island is all but impossible. Who knew?), but really, who cares, because how many families are lucky enough to vacation with 30 of their closest relatives? And if you don’t have 30 close relatives to vacation with… I’m sorry. So very, very sorry.

Anyway, I think we were fortunate this year in that we (at least, I) never really discovered how the cable worked in the house, so we couldn’t spend hours in front of the TV watching NCIS like several of my cousins were rather inclined to do last year. Instead, we found a (in my opinion, much more worthy) substitute. Every night, we watched a different Harry Potter film. At this point, a few of you are probably saying, OK, anyone who hasn’t seen the movies by now is sad.  What you don’t know is that one of my aunts has completely banned her children from reading Harry Potter (There’s some kind of logic in there about it being evil? Yeah, I can’t wait for the day that she reads it herself.) One of my cousins decided to read it anyway, something he told me about LAST beach trip. By this point, he’d finished all the books, but hadn’t seen any of the movies. So I made it my personal mission to show them all to him. (Him, and another cousin, who had never even read the books, but exhibited a mild curiosity.)

Another amazing thing about this year is that the water was amazingly clear and warm- clearer than I’ve ever seen it, and I’ve been spending time at the beach almost every summer since I was a baby. It was actually practical to use goggles in the ocean for the first time I can remember. Because of the clear water, we noticed the fish swimming with us for the first time, too. I’m pretty sure that they were pompano fish, by the description and picture. We would often get groups of 30-40 fish swimming around our feet- it was one of the most memorable experiences I’ve had in the ocean, and, given the amount of time I’ve spent in the ocean, that’s really saying something.

Unfortunately, by Thursday, a hurricane (Hurricane Emily, apparently. Oh, the irony.)  was starting to move up the  coast and the waves got much rougher. The water was much less clear, and we didn’t get to swim with the fish, but the water was also a lot better for body surfing and riding boogie boards.

Anyway, I suppose it’s back to the real world now… which is unfortunate, because the real world means me returning to college in a week and a half. Someone remind me why I signed up for three lab science courses this semester. I think I’m gonna die.

It makes me sad to think that even with all of my scholarships, I’m still having trouble paying for college. (Granted, this is completely sans loans, but still.) What do kids who have to pay full price for tuition do? How do they manage? Most in-state, public schools are at least $25,000 a year. Private institutions can be almost twice that much.  When it’s almost impossible to get anywhere in life without at least some graduate school- let alone a bachelor’s degree- it’s not really surprising that no one these days has any money.

It kind of makes a person wonder if a basic liberal arts degree is even worth it any more- wouldn’t it be better just to enter the job market straight out of high school and start earning a living? For a lot of people, it probably would- unfortunately, college isn’t really considered an option any more- for all but the worst high school students, it’s like a required step. Not everyone is made for college- for some, it’s just a waste of money. A lot of money, as the case may be.

Eh, I don’t really know where this thought train is supposed to lead- maybe high schools should stop pushing kids who really shouldn’t go to college to apply anyway?  Maybe college should be less expensive? (Given the amount of money that was in my bank account two days ago versus the amount of money that will be in my bank account tomorrow, definitely. Don’t get me wrong, though, I’m definitely grateful for my scholarships. If I didn’t have them, I would probably be crying right about now.) But really, I just wanted to whine about both my empty bank account and how school will be starting again in two short weeks. Where did summer go, anyway?

For pretty much- no, actually, my whole life, the middle of June has signified that it’s time to get down the window AC units. In the past few years, all of the window air conditioners have been replaced by shiny new ones, with a single exception- the one in my bedroom. This is slightly ironic, because I’m pretty sure mine was the oldest one to begin with. The thing was manufactured sometime in the 1970′s. Yes, really. The plastic parts had long gone from a white to a yellow-brownish color, and the front was a hideous faux-wood type pattern.

The sides of the air conditioner had long rotted away, so in order to keep out the hot air, I had to shove old towels in the gap between the air conditioner and the edge of my window frame.

Aside from being visually hideous, something I didn’t appreciate but could certainly put up with, a year ago, the air conditioner lost its ability to properly drain itself. As a result, whenever I would turn on the air conditioner, it would spew little drops of water everywhere. But when it’s 87 degrees in your bedroom and all you want to do is sleep, are you really NOT going to turn on the air conditioner, no matter what kind of filth it spits out? Yeah, didn’t think so. But of late, the air conditioner had gotten so bad that my entire carpet ended up soaked and the paint on my windowsill is bubbling up from being constantly soaked. This despite the 3-4 towels that I constantly had shoved underneath it.

But there is good news to report: “The Dinosaur” has been gone from my window for three whole days. Actually, my dad, after putting up with three days of whining with relative grace (Me: “It’s so hot, when are you going to install my new air conditioner?” Dad: “It’s *checks thermostat* only 83 degrees in your bedroom, that’s not hot!” Me: “Buuuut…..”) just installed it. I would say I helped, but the only thing that he asked me to do was run out to the pool house to get a Phillips screwdriver, and I couldn’t even do that properly. Apparently, Phillips screwdrivers are the X shaped ones, NOT the flat ones. How was I supposed to know?!

Unfortunately, the carpet by the window where the old air conditioner used to be is still wet. Oh, well.

Anyway, so it looks like I’m back, doesn’t it? I converted the whole website to WordPress, which didn’t end up being nearly as difficult as I would have supposed- except for transferring over my blog comments, which I had to do by hand and took me HOURS. Someone (and I mean a coding genius, not me) really needs to come up with a better way to do that. Seriously. Google “uploading fanupdate comments to wordpress” and you get nothing. I made a shiny new layout (light for a change, whopee- I guess I’m on version…. 7 of this website?) And this time around, I’m determined to expand my circle- I need to be commenting on new people’s blogs and making some new friends, because it seems like every few months, more and more of my friends disappear from the internet…

Getting the internet back up was kind of an adventure. Our first mistake was letting my father pick out the router. He went out to buy it Friday while I was at school. I was a little bit worried, because not only had he not taken my mother along, he hadn’t asked any of the people at Staples for recommendations. But I tried to set it up anyway, because how bad could it possibly be?

The first real problem came when I inserted the CD and was informed that I needed to download something called “Service Pack 3″ for Windows XP. A bit of Googling told me that “Service Pack 3″ wasn’t available for my processor- in other words, that I would never be able to use the router that Dad had bought. I got scared, and after about 2 hours of more Googling (with, OK, lots of time on Facebook in between Googlings) I went ahead and downloaded the service pack anyway, figuring if it didn’t work, we’d just have to take the router back. The good news? It worked. The bad news? It took until 10:30 that night to finish downloading.

I gave up for the night, and resolved to finish installing the router in the morning. When I finally got around to it around 11, the computer wouldn’t read the disc. I, of course, asked Google, which told me that my CD drive was broken and I would have to buy a new one. That couldn’t have been true, though, because the CD drive played other discs just fine. (I checked it with a Barbie Riding Club disc. Don’t ask.) By this point I was determined that I was going to get that router set up, disc or no disc, so help me God. And I’d found a website that seemed like it was going to help me to do just that! I started to follow the step-by-step instructions, got to page three, and….

“Please pay the subscription fee to continue further. Only $9.95!” … Oh, you must be kidding me. I was not going to pay some stupid website $10.00 to teach me how to set up my router! So I kept searching for a site that would tell me how to do the same thing. Half an hour later, I was redirected to the router’s official site… where I was told that I could download the program that was on the CD from the internet. ALL OF THAT FOR SOMETHING THAT IF I WEREN’T STUPID I WOULD HAVE FOUND IN FIVE MINUTES. Of course.

5 minutes later, the program was downloaded and I had my router set up. All it took was about five hours of extraneous Google time. But hey, the Internet lives again, and I guess that’s all that matters.

This was, of course, sparked by a bit of local controversy over potential cuts to the county’s Head Start program. While discussing the cuts, a few elected officials basically remarked that women who are using that program should really be staying home with their children full-time anyway, and implied that women who aren’t stay-at-home parents are irresponsible. The worst part of their remarks is that SOMEONE elected them to office.

Is it so hard to understand that women are essentially the same people as men, with slight anatomical differences? We need fulfillment somewhere outside of the home, too- or at least, some of us do. Having a career or a job provides women with something that their family just can’t. After all, if the home life were completely fulfilling on its own, the Feminine Mystique and the woman problem of the 1950’s would never have arisen. Besides that, it’s obvious that in an economy such as this, a lot of families just can’t survive on a single income. A lot of families are headed by single mothers who face either working or going on welfare.

These people cite scientific studies that seem to imply that families who have a stay-at-home parent tend to have better-behaved, more well-adjusted children, and to this I reply: Fine, but why does the stay-at-home parent have to be the mother? Why does HE always have to have his career and SHE her family? Why can’t it be the woman with the career and the man with the family? One simple reason: it doesn’t work with traditional stereotypes. This is called the “breadwinner ethos”, and it’s the idea that it’s a man’s job to earn a living to support his family and a woman’s job to his little housewife. The United States has a history of wanting to revert to this “breadwinner ethos” in times of economic crisis. (If you want to know more, take a women’s history class. It’s fascinating stuff.) It has something to do with an increasing scarcity of jobs along with traditional roles, but that doesn’t make it right.

1950 was six decades ago. So many other things from that era seem hopelessly outdated now- their TVs, their refrigerators, their cars. I don’t know why their “suburban utopia” outlook isn’t one of them. I have no problem with women who choose to stay at home with their kids, but let’s not condemn the women who want a career and a family. After all, it’s not any more or less than what most men have.

Think about it. How many times have you watched the morning news and your stream of the week’s tragedies is interrupted by a report on Lindsay Lohan’s latest drug deal? I know it’s daily for me. (Yes, I have to watch Lindsay Lohan over my PopTarts on a daily basis, and that is not an exaggeration. I wish it was.) If people like her make the news so often, there must be some kind of popular demand behind it, otherwise NBC wouldn’t be making any money. The question is, why? It’s not like Lohan in particular has anything to offer our society. True, she was a cute child actress, once upon a time. But now she’s nothing more than a common criminal, so why is she so fascinating?

Celebrities and movie stars aren’t the only members of society’s “elite” that don’t show themselves to be worthy of our admiration- just look at our politicians. I understand why these people make the news, at least- if our elected officials are being irresponsible with our trust and our money, then I want to know about it. But why is it acceptable and why are these people continually elected? For our business executives, how many of them are able to get away with stealing from their own companies? Is it the way our country is run that promotes and rewards white-collar crime by politicians and business executives?

Maybe celebrities, especially ones that become famous overnight, give us a sense that we, too, can become famous and rich. Maybe the fall from grace of certain individuals gives us cause to feel superior about ourselves (after all, we would never do something similar in their situation- never!)—or- maybe when celebrities are shown to be corrupt, it humanizes them and makes them easy to relate to. Maybe we don’t worship celebrities and politicians for any of these reasons- I don’t know then answers.

The corruption of the upper class was responsible for many (or a very, very large percentage of) the revolutions that have shaped modern society over time. But when I look at today’s world, our upper class isn’t any less corrupt than the upper class three centuries ago. The possession of wealth, fame, or power doesn’t make a person worthy of our admiration. Until our society realizes that, we haven’t moved as far away from the medieval world as we think we have.

We stayed at the Port Orleans Riverside resort. (By the way, all links in the next two paragraphs will be a picture. From the left, that’s my dad, my sister and I outside our hotel room. Yes, I’m aware my younger sister is like three inches taller than I am. It makes me sad but I’m used to it now.) We’d stayed there once before, when I was 11, and it was nice- our room was pretty secluded, so it was nice and quiet most of the time. My favorite park in Disney World is probably Epcot- specifically, the countries, but I like the future-world part too. (I think Soarin’ is one of the best rides in the entire resort!) We spent some time in the Seas building on one of the days it rained, and my sister posed inside Bruce the Shark’s mouth, even though she is adamant that she doesn’t like Finding Nemo. (If only he’d really eaten her.)

We also spent more time than usual at MGM (well, OK, it’s Hollywood Studios now. But it was MGM the first three trips we made and I can’t get used to saying Hollywood Studios. Besides, it’s longer.) And I know that the Honey I Shrunk The Kids playground is for, well, little kids, but come on. We were in Disney World. They have this giant ant that’s kind of fun to sit on. (OK, left to right: my cousins Chris, Jessica, Samantha, my sister and me.) Our cousins and aunt ended up leaving Wednesday (we stayed until Saturday morning) so we got kind of a lot of time to ourselves as well as being able to spend time with them. Here’s my sister, my mom and I posing on a bridge in front of Big Thunder Mountain in Magic Kingdom. (I’m the short one. Of course.) Finally, of course no trip to Disney World is complete without character pictures, so here’s one of my sister, me, and my mom with Tigger. (Yes, I know. I’m a child. Don’t judge me.)

All in all, though, I guess I’m glad to be back- there’s something about being on vacation that just makes home seem really nice. Unfortunately, being back from Florida also means going back to classes, although truth be told I haven’t been doing a lot of that lately. There’s been kind of a lot of winter weather-related insanity around here lately. We didn’t even get a third of the snowfall amounts that we got in last year’s insane snowstorm, but it seemed like there were a lot more traffic problems than there ever were last year. For example: my dad left work at 3:30 yesterday. He got home after 11PM. (Traffic for the D.C. area sucks under ordinary circumstances, but it doesn’t suck THAT much.) People were abandoning their cars on the interstates. But hey, I haven’t gone to school for two days! Think of the positives…

Also, just a little note- there are a few more photos from my vacation in the Stock Photo section. They’re under Animals, and they’re almost all from either the Animal Kingdom safari ride or jungle walks. I also added some more flower pictures, but they were taken last May and don’t have anything to do with Disney World at all. I added a new web template as well, and that doesn’t have anything to do with Disney World either.

• ?I? I? forgot how to skip??
• ?Harry Potter IS good for you! Good for your soul!?
• ?LIFE is a terminal illness.?
• ?I kind of forgot how to stick my tongue out for a second. It kind of like, got caught on my lip??
• ?The roller coaster flies oof the tracks.?
• Emily: I think my feminine side is a little more than inner. Hannah: ?Definitely not. Except for your boobs.”
• ?The legend of the Christmas TURD?!??!??
• ?OH, it?s NOT a face sock!?
• Upon being questioned as to why she had to touch the ?jeggings? when we walked past ?I had to feel the ugly.?
• ?I?m pretty sure most SUVs are more aerodynamic than an elephant.?
• ?I had a dream about dinosaurs, and they were throwing people off cliffs. Then I rode one into a basketball court? yeah, I guess I do have weird dreams.?
• ?You?re the one who says kidneys are kidney-shaped! Why should I believe anything you say??
• Covers face with hands ?I?m a stupid person!?
• Upon reading this list “God, why am I so stupid?”

The way I see it, part of the real tragedy in this event is that some people are using it as a means to divide the country even more (look at both the article and some of the comments to see what I mean), labeling individual politicians like Sarah Palin and other extremists as personally responsible for the incident. Now, don’t get me wrong, I don’t like Sarah Palin. But even I can see that she can’t be blamed for the actions of a lone, mentally unstable gunman. When fingers point at a political party for this kind of tragedy, whether the party in question is Democrat, Republican or otherwise, we only divide ourselves more. By so stubbornly clinging to the “them vs. us” idea that seems to be prevalent in the minds of just about everyone, we’re tearing ourselves apart.

Most people in the U.S. today can be divided up into one of a very few groups based on their political philosophy, it would seem. On one hand, we have the extreme conservatives, who blame the left for everything that’s wrong with the country. Opposite of them are the liberals, who blame the right for everything that’s wrong with the country. Then, we have what feels like the smallest group of all- the moderates who just want everyone to be able to work together. All three groups are responsible for the finger-pointing: Democrats blame Republicans, Republicans blame Democrats, and moderates blame both. But no one ever does anything to change the way our political system works.

I’m not saying I’m any better, because I know I’m not. But maybe if we started to look at each other as people rather than political labels, we’d be better off. Maybe if we were able to see that we’re all on the same side, we’d be able to find solutions to our problems that actually work. Life is a compromise. After all, united we stand, divided we fall. I just wish the world could remember that.

By the way, for those of you who were inquiring, I got at least an A- for all of my class grades, which means I didn’t fail any of my final exams! So apparently the not-study game worked after all. Not that I’m recommending that you don’t study for your exams. You probably should. Unless, of course, you’re reading my blog. It’s perfectly acceptable to skip studying for that. (…Except don’t. I don’t want to be responsible if you fail you exams.)