Fish: Meat or Not?

“Do you want your meat in a separate bag?”

“That’s not meat; it’s fish.”

“Ok…do you want it in a separate bag?”

“Yes, of course.”

I’ve lost track of the number of times I’ve had this conversation, or a similar one, with customers.  Today it went even further.  The customer in question informed me that he did not eat meat, as I put his fish in a separate bag for him.  He then proceeded to ask me if I ate meat and when I said “yes” he asked me what kind.  I replied with “all kinds.”  I have nothing against vegetarians and vegans.  I have friends who are both.  But it drives me nuts when customers insist that fish is not meat.  My definition of meat is that it is the flesh of an animal.  Fish are animals.  Therefore their flesh is meat.  Dictionary.com agrees with my definition, stating that meat is “the flesh of animals as used for food.”

 

Although the fact that the customers are wrong about the definition of meat is not even what bothers me the most.  What I dislike the most about that conversation is the fact that it does not help me to know whether they want their fish in a separate bag.  All I want is a yes or a no.

 

What do you think?  Is fish meat?

I Think It Did Make the Grade

Last week my story was up for critique in my Advanced Fiction Workshop class.  I felt I had written it well and wasn’t at all worried about the critique or my grade.  When I first started taking Creative Writing class I got really nervous about the in class critiques, but I no longer get extremely nervous about them.  Half the people in my class this semester were in my class last semester and we’ve all gotten to know each other, so it’s nice.

Most people seemed to like my story and while they had some constructive criticism for me, the critique was going well.  However, one guy in my class (he’s in his 40s, I think), absolutely hated it!  He pretty much told me the characters were flat, there was no plot, and it was generally a bad short story.  I was completely stunned because while people do offer criticism, they do so nicely.  This guy was completely rude about it, to the point that my friends were getting really mad and arguing with him and defending my story.

His written critique was even worse, telling me that I need to “consider the type of work I am turning in to an advanced fiction workshop class” and “this just did not make the grade”.  He really had nothing nice to say at all.  When I critique stories, I always try to find at least one thing I can compliment the writer on, even if I do not like their story.  It’s just a polite and nice thing to do.  Plus, it really was out of line for him to tell me it “did not make the grade”.  It’s not his place to do that.  He’s not the professor.  He also gave me his copy of my story that he had read and it was written up and he had even written “awful” and “ugh” in the margins.  If you want to do that, fine, but don’t hand it to the person who wrote it.  He did the exact same thing to another girl’s story and gave her practically the same critique he gave me.

However, apparently my story did make the grade because I got an A- on it!

Then, yesterday, we were critiquing one of my friends stories (he was in my class last semester) and two of my other friends and I complimented him on his ability to describe the setting of his stories really well.  We brought up one of his stories from last semester and compared them because they both took place in the same town.  The guy who insulted my story the previous week was quite outraged that we were bringing up a previous story.  He told us it was completely inappropriate and horrible that we were doing that.  He said my friend’s previous stories were completely irrelevant to the class.

What?  Of course they’re relevant!  One aspect of writing is improving your writing and it’s good to compare one story to a previous one to see where people improve.  Plus, the two stories were somewhat connected by their shared setting.  Another friend was really mad that he had said that and started defending herself, saying that the comparison was relevant, and I agreed.  Even the teacher pointed out that we were free to compare the stories if we wished.  He quickly changed the subject, but otherwise we would have had an all out shouting match during class.

It just seems like something like this is going to happen every week now.  I just can’t wait to read his story.

Last Names

It’s the start of the new semester and I’m sitting in a class of forty or so people.  The professor passes out the syllabus and then picks up an attendance sheet.  In an attempt to learn our names, he or she decides to call out names instead of having us sign in for the first few weeks.  And so, the professor begins to call out names.  ‘Thomas, John, Sarah, Emily, Natalie, Sarah, Peter, Sarah…’

What’s missing?  Last names!  Why do professors take attendance using first names only?!  It’s one of my biggest pet peeves about professors.  In a class of forty or so students, there will undoubtedly be at least three Sarahs.  It was the third most popular name in 1988.  So, how am I supposed to know which Sarah a professor is talking about when they take attendance?  I don’t want to raise my hand for some other Sarah and give them my attendance point.  And if that other Sarah is actually in class and we both raise our hands, one of us is bound to look like an idiot.

After the first two or three days of class, I can figure out which Sarah I am, the second or third, but that first day is always the worst.  I can usually bet that if one of the first names a professor calls out is Sarah, it’s not me, since my last name is towards the end of the alphabet, but it’s still irritating.

It’s something that’s easily solved.  It’s not difficult to call out last names as well; they’re right there on the list.  Students are stressed enough, don’t add to it by making them wonder if they’ve claimed an attendance point for another student instead of themselves.  Use last names as well.

Although, on the other side of the spectrum, I had a professor use last names and no first names.  It didn’t help me much since my last name can also be a first name and when he called it out I thought he was using someone’s first name.  So, professors, using both names is useful.

I Don’t Think the French Language Has Changed…

The other day I sold back most of my books. I wound up selling most of them to a girl in one of my friend’s classes and she gave me $76 for them, which is not bad at all.  However, she was only going to give me $3 for my $200 French text book (the funny thing is she gave me $6 for the workbook that came with it, even though a bunch of pages were ripped out), so I decided to just sell that one back to the school.

The school was going to give me a grand total of $0 for a book that I spent $200 on!  Why?  Because the stupid thing went to new edition.  I really hate how text book companies have books go to new edition every other year.  It’s not like the French actually changes.  Schools and professors get part of the blame, too, because they insist that students get the newest edition, thereby making the old editions worth nothing.  My first college actually decided to stop using new editions of the calculus book they use so that students can keep selling back their old editions and then new students can always get used ones.  Unfortunately I’ve never had another class that’s done that.

So, I went to sell the book back to a local independently owned book store and they were also going to give me $0.  I am so mad about that.  A $200 book and I’m not going to be able to sell it.  I think I’m going to try selling it on Amazon because maybe somewhere out there there’s a professor who won’t insist on students getting a new edition.

The Good and the Bad, Mostly the Bad

After a few weeks of not having much to blog about, I all of a sudden have quite a few things to blog about.  I’m just going to put them in one entry to make my life easier.

I woke up today to the lovely sound of my phone making a crackling noise that sounded somewhat like my alarm clock tone.  I hit snooze to see if it would do it again and it did.  Then I messed around with the ring tones and now my phone seems incapable of making any sort of ringing noise, choosing only to vibrate when someone calls me.  This really wouldn’t be the end of the world if it chose to happen while I was home and not while I was at school.  I’m long since due to a free upgrade and just kept this phone due to its excellent battery life.  However, since I’m not home I can’t get a new phone right away.  The phone’s in my dad’s name and I can’t just go into the AT&T store and get a new one without him.  So, he’s going to email me a list of phones that I can get for free and I’ll choose one.

I’m also sick, which doesn’t help matters.  Just a cough/sore throat, no fever, so that’s a plus.

The one good thing that happened today is that I discovered that I do not have to take anymore French classes in order to graduate!  Turns out only incoming freshmen needed to take two semesters worth of foreign language, not transfer students, so I’m in the clear after taking that one class over the summer.

Then I had to get my story critiqued in fiction workshop today.  The actual critique wasn’t bad.  My class seemed to like my story and had constructive things to say about it.  But then I got my grade.  C+.  Mostly due to mechanics!  It’s a fiction class, not a mechanics class!  He liked my story, just not the mechanics.  I don’t think mechanics should lower your grade that much.  I’m so pissed off about it.  It’s going to kill my overall grade which will then kill my overall GPA.

I’m so ready for this week to be over.  I wish mid semester break was this weekend instead of next.  I need a break.

Ahhh, Spoilers!!!

The other day I was zoning out in my Literary Analysis class, idling doodling on my notes like I usually do.  There were fifteen minutes left in class and I was counting down.  It was the last day we were talking about Sent For You Yesterday, which is a very confusing and boring book.  The author neglected to use quotation marks throughout the entire novel.  I may be new to my English Minor, but I could’ve sworn quotation marks were a standard convention in the English language.

Anyway, the teacher had connected that book with one we will be reading in a few weeks, Anna Karenina.  I have actually been looking forward to reading that one since I’ve heard it’s good.  I looked up and started paying attention.  Then, he told us exactly what’s going to happen in Anna Karenina!  He spoiled the whole thing!  I was just staring at him, trying to comprehend what he had just done.  I immediately grabbed my iPod and hid it under my desk while I texted my friend who was sitting next to me (gotta love the new way of passing notes).  I could not believe he’d actually done that.

I hate spoilers.  I am completely anti-spoiler.  I flat out refuse to spoil any book to anyone, no matter how much they want me to.  I am so incredibly mad that my teacher spoiled Anna Karenina.  Seriously, what kind of teacher does that?

At Least It Wasn’t at 3 AM

I woke up today to the lovely sound of the fire alarm going off.  Last semester I configured my schedule so that the earliest I would ever have to be in class is 11:30 am.  What is the point of that if they’re going to do fire drills at 10?

When the alarm went off I was half-asleep and thought that the alarm had gone off from the steam in the shower (yes, this does happen, the RAs warned us about it, happens at my house, too).  So I spent a good few minutes standing on my bed trying to figure out how to turn the damn thing off, only to realize that there was no button on it.

So, next I got my computer and went out into the living room to try and find out how to turn it off by looking online.  Then I realized that the sound was even louder in the living room than in my bedroom and looked out the open windows.  There was a whole crowd of people standing around.

Oops.  Everyone’s alarm had gone off.  Then it clicked.  Fire drill!  All my roommates were in class, so I grabbed my keys and left the building.  The alarm stopped two minutes later.

Better than last year’s fire drill, but still not fun.

Semi-Annual Textbook Rant

You all knew it was coming.  You know school is coming when I rant about textbook prices.  But you know what?  I nearly had to not have a rant this year.

I am only taking three classes that require me to purchase textbooks.  My other credits consist of my senior thesis and working in a research lab.  Two of those three classes are English classes.  I have discovered a great way to save money in college.  Take a lot of English classes.  Paperback novels are significantly cheapter than hardcover math and science textbooks.  The five novels I need for one of the classes don’t even add up to the cost of one math or science book.

I found all of my books really cheap on Barnes & Noble’s website, but shipping was $30.  They were all coming from different places.  Then I decided to just get my one psychology book from B&N and get all the novels from the school’s bookstore since there wasn’t a huge price difference and the school’s store had no shipping cost.

However, my school cannot guarantee you used books.  You have to give them your credit card number and they give you a total of what it would cost if all the books were new.  But you won’t know for sure what your total will actually be until you pick them up.

Cue the rant.  It would be fine if I wound up getting used books, but what if I don’t?  Then I’m stuck buying all these new books.  Why can’t the school tell you whether you’ll get used or not?  Shouldn’t they know how many used copies of each book they have?  I am not ordering any books from them.

I’m going to get my psychology book from Barnes & Noble and all the English books from Powell’s.  I have not totaled it out, but it will probably be around $130 or so.  Might I add that this is less than the French book I had to purchase over the summer, which was $200.  I’d say I did pretty good this semester.

They Vant to Suck Your Blood

I was recruited to run games at my church’s vacation Bible school last night.  That in itself was an interesting experience.  Some of the kids had endless amounts of energy.

After it was over, one of the little girls from my mom’s group wasn’t picked up yet.  Her mom was late.  We were sitting outside waiting for her to be picked up and the mosquitos descended.  They were everywhere.  I had to put my hair in front of my face to keep them out of my eyes.

This morning I counted no less than twelve mosquito bites on my body.  And they’re all itchy.  I even got a few through my clothes.

The New iPhoto

Well, it’s not really new since it’s been around since Leopard came out, but it’s new to me.  I hate iPhoto on Leopard.  Yes, it has some cool features like face recognition and stuff, but it’s not cool enough to make me like it.  I was not expecting it to be that different from Tiger’s iPhoto.  So I ‘upgraded’ my iPhoto library when I got my MacBook so the pictures would be compatible with the new iPhoto.

Big mistake.  Huge mistake.  Wish I hadn’t done it.  The photos are no longer in nice little folders that I can organize with a file manager.  Nope, the only thing I can do with the photos is open them on iPhoto or Preview.  I can’t even get them on the Gimp.  I was going to make a new blog banner yesterday and then realized that I can’t open my photos in the Gimp.  Well, I can open them but they are really small.  Less than 200×200 pixels.  They’re no longer full size.  I am not impressed.

I have no idea if I can put Tiger’s iPhoto on Leopard, but I don’t think I’m even going to bother.  The only thing I used iPhoto for was to transfer pictures and videos from my camera to my computer.  I use the Gimp for retouching, resizing, and anything like that.

Since I ‘upgraded’ all my pictures, I now have to get them from my iBook again and put them on my MacBook again without ‘upgrading’ them.  That’ll be kind of a pain since it takes forever to put pictures on a flash drive with my iBook.  I’m just glad I decided to let my sisters use it instead of selling it.  Otherwise two and a half years of my pictures would be lost.

My brother of course finds this whole thing rather funny since he doesn’t really like Macs.  He keeps telling me how this wouldn’t have happened on Linux.  Maybe it wouldn’t have, but at least my headphone jack works on my computer.  He’s had his laptop for six months and his headphone jack still doesn’t work with his Linux.