Puppy Time

This past Christmas break, my family got a new puppy.  His name is Mason, and he is a yellow lab. He is currently 6-months-old.  I am slightly obsessed with him and I think he is the funniest little guy I have ever seen.  And it doesn't hurt that he's a real cutie. Here's a picture of him on the day that we got him!

Mason, being a puppy, gets into everything.  Sometimes it definitely isn't funny, but sometimes it is loveably adorable.  He tears up the backyard, which isn't funny, but he gets himself into little situations that make everybody around him laugh.  For example, a few weeks ago Mason got himself all tangled up in our pool vacuum. 

Mason is basically just a little weirdo.  He's just a huge bundle of energy.  One thing that he does is he drags his bed around the house.  He'll get running around as fast as he can (while dragging a dog bed behind him) until he gets his bed stuck on something, at which time he goes sliding across the wood floors.  I always find that hilarious. He also will sometimes sleep underneath his bed instead of in it... 

When Mason gets really hyper, he starts running around in circles around the house.  He starts going so fast that he goes slipping and sliding all over the floor.  We actually have to put him in his crate for like 20 minutes, let him take a nap, and then he's super chill.  I am so entertained by him.  He just leaps around and does strange things that make me laugh.  I love hanging out with him, cause he's SO CUTE. 

I'm going to leave you with one last picture of my little puppy sleeping like a weirdo:

P.S. These pictures aren't his size currently, most of them are from when we first got him, when he was tiny. 

The Forgotten Blogs

I just realized I forgot to blog about my last few meetings with my conversation partner! Don’t worry; you are about to read an onslaught of blog posts. Sorry guys.

I met with Mohanad at the TCU Bookstore a couple of weeks ago, as usual.   We grabbed some coffee and settled in to have another conversation.  We started by catching up, because it had been a couple weeks since we have last spoken.  I asked him about his classes, and he has been really enjoying them.  He loves being able to make his English better and work on it here at TCU.  He is so grateful for this opportunity and I just kind of want to kick myself for taking it for granted.  Each time I speak with Mohanad, I am reminded of the fact that we are from such different parts of the world.  Our backgrounds are so different, and sometimes we don’t always see eye to eye.  Not in a bad way per se, but he just sometimes doesn’t understand or agree with some of the things that I say when he asks me questions.

During this conversation, he noticed that I look around a lot.  In my defense, I wasn’t really being rude, there was just a little lull in the conversation occasionally and I would look around.  I tend to do that often, but I’m usually with people who do this as well.  For example, we will be eating in the BLUU, and it is entertaining to basically watch what is going on around us.  So anyways, he finally followed my gaze and asked what I was looking at.  I laughed and apologized, and then explained that I wasn’t looking at anything specifically, that I was just “people watching.”  This concept really threw him off.  He was totally befuddled by the idea of just looking at people for entertainment.  I did my best to explain it to him, but it’s not really something that you can explain, to be honest.  It is a really weird concept if you think about it, so I understand why he was confused.

We also talked about food.  Great topic, right?  Any of us could talk about food for as long as necessary.  We all eat it and LOVE it.  Anyways.  I had asked Mohanad what he was going to do later, and he said he was going to eat dinner at the BLUU.  I groaned, and he told me how much he enjoys the BLUU.  I don’t necessarily enjoy eating at the BLUU in any way.  I just see it as food that I don’t have to cook.  He sees it as endless options of things to eat.  Typical boy.  But I guess he’s right.  There are so many options that I forget about since I usually eat the same thing every time.

This was a really great conversation with Mohanad as I remember it.  I’ll continue to blog about all of our meetings that I forgot to blog about.  I am really thankful for my good memory of our conversations! 

Witty Wisdom with Mark

I enjoyed reading through these quotations from Mark Twain.  My six favorite quotations are:

1. "Wrinkles should merely indicate where smiles have been." -Following the Equator, 1897, vol. 2, ch. 16 (p. 9)

2. "The best way to cheer up yourself up is to try to cheer somebody else up." -Notebook, 1896 (p. 36)

3. "Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear." - Pudd'nhead Wilson, 1894, ch. 12 (p. 49)

4. "There are those who scoff at the school-boy, calling him frivolous and shallow.  Yet it was the school-boy who said, 'Faith is believing what you know ain't so.'" - Following the Equator, 1897, vol. 1, ch. 12 (p. 74)

5. "A good and wholesome thing is a little harmless fun in this world; it tones a body up and keeps him human and prevents him from souring." -Joan of Arc, 1896, bk. 2, ch. 21 (p. 83)

6. "Grief can take care of itself; but to get the full value of a joy you must have somebody to divide it with." - Following the Equator, 1897, vol. 2, ch. 12 (p. 129)


I think that all of these quotes are equally my favorite, but I really identify with the last quote.  I love the differentiation between grief and joy that people don't generally think about.  You can deal with grief all on your own, even though it is helpful sometimes to have family and friends around you.  I would never have thought about the idea that you don't fully experience joy unless you have somebody to share it with.  People always think about sharing their grief, but it's not always the first thought that you have to share your joy.  But if you think about it, when something amazing happens, there is always that one person that you want to share it with.  Joy is an amazing thing that sometimes we take for granted, even though we always look forward to experiencing it.

I actually really enjoyed reading through Mark Twain's quotes.  He really has some great insights.  Some were humorous, and some were just great to read.  I didn't realize how many great things he had to say!

Tales of Juha Part 3

In today’s reading of Tales of Juha, I continued to enjoy myself.  This isn’t a difficult reading, and that made it more enjoyable.  Something that added to the humor for me was the names of the chapters.  These gave a little foreshadowing to the type of humor in each chapter.  For example, Chapter 7, “A Witty Rogue,” was probably my favorite of this reading.  The very first story in this chapter was my favorite.  Found on page 107, this story tells of a drunkard judge in Juha’s city.  One night, Juha stole the judge’s cloak.  The judge, after sobering up, sent his clerk who found out that Juha had stolen it and brought him in front of the judge.  Juha then told the judge that he had witnesses to prove the identity of the drunkard that he had stolen the cloak from.  The judge then told Juha that he no longer cared about the identity of the cloak's owner and sent him on his way.  I thought the wit in this anecdote was great.  I love to see people outsmarted.  

The last chapter, "Critic of Despotism," was not as funny to me.  I didn't understand these anecdotes as well as the others.  Because I didn't understand them, I finished each story feeling more confused than with any of the others.  For example, on page 139 there as an anecdote about Tamerlane and Juha.  Tamerlane was asking Juha what his title would have been, and Juha said "It is to God that we Turn."  I am sure that there is some kind of underlying meaning to this, but I really had no idea what it was. 

Chapter 9, "Justice and Generosity," was a chapter that I enjoyed greatly!  I love to see a story end in justice, so these were right up my alley.  My favorite anecdote in this chapter is found on page 131.  A judge wanted to share 9 geese with 10 police officers, and consulted Juha about his predicament.  Juha put the geese in a row and told the officers to grab a goose. At the end, one officer was empty-handed and asked Juha for his share.  Juha simply told him that he told them to grab a goose, and he should have grabbed one quicker!  I thought this was funny because even though it's not exactly fair justice per se, but it's simply saying that the 10th police officer should have been quicker. 

I am a little bit sad that we are done reading this book. I have really enjoyed it!

Giggles with Juha

Reading the second section of "The Tales of Juha," has been quite enjoyable.  This book is by far my favorite that we have read this semester.  I think that I just think this type of humor is hilarious.  I love making fun of myself.  The first chapter that we read, “Social Satire,” had some funny little anecdotes.  My favorite from this chapter was on pages 49-50.  This one was about Juha sending his son to buy him some grapes, and when Juha sends his son to do one thing, he ought to do two things.  So when Juha fell ill, his son brought him not only a doctor, a gravedigger as well.  I thought this was absolutely hilarious.  It was a sort of “stick it to the man” type gesture from the son, and it made me actually laugh out loud.  Essentially, the son was saying “so there” to his father for making him look bad.  I really enjoyed this entire section.

My favorite chapter that I have read is definitely chapter 4, “Naïvete and Stupitiy.”  This is hands down the section of the book that made me chuckle the most.  This may sound horrible, but I think stupidity is hilarious.  It drives me nuts, but I can’t help but giggle when somebody says something that doesn’t make sense or hints at stupidity.  A great example is the very first story in the chapter.  Juha buys a donkey, a thief steals the donkey and puts the rope around his friends neck, who then tells Juha that his mother turned him into a donkey and he just became a human again.  Juha believes him, and lets the man go.  When Juha returns to buy another donkey, he finds the same donkey again and thinks that the thief’s mother turned him back into a donkey and gets frustrated.  When I was reading this story, I was legitimately shaking my head at the thought of someone actually believing this.  This story is simply making fun of Juha’s intelligence as well as the fact that he is extremely naïve.  I noticed that a lot of the stories making fun of Juha’s intelligence had to do with thievery.  Another common theme throughout the book so far has been related to Juha’s wives.  Another story that I found amusing in this chapter was located on pages 74-75.  This story was about Juha’s wife convincing him that her giving birth after three months of marriage made sense.  I did an actual face palm (the act of hitting one’s forehead with the palm of one’s hand) while reading this.  Juha is incredibly naïve, and I just wanted to shake him and knock some sense into him. 

I am really enjoying reading this book.  I have laughed so much, and I am excited to finish the book up and potentially giggle some more!

Sorry for Eavesdropping

Over this weekend, I eavesdropped on a few different conversations, so instead of just choosing one, I decided to describe a few different ones.  I went home to Corpus Christi this weekend for the Easter holiday, and because my brother was having his Court of Honor because he became an Eagle Scout, which was really great.  But, my entire family was around all weekend, which led to some great conversations to eavesdrop on.

First of all, let me just say that my family is a bunch of weirdos, and I love it.  They say and do a lot of lame things but we always think it’s hilarious.  This made it really easy to eavesdrop on conversation, because we laugh A LOT.  There are a lot of different personalities, and it makes for a great time.

The first conversation that I eavesdropped on was between my Uncle Tommy and my mom.  As I already mentioned, my brother was becoming an Eagle Scout, so in preparation for that my mom requested letters from various people of importance around the country.  One document that we received was from the Texas Senate. They had made a resolution in honor of my brother.  My mom was showing this document to my uncle, and he thinks that is pretty cool.  My mom then says: “Matthew doesn’t know about it yet, so don’t mention it to him.” Tommy then says, “OH! You should have mentioned that before I texted Matthew about it!” My mom’s smile drops as she says “Oh no…”  My uncle then cracked up laughing.  My uncle enjoys to joke around with people, and that’s what he finds funny.  I never really noticed that in casual conversation with him, but eavesdropping on multiple of his conversations I realized that was what made him laugh.

Another conversation that I eavesdropped on was between my mom, her sister, and her brother (so my aunt and uncle).  They were in the living room, and I was in the kitchen, and I heard them start telling stories about all of the mischief that they got into when they were kids.  These conversations always make them laugh, because I have been involved with many of them throughout the years, but this gave me a new insight into these conversations.  Every story made them laugh, but what really made then crack up was when one of them told a story that the others didn’t remember or know anything about.  For example, my uncle told them that when he was 5, he got caught shoplifting at a 7-11 store.  At first they were dumbfounded because they had never heard that story before, but then they asked him more about the situation.  When they asked him what he had stolen, he told them that he had stolen a giant sweet tart.  When he said that, my mom and aunt cracked up laughing, and laughed for a long time.  This reminiscing on the past paired with the unexpected aspect is what made them laugh in this situation.

In the case of my dad, I overheard a conversation between him and my other uncle.  They were sitting in the living room watching a golf tournament.  Both men are avid golf fans and love to play to game.  They were discussing golf, and got onto the topic of golf handicaps.  Let me just intercede and say that I have absolutely no idea what a golf handicap is, so this conversation really made no sense to me.  Anyways, my dad was making fun of his own terrible handicap, which made both of them laugh.  This was self-deprecating and that is what makes my dad laugh, and made my uncle laugh at him. 

This last conversation was not at home, but in my apartment and happened last night.  I was sitting in my room, working on some homework, and all of a sudden I hear my roommate scream and run out of her room.  I then hear her boyfriend start laughing uproariously at her.  I start to listen, and I figure out that a bug flew by my roommate’s face, which freaked her out, and her boyfriend found that hilarious.

I found it extremely interesting to learn about what makes people laugh when they don’t realize that anyone else is listening.  I felt really weird listening in to other people’s conversations, but it was a great insight to humor.