Random Ramblings

Back in the saddle and looking forward to a productive day. Over the weekend I managed to get half my final done (the 9 page paper), half my 12 page paper done and made an outline for my dissertation proposal. Not all that, but I did a bunch of bookkeeping and housecleaning too, plus went to a play and had a few long walks. I'm satisfied with that.

Now back to the grind. I have to write an essay on aggression and one on human attraction, then back to my paper.

I decided not to write about Gone With the Wind because someone else was using that movie, so I've switched to Something the Lord Made instead. This movie has particular meaning to me because my father went to Vanderbilt's medical school and trained in the dog lab, with the instruments made by Vivian Thomas, and knew Dr. Helen Taussig. To make it a bit more personal, when I was 18 months old (in 1968) I had open heart surgery and my surgeon was trained by Dr. Blalock. The story of these two men is a wonderful study of moral development and altruism, so it fit perfectly into Social Psychology themes.

Also today I must make a dentist appointment. I HATE dental procedures of every variety (and trust me, I've sampled them all over the years) so am not looking forward to this. The pain is between two molars, each with a crown, so I'm fearful this may end in a root canal. Perish the thought!!! =X

In other news, Entree (the upside down tuxedo cat in my side bar) has been having bouts of cold feet again and is looking a little ratty. He always gets that way when he's not feeling well. Nowt to do but keep pounding the meds. A friend of mine tells me her husband is on a really powerful med that keeps his heart rate the same no matter what he does. It's very strange as he can work out until he's sweating like a pig and out of breath, but his heart rate never changes. I'm going to see if cats can tolerate this med, or if it is substantially different from the Calcium channel blockers we already have him on. In the mean time he's a love bug; another side effect of his not feeling well. I brush him in lieu of petting him mostly, because of my allergies. He's such a silly old sock, he doesn't care one way or another, as long as he's being fussed over.

Another Scorcher

Summer has arrived... for a few days anyway. This super hot, super cold, super hot, super windy thing is KILLING me! WTF? Somebody hide the celestial remote so whoever is flipping weather channels will stop already!

I took all my recent whiny posts down in hopes I'll get past all this stuff better. Yesterday I alternated between feeling drugged (allergy meds + heat = zombie) and feeling desperately depressed. It's hot, I have a shitload of work to do, and I can't make my mind hold still to get it done. So today, in hopes of getting off to a better start, I got up super early and started watering the lawn. Now I'm doing laundry and I'm going to clean the fishtank. I thought perhaps getting a bunch of housework accomplished might get my mood to where it needs to be to do brain work.

I have to write a longish paper for social psych using a film or a novel to illustrate one of the areas we've covered. Been having a terrible time choosing one, but I think I'll go rent Gone With the Wind today and see about using it to exemplify all the different kinds of 'love.' It's my belief that the word love is utterly useless in terms of actually defining anything meaningful. It's great for lay use, but when you start trying to understand human behavior the word falls flat. There's attachment that we develop for caregivers and others; infatuation during new romances; deep and abiding trust; long term companionship; respect; reverence; worship; patriotism; devotion to principles; empathy for conspecifics; empathy for other species; loyalty; social expectancy; dependency and on and on ad nauseum. How on earth does one word, love, even begin to capture that? I think nearly all of those themes are covered somewhere in the movie, so I'll just make a list of my terms and then take notes of examples under each one. I have three more weeks to do the paper, so this should give me a good start and not overreach my mental capacity today. I started with the idea of using the novel,Parable of the Sower, by Octavia Butler, and then I was going to use Fiddler on the Roof for the same theme, but neither is as comprehensive, so I'm going for the overused classic because I'm too lazy to find something else.

There! Just writing that gave me a nice, simple task to do, and it's a pleasant one, too! Add to that collecting 5 more articles for my lit review and I think I have a doable list.

Lalalalala! Off to have a productive Sunday. I wish you all the same (or a fun one if you're not doing school stuff)