Escape the Ordinary....

I published this story on my Google Sites. It can be found here! The year was 2200 and the world was a different place. Earth had achieved some wonderful things. Space travel for recreational purposes. Self-driving cars that decreased the number of accidents drastically. Robots were highly efficient and intelligent. The healthcare system found cures for almost everything imaginable. But at a cost to the planet. There were so many people that the government had to institute a very strict population control measure. Citizens had to apply to become parents. Only those of top physical and mental health were allowed to raise a child. And even then, only one per family. The earth sent ships into outer space to orbit the earth a year at a time. This allowed for more room on the planet. There were dozens of them. Kunti lived aboard the Durvasas station. She was the young and beautiful wife of the commander, Pandu. They had applied for parenthood and were granted permission to carry a c...

After reading the rest of part A of the Mahatbharata, there really wasn’t anything that just grabbed my attention. It talked about the son’s and wives of Pandu. How they were all trained together to be great warriors and how they were jealous of each other. They went off to fight a battle and the most jealous of them all lost the battle. The story that stuck with me the most out of all the stories in part A is still the one about the woman that had to give up her baby out of shame and then a woman down river found the child. She had been praying for a child to come and this was her chance. This really reminds me of The Prince of Egypt animated film. I watched this movie as a child I don’t know how many times. The stories are similar in that a woman puts her baby in a basket and into the sea. She is unable to keep her child. The child then is found by a woman as the basket floats in the water. In the Prince of Egypt this child is taken in by a royal family. This version of the story is...

This week we read the Mahabharata Part 1. Below are my detailed notes for each one; 1 Vyasa and Ganesha Vyasa was the author of the Mahabharata. Bhrama appears told Vyasa that Ganesha was going to be his scribe to write this epic. It goes on to explain how the story was told down through the generations. It goes on to tell a story about the fish that carried two children. A boy and a girl. They were born of the King Chedi. Chedi kept only the boy. The girl was raised by someone else. The female made a deal with a someone so she could lose her “fishy smell” She then gave birth to a baby on an island. This baby was Vyasa. He was called his because he wrote the scriptures or Vedas Source: http://ouocblog.blogspot.com/2009/07/pde-mahabharata-vyasa-and-ganesha.html Ganga Ganga took human form and married King Shantanu. She had made some promise to throw the first 8 into the river so that 1/8 of their powers would be bestowed upon her own child. She then started having childr...

I'm still a little unsure exactly how this is going to come together, but here are some basic thoughts about what I want to do with my Storybook: *I would like it to be an anthology of stories. I don't think that I could base my Storybook off food and make it one long story. I just don't have that skill set to make that work. Which I'm okay with. Short stories are more my thing. *I want to center this around Indian food. So I think some good sources will be Indian cookbooks and websites that talk about recipes and the history behind each dish/ingredient. I had also thought to talk about each ingredient individually and at the end put them all together to make one recipe? idk, that might not be as fun. However, I do know that a lot of the stories we've read so far for this class all mention food. Or at least in a good majority of them. It quick and in passing, but it's there. (It's amazing how you pick up on that stuff when you focus on it for a project. ...

Title: Copenhagen, Denmark Source:  Wikimedia Welcome to the comments section for my portfolio page. I will be adding stories to my portfolio that reflect some of my favorites from the Epics we read. These stories will be versions told in my own words with my own personality. I hope you enjoy the read and feel free to comment, suggest or give feedback on the things you like, don't like or could use improvement. Here is a link to my  GoogleSites . Enjoy the read and have a great semester! P.S. Image information - I originally had set this up to be a storybook. After getting behind, it was best for me to switch. However, I decided to leave the coffee picture as my image. While I won't be talking about food for my storybook, coffee is still an important thing in my life. Every time I sit down to write a story, I ALWAYS have a cup close by. It helps my brain do it's thing. I felt it fitting to leave the image here since it is a part of every story (even if not exp...

This week I decided to do the tech tip on the Canvas Mobile App. I thought this would be a great tool that I could use when I'm out and about and can't or don't want to drag out my laptop. However, after using it the last two semesters, I'm a little disappointed, for a couple of reasons. 1st reason: I have a small phone. I don't use it for the normal things people do like videos and games and all that. I use it to call people and text and on occasions I take pictures. I have some useful apps on my phone that help with my everyday life. I downloaded Canvas so it would be easier to check due dates and notifications easier than checking e-mail. However, because my phone is small, it's hard to navigate through everything and there is a lot of scrolling involved. If you're going to use the app, I would only recommend it for the larger phones or tablets. Not for tiny phones that aren't graphic forwards. 2nd reason: I love the idea of Canvas and that all my...

I'm not going to lie, this is probably going to be one of my favorite assignments throughout the semester. I do this on my own when I'm curious about a subject. I google it and then two hours later, I know the most random facts! So when I saw this as an option, I knew it would be something enjoyable.  This week we brainstormed about different storybook ideas. The one that caught my attention the most, was a storybook I saw about food. So that's where I started this week. One of my favorite Indian dishes is Chicken Biryani. It is a savory, and sometimes spicy, rice and meat dish. It is filled with a ton of traditional Indian spices. This is the link on Wikipedia that I used to learn more about the dish:  Biryani . What I didn't know is that there are soooooo many versions of the dish. I knew there were a couple of different varieties depending on the ingredients used, but I did not know that it was then divided into region: both inside and outside India! It lists 24 d...

I can already tell that this semester is going to be super challenging for me. I'm only two weeks in and am feeling a bit overwhelmed. I decided to take 12 hours this semester because I want to graduate so bad it's not even funny. Now I'm rethinking that choice. I'm really hoping that it's just because I took the summer off and am trying to adjust back into the routine of things. It also hasn't helped that work has been a nightmare these last few weeks. I have a very large assignment that I've been working on that takes up most of my time. Even having to go in on my days off to work on it. I love time sensitive work projects....said no one ever. I think the thing I really need to figure out for this semester is a schedule that works well with the rest of my life. Juggling the family, work and school will be the challenge. And I really need to stop procrastinating! It gets me every stinking time. I wait until last minute to do anything and then stress mysel...

This assignment was about feedback. I thought it was interesting that it brought up positive and negative feedback and how to deal with both. I think feedback is something that we all deal with no matter where we are. At work, at school and even at home. And I will agree, most of the time it's easier to focus on the negative aspects of it and push aside all the positive things that have been said. Although feedback is spotty across the board for my academic career, it is something I have to face EVERYDAY at work. Being a supervisor, it is my responsibility to provide feedback constantly. Some of these articles really got me thinking about how I could improve that process in the scope of duties as a supervisor. Of the articles I read, there were a couple that really resonated with me. The first one,  Silence Critical Voices in Your Head , talked about our tendency to only focus on the negative. Even if we receive ten positive comments, our brain relives the one negative. The arti...

This assignment was a bit difficult for me, as brainstorming for a project was a lot harder than I thought it was going to be. It's hard to come up with story ideas for things you have not read or know nothing about. However, as I looked through the list of topics, there were a few that caught my eyes. 1. Food - The first one that caught my eye was food. While I was browsing the storybooks for the first week of assignments, I saw another student that had done their project on food. This was really intriguing to me. I love trying new foods and knowing how those foods related to culture and tradition. This would be a topic that would interest me throughout the semester and something I feel might be easy to write about. I'm not sure how I would tie everything in just yet, but this is definitely the front runner for my project. I would most likely include recipes and pictures of the cuisine, but would want to relate it back to the stories we are reading for the class. This artic...