Not sure what to title this

The issue isn't that I am lazy, rather it's a similar four-letter word that starts with b, ends with the same letter y, and for all you language geeks, shares the same voiced dental fricative when expressed in speech, but in writing the graph is a the voiceless one. Ooh, the mystery and excitement of linguistics! NOW READ THE CORRECTION AT THE END OF THIS POST.

I'll get some pics up of the wedding and related items while it is still somewhat relevant, even though it probably isn't anymore, soon. By soon I mean this next week. This is an improvement in my use of the term 'soon'. Usually it's anywhere from 1 - 6 months. I'm slowly working on making the soon = 'less than a week' coorespondence real.

I'd talk politics but I still have nothing to say. Sadly, the only thing I've done in that direction was rank the candidates according to their looks. Some distracting link I pressed while checking my Yahoo mail. I'm so behind on paperwork, but yet I couldn't resist. But just FYI, my top 3 were 1 Gen. Clark, 2 Mitt, and 3 Edwards. Bottom 3 were Dodd, Richardson, and Fred Thompson. Wonderful, eh? Who needs to be informed when you can just go by looks. At least that takes Clinton out of the running.

So in the meantime, here are some more niece pics. I am taking a break from my eldest brother's kids since there are so many and moving to my other older brother's (also, my number 2 bro SIL rarely sends me current ones, so I actually have some now that are relatively current rather than newborn ones of Aby). The young one is year and a half year old Abygail, "Aby". The blondie is 6 year old, uber gregarious, Alaura. Do all my 8 nieces and nephews have thier names start will either an A, C, or L? Yes. I'm going to have a kid just to break it up.



Left: Aby watching from the sides.


Right: The Girls














****CORRECTION: One must wonder if English is my native language and if I really did teach a writing course when they are subjected to the ill-formed nature of my prose. I have no idea what I was "on" when I wrote the following:

The issue isn't that I am lazy, rather it's a similar four-letter word that starts with b, ends with the same letter y, and for all you language geeks, shares the same voiced dental fricative when expressed in speech, but in writing the graph is a the voiceless one.

It should read:

The issue now isn't that I'm lazy, rather it's a similar sounding four-letter word. This newer word to describe me starts with a b; ends with the same letter as the old word, y; and, for all you language geeks, when spoken, the third sound in both terms share the same voiced dental fricative. However in the new word's written form, the graph is the voiceless one.

Sounds just as geeky but at least it makes better sense, and now I can relax.

Lazy

After 2 weeks of not working and a honeymoon, I am beyond lazy. I can’t even believe I managed to write a sentence or two. While my honeymoon consisted of a lot of physical exertion (It’s not the exertion you are thinking of, I do maintain some class on this blog. We were backpacking), there was little mental. Now I’m having trouble accessing my cognitive functions, as they liked the break as well. Oh well, I'll find them soon.

So in the tradition of laziness, here are a couple pics from the actual laid-back (that wasn’t so laid-back, story and more pics to follow sometime) courthouse wedding. I am too lazy to get the ones off our camera, so I am using ones my friend sent me. Also, were are not taking our wedding pictures until our November party, I've left the professional stuff to my talented friend Summer, so they are all pretty amateur until then. In the meantime don't be surprised if you see poorly doctored up versions. Doctoring there will be.

Do you want to play 'Let's get Married'?


Okay!

Single

Well, I had to write something on the last day of my singlehood or singledom (I think the proper suffix is -ness, but I'm all about language change). However I don't really have much to say. It's been busy these last 3 weeks, I'm not sure how I could have handled a full-on wedding. I feel excited, though nervous, nervous about expressing my emotions in front of people. Well, this is getting too serious (I can't even express anything to my imaginary blog audience) so here are couple pics of my retro hippie friend Sarah and I picking and eating berries on a recent hike.

Sarah's a-pickin' and I'm a-n-eatin':

Can't really see the Sarah, but she's one hot lady. Here's one of the both of us, but I look weird and high. I was high on nature, I promise.

Lacey

Thanks Sariah for reminding me of my niece/nephew feature. It’s good if I can follow through with at least one thing in my life. (BTW to those I have recently emailed, since this is somewhat related, when I say tomorrow I usually mean anywhere from a few days to a week).

I haven’t received any real recent pictures of my niece Lacey, aka Lace Face, but here are some from a few months ago. Lacey, almost 7, is number 3 of 6; a true middle child with an older brother and sister, twin younger brother and sister, and another younger brother. She’s a girly girl, but she has a roughneck side of her as well. I remember when she was younger, any new toy she had would eventually turn into a weapon to be used against her unsuspecting older siblings.

Right : Lacey with her baby Brother (he almost looks bigger than her)

Left: Lacey and friend at a dance. She gets out more than her aunt.

Freedom at Last

I have finally completed my quarter from hell! I must say, I’ve never spent so much time on one
course, and still not get an A. Yes, despite my good efforts I don’t think an A is in the future. I turned in all but two fully functional programs, with the incomplete two missing a few specifications here and there. I could go into it but I’m sure I would bore you if I haven’t already, but just imagine if you had a computer game and it only ran once. One try and that is all you get. Yep, that was my program.

While this certainly won’t be the most difficult class I will have had to take on my road towards geekdom, this class will be the largest leap. The course is designed to weed out programmers from non programmers. When I couldn’t fully complete my third and fourth assignment, I feared there would be a hoe in the horizon. I would have to quit programming and begin a life of prostitution. Oh wait, I was being metaphorical, I thought I was a weed and feared the garden hoe, but I was reassured of my floral status on subsequent programs.

I know to most people in this course, passing was not a big deal. To me, however, it was a much needed boost in confidence. I gave up some dreams when I decided to pursue computatonal linquistics (misspelled on purpose), and I knew, coming so late into the game, I would probably never be a stellar programmer. I like to excel and stand out, and I chose a path that will make that difficult. I wasn’t the best in this course, but I’m happy I was among the survivors. Now just remind me to delete this post when I start looking for jobs. Because I, Allison Johansson from Detroit, Michigan don’t need this coming back to bite me.

There was some unfortunate fallout from this course. 1. I gained a pant size. Well not quite, but I’m bursting in them. My lean muscle mass has decreased and I’m gaining weight. Yes, you may blame my love of ice cream, chocolate, and cheese on it too, but I’ve been eating that crap for years. While I was taking this course I barely worked out and spent most of my non paid time in front of the computer. I need my exercise to maintain my junk food lifestyle. 2. My friends got married in February and I still haven’t sent them their wedding gift. 3. I am addicted to the worst form of caffeine: coffee. Sodas couldn’t quite deliver, and tea was just too healthy. Coffee transforms me into a nervous freak, but it does wonders to me in the idea generation department. 4. I decide to get married in early July. I figured any date after this course was over was plenty of time. It’s less than 3 weeks away, what was I thinking! My apologies in advance if the party consists of a bunch of pizza, but hey, everyone loves pizza right?

Pictures accompanying this post were provided by the Will man.