“The Scholarship War and the Stowaway”

 

The “Scholarship War” has come to a slight hiatus at the moment.  I have finished fabricating an essay that’s probably not some of my best work, but it’s enough to make him shut up.  I can relax for the time being and focus on other things that have been racking my brain lately…

The UC applications are done.  The Cal States are on their way to their respective destinations.  And now with this essay in the can, all that’s left is a shot at USC and possibly Georgia Tech or Urbana-Champaign.  I want to apply to those schools, if only I could persuade the person who is paying for all these application fees to allow me to do that.

After busting through an IDP meeting at Susy’s house and finding out that we were going to market a book “page turner” for a project, it was off to the mall to see if there was anything left.  I needed some cheap comedy, a catfight between two shoppers, a boyfriend secretly buying cubic zirconia instead of diamond, or maybe somebody dislocating their shoulder from holding too many bags.

This was the stupidest IDP idea that anybody has ever come up with.  I was inclined to the other idea of a backpacked that moved by itself.  Who in their right mind would be interested in a page-turner?  Other than the bedridden, nobody else I can think of.  Arthritis patients would probably still be able to flip pages by themselves.  I thought I had a group of decently smart people.  Here we go for another round of IDP idiot-ism.  I promise I won’t choke anyone…I’ll just bring the hockey stick and rope to every meeting.

Today was supposedly the busiest shopping day of the year.  It didn’t seem like that.  It wasn’t horribly hot and overcrowded.  There was only the usual amount of mad moms with shopping bags and screaming kids.  The toy stores still had toys in them.  I can remember past years when Kay Bee looked like a tornado (make that two or three of them) ran through it.  I don’t know if it’s because of the events in the past few months, but nobody seems to be buying anything.  And who could avoid a Pokémon Edition, Monopoly set for five dollars?

I spent majority of the morning working on getting this laptop to proper order.  I will officially declare this journal entry as the first one ever typed on this machine…

After 10½ hours of low-level formatting (five times to be exact) and extensive read and write testing on Thanksgiving Day, I fixed the laptop that was guaranteed by the company I purchased it from eBay.  Bad sectors everywhere, caused by some sort of corruption in part of software.  I am glad it wasn’t physical, for that would have delayed its readiness much more than it already was.  I loved the free time that gave me, enough to bust through more applications and the fabrication of that NSA junk essay.

Thanksgiving isn’t celebrated much in my house.  My family doesn’t eat turkey (I absolutely abhor it).  We don’t have a dining room table (my computer desk), and we just use the time to kick back and escape the cooking that other people impose on themselves because they have too many immediate family members.  Thanksgiving dinner is also supposed to be a time for people to get together to catch up on good times.  I believe that even without the turkey, we can do that.

Holidays are excuses for those who have no time to do what they should be doing everyday, communicating with loved ones and reassuring others that they are still alive.  It’s all formality, because behind the turkey and the mashed potatoes are people.  The scenery just makes everything appear livelier.  Not having Thanksgiving dinner should not arise public scandal, for the food may come and go, but not the ties with your family.  There will always be the arguments, the tirades over wasting supposed free time, and regular household difficulties.  It’s the same with Thanksgiving dinner.  Who’s hiding the knife?  Why was this turkey put in the oven too long?  That’s my seat!