I wish I had money! (at least $200 anyway)

I really want an MP3 player. I am currently looking at this one. I can't decide between green or purple. I don't know why it matters since I can't afford one anyway. It has this thing so you can listen to it in your car. I will have a new car soon that has a CD player so I won't have to listen to the radio all the time, but an MP3 player would be so nice. I like these better than iPods because they have FM radios and the radio thing I just mentioned as well as playing more of the audio formats I am used to and it comes in colors I like better. They seem pretty much the same otherwise.

I blame Josh for getting me thinking about these things again; he has been looking at them. Do you think I can convince him to buy me one? He was talking about getting a digital camera (which I also want) and then letting me hold on to it since he has his sister's if he really wants one. Do you think I could convince him to do the same with an MP3 player?

I am really going to need one in the fall when our lab moves to a new building and we are all in one room. My bench is going to be right in the middle of the room, so I will hear pretty much everything going on in the lab. Currently we occupy several rooms, each with their own radio. I don't know how we are going to handle 6 radios in one room. I have a feeling everyone is going to be walking around with headphones. Some people already do! Who wants to donate to the 'Chelsea MP3 Player Fund'?

I have been drinking a lot of carbonated water lately. It is better for me than pop, and I am sick of drinking plain water all the time. I have already had two cans tonight and am thinking of having another.

I made some excellent creamy, cheesy spinach pesto and chicken pasta tonight and some coffe flavored chocolate chip cookies last night. They aren't too bad either!

Is it weird that Josh called me two times yesterday and the calls were 12 hours apart: 11:17am and 11:17pm?

Well, Sunshine asked for the revised version of my paper for my Greek Civ. class so here it is.


Women Against War

Euripides in The Trojan Women and Aristophanes in Lysistrata explore the consequences of war. The focus of each play is the affect war has on the women and how they respond to a demanding situation. However, the women are characterized in entirely opposite ways. Even with the same topic and group of focus, Euripides and Aristophanes take their respective plays in completely different directions yet come to the same conclusions about the ramifications of war.

At the time these plays were written, Athens and Sparta were about 20 years into the Peloponnesian War. When The Trojan Women was written, Greece had just captured Troy. It makes sense that these two playwrights would choose the backdrop of war for their plays. However, it is the portrayal of the women that is really the core of these two plays.

Euripides uses tragedy to give the audience an idea of what the women of Troy had to deal with after the capture of their city. Pretty much everything bad that could happen to these women did. Their husbands were killed and left without proper burials, their children were taken from them, and they were assigned to Greek men as concubines and slaves; some were even killed. These women are powerless to defend themselves against the brutality of the men.

Hecuba has lost almost all the people important to her as well as her city and home. She has “no limit to [her] misfortunes. They are beyond number” (The Trojan Women 56). Her husband and children are dead, her daughter-in-law, Andromache, is enslaved and her grandson is thrown off the walls of Troy. One of her daughters, Polyxena, is killed on the tomb of Achilles and her other daughter, Cassandra, is chosen by Agamemnon to be his concubine. Andromache, widow of Hecuba’s son Hector, is another woman focused on in The Trojan Women. She is grieving the death of her husband and fearful her fate and the fate her infant son, Astyanax. Her grief only increases when he is thrown off the walls of Troy and she isn’t allowed to openly mourn his death. The horrible things these two women face encompass what has happened to all the women of Troy. Their lives and futures are rife with tragedy.

On the comedic side of things, we have the women as portrayed by Aristophanes in Lysistrata. The title character, Lysistrata, calls together the women of Athens as well as Spartan women with an idea she thinks can put an end the war. They have taken over the Parthenon and are striking against sexual relations with their husbands. These women have obtained power through cooperation and their husbands’ sexual appetites. Lysistrata knows that if they “want to force the men to make peace, [they] must renounce…sex” (Lysistrata 145).

These women are suffering as well. Their home lives have been disrupted because their husbands are not around, but they are not helpless. These women have banded together to get what they want. They have a strength that the women in The Trojan Women do not possess: strength in numbers. It was very unusual for women to have this kind of power handed to them by men at this time in Greek society. This play is an example of the role reversal of men and women in ancient times.

The Athenian and Spartan women are waging their own battle against the Peloponnesian War. Waging war is generally the masculine thing to do. As with the actual war going on, this fight against a war is a power struggle, but instead of being between two cities it is between the two sexes. It seems less war-like because it is centered on sex and there are men walking around with erect phalluses much of the time.

Even the goddesses involved in each play are as opposite as comedy and tragedy. In The Trojan Women, the women have Athena on their side. She is quite upset with the Greeks for defiling her temple in Troy, especially after helping them take the city. In Lysistrata the women have the backing of Aphrodite for their sex strike. In one play we have a goddess of war and in the other a goddess of love. Both goddesses are upset with the men and their disregard for the women in their lives. The gods don’t approve of a war so why should the women.

At the beginning of a war, no one really knows what the consequences are going to be. It is not known how it will affect people not fighting the war, like women and children. Around 400 BC it probably wasn’t up to the women whether they should go to war or not. Their input wasn’t important to the men making those decisions. How war affects the women was probably not taken into consideration when the battle lines were drawn.

In The Trojan Women we see women and children suffering at the hands of the invading army. The women are being raped and murdered and their children are being killed all because of a war they did not have input on. Even though the war is over they are still suffering. Everything in their lives has been disrupted by a war that probably could have been prevented. The men are using their power over the women to hurt them for a war they had very little to do with.

In Lysistrata we see women on both sides of the war dealing with the difficulties of living in a country at war. The men have disrupted their home lives by going to war. They are worried about losing their husbands, and they are living in poverty and dealing with the corruption of their government and the hostility of the Greeks. The women in both plays have lost all sense of domestic normality. They aren’t happy with their current situations, and the men don’t have a clue until they lose something they have taken for granted. Lysistrata believes they are “ruin[ing] Greece’s towns and slay[ing] her men” for no reason (Lysistrata 186).

Euripides and Aristophanes take their respective plays in entirely different directions, tragedy and comedy respectively, yet have the same conclusions about the ramifications of war, especially on the women. Because of wars, people are dying, living in poverty, being treated unfairly, losing the people they love and the powerless are taken advantage of. Euripides and Aristophanes have demonstrated these things in their plays through the women of the time. The women handled their situations very differently but they showed the usually neglected side of war. They showed there is not always a victor in war because of what war does to the people at war even if they do win. They also showed the wars did not benefit anyone. Everyone involved suffered in one way or another. Whether it was becoming a slave or being denied sex, everyone suffered.

I just downloaded the song from the HP picture commercial, I have over half my paper written, my exam and presentation are done, my toenails are teal (to match my new shirt) and my fingernails are purple and sparkly. I am feeling pretty good considering I have only slept about 10 good hours in the last 2 days.

Does anyone else think it is crazy that the new pope is 78? Do they not want him around very long? If they don't want him around long, why did they elect him in the first place?

If you are bored, here's my paper so far. Remember that it is just a rought draft and incomplete. It's also probably really boring, but I did get to use "sex" and "phallus" so it can't be all that bad.


Women Against War

Euripides in The Trojan Women and Aristophanes in Lysistrata explore the consequences of war. The focus of each play is the affect war has on the women and how they respond to a demanding situation. However, the women are characterized in entirely opposite ways. Even with the same topic and group of focus, Euripides and Aristophanes take their respective plays in entirely different directions yet have the same conclusions about the ramifications of war.

At the time these plays were written, Athens and Sparta were about 20 years into the Peloponnesian War. When The Trojan Women was written, Greece had just captured Troy. It makes sense that these two playwrights would choose the backdrop of war for their plays. Even with the war in the background the portrayal of the women is really the core of these two plays.

Euripides uses tragedy to give the audience an idea of what the women of Troy had to deal with after the capture of Troy. Pretty much everything bad that could happen to these women happened to them. Their husbands were killed and left without proper burials, their children were taken from them, and they were assigned to Greek men as concubines and slaves and some were even killed. These women are powerless to defend themselves against the brutality of the men.

Hecuba has lost almost all the people important to her as well as her city and home, Troy. Her husband and children are dead and her daughter-in-law, Andromache, is enslaved and her grandson is thrown off the walls of Troy. One of her daughters, Polyxena, is killed on the tomb of Achilles and her other daughter, Cassandra, is chosen by Agamemnon to be his concubine. Andromache, widow of Hecuba’s son Hector, is another woman focused on in The Trojan Women. She is grieving the death of her husband and fearful of the fate of herself and her infant son, Astyanax, that is until he is thrown off the walls of Troy and she isn’t allowed to openly grieve his death. The horrible things these two women face encompass what has happened to all the women of Troy. Their lives and futures are rife with tragedy.

On the comedic side of things, we have the women as portrayed by Aristophanes in Lysistrata. The title character, Lysistrata, called together the women of Athens as well as Spartan women with an idea she thought could put an end the war. They have taken over the Parthenon and are striking against copulating with their husbands. These women have obtained power through cooperation and their husbands’ sexual appetite. Now these women have some power.

These women are suffering as well, mind you. Their home lives have been disrupted because their husbands aren’t around, but they are not helpless. These women have banded together to get what they want. They have a strength that the women in The Trojan Women do not possess: strength in numbers. It was very unusual for women to have this kind of power handed to them by men at this time in Greek society. This play is an example of the role reversal of men and women in ancient times.
The Athenian and Spartan women are waging their own war against the Peloponnesian War. Waging war is generally the masculine thing to do. As with the actual war going on, this war against war is a power struggle, but instead of being between two cities it is between two sexes. It seems less war-like because it is centered on sex and there are men walking around with erect phalluses much of the time.

I can't study anymore. I am reading and not comprehending. I have an exam tomorrow that I don't feel at all prepared for. I have been staring at this stuff since about 5:00 and I don't feel like I really got anywhere. Too much information and too little time. I wish I had been able to start studying earlier. If I hadn't been so worried about my presentation today, I may have been able to get a little mroe studying in. I have so many other things to do this week, that I just want to get this exam over so I can focus on them. With 40 pgs of Plato to read for a quiz on Friday and a paper due on Friday and biostats homework to do an the Gym Nest to go to on Thursday night, I am left with a lot to do tomorrow night. Maybe I will try to get up early and study some more.

Friday night was more fun than I have had in quite awhile. First we went to Davenport to retreive Josh and Shauna's bikes and eat some excellent wings with their parents. Shauna's friend Ryan joined us. We got back to North Liberty around 10:00 and decided we were going to go to Bob's Place, a bar in North Liberty, if they had karaoke. When we walked in everyone stared at us. I guess we aren't that bar's usual patrons. Well, there was karaoke so we decided to stay.

Josh and Shauna wouldn't sing but they forced Ryan and me to. I ended up singing 3 songs including Flashdance (What a Feeling) because Josh never saw my original performance. While I was singing that, the three of them got up and started dancing. It was hard not to laugh while I was singing, especially when Josh decided to slide towards the stage on his knees. That was after I had already sung Sweet Dreams and was told by an older guy that I had a nice voice and that he was going to sit in the front row for my next performance, which he did. He had even asked Josh if he could tell me he thought I had a nice voice. Ryan and I sang a duet that I didn't know very well, but no one seemed to mind.

Later we gave up on singing and just focused on our dancing. Josh dragged me around the dance floor a few times while singing. He and I somehow ended up singing along with You're the Inspiration to eachother.

We left when the bar closed and then stayed up listening to music and eating tater tots until about 4:00am. It was so fun, but I was so exhausted Saturday that I kept falling asleep on the couch after 7:00. Funny thing is, that doesn't even cover half of what happened that night!

We also went to Sahara on Saturday, which was excellent. Sorry I missed your call Tacia! My phone died sometime Saturday night, but I don't think I would have been up for going out anyway. I was in bed by 9:00.

Well, that is about all the break I can take from my homework right now. I have been working on a presentation since I got home at 6:00, minus a couple phone calls from Josh and my mom. It looks like I will be getting a new car. Well, not new, just different. I am going to miss the purple car. I am really only attached to the color of it.

Sometimes I get sooo sick of the people at work. They are always makeing messes and they never clean them up. As the lowly undergrad it is left up to me to take care of the messes everyone else leaves. I change bench paper and wipe up spills and wash all their nasty smelling dishes. When one of the carboys is leaking some solution all over the floor, no one tells me or makes an attempt to stop the leak or even put an absorbant pad under the leaking spigot. I get left with puddles on the floor.

We have a room that is just plain nasty. We pour gels used for looking at DNA. It has all sorts of nasty chemicals in it. There are a bunch of baths for soaking the gels in and I am in charge of changing them. One of them is NaOH (sodium hydroxide). It's a nasty and strong basic solution. Last Thursday I spent most of the day cleaning that room and the baths containing NaOH. I even wiped up the dried NaOH on the floor by the bath. That meant I was crouching for about 20 minutes with a sponge in my hand while wearing a hot lab coat and latex gloves. Not the most comfortable position. I get to work on Monday and notice a trail of dried NaOH leading from the bath. I am a little upset. On Tuesday I notice a puddle in front of the bath. I try to be optimistic and tell myself it isn't more NaOH solution but rather water or something not so nasty. Today I go in there and notice the wet spot from yesterday has turned a nice shade of white, indicating NaOH solution was spilled and dried in that spot.

My boss knew I had cleaned it all up on Thursday and when she noticed the mess today, she was also upset. We know who made the mess and she is going to talk to the person. I then told her my plans to do some other stuff that is not really my responsibility to take care of, and she said she would help me. At least I know she appreciates what I am doing in the lab even if no one else seems to have a clue.

Now that I have taken two tests and read about Oedipus this week I should clean my room so I don't have to deal with the mess next week since I have another test as well as a presentation, paper and reading for Greek Civ and home work for biostats to worry about.

I didn't fall!

I went rollerblading (I know I should say "inline skating", but no one says that) for the first time in probably at least 10 years yesterday. When Josh asked if I would go with him I figured he just wanted to see me fall on my ass, very gracefully of course. He kept telling me I would be fine since we went ice skating a year ago (our first date) and I didn't injure myself. I didn't fall or run into anything!! My only problem is with stopping. Probably because I am afraid of not being able to stop in time when I get going kinda fast so I tend to freak out about it. At one point Josh had to grab my hand because he was afraid I was going to roll into the street. I have pretty good rollerblades so I tend to get going kind of fast without even trying.

We didn't go very far because we ran into some bigger hills we didn't feel like tackling and Josh had already gone for a 4.5 mile excursion Thursday. He skated from North Liberty to the mall on the bike trail. He called me a little before 5:00 and asked if I could pick him up at the mall on my way to the Gym Nest.

I think I am going to run to Target today to see if they have any cheap bike pumps and tires. I need a new front tire desperately. I would like to take my bike to a shop, but I don't want to pay for it. It needs to be looked at, but I am only going to resort to that if I have to. I did just cut myself while I was messing with my chain, but that's what I get for shifting incorrectly. I was trying to put it on the two big chainrings. Chains don't like to do that. Especially ones that are old, slightly rusty and in need of grease, like mine.

My rant...

Ok, here it goes. I am going to rant:

Bras are insanely expensive. Why do we have to invest so much money on something that we women pretty much have to have. If you want to get a decent one that fits and the underwire won't start poking you within a month, you have to pay at least $30. A bra that fits correctly is soooo hard to find. I found one that was decently priced at under $10 and fit me well, but within a few weeks, the little bit of padding in it had shifted and was looking lumpy. I tried to shove it back in to place without success. A few months ago I finally broke down and bought a good one. It cost me almost $40, but I almost think it was worth it. No weird shifting of padding or sliding around during the day and I can actually stand to wear it all day. the thing is, I wear it pretty much everyday. I would really love to get another one, but I can't afford it!
End rant.

In other news, strange stuff was happening to me the last couple of days. I was at work writing on little tubes for DNA. I was copying info from a packet of papers. Every time, except once, that I dumped out some tubes, I had exactly the same amount as was on the page. The one time I didn't have enough I had one extra. I told Shawn, the other lab assistant, about it and then I couldn't do it anymore. Then when I was doing my laundry tonight, I went to the door to see if my laundry was done and as I opened the door the dryer stopped. I have never been able to figure out how long the dryer takes because it takes so long that I tend to forget about it.

Apparently, I am not supposed to go to tae kwon do class any time soon. Last week I was sick (I was sent home from the Nest on Thursday because Josh thought I was going to pass out). The week before that I had a huge test, quiz and homwork, and now my neck is so sore I can't turn my head. I must have slept funny. My neck does this every few months and it always takes a few days if not a week to feel normal again.