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touching nicole Most of Friday was spent trying to recover from Thursday, but I think that it was worth it. Not only did I get to see what the people in class would be like outside of the classroom, I also saw the house where my instructor lives which in some ways was even better. Now Milwaukee may not rank that high on some lists as a great place to live, but if you have money then the best place to live here would be on the lake and my instructor falls into that category. Without a doubt, her family and her live directly on the lake and I can't imagine what that must be like for them on a daily basis. Instead of looking out onto a street or into someone else's backyard, the only thing that they see from their windows is the lake and sky above it. From the kitchen window one can see out over the waves without any effort. She even commented on the great sunrise photos that they have taken over the lake. Sigh. It must be rough. We didn't get a formal tour of the house, but from what I saw it isn't your average shack. Stone exterior, tiled foyer and cathedral ceilings were just a few of the things that I saw while I was there. ... I may have given the impression the other day that I take whatever the instructor says in class as absolute truth, but that would be wrong. More often than not I disagree with her and end up arguing for ten or fifteen minutes until we have had enough. She herself has said that she often takes a feminist approach to our reading and the Victorian novels are filled with women being treated unfairly according to today's standards. Personally I don't take any offense at these comments since I am neither British nor did I live in the eighteen hundreds. None of what happens to the women in the books applies to me. She on the other frequently points out how women were viewed as property and did not have any means of income and she sometimes seems to take it at somewhat of a personal level. For me I like to read books to see how other people view the world. I may not always agree with these other points of view, but I do prefer to read something that has some kind of message behind it. Plot driven novels such as the ones written by John Grisham have no value to me whatsoever and I truly doubt that anyone will be reading them a hundred or even twenty years from now. Having this attitude towards books I can appreciate a careful reading and looking for a deeper meaning in the text, but sometimes I wonder if my instructor goes too far. What I mean to say is does every author think that carefully about the words that they are choosing when they write something? Does a decision have to be made about each and every word before it gets placed on the page or keyed onto the screen? I imagine that for some people the answer would be yes, but it can't be that way for everyone. Some people must simply crank out formulaic stories with no thought behind them. Then there are the times when she uses an analogy that just falls flat with me. She once used the famous painting The Raft of the Medusa by Theodore Gericault as an example of how paintings are static. Personally I don't think that she could have picked a worse example. From an art history point of view of that painting is all about movement with the entire composition built upon diagonals. In my opinion almost everything in the painting is moving and there is energy everywhere the viewer looks. She was trying to say that a painting is a static image, but that words can convey movement. At least I think that that was what she was trying to say then. To be fair I don't quite remember her whole argument that clearly, because I wasn't listening that much as soon as she used the Gericault example. Despite the differences that the instructor and I might have, I still appreciate the fact that I can express my point of view. At work that never seems to happen or at the very least it is discouraged. ... Getting back to the people that were there watching the movie, it was interesting to meet Jennifer's fiance for the very first time. There had been a vague mental image in my mind of what he might look like, but it wasn't something that I though too hard about. Seeing the two of them together made sense though with the attraction between them being rather obvious. ... I did a very dumb thing this afternoon and I hope that it never happens again. I was making a stop at the local bookstore and decided to park my car right in front of the store. Usually I park around the corner because the street in front of the store is so busy that itís hard to get out the driver side of the car without waiting for everyone to go by first. So I parked my car, got out and decided to leave the door unlocked because I was going to be right back out. Well, I ended up spending close to forty-five minutes in the store. Then as I was walking out the door and reaching for my keys at the same time, I discovered that they werenít in my pocket. They were gone. Then it dawned on me where they might be. As soon as I opened my car door, I saw that I was right. I had left them in car, in the ignition with the car still running. Sigh. Dumb. Thankfully I didn't lock the door.
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