jebbypal

Via Kung-fu Monkey, The engagement ring tradition

You know, I found this article about the history of engagement rings and the diamond industry's push to revive cells in the 1920s interesting.

Now, I'll be the first to admit that I've never been hung up on rings --- actually, for various reasons, I've never been hung up on jewlry at all. Yet the impracticality of a huge engagement ring followed by a wedding ring has always struck me as...excess. And I can honestly say that I was never one of those girls that imagined/planned a wedding day at any point in time in my life --- and yet, I myself still do fall into the trap of measuring worth in the terms of "am I in a relationship or not".....especially back in college when it always seemed like I never would be in one for the most part. So when the author writes Women still measure their worth in relationship to marriage in ways that men don't., I know exactly what that means and it registers.

I mean, the media saturates us to this day with plot lines and images that say if you aren't married by the time you're 30, you'll be old and alone forever. Career women in shows that we see are invariably single and childless. And marriage is always the goal of the story line of a teenage girl or 20-something in love.

You'd think in this day and age we'd have progressed away from that. I mean, don't get me wrong -- long term commitments and marriage are great -- knowing that there's one person there that will move through the rest of life with you that you don't have to worry about constantly driftng away etc. I think it would be great if we could pick a group of our closest friends and make similar commitments (w/ or w/out the sex, depending on how you role).

Yet at times, I still have to remind myself that "marriage" is not a goal. A happy loving relationship is. I guess that's why that ever since I was at my brother's first wedding, I've been anti-wedding. Weddings, like graduations, aren't for the people that walk through them -- they're for family and friends. And a life-long commitment to someone you love isn't something that I want to use as entertainment fodder for other people. A reception to celebrate after the fact, okay, fine. But give me elopement combined w/ the honey-moon, or even just a trip down to the justice of the peace before we go back to work for the rest of the day if you insist that we have that legal piece of paper.

Oh man, did I ever pass out last night. Still can't sleep flat without coughing, but they FINALLY turned off the heat so my body didn't pay any attention as it enjoyed sleeping at a normal room temp (plus, in relative quiet since I could shut the window! Oh, it's the little things).

Of course, they decide to turn off the heat for the last day of warm weather since it's supposed to go back down to 40 this weekend. *rolls eyes* Common sense, if only schools offered classes in it.

I did have a dream that someone in my lab had a lj. I blame this on the incessant radio announcer chatter about getting one of their assistants a myspace. Still, disturbing. Very disturbing.

I'm annoyed at mycheckfree, though I guess it's not my fault. Almost all the bills I pay through them are discontinuing the relationship. Weird. I liked it because it was just one password to remember and they have a pretty good guarantee thing about if any of your info is compromised. Oh well, I guess I'll keep using them for state farm. (Though this explains the problems I had with paying my cingular bill and getting it to register this month).

I can't believe it's december. Two months. Two months is all I have and for two weeks of that I'll be in OK. I'm not freaking out mostly because I have my brain in a relatively zen place right now where I don't look much beyond tomorrow. I think I've got all the post-writing binge fuzz knocked out of it -- I really wish I could get to the point where I could functionally do science and also write fiction at the same time. Unfortunately whenever I get muse dumps, I turn very Walter Mitty. During the actual muse dump, I'm literally telling the story to myself in words to try out how things sound whenever I'm not focusing on something. During the aftermath, I'm doing my best to watch the story as a show (or any other story) in an effort to recapture the word phase so I can write more without a struggle. Both of which leave me very ambivalent for engaging real life much. Or you know, mathematical calculations or hours of time staring at a plate doing repetitive pipetting. Which, if you wish to imitate this, take a piece of graph paper and set it on a desk. Then hold a pen that has a clicker on it in your fist with your thumb on the clicker. Click the pen down, touch it to a square on the graph paper for two seconds, pull up, unclick, repeat about 600 times and you'll have done what I do whenever I do one of my taqman runs. Fun, no? And that's without even trying to focus to make sure you grab the right tube to put the right sample in the right square.

( an absurd amount of reflection that I can't believe I did and can't decide whether to flock or not )

Oh man, how did this post turn into this?? Seriously, I was just going to write about how well I slept and then get my ass in to work to do the last bit to this repolarization experiment. Gaaah. And no, I didn't force myself out of bed to work out this morning. The biobrite alarm clock does wake me up (and without much jarring since the alarm is so freakishly quiet that I can't even believe it wakes me up), but it doesn't increase my will to actually get out of bed. Of course, I know, if I'd go to bed earlier than midnight so i could get the requisite eight hours that I know my body demands, that might be different.

But enough, off to work.