Lately, the majority of my blog posts have been at really odd hours, as you may have noticed. Normally sometime between midnight and 4 am. I'm not sure what it is but I've found myself having a really weird schedule lately. I'm sure it has something to do with school and all the anxiety that goes along with it. As my last post clearly indicated, school can be a definite point of frustration for me at times. Not because it's difficult but rather just the opposite. Shane has made several observations on his weblog about the number of stupid people who populate the halls of California State University. As an undergrad, I attended the University of California and I don't seem to recall as many stupid people there. I have to clarify that there were, in fact, plenty of stupid people at UCSD. Like this one guy in a history class of mine that dealt largely with the Roman Empire. We had a discussion section for the class and one day we had to divide up into pairs and review each others papers. I had written this phenomenal essay on the role of the Romans in the spread of Christianity. As part of my introduction paragraph, I had listed several accomplishments of the Romans, such as roads, acqueducts, etc. After he finished reading my paper, his strongest criticism was, "I don't see what roads and acqueducts have to do with the Roman Empire." I was dumbfounded. Absolutely shocked. I mean, that was sixth grade knowledge there...not to mention that the professor had spent most of the previous week discussing such things.

I thanked him for his suggestions and then proceeded to ignore him completely.

At any rate, I'm not speaking disparagingly of Cal State. It has a lot of good qualities and strong programs. SDSU has one of the best nursing programs in the country. CSUN has the number one teaching credential program in the state. (And there's good things about Cal Poly, too.) I think for the most part, though, that college is what you make it. Sure, you can go to college and slide through like a complete idiot with a C average and never learn a thing. I know people who did that at UCSD. But if you're not going to learn anything from it, then what's the point? I understand in some cases (like mine) there are people who wouldn't be going to school if they didn't have to in order to pursue a certain career. For the most part, schools are no longer accepting teachers without credentials. Los Angeles Unified is even laying off teachers without a certificate. This is due in large part to the fact that the teacher shortage is disappearing and school districts can now afford to be more selective about the teachers they hire. I guess that could bode either ill or well for me, depending. I'm kicking myself for never having studied Spanish. Seriously...living in Southern California, why the hell did I study French for six years? Considering that my hometown is about fifty percent hispanic, one would have thought that maybe I would have taken Spanish. Oh well...there's not much I can do to fix that now other than start studying Spanish, which probably isn't going to happen.

Anyway, it's now about 1:00 in the morning on Sunday. Yet another odd-hour posting.

Saturday afternoon I drove over to the Starbucks at the corner of Hill and Walnut in Pasadena...I've found that that one actually is the most study-friendly one in the area. They have this area set up with a huge table and lamps where several people can sit at once and not disturb the others at the table. Anyway, while I was sitting there studying there were these two guys a couple tables over who apparently work in the adult film industry. I know this because they were loudly discussing their line of work, without shame, in almost graphic detail. They were discussing the problems that can occur while filming scenes and all the problems they have with certain "actresses." That's perfectly fine with me if they want to work in that industry and even that they want to discuss it but the fact that they were discussing it so loudly was what bothered me. One lady came in with her children and, after buying coffee for herself and some juice and cookies for her children, sat at a table close to them. Well, it didn't take long before she realized what the two men were discussing and quickly ushered her children out the door.

I left Starbucks at about 7:00 and stopped by Ryan Cox's house to see if he wanted to go get something to eat at our favorite haunt, Crown City Brewery. He had just eaten, but went along with me anyway. Our waitress was pretty cute but she reeked of smoke which totally killed all attraction that I might have had to her. To me, there is nothing more unattractive than a girl smoking...no offense intended to those friends of mine who do.

In other news, early Saturday morning I was roused from slumber, like millions of others across Southern California, by the shaking of my apartment building. Of course, there was that initial panic of wondering whether this was the big one or not but after a few seconds I rolled over and went back to sleep. I was roused again about a minute later by further shaking but this time I didn't really react.

When an earthquake strikes, I think it's always funny to see the reactions of people who are new to the area. Those of us who grew up here have little if any reaction as long as there is no danger of our buildings collapsing. I once read something about a 4.something earthquake hitting in the Mid-West. People ran screaming from buildings.

As far as natural disasters go, I think earthquakes are preferable to any others. With other types of disasters there's all this waiting and anxiety involved. In Texas, for example, they always run those tornado warning across the screen and you have to sit there and wonder if your house is going to be destroyed or not. In Florida, they have those hurricane warnings and you can spend as much as a week worrying about whether Hurricance Alistair or whatever ridiculous name they have given it is going to come bearing down on you.

With earthquakes, however, there is no warning, so there is no anxiety. It's not like we walk around constantly worried about an earthquake hitting because the fact is that they could hit at any second. Then, you have about ten to thirty seconds of shaking and then it's all over and you can start to clean up. There's no need to board up your windows or run to the storm cellar. They do tell you to "duck and cover" but that's more of an instant reaction than anything else. You don't walk around ready to spring under the nearest desk at any given moment.