If I had a superpower.........

Did you ever play the icebreaker where everyone says what superpower they would want? I've decided that the superpower I would want would be the ability to stop time. It would make life so much easier. My main reason for wanting to have it is to get more sleep at night, because I hate getting up to an alarm. I don't mind getting up early, I just hate having an annoying noise tell me it's time to get up. I'm working on training my internal alarm. Anyways, when the alarm went off and I wanted to sleep more I could just stop time, go back to bed, and it would be the same time when I woke up naturally. Amazing! I would never be tired again. I could stay up late and get up early, the best of both worlds.

Sometimes I just really like staying up late. It makes me happy when I can stay up late and just enjoy the late night. Sometimes I watch movies or DVDs of TV shows or read. Then I instantly regret staying up late when I have to get up in the morning. See, the power to stop time would come in really handy then. Other times I like going to bed early. There is something about getting in bed so early and just sleeping and not feeling super tired when your alarm goes off in the morning. I've even taken a liking to getting up earlier on Saturday mornings and enjoying the morning. Sometimes I like to read, or today I made pancakes, which were great! Although the smoke alarm went off.......

Our smoke alarm goes off when it doesn't need to. It didn't go off when I was making pancakes, but after I was done. What was the point? There was no fire, and no smoke, not to mention it had the unfortunate mistake of waking up my housemates.....oops. The pancakes were delicious though. Just like my dad makes them. Nice and thin. Yum!



The original point is the ability to stop time, which would be great in other instances too. Like needing more time before you have to go to work. Needing more time because you are late. Stopping time when you are enjoying a moment with friends and family. When you don't want a holiday to end, or the end of a year. It all would be great if I could stop time, but then again.....that begs the question....am I living in the now? What is the power of now? There is something to be said for living in the moment. Maybe it's worth staying up late when you are having fun, even if it means being tired. I don't really regret staying up late because I was enjoying the time that I was staying up late. There's always time for sleep later in life.

Nope! I don't want to have a superpower anymore. I want to appreciate the time I'm living in. There's a reason things only last so long. Now I feel like the movie “Click” because he could control time and then he didn't want to control it anymore because then he wasn't enjoying the small moments in life.

The book this time is: The Cronicles of Narnia (C. S. Lewis) They are all great, and they go through many different phases of time. :)

Calvin and Hobbes

When I was little, I would ask my dad to read me the comics. He would sit in the black recliner, I would sit on his lap and then he would read me the comics. It was our little Sunday tradition. One of my favorite Sunday comics was Calvin and Hobbes. I enjoyed that Calvin had an imaginary friend and they would go on adventures together. I never really understood why it was funny until I got older. Calvin and Hobbes is hilarious! Calvin does polls of his dad meaning that he polled himself and would talk about his dad going down in the polls. He played CalvinBall with Hobbes, which basically had no rules, but somehow Calvin always lost. He used a big box as a spaceship, a superhero change area, and as a sled. He tortured his neighbor Susie, but you know it was because he had a crush on her. I think some of my love of Calvin and Hobbes came from my sister. She asked for the books for Christmas and her birthday and then when she wasn't home I would sneak into her room to read them. It was part wanting to read Calvin and Hobbes and part wanting to be a part of her life. My sister Angela is one of the most fascinating people I know. I'm posting some Calvin and Hobbes comics. Take some time to read and enjoy an old classic.

P.S. A great present for me would be The Complete Calvin and Hobbes box set.







The book this time is: Any Calvin and Hobbes Book (Bill Watterson)

Pretty Pretty Princess

One of my favorite games when I was a kid was Pretty Pretty Princess. I think it had a lot to do with the crown. I always wanted to be a princess, but now I wonder why? Princesses are not free to make their own decisions, they don't really have a say in their lives. I have complete control over my life and I love it. Imagine if you had several people telling you what you were going to do, who you are going to marry, what job you are going to have......if you even have one, what clothes you are going to wear, and where to go on your social outings. I love my life because it's free. I can wear what I want, say what I want, and be who I want to be. I like that I'm weird and laugh really hard at things that aren't that funny. I love that I'm passionate about changing the world. I think we can do it. I actually think there may come a day when everyone, no matter what their gender, sexual orientation, class, race, and disability/ability is, we will all be given an equal chance to be successful in life. I know I think big! How can I not? It's the big thinkers that make changes and make things happen. MLK Jr. was a big dreamer, FDR was a "think outside the box kind of man", and I am someone who can change the world for the better!






The book this time is: Listen Up: Voices from the Next Feminist Generation (Barbara Findlen (editor))

Tina Fey as Sarah Palin.....soo funny!

Anti-Feminism Strikes Again!

Sometimes I wonder how far our country has really come. Like not at all because I was reading the Metro (the free newspaper at the T (subway) stations in Boston that you are supposed to be able to read the entire way through on your commute) and on the political page there was a section with Cindy McCain and Michelle Obama ranking them as Hot or Not. Are you kidding me? Is that why I should vote for a canidate because his wife is hot? It sickens me that this is in the news or even done at all. This is why Hilary had such a hard time with her campaign and they are doing it to Sarah Palin as well (they made a doll of her). I don't like Sarah Palin, but she still deserves to be treated with respect and dignity. What century are we living in? This then makes me wonder about the people who think that feminism in dead and we don't need it anymore. Oh we do! As long as this kind of thing is still happening we need feminism. We need people to stand up to the injustices in the world. What would Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Alice Paul, and Lucy Burns think of all this? I'm pretty sure they would hate it and fight against it. I will take you on society, I am not afraid. Look out world, here comes Nora!




The book this time is: The Fire this Time: Young Activists and the New Feminism (Vivien Labaton)

The Dreaded Life Update

My blog is not meant to be the blog that updates you on my life. It's meant to be the place that I write down my random thoughts on the world. I feel though that since I recently had a life-changing move to Boston I should update you on what I'm doing. I got to Boston about three weeks ago. I live in Jamaica Plain, which is called JP by the locals. It's a neighborhood of Boston. Our house is huge! There are 5 bedrooms and 3 floors. I'm living with 5 other girls. We are all volunteering for the year at different jobs. I'm working at Sojourner House in Roxbury (another neighborhood of Boston) as the Permanent Housing Coordinator. Sojourner House is a homeless family shelter, and they recently built affordable rental units and affordable home ownership condos. I get to work with the people living there. It's a lot of work and a little overwhelming, but it's going to be a great job. So far, I haven't really done much with the tenants because my boss is really busy, but we're having a tenants meeting on the 25th and I will get to meet all the tenants. So excited!

My housemates are Hilary (working at the Women's Lunch Place. A place where women can come during the day to eat and wash their clothes. Most of them are homeless), Caseye (working at St. Stephen's Episcopal Church after school program), Heather (working at Casserly House, which during the day has English classes for recent immigrants to the country, and has an after school program as well), Jen (working at North Cambridge Catholic High School, it's a Cristo Rey school so all the kids work at Corporations one day a week) and Kathleen (also working at Sojourner House, but she is working with the Children's program).

It's been a whirlwind since we got here. We had a tour of the city and visited all of our sites. We then started our jobs and have been living in community with each other. We make a point of eating dinner together and we have little money. To be in solidarity with the people that we are volunteering for. We get a personal stipend of $85 dollars a month, and then we each get $75 for food and money to pay rent and all our other bills.

This weekend there is a fundraiser for JVC at Boston College High School for the New England area. I'm excited to meet people that support us and want to see us succeed. Also 2 weeks ago, we went to a bar in JP to watch Obama's acceptance speech. I was interviewed by a newscaster because there were so many people there, and the video is posted on the Internet! So exciting! Mike Fitz, who is a former JV took us to the event and he was interviewed as well. I'm posting the video so you can see my lack of interview skills. Note to self: work on not being so fidgety. That's all I have for the update. Stayed tuned for more of my random thoughts.

http://www.necn.com/Boston/New-England/Obama-supporters-gather-to-watch-a-milestone-in-American/1219983116.html

The book this time is: The Other Boleyn Girl (Philippa Gregory)

Pro-Life Really?

Sarah Palin has suddenly become a person that a lot of discussion is centered around. It's because she was the most random person to be picked as the running mate of McCain. This woman is so interesting to me. I watched her speech and I can tell you that she is a great public speaker. She knows how to keep her audience interested and knows just the right time to put in plugs of her own personal life. She is a great person who obviously loves her family and loves being a mother. Here's the thing that I don't understand about Sarah Palin. She has declared herself multiple times to be pro-life, when she is no where near pro-life. She may oppose abortion, but that does not make her pro-life. She supports the death-penalty (not pro-life), she supports ruining that natural habitat of Alaska, which means a lot of wildlife would die (not pro-life), she supports gun rights, which I know that guns do not kill people, people kill people, but guns make it a whole lot easier for people to kill people (not pro-life), and she supports the war (not at all pro-life) even if your son is in the armed forces. Killing innocent people is not pro-life.

We have come to use pro-life as a term that only applies to abortion, but shouldn't someone who is so adamantly pro-life be pro-life in all aspects? The other thing that is so interesting to me is that her daughter is pregnant, and she still supports abstinence-only sex-education. Really? Come on! Your 17 year-old daughter is pregnant, and you are forcing her to get married to make it look better, when it really screams a public service announcement for comprehensive sex-ed programs. Let me also tell you; her daughter by deciding to keep the child had a choice. That's what pro-choice is, a choice. I hate abortion, but I also know based on research that the number of abortions actually go down when there is a pro-choice president in office. The Republicans seem to think that by outlawing abortion and anything that has to do with preventing pregnancy will someone make it all go away magically. Hello! Women did not start having abortions when they became legal, they were having them long before that. They were just dying from them because they had to get back alley abortions and the doctors wouldn't use clean instruments. So really, by outlawing abortions you are destroying two lives. The unborn baby's and the mother's. I think we all need to look at Sarah Palin, knock some sense into her and let her know that she is not pro-life, like she states, she is very very very anti-choice, which only gives me one choice this fall. I think you get the picture.....




OBAMA/BIDEN '08

I'm begging you all please to do some research on McCain/Palin. They are playing the nice card, but there is so much info about them out there....don't become a puppet in their show. Use your voice and make an informed decision. Even after you do research and think that McCain/Palin are the right people I will support that because you made an informed decision.

The book this time is:
Dude, Where's My Country? (Michael Moore)