Ifa, the Yoruba form of divination

We had a babalawo (shaman) of Ifa come and speak to our Anthropology class. It was pretty damn sweet. I think I said those exact words when we left class. Their philosophy is very interesting. One thing in particular hit home with me. He drew a diagram like this:

spiritual

past............................future


secular

(I had to put the ...'s in the middle so the diagram would look right. Stupid Blogger took out my formatting.)
and he drew circles from the top to bottom and from right to left. So it creates a sphere. Their philosophy is that you need to try to stay balanced in the middle. I realized while he was talking about this that my problem is that I'm too much focused on the future and not on the present in the middle like I need to be. I'm so focused on the future that I'm not getting things done now. I think I'm ok balancing the spiritual and the secular. It's a very interesting culture Yoruba. Makes me want to go to Africa and hang out with these awesome people. That is all.

Good news/Bad news

I need to update this dealy bob more. Dealy bob? Seriously? *shakes head* It's ok. It's my native dialect and not wrong/incorrect just different. lol. My linguistics class has started to influence my speaking all the time now. It's a very interesting class though. Ok here it is...

Good news: I had 11 writers come to the first craft discussion of Writers Guild. So including myself that's 12 which makes 3 groups of 4 for workshops. Woot. They were all really neat people and I'm super excited about it. Next week we're talking about imagery. And I already have what I'm going to say all outlined out. I'm going to be an awesome professor.

Bad news: My doctor told me this morning that I have a viral infection and it takes 7-10 days to get over it. Boo. I was super sick all day yesterday. I HATE being sick. At least I don't have strep throat like I thought.

Good news: Only 18 more days until I'm 21. Double WOOT! But that leads me to...

Bad news: I found out recently I can't go to FenCon and have my first legal drink. :/ Sad day. I have sorority stuff that weekend. The kind that I can't get out of like I did to be able to go to ArmadilloCon. When's the next con after FenCon? I'll have to look it up.

That's all for now. This weekend I really need to get caught up on my journal for my English class. And I need to order my books for that class. Bleh. Damn bookstores don't buy as many as we need. Super lame.

WOOT! Finals are over.

So I just got back from my McDonald's comfort run after my last final for the first summer session. It's about RIDICULOUS that the next summer session starts tomorrow. What I'll do to be able to leave this place sooner astounds me.
Now I'm able to return to the rpg that misses me and write more (starting tomorrow morning at 7am!) as well as sleep. This weekend I didn't sleep much. But I'm about to go get my comments on the Merlin story. Edit it up and then send it off to apply for ArmadilloCon's writing workshop. Hopefully I will be able to continue cultivating my contacts with writers there for when I (hopefully) move to Austin in a year. Woot! Wouldn't that be sooooo much better than College Station? Yes I think so, too.

Also now I'm able to read again!!! Not stupid history books but all those books I couldn't read yet that I bought the other day. Right now I'm working on Mercedes Lackey's Ill Met By Moonlight. She's one of my standby good authors. I love all her stuff. But there's a lot of other stuff on my shelves too. Oh and last week I finally bit the bullet and talked to my adviser about wanting to go to graduate school. It didn't go as badly as I was afraid it would. Looks like me thinking about taking a year off might be a possibility. I think I want to do my masters at UT, that's what it's looking like now.... So if I don't get in, I doubt I can get in anywhere I want to do my PhD at, I think I'll just move to Austin, get a regular job and write full time for a year. I need to work on my second foreign language anyway and I think ACC offers Italian which is what I want to take. Or German.... Still haven't decided which to tackle next. Any opinions? lol. I love when I write these things like people read them. One day!!!! I'm a secret optimist trapped in a cynic's body. No denying it.