I'd love you to love me

Volunteer.  Seriously, just do it.  Volunteering at the food pantry has quite likely been the most rewarding thing I've done in the past year.  Its not because its a "now I appreciate what I have when others have so much less" type of thing.  That occurs if you only go through and do it once or twice.  Its much better than that.  Today, in the hour and a half we were open, we helped out 173 families.  The number was higher than normal because the pantry is closed for the next two days and its the end of the month and so people are running low on food stamps.  This was a great day for me because this now meant that there were 173+ people who were happy to see me.  Compare that to my usual week, when there are about 8 people that are happy to see me (okay, its higher than that since most of my students like me, but it doesn't approach 100+ on any given day).  Even better is the fact that I work produce which means I'm right after Andre, who has a good way with people and thus, I end up with all these little old ladies who are in a good mood and flirting with me even though all I'm doing is giving them a cabbage and some bananas.  When you get all these people coming together for the greater good, you can't help but walk away with a smile because when 173 people love on you, the stones in your heart haven't got a chance.

We'll show them how its supposed to be.

Just a quick update to cover the past two weeks.  First, I am now dating Krista, but more on that later.

Last Saturday, I went to the Iowa-Purdue football game with both Lisa and Krista since I was able to score tickets on StubHub for $1.11 before various fees.  We ended up sitting in the south end zone bleachers with all the Iowa fans who scored similar ticket deals.  The game was at least close for the first half before ended up blowing Purdue out in the second half.  It was a little cold out and made worse by the fact that the video screen ended up blocking out the sun in our section.  Nonetheless, it was good and now marks both twice that I've seen Iowa play and been to Purdue for a football game.  This one was miles better than the previous game, a 6-3 affair against Penn State.  After the game, Lisa and I went back to my place and went out to dinner.  We got home after that and I promptly crapped out at 8:30 and went to bed because I am the oldest person alive.  I did fall asleep though immediately so at least it was justified.

This past Saturday, I went over to Jesse's place to watch the MSU football game.  It was a good time and nice to hang out with other Anderson friends.  Yeah, that's right, my social life existed for a week or two.  Its better that I went over for that game instead of the MSU-UK basketball game since I got a little more animated for that and should probably go apologize to my neighbors if something like that happens.  Thankfully, none of them have small children.

On this past Friday, I submitted a mini-grant proposal to CURM at BYU in the hopes of getting my first research grant.  Apparently though, you have to submit a grant proposal proposal to the development office here at AU before you submit anything else.  Oops.  I screwed that up so I went around yesterday asking people for signatures and apologizing for the poor timing.  That's currently in Marie's office right now and hopefully I'll get all of that taken care of in the next couple of days.  Wish me luck. EDIT: Wish granted.  The signatures are gathered and no on e even yelled at me.  This is so much easier than trying to get signatures from all my committee members at MSU.

How on Earth did I get so jaded?

Sometime last week, one of my facebook friends linked to an article on Huffington Post discussing how to be insufferable on facebook.  The premise of the article was the author taking issue with a long post from one of his/her friends, essentially recapping all the great things that have happened to them over the past year.  The author then slowly became more enraged with the post as the post was basically a boast of "Look how awesome my life is!".  The rest of the article discussed posts like that and other such posts which would serve to essentially alienate facebook friends.

I was amazed at how many of my friends liked the article and the discussion that followed.  I know I'm guilty of some of the "inconsiderations" that were listed in the article, but I don't care.  None of my posts are designed to make all of my facebook friends feel better about themselves.  They're there to keep the people that care about me up to date about my life.  I don't intend to create any rift with my posts and if I post about something awesome occurring in my life, its not meant as a brag; rather, as my friends, I want you to celebrate with me.  This was my main issue with the Huffington Post article.  If you find yourself getting angry at someone's comments on facebook, the onus is on you to do something about it, not them.  Its really not that difficult.  In fact, just stop reading the post and move on.  Al Gore did not invent the internet so everyone could focus on making you feel good about yourself.  If the problem persists, either block the person or unfriend them because there are issues if you get angry whenever your friends are happy about something.

Two days later I was a victim of my own words.  I have an acquaintance on facebook who I feel had wronged me earlier and it affected me more than it probably should have.  I saw her discussing things of a similar nature to what was mentioned above and I found myself getting angry.  I haven't blocked/unfriended her yet, but it'll get there soon.  It scared me that I had this thought of, "If you ever cross me, I will become cross with you when you enjoy having nice things."  Thankfully, I know how to remedy the situation since I can't insist that others are responsible for my happiness.

Unfortunately, the story doesn't end there.  In the way in which I was wronged, I turned around and did that to someone else just recently, but in a worse way.  When you make someone cry and you know you're in the wrong and there's nothing you can really do but apologize, it really makes you feel like an asshole.  I should've known better than doing what I had to do the way I did because I don't like making people hurt.  Anyone reading this knows my callousness and indifference is feigned.  There's no happy ending here yet.  I can only hope things work out eventually.