In the sun

On the top shelf of my minifridge, right next to my most recent acquisition of orange soda, is a single can of grape-flavored Tropicana Twister brand soda.

The story behind this can is a simple one: Tiger Inn used to sell cans of grape soda at the beginning of the year. That's where the can comes from. The reason it's the only one in my fridge is because I realized shortly after getting it that it was actually one of the last cans of grape soda that Tiger Inn would stock. Not being one to simply consume something that suddenly becomes almost unique in a torrent of immediacy, I decided that I wouldn't drink the grape soda just because I wanted to.

I decided that the grape soda would be for a special occasion, like a very cheap and nonalcoholic imitation of champagne. The grape soda would be celebratory.

But since the scarcity of the can is so high, this is quite possibly the most special can of grape soda I have ever owned. It doesn't deserve to be taken after something as mundane as getting a paycheck, or something as common as writing a paper. This takes something that could be deemed a cornerstone of my life.

Arguably, there was a case for drinking it when I turned 20. You only enter a new decade of your life, like, every five to seven years. But I don't really regard an age as a cornerstone. Certainly, it's a milestone, by which I can measure how far I've come up to this point, but as far as achievements go... It just doesn't seem like something to cheer about.

I would say that that's the only real mile/cornerstone that I've hit since I got the can. There's the purchase of this iPod, but that just means that I had $300 at some point recently. Material goods, unless they're monumental, shouldn't really count for much. If this had been an iPod that I won in a contest, or if it had been a purchase made because I won a good sum of money in a contest, then I'd drink the grape soda.

I guess that some people would argue that I am putting too much thought into what I would consider to be a cornerstone. I'm sure that others still would think that it's just a stupid can of grape soda and that I should get over it. It's my belief that these latter people do not have grape soda of their own, and are therefore rationalizing that it's probably a can of sour grape soda, anyway.

And to the former group, I would have to say that I am confident in my ability to discern a cornerstone in my life from the mundane and the routine.

So until I find that cornerstone, I know I'll have that grape soda waiting for me on the top shelf of my minifridge.

And now, iPod.

After a bit of unhealthy obsessing over the fact that this puppy was soon to be in my posession, it's finally here. And it is pretty darn cool. I'm typing this blog out on it, thanks to Safari and the built-in wireless module in it. So overall, this was worth the wait (ooh, it's correcting my spelling and predicting what I'll type next).

I think a lot of times, we want something too fervently, and it slips out of our possession without us even realizing that it's gone. I can attest to finding out that something has left me before I even realized that it was gone, and the realization that it's gone can sting. A lot. We can also wish that we had something so much that when we finally get it, the magic has all been spent in the anticipation. But the real thing about wanting stuff is that it's bound to happen. It doesn't take a psychologist to tell you that people want stuff. But when you try and downplay your desire for something... Well, that can be just as dangerous as wanting it too much.

Bottom line is that you can spend all of your energy on your will to have something, without even realizing that you're slowly killing the excitement for when it finally does arrive. But I think it's better to at least acknowledge the fact that you want something.

If you're honest about wanting something, them you can safely say that you over-hyped what you were waiting for, but if you downplay the value of something in your own mind, you might just miss something spectacular when it does come along

Today pretty much rocks.

Last night, I got an email from UNL on the subject of transferring and enrolling. Well, the email was mostly about the Math Placement Exam I need to take at the New Student Enrollment day I'll be attending, but it did catch my intrigue, being the first time I heard news of even needing to attend a New Student Enrollment day. So I did some digging on the subject, and it turns out that in preparation for one of the four dates they have for new students to enroll (10/19/2007, 11/16/2007 12/14/2007, and 1/10/2008), I need to pay them $150 and $10 for each guest on this enrollment day, decide on 6 or 7 courses I would like to register for, fill out a health profile that describes my immunizations and such, and take the aforementioned Math Placement Exam. This is funtime, because it means that I'm very likely to need still more math credits once I get to UNL, and I have no clue what classes I'll need to take, nor do I have any idea what my immunization record is like. The upshot of this is that I'm going to be missing class on the 19th.

In other news, I sent a second email to Fred #6, who sent the previous reply to me, calling me a little girl. That message, and the correspondence henceforth, can be seen here. It feels as though that might be the last I hear from Fred #6 regarding my question about the Minneapolis bridge, but it was a good test of my argumentative skills, and of my patience with difficult people. Yeay.

More glorious than that, though, is the news that my iPod Touch, originally thought to be shipping from a warehouse on Friday and arriving here next Tuesday, has in fact shipped this Tuesday and is set to arrive here this Friday.

I was so excited at the news of this, that I ran to the Perry so that I could tell somebody. I didn't run into anybody who knew how eagerly I was anticipating this baby's delivery, but rest assured the labor had me gasping for a good long time after the fact.

And so now we come to this afternoon, in which it would behoove me to both exercise and to read the news on my Wii. The exercise is important because I need to exercise, and the news-reading is really only for my photojournalism and American Government classes. I don't think anybody ever gets any real benefit from reading the news.