The State of Things

The *only* downside of having a blog is that it is an excellent place to procrastinate.

Little things have been coming and going and changing. The sun is beginning to warm when it shines and I feel like it must be Spring already, but all too often the Winter chill rolls through the streets still lined with barren trees and I am reminded that we have a few months to go.

My little garden was entirely green a couple months ago, having sprung to life from very humble beginnings back in August. At one point they were all standing tall with their little leafy arms spread out wide, but now my cilantro and tarragon have reached the end of their lives (this season) and my other babies are shrinking a little and just holding on. The exception: my parsley is apparently immortal. Whenever people come over I ask if they want parsley, because it just keeps on giving and I can't seem to use it all fast enough. Anyone have any recipes, edible or otherwise, that call for obscene amounts of parsley?


Also, little weeds have sprung up all over, but in the same way that I can rarely bring myself to kill spiders, I can't bring myself to pull them. I gave them life, after all, turning this little patch of dry, shallow soil into a new home for my leafy friends. It seems cruel to kill them. My herbs are old gents and ladies now, anyway, so the young and the wild can come in for a bit until the old ones are ready to be reborn.

I haven't been to see my ocean in weeks. I see her from afar every day and I feel her call to me. I'm sorry, I say, I'm up to my ears in homework and midterms and need to get A's this quarter. Sometimes I hear her laugh at me. After all, of what importance are grades when you're an ocean? Sometimes I wish I had her job instead of mine.



I've also begun to feel increasingly unsafe. There are "bad cities" and "bad parts of town" everywhere, but I didn't think I lived in one (I did research this when deciding where to look for a place). Until, two nights ago, there was a shooting about three blocks away from my apartment, right along my usual running route, at 7:30 at night. Some idiot with a rifle thought it would be a good idea to try and mug a college student waiting at a bus stop, because us college students taking public transit have *so* much cash on us all the time. He got her backpack (new textbooks for you, hooray) and shot her in the back of the head. Miraculously, it lodged itself in the back of her skull, the surgeons removed it, and she's going to make a full recovery. But still: rifles should not be handled by idiots, or by anyone, for that matter. I probably shouldn't get into gun control in our country right now, because it's the one issue I can't firmly state my position on.

{I believe guns should be completely eradicated, but know that even if they're made illegal that won't happen, at least for a very long time, so some other logical solution has to be figured out. And that's not likely to happen soon either, because the majority of our government *cough congress* is more preoccupied with public image and reelection than anything else, and can't seem to get anything productive done. So there. I stated my position.)

Anyway, taking intermediate microeconomics this quarter, I have become increasingly more convinced that congress has no idea what they're doing with the budget. Did you know that congress has no required compliance training? If they get voted in, they're in, no matter how much they're lacking in economic know-how. These are the people who are deciding what to do with our nation's money: guys (mostly) who majored in political science, which teaches you how to win elections and stay in power, not how to manage the entire public sector of a country once you're in office. I believe that if even basic economics courses were required for congressmen and women, we would be in significantly better shape.

Well, that's my shortened spiel on government. Now I have to stop writing words and go start writing formulas (math intensive econ midterm tomorrow). Oh please let sweet Summer come soon.

xoxo
Maralah