Sara sans "h"

As I sat in the mini-orientation for the graduate school program I begin in June, one theme repeated itself: You will never ever ever have time for anything other than school while in this program.
Now, I realize most graduate school programs feel that way, but that was just for the full-time, 24 month students. It is what seems to be a fairly standard class load: 9 credit hours in the summer and 15 in the fall and spring. When you do the calculations on a standard of "for every hour of class you should be studying three hours outside of class" it comes out to 36 hours. Easy-peasy.
What that doesn't include is a 15-hour per week on-site practicum that must be completed, which comes out to an additional 240 hours per semester. That brings the grand total "time commitment" up to 51 hours per week, all because of the on-site practicum.
Oh, and did I mention that I am actually doing all of this in 20 months as opposed to 24? Yeah, it's expedited. So during the second summer I get to do a 30-hour per week practicum on top of two classes.
Don't get me wrong, I'm actually really looking forward to the practicum more than anything else. A lot can be learned in the classroom, but being out doing is an entirely different kind of learning.
That doesn't mean I'm not going to die.

Turning 24 brings with it very few new perks, the best of which has to be the reduced car insurance rates. I still don't understand how in 26 hours I will be seen as a better driver based solely on my age. I struggled with the same issue understanding how being 20 and 364 days old made me less responsible in alcohol related decisions. I know plenty of people that are over 21 that still have no clue how to responsibly enjoy alcohol and about as many that are under 21 that have many clues. Go figure. I'll file it under "arbitrary things I will never understand."
Oh, and I made calla lilies out of gumpaste for my birthday cake this past weekend. They were super cute. I need to do my frosting homework, though. If I don't frost a cupcake onto a cake I'm sure my frosting instructor will have some very harsh words for me this Sunday when I come to class.

I have not written a post on this blog in 8 months. I keep meaning to update, even sit down and start to write about something or jot down ideas as I come up with them occasionally during the work day or while in the middle of something but never see those scraps of ideas come to full-fledged blog fruition. Sometimes I'll even be lying in bed and think, "I really wish I had written a blog about that major life event, but it seems like too late now."
Since disappearing from the internet in such an abrupt way (I think I have logged on to twitter twice in the last 9 months), a lot has changed in my life. There are the obvious huge life happenings (like getting engaged) and smaller, less obvious ones (like learning how to make a rose out of gumpaste for cake decorations).
Oh, and I wrote a novel in there. NaNoWriMo was so much fun last year that I am already planning my novel for this year. (hint: There is a girl literally going crazy from planning a wedding. Planning our wedding has actually been super easy, so I'm going to have to make a lot of stuff up, but I feel like it will be a fun thing to write.)
Also, Texas changed their law regarding selling baked goods from a home kitchen, so now I am pursuing taking my passion for baking and making a little bit of money out of it with a side business. I have the baking part down pretty well, but the decorating is where I am a bit lacking (hence the gumpaste rose). I did so badly in art in middle school and have never really been all that good at visual arts that I am kind of scared. I mean, at Knox I thought the art requirement was going to be my downfall until I found out I could take poetry instead of an actual studio art class. This should be an adventure.

Dear Michelle Bachman,
I realize we don't talk much, what with you being kind of a crazy tea-partier and me being a bleeding heart liberal, but I just thought I'd write you a little letter about one of your recent attacks on Rick Perry.
Don't get me wrong: I am all for any attack (of a political nature, not a physical or violent nature) on Rick Perry, especially if it helps to derail his bid for president. But the thing that gets me is how you have decided to go about attacking his recent "every girl must get vaccinated against HPV" law a little over a week ago.
See, you decided to go with the age-old and dis-proven "vaccines will cause mental retardation in your children" argument. First off, it's been proven that they don't. Second off, the guy who did the study that found that back in the 80's has confessed to tampering with the data and participants chosen because he wanted to find that result whether or not it was a scientifically sound study. He was even bought off by supporters of the anti-vaccine movement at the time to publish such false results.
Also, the vaccine is given after age 9. If that lady told you her daughter developed mental retardation after getting that vaccine at age 9 that is rather remarkable. I bet lots of doctors would like to study her daughter: mental retardation developing that late in a child's life is rather remarkable, if in a very sad way.
If you want to attack Perry's law, go for it in a way that makes you look like an intelligent human being rather than someone that read one headline 30 years ago and hasn't bothered to check the validity of the statement and just keeps repeating it. Here are a few options:
1. How about you say it is ridiculous that he requires the HPV vaccine only for girls? Boys are actually more likely to carry HPV without showing symptoms, so they are more likely to pass it on to their sexual partners. The vaccine is also thought to be more effective in males.
2. How is he expecting people to pay for the vaccine? It costs roughly $128 per shot without health insurance and requires three shots within 3-6 months of each other. That can be pretty costly. And since Texas has more uninsured or under-insured residents than any other state, that mandatory vaccine is going to be pretty costly.
3. As far as women's health is concerned, you could have mentioned how he took approximately 2/3 of the budget away of every women's clinic that offered any kind of contraceptive or made referrals for abortions. None of that money was used for contraception or abortions (none of the clinics performed them). The money taken away was used for things like pap smears and breast cancer screenings. All of that money was re-allocated to "crisis pregnancy centers" that only offer care for pregnant women that are willing to keep their baby or put it up for adoption. Those centers to nothing in the form of cancer screenings or health exams at all. If he is really worried about women's health enough to make girls get those vaccines one would think he would be behind them getting screened as a cancer preventative measure as well.
4. You could have even gone with the "if girls think they can have sex without worrying about the consequences of STDs they will start having sex at age 9" argument and would have sounded like a more intelligent person. (Note: that is a ridiculous statement and is not to be taken seriously in any way. Also, girls already can have sex without having to worry (as much) about STDs: they are called condoms.)
Okay, I know you are busy, what with trying to ruin the free world and all. So I'll just leave you with this: I would be okay if you win the Republican primary, because I know that Barrack Obama will eat you alive when it comes time for the real election.
Most sincerely,
Sara Belger

New blogger. I like it. It feels nice and fresh.

So I have started this new job at an organization I am not going to state the name of here in case it gets searched, and it is kind of a "We're going to give you a job and pay you a bit and want you to do these few things and maybe come up with new things but we aren't really sure about what we want and have a lot of bureaucracy to go through and have gotten really stagnant and don't really do anything anymore but some of us think we might like to so can you figure it out while we work on the figuring out of the structure of the organization until January" -thing. It has been...interesting. I have tons of great ideas of programs and events I could do but would have to take place well after January and whether or not I will be here is still up in the air. There is also the question of money when it comes to trying to figure out how to fund these new programs I want to create. I've mostly just been researching grant opportunities and outlining fundraiser and member event ideas, but it is all so...squishy (that was the best I could come up with for an antonym to concrete without saying non-concrete).

Otherwise, life is pretty good. We still don't have internet in our apartment, hence the lack of posts and my general presence on the internet overall. But that should change in the coming weeks.

We have also been fighting with our older apartment that has issues (as most older apartments do) and a language barrier with the landlady. It's kind of fun, not knowing if she understands what you mean and not understanding 100% what she means.

I really need to learn Spanish.

Funny boyfriend act of the week: I really wanted chocolate last night but was already in my comfy clothes. So Andrew said to think of what I wanted and he would run to the gas station to get it. I couldn't really decide (it's chocolate, how can you go wrong?) so he decided for me. He came back with 15 candy bars, spent a total of $22 on nothing but chocolate in various forms. What a goofball. <3

Big things have been going down for this girl. I have moved into an apartment with the boyfriend, gotten a job doing something I find interesting and also entirely too much to take on, and I am looking at cars.

Also, I saved over $40 in one grocery trip with coupons and comparison shopping. It was an exciting day.

I love to read. I like to read lots of different books, most of which are fiction. I think I generally like fiction better because at the end I know that no matter what happened in the book, it wasn't real. Those characters I connected to are not real people, no matter how real they may have seemed. When they die or have something horrible happen to them I am sad because one of my new friends just got hurt, but at the end of the day I can separate the fact from the fiction and be perfectly fine with the outcome.
That being said, I tend to stay away from non-fiction.This is mostly because I know that I can't just fake my way out of the sorrow and heartache I have for the characters in whatever non-fiction book I may be reading because they aren't characters at all. At the end of the book when a character dies or has some kind of horrible circumstance, it is real. Every person you meet in a non-fiction book is out there somewhere, living their life and suffering their pains (if they have them).
I don't know why, but I have been on a non-fiction kick lately (I define kick here as having read two non-fiction books in the last three months that weren't assigned by a professor). Perhaps this has something to do with the fact that I am growing up and opening myself up to the strife of the real world. I am okay with reading about real issues for pleasure (does it count as reading for pleasure if it makes you cry?) and accepting that they are real. I might not be able to save the world and solve the issues presented, but I can make myself a little more aware of them and help in what little ways I can.
The two books that have prompted this musing are Orange is the New Black by Piper Kerman and The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot. I highly recommend both of them (one of which I already mentioned in another blog in May) and think that many of you will enjoy them.
Orange is the New Black is about a woman who enters the federal prison system ten years after committing the crime of which she was convicted. The book chronicles the interesting make up of the group of women in the low-security prison she is sent to and brings up some very interesting issues with how the system is handled. The book reads like a letter from a good friend, and at the end of it I felt like I knew some of the women personally. The whole thing is made even better knowing that Kerman now works with non-profits to improve how they use media to get their messages out.
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is about cells taken from a woman in 1951 that have since been grown and regrown in the billions and used in extensive medical research. These cells were the first human cells to successfully live outside of the human body and have led to the polio vaccine, HPV research, and countless other valuable medical miracles. The main issue is that they were taken without the consent of Henrietta Lacks or her family. I am not a science person at all, but Skloot was able to write all of the technical science in a way that I had no problem understanding. I was able to get past the science and look at the issue of cell ownership, how research has been done in the past, and a very moving story about how Henrietta's family has dealt with finding out years later that a part of their mother was not only still alive but very important to medicine. Like Kerman, Skloot has taken the issue to heart and formed the Henrietta Lacks foundation, and proceeds from the book are donated to ensure that Lacks' grand children will have resources to go to college.
Moral of the story: don't be afraid of non-fiction. I don't think I am anymore.
Moral of the story 2.0: go buy both of these books. They are wonderful and you won't regret it.