cuchillo

Yesterday, I helped a little bit with the Chi Alpha missions garage sale. Every year we hold one of these to help send students to Slovakia on a summer mission. This year we seemed to have quite a bit of donations. People donate stuff, we sell it, and the money goes to the mission.

Part of the fun is an all-night setup party. I didn't stay for all of it. I just dropped off my truckload of stuff from me and my parents, ate some pizza, and left. Another part of the fun is taking pictures with some of the more silly items for sale.

In other news, I'm sick of school for this semester. I ran out of steam about a week ago when the weather got nice. I just have to force myself to write the final paper for Russian Lit and I'll have the big thing out of the way. I'm going to compare Anna Karenina and Crime and Punishment. Particularly, Part Eight of Anna Karenina and the Epilogue of Crime and Punishment. These are the two best novels I have ever read. If you have a lot of extra time, read them.

In still other news, I'm sick. It figures since I have recently been saying that my extra sleep has kept me healthy. I got a sore throat, and now it has turned into a stuffed up nose too. Theraflu is incredibly expensive right now. It was over $8 to get six packets. Maybe it has something to do with the bird flu worries.

Well, I'm back to thinking about that paper.

April 26th was the 20th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster. Twenty years ago in Ukraine the plant suffered a nuclear meltdown. Some have described the glowing sight of the explosion as beautiful while others could feel the radiation burning their skin. Forty seven workers died as a result of acute radiation syndrome, but no one knows how many have died and will die from radiation exposure.

The area and towns directly around the reactor have been abandoned, and many nearby towns still suffer the effects of elevated radiation. My friend's neice, who was born several years after the incident, died as a result of a heart condition which is now known as "Chernobyl Heart." There are many children who suffer ill health due to the accident and the radiation still present.

There is an interesting story about a girl who rides her motorcycle through the ghost towns. Apparently, it is not all true, but the photos are still haunting, and it is worth the read.

Well, I thought that I should get something up, and what better time to do it than when I should be writing a paper that was due last Thursday? I've been busy with school stuff lately, and I've told myself that I shouldn't be blogging when I have homework to do, but now I'm throwing that out the window and giving you an update.

I just finished Anna Karenina by Tolstoy. You know the same guy who wrote the longest book you've ever heard of: "War and Peace." Anna Karenina is officially the longest novel I have completed at 740 pages, but I would say it was worth it. Tolstoy is just a master at writing emotions, the thoughts of charaters, and their relationships. Did you know that Anna Karenina was a best seller in 2004? That's right, it was on Oprah's Book Club!

Aside from reading Anna Karenina and taking vacation to read Anna Karenina, I've been building a new computer. I bought a motherboard from Pavel, ordered an AMD 64 3000+ processor, a killer heatink (Dale thinks it's cool), and picked up a new 320 GB SATA hard drive from Best Buy. Oh yeah, and a sweet Antec P180 case. It's a nice case. It is supposed to be the quietest stock case on the market. It has 3 120cm fans, and rubber grommets for the hard drives to ride on (it cuts down on the noise from vibration). I was really going for a quiet computer since my last one sounded like a jet.

Right now I'm installing Windows 2000 for the second time. I already had it installed, but I tried to run Paragon Partion Manager on it and it hosed my installation and I lost everything on the hard drive. Let that be a warning to you to always backup what you need off your computer.

Well, I think I'll finish Checkov's "The Lady with the Pet Dog" before I go to bed and just write my paper on Anna Karenina tomorrow morning. I really need to make myself get up early. I'm still working on that, but on the bright side I haven't got sick in a long time.

Apparently, Wendy's not only hires teenage instant messengers to make burgers, but to write signs too.

I don't have anything against teenagers. Heck, I even used to be one. I just never wrote an instant message or a text as one, and now that I do use those mediums, I'm responsible enough not to let the style cross over into professional or academic work.

I'm not a strict prescriptive grammarian, but I do think we need some standards to communicate well.