Early Memories, Groundhog Day, & James Joyce

All of my earliest childhood memories are pretty silly. For example, one time when I was roughly 4 years old, I stuck a Polly Pocket swan up my nose (it was smaller than the size of your pinkie nail) and my parents nearly had a heart attach because it was so far up there it would be come out. I remember getting in big trouble for that little mistake. I also recall going to Toys 'R' Us with my father around the same age. We were walking up and down the aisles, looking at all the dolls and toys cars when I wandered off by myself. I came around the corner to type tap my dad on the back and when he turned around... I realized it was not my father. GASP! Horrified, my four-year-old self ran off crying to my actual dad who was only a few feet behind me. These memories aren't very interesting to most people, but they have definitely been burned into my brain.

On another note...

Here is my half-assed documentation of February 2nd, 2010:

6:00am: Alarm goes off. I don't have class 'til noon so I sleep another 4.5 hours.
10:00am: Roll out of bed. Shower, brush teeth, hair, make-up, etc. The usual.
11:15am: Eat a granola bar. Try not to fall back asleep. Check Facebook.
11:45am: Print worksheet and head to my first class -- and it's a two-hour lab. Hooray?
12:00-2:00pm: Anatomy & Physiology Lab. It was fairly dull. We set up a concentration lab using pieces of potato and sugar water (and calculated molarity).
2:00pm-2:45pm: Ate cereal (corn pops?) and finished Human Nutrition Quiz.
2:45-3:35pm: Walked to SUB, got a coffee, chit-chatted with my boyfriend, and walked to my last class of the day -- Human Nutrition.
3:35-4:45pm: Turned in quiz, discussed the next project with the professor, fairly briefly did a review of vitamins, etc.
4:45-6:30pm: This is when I started packing up all of the belongings in my room and moved them into another room across the hall with a new roommate. The process took my forever, and as I am typing these words, I still have more items to move.
6:30-7:00pm: Ate dinner.
7:00-8:00pm: American Idol was on. Normally, I don't watch this show, but there was a rumor that a guy I went to high school with was going to be on this episode (and he was! or at least he was on the commercial) so I decided to tune in.
8:00pm-10:00pm: Continued to move my stuff, did a bit of cleaning, exchanged keys, made my med, put clothes away, set up desk, etc.
10:00pm-1:00am: Finally started to settle down. I did some reading for Literature, finished my assignment for Organic Chemistry, and did a little bit more reading for Anatomy. Then went to bed and slept like a baby.

In the back of my mind, I was hoping today would be a wondrous, beautiful day which I would want to relive over and over and over. But in actuality, I knew it was just going to be another Tuesday. And if I knew I would have to relive this day for the rest of my life (or even thirty-days) it would be a huge disappointment and a waste of a perfectly good life. I did a little investigating and dug up some background information on Ulysses by James Joyce -- Apparently, the book is a stream of consciousness that takes the reader on a detailed journey into the lives of its characters. And isn't that what the class is essentially doing in our blogs this week? Documenting all the details of a seemingly boring day that resembles just any other Tuesday? Even though there may be many similarities in everyone's blogs, I think it's fascinating there are so many different human experiences and emotions crammed into one. For some of us, February 2nd, 2010 could have been a day of triumph and victory (getting an A+ on your most recent exam, finally asking out the cute guy or girl you've had your eye on), whereas for others it could have been a day of defeat (getting a flat tire on the way to class, etc.). The way Joyce eloquently describes the over-lapping of these everyday human experiences and emotions is one of the reasons (in my opinion) that it became a classic.