tackabery chronicle: March 2005

3.31.2005

Now for the hard part

With tournament excitement and schoolwork kicking my butt, I forgot to mention that the new version of farrin.com went live last Thursday. The Chinese calligraphy picture is still just a placeholder; it's changing in a few days, but pictures hasn't been a big priority for me this week. Getting the SEO started has been, so we can get ranked and make up for the time we lost we our last vendor, and I've had some very pressing projects in the meantime, most notably trying to fix some problems we are having with our television advertising not airing, direct mail kicking into high gear, and starting a new client referral program at the Firm, among my other usually hectic and pressing duties. Oh, and I've got to get back to creating more website content. I just got time to take a breath and spend Easter Saturday at Chez Tackabery in Southern Pines before I got right back in to a hectic, hectic, and did I say hectic?! week.

The ball game was great last night, but we left early because I was exhausted and also getting cold. There were a group of college students (imagine that, at a college baseball game; what other kind of students would they be, bright eyes? Sheesh, I'm tired) sitting behind and to the left of us, and I was getting a kick out of them. The thrust of their conversation was basically about -- well -- nothing in particular. They were laughing a lot, picking on each other mercilessly, and it reminded me of the times I had in college with my best friends Rob and Penny and the rest of the crowd I hung around with. I don't remember most of the brunt of the time we spent together; I mostly remember laughing all the time, probably about similarly mundane bullshit. There was also much excitement among the females when some members of the basketball team showed up; when my husband went up to get water he called me up to report an Engin Atsur sighting, and I realized why the girls got so giggly, 'cause he is pretty cute. BMOC. I guess I realize now why other people's parents always told me, during my college days, that I was in the best years of my life. They were pretty good. But, life is pretty good right now too. I have a wonderful relationship, a good job, ample electronic equipment, a broadband connection, and four cats who occasionally shower me with affection when it suits them. And I've got the Wolfpack. What more can a girl ask for?

3.30.2005

It all washes out in the end

I was gratified on Monday night to hear the tail end of Coach Sendek's radio show, which was full of callers with positive comments about the squad and the Coach. It seems that after all was said and done, this year's Wolfpack was very much like last year's Wolfpack except for their free throw percentages. The return to Herb-bashing and screaming about how we never finish, especially coming so soon after the loss last week (I think Ned Barnett gave them less than 24 hours grace before he put the match to the fire), was disheartening. Many bloggers and message board posters (heretofore referred to as fungi) seem to be dividing the fan camps squarely into the "defend Herb unto the death" camp and the "Herb must go, period," camp, which I think is too simplistic a read of the situation. Of course we all want to win championships, but this is amateur athletics, and we should all just get a grip. What the Coach and the team need is our support. If you want to make the entire program about banners and trophies, go watch the NBA. I guarantee you will not have as satisfying experience watching people who play for a living. It's just not the same thing.

My husband Richard is an avid baseball fan, although strangely enough he doesn't follow the college game as carefully as he follows the majors. Probably this is just because growing up you didn't hear much about ACC baseball (I never did). But last year we finally went to a game against Carolina, and I enjoyed that game far more than I did the Bulls games we go to. Don't get me wrong, I love going to the games at DBAP with him, but there is far more passion and excitement at a college baseball game than at the Bulls park. For one, the fans are all engaged in the game, and when I say engaged, I mean, actively participating. It's like Showtime at the Apollo - guys are yelling at the refs and encouraging the team with every single pitch; I'm surprised the Coach gets a word in edgewise. It is constant chatter, and that's just in the bleachers. People stand up, yell, scream, jump and holler, clap, and get hoarse, just like they do at the football and basketball games, but it's a much smaller crowd. It feels different, though, and it has to be because the game is about the game, not about paychecks.

I'm not naive, I don't expect our players not to think about professional careers and no Coach can not deal with it; it's just a fact that most of these players are not going to have their names on professional jerseys. For most of them, this is as good as it gets, and I believe it's much better than the higher-priced alternatives. Whether or not this makes my blog a baseball blog now, I don't know, but we are going to our first baseball game tonight; there's a rumor that Andrew Brackman might relieve. I did want to mention that my favorite hustler, Engin Atsur, led the team with 287 deflections and 57 steals this year, before I shut up about basketball; and now I'm done.

3.27.2005

Just can't do it.

Root for Carolina, that is. Richard informed me this morning that the only way we'll win my firm's bracket is if Carolina takes a dive. This leaves me in the position of rooting for the skunks, er, badgers, that beat us on Friday. As this is an untenable moral position, I have elected not to watch the stinking game and let the chips fall where they may. Technically I should go with the lesser of two evils, but I am unable to maintain enough objectivist perspective to realize which team that is.

Okay, enough deontological hat-dancing. Time for baseball. Next Saturday is Richard's Stat-O-Matic draft, during which I'll be doing homework, and later we are going to the Virginia Tech game that night, and then the next weekend we have our first game in our Durham Bulls mini-pack. After school is out for the semester, we are going up to DC to see the Nationals play the Cubs and catch up on some of the new monuments, and perhaps go to the zoo. I am looking forward to our second-ever vacation as married folk (our first being our honeymoon, which was in Las Vegas) and having the summer off to pursue really learning Flash and perhaps php. I always have bigger project goals than I can actually accomplish, but we'll see. The big project of the summer will be finding a house. We hope to be in our first home by Christmas of this year. It will be the first home that I have ever lived in that will actually belong to me (once the mortgage is paid off, that is). For my life entire, I have lived in apartments, rented trailers, or rented houses, and never, ever, felt safe; the threat of being thrown out because we couldn't pay was always imminent and real. One of my family's first abodes was the projects in Staten Island. I am really looking forward to making that a permanent part of my past and making a home that no one can take away from me.

3.25.2005

Post Madness

The run is over, and though it stings a bit, I'm still proud as hell. Engin was the Chevrolet player of the game (beat me by two points, again) and for most of the second half, was the only reason we stayed in it. Duke is out too, so at least my boss and I will both be miserable on Monday. Go Heels, I guess.

Pre-Madness Post, with no information architecture to speak of.

Tip time: 7:27 p.m. tonight. Hours spent at work today in a CRM Roundtable Session: 15? 30? The clock said 9:30 to 3:30, but I think it was the longest meeting of my life! Sitting in a conference room racking my brain for referral marketing ideas, drinking too much Diet Coke, and fidgeting. Wondering how the guys were shooting in practice, and whether Tony will play. At every break, we talked about basketball. All anybody talked about at work was the games tonight, and everyone was being nice to everyone else - all the Tarheel fans wished State luck, the Duke fans were being gracius to the Carolina fans, and vice-versa; it was an ACC love fest in there today, but it will all be back to normal after Sunday, which is Easter, as if anyone cared . (I work for a personal injury law firm, we're a bunch of liberal agnostics in there, okay? Well, not all of us, but enough to count.)

Jim was calling the dry-erase markers "Duke blue" and "Wolfpack red." Is this obsessive? Nah. . . Personally I can't root for Duke or Carolina unless we are officially out of the dance altogether, but it's such a good thing for all three of the Triangle schools' recruiting efforts to have gotten this far. And I think Herb has a job next year, don't you?

My boy got some love, from an out-ot-town paper. Rob Daniels called him "the total package that doesn't fit in a package;" I just love that. I have a good feeling about Engin tonight; the black socks are going to hold up, and he's going to have a good night tonight: 14 points, 4 steals. The last time I predicted Engin's score, he beat me by two points (Clemson), which in my mind qualifies as a winning record.

Dickie V is ranting about Duke on ESPN right now, which is the game the other 90% of America will be watching instead of ours. He just got to us -- oh no, the kiss of death! He's predicting a North Carolina - North Carolina State matchup on Sunday. Jesus please us. It's good to be loved, but bad karma if you're a Wolfpack fan. We are supposed to be hungry and ignored. It's okay though. All is well. Just over an hour left. Can't come fast enough.

3.24.2005

FYI TCers,

Monster.com has been advertising more technical writing positions as of late. Today I saw one from CTG and one from Modis.

3.23.2005

Content Inventory. Not again!

When Jason said in class last night that we were going to be starting on a content inventory for our ME project, my heart just slid to my stomach. I have been doing content inventory for my website at work for weeks, and the last thing I want to do, even though I have so much more to do it's unbelievable, is look at more content and figure out what to put on my website. Can someone else do this for me? I'm so sick of modules (little granular bits of content. My life is now divided into modules. Right now I'm in the rant module, if you haven't noticed), I could puke. After class last night I worked on checking and re-checking the new website (hopefully rolling out today) until 1 in the morning. I'm sick of websites right now, and I can't get away from them. In the words of the great Charlie Brown: I can't stand it!

Which is why I'm so thrilled that there are Julius Hodge cartoons to read for much-needed mental break times. It doesn't take much to amuse me right now. I have always been amazed at the fact that when Julius Hodge turns sideways, he disappears. Every time I watch him play, I am amazed that he can stand up on those legs at all.

3.22.2005

Ladies and gentlemen: Julius Hodge

The mouth is back.

3.21.2005

Overwhelming D is what gets you to the 16

There is one picture, after all the shots of well-deserved jubilation and joy, that exemplifies Sunday's Wolfpack victory over UConn. It's here, halfway down the page: Engin, Jordan, and Gavin just swarming over, around and through Hilton Armstrong to go after a loose ball. After everything this team has been through, to not give up for one second, to fight this hard, to just not let it go this time, is why they won. I was really impressed with Julius Hodge during the post-game press conference as he gave much respect to his opponents, controlling what had to be incredible surges of emotion to answers questions calmly and purposefully while continuing to deflect and share praise with his teammates. The fungi had to be struck dumb by the stat that Herb Sendek has now tied Everett Case and Jim Valvano for most post-season wins by the Wolfpack. What a great reflection on him to see his men act with such poise, charm and control. This is why ACC basketball is one of the best things there is.

3.19.2005

It was not exactly ballroom dancing . . .

but they got the W which is what counts. Engin seemed to have tough game in the first half. He's been so consistent all year and really carrying a lot of the d on his back, so it was more than great to finally see someone else step up and give him some help. Cameron Bennerman, the Sixth Man, back again, just when we need him the most. It's a good time to be a Wolfpack fan. It's been such a very horrendous year with so much heartbreak. It still might not end well, but I know they are giving it everything they have.

Meanwhile I'm just swamped with work. I've got to finish populating our corporate website this week so it can go live, I've got the information plan to write for 519 that I haven't even looked at since class, and I've got six problems on my mid-term for BUS 543. (I have a lot of ranting to do about that class, but no time now, so you are spared). Richard and I are going up to Virginia Beach today to pick up a couch and a loveseat my sister is donating to us, but we can't afford more than a day's rental of a van, so we have to rush up there, and rush back here before noon to turn the truck in and catch our next ballgame, meaning I don't get much quality time with my nephews, plus Richard is still sick, plus I have to go in to work to do my bi-weekly TV report, then write that info plan and finish the mid-term. Oh, and I've got to finish the reading for 519 plus read two l-o-n-g chapters for 543 on data design and data warehousing. I'm tired just writing about it. Not a lot of time to get that all done before tomorrow night.

3.15.2005

I am the cut-and-paste Master, er, Mistress.

Hello, class. The dazed look you see on my face is from hours of cutting and pasting my old website into my new website. Which, although it is taking a long time, is actually quite exciting. What? you ask? Cutting and pasting a thrill? Well, yes, when you are using a very cool content management system that is flexible enough to do darn near anything. The guys at CoalMarch have been incredibly responsive to all my requests and bug reports. I mean, incredibly responsive, such as, fixing a problem before I even got a copy of my own bug report via email. Now that's impressive. John would love the level of their customer service.

The engine they have developed is called CoalEngine, and you should go to their website and check it out, then go hire them, because they need office furniture and new flooring; their carpet is pretty hideous. But, office decor aside, the tool they have built is really powerful and is going to do great things for our website. It's hard to convince my boss of that yet. He doesn't get thrilled by my telling him I created ten pages in ten minutes. He wants cases, and he's going to have to wait many months for them, so on a day-to-day basis, it's hard to transfer my enthusiasm for this project to him. But I plug on, praying this sucker works. I think it will though.

But that's not what I came to talk about, blogging when I should be catching up on all the reading I didn't do for class this weekend because I was cutting and pasting and, um, watching basketball. Well, you knew I was, didn't you? Sheesh. You can't expect me to ignore the ACC tournament, can you? But I digress. The thing I'm excited about is the mark-up system I get to use, an open-source tool called Markdown. It is incredibly great. No more bloody closed tags and ampersands; yeah. Once I started using it (yesterday) I got really enthused because it's so fast. It's just as fast as typing. Really. I may just have to send the guy some money and get a t-shirt. Does this make me an open-source geek now? All hail the asterisk.

Okay, I'm tired. That probably didn't make sense, did it? Time for bed - say goodnight, Michelle.

Goodnight, Michelle.

3.13.2005

No real loss

Granted, we aren't going to the finals in the tourney, but the fact is that JJ Redick had to have his big game in order to beat us, because it was our game for a long time yesterday, and I could not be prouder of our guys. I knew we probably weren't going to win if Redick got hot. Our guys played like warriors out there. Engin ran his ass off, and the guys just gave some furious d. They deserve a little rest. I hope they dance, but even if they don't I am still proud to be a Wolfpack fan. The excitement is over. It's time to get back to school work and work work - what a bummer.

18:47 hrs Update: definitely not a loss, because we have our dancing shoes on now.

3.12.2005

Gentlemen Callers

There was smack on the DC court last night, so much so that a ref told Julius to shut up already. He couldn't, though, because he was so proud of his teammates, especially the stepping-up and laying-it-down freshmen and the Sixth Man Returning, Cameron Bennerman. Everything looked effortless, even with Engin having something of a cold game offensively (but not on D! No f'ing way), and what can you say about Ilian's pass that went in the hoop? Guardian angels must be in abundance for the Pack this week, and they've been a joy to behold, no matter what happens today. They just played beautiful basketball, and two most beautiful things about our game was that there was no ugliness, animosity, pushing, shoving, or anything else towards Wake, and the gentlemanly gushing Julius did post-game. He gave props to everybody except the ball boys and said some incredibly warm, loving things about Coach Sendek that I hope made a lot of the fungi feel bad. Real bad, as in, give up their tickets next year bad, so I can a better seat for '06. I really appreciated that Tony Haynes gave the Player of the Game award to the whole team.

Today I have to say that I see it as the Atsur-Redick rematch, and the ACC voters who forgot to put #14 on the All-Defensive Team are going to get a talking to when they remember that Engin is the guy who manuevered poetic Jonathan into his lowest scoring game of the year (1 out of 5). I can barely sit still waiting for 3:30 to get here. You gotta love this game.

3.11.2005

Survive and Advance

. . . that's what it's all about this Friday. Ilian was declared a hero in Sportsline's Build-a-Bracket column today. Which is really just a challenge, to knock down six of those heart-stopping threes today, right? I hope the guys feel ready to lay down the smack, because I know every Wolfpack fan around here is ready. Julius is even back to his old wise-cracking self.

3.10.2005

Life is good. Atsur 17 pts, Evtimov 18

Names were taken, and Engin (zero turnovers, 9 rebounds) and Ilian (five threes! Mama!) had great games against FSU today, even though I didn't see it. I kept up with it via Gametracker, which (annoyingly) had some kind of weird delay at the start of each half where it didn't scroll any play-by-play until three minutes or so had passed. I was quite upset that I missed Ilian hit those threes in the first half, especially since I just heard he tied a school record for most 3-pointers in an ACC tournament game, but tomorrow's payback game starts at 7 so I won't miss the rest of it, no matter what happens. That's cool. I'm not going to worry about the bit of flakiness we may have displayed in the second or that Tony pulled a groin muscle (ouch, it's the year of the groin for the Wolfpack now). I just hope the team remembers that revenge is best served cold. Ice cold, from about twenty-two feet out or so. The best part will be watching Chris Paul squirm from the bench, I think. That's just a terrible attitude, isn't it? I should feel bad about it, but I'm just waiting for the smackdown. It's gonna feel good to see the guys play the way they played in last year's tournaments. I'm remembering Ilian's performance against Vandy, which was lethal. We almost got them last year. Anything can happen, baby.

3.09.2005

Kicking ass and taking names is now our mission . . .

beginning with Von Wafer, who may be a perfectly nice person for all I know, but needs to go down on the tournament court tomorrow because he scored all over us last time. We only gave up 9 turnovers in that game, and they only gave up 10; we shot a great game but they beat us. It is not going to be easy to walk over FSU to get to Wake, especially if we can't hit our free throws, but it can happen. Engin can tie Wafer up, put him in his defensive pocket and then go kick some Demon Deacon butt on the next day. That's all they need to dance, and they are going to do it. Unfortunately, I can't watch it. I will be getting introduced to our new website engine tomorrow and we have a go-live date of next Tuesday, which means I need to spend every spare minute working on the new site. Well, one eye full of every minute. I can keep the other eye on the Gametracker, can't I? It's hell to be hired out, without a prayer of coming down with the blue flu, during the ACC Tournament.

More six degrees of blogs

Found an article on a new tool for discovering blogs today; via Search Views's link to an article on Search Engine Watch. The tool is called Blogstreet and uses linking patterns between blogs to find blogs you might be interested in, from the ones that already interest you. I tried it out and it's pretty interesting. I currently use Bloglines to keep up with my blogs, but there are some annoyances. Some RSS feeds pull redundant data and I end up looking at something I've already read. For instance, John Martin's feed occasionally will pull the last four or five feeds when it sends me the latest one. Don't know why that is, but in general, Bloglines is a very convenient (and free) tool for organizing and keeping up with the blogs I read. I like being able to find new blogs through the keyword search tool, but I think I'll bookmark Blogstreet when I want something fresh. It's definitely an interesting way to find things I probably wouldn't otherwise.

3.07.2005

Wake 55, NCSU 53, Sportsmanlike Behavior 0

Chris Paul is a punk from East Winston. There is no other explanation for the flagrant foul he committed against Julius Hodge, and if he doesn't get suspended for it there is no justice. I think the five to eight minutes Julius Hodge spent curled into a ball clutching his groin and screaming in pain had to be the worst minutes of his life and represented everything that can go wrong in college basketball. It's a game and nobody needs to get that personal. Paul grabbed him by one arm so he could hold him still for his follow-up punch! 19,000 people called foul and begged for him to "get up, just get up, Jules" while he was unable to stand up and might have been facing the end of his career in that arena, on his back, if he wasn't able to come back in.

I feel so bad for our guys, who gave us the most exciting, most ballsy (no pun intended), gutsiest, hardest-fought game I have ever seen in the RBC Center. (Granted, I haven't seen that many, but it was special). Richard said the noise and the intensity during the second half was exactly the way Reynolds used to be for big games. No question it was the biggest game of our season. The only thing for it is for us to stomp on FSU Thursday afternoon so we can stand face-to-face with Wake and bitch-slap them in the tournament (Chris Paul better hope Ilian Evtimov isn't friendly with any Bulgarian mobsters with nothing to do. Or any wanna-be gangsters from East Winston who Paul owes money to). Engin looked absolutely defeated after it was over, which was the other most shocking thing for me of the whole night. When we got home and watched the replays, it was just obvious that we got robbed by three guys in black and white. During the second half I remarked that the refs were treating Wake like they were in kindergarten learning tee-ball. You know, when the coach just keeps the kid in until he gets a hit? What other explanation could there be for continuously calling fouls on our guys and giving Wake another shot at the basket? Richard said their end of the court was tee-ball, our end of the court was rollerball. Why does the #4 team in the country get treated differently, or is that a rhetorical question?

Post Update 1609 hrs: Paul was suspended for one game by WFU and will not play in the first Wake game of the ACC tournament which, the universe and karma all falling correctly into place, will be against our guys.

3.04.2005

All hail the mighty Atsur

First of all, somebody has to rave about this guy since nobody who writes in Raleigh, NC, ever manages to. Whenever I see that Duke's JJ Redick has trounced another line of wimpy defenders in the ACC, like he did last night to Florida State, I remember that Engin held JJ to only 8 points in the RBC Center. I was watching highlights yesterday from my sick bed (I'm pretty sure my cold has turned into a sinus infection and I feel like a dying dog. Lovely metaphor, ain't it?) and it's all dunks, dunks, dunks. This country is in love with the smackdown, smackover, in-your-face basket jam, and it's just too bad, because it's such a rare thing. Real basketball is grungy and hard-fought. I guess major defensive stops aren't as sexy, but they sure do make a big difference when you are up against the shooter no one else can shut down. Keep it up, Engin, keep it up. You know Wake is beatable.

With the way the freshmen are coming along on the inside (go Ced and Andrew), it's going to be a great year of basketball next year, if I can stand the wait; kickouts to Engin for the three, all season long. One more home game left and it's all over for this one though. I'm already mourning it! Now that's just -- obsessive.

p.s. I got a good grade on my paper, not to brag but I did promise I'd post my results. I am not re-writing it right now but I am considering doing the work this summer. It might make a good journal article. There is a book out about the rhetoric of classified advertising I found during my research, and it might be interesting to compare online ads to newspaper ads.

3.02.2005

Waiting with baited breath for my paper. Oh, and there's that game tonight . . .

I haven't gotten the first minute to work on my mapping notes, so I'm planning on doing that tonight before the basketball game. Which, you probably realize, we must win. Must. Win. We must. Have you gotten the point? I have nothing but confidence in my team. Nothing but. Engin was quoted in the press today as saying "we have only one purpose now and thats the Virginia game. " It has to be damned-near impossible not to think about Wake, the tournament, and the dance at the same time, but if anyone is managing not to think about that, I know it is my favorite player. I've said it before and it bears repeating: everybody play like Engin and we'll be just fine.

In other news, our 519 genre papers are apparently not up to par. I know my paper was among the five graded first because I turned it in early. I thought I did okay; well, not great exactly, but that was mainly my disappointment because I felt that I could have really delved into the topic more if I had the time. I had two other papers to write that weekend plus two three-hour SQL tutorials to work through and it was truly the best I could do in the time I had to do it. I didn't want to ask for an extension after missing two classes from being sick; I'm not going to feel guilty about not asking for one unless I get my paper back and Jason says (and I'm sure it will be more polite), "WTF were you thinking, kid? "

I did feel that I proved online recruitment sites are a genre and I thought I detailed the discourse community, such as it is, and for the rest of the paper I talked about how the sites help users complete their tasks and meet their goals. I thought I did okay, but could have done much more with the topic, and I said so in my paper. I could have compared jobs ads to newspaper ads (no time), could have talked about the difference between paper and online resumes (no time), could have delved into classified ads as a genre (ditto), but . . . who knows? Perhaps I just did not do a good job. It has been known to happen. Richard always tells me I worry too much about my academic performance. I always expect that unless I'm completely asleep, I should get an A or an A- on everything. My opinion is, I'm making the investment in my education and I damned well better get every penny out of it. If I'm not learning anything, I won't get an A. If I do get an A, that proves I've learned something that I can take away and get a new career with. That may be simplistic, or arrogant, but there it is. Anything less than that is just not acceptable to me.

Caution: Rant follows.

I get very frustrated in classes sometimes, especially when professors change the schedules around to accommodate students. Dr. Payton completely screwed with the schedule because people in our BUS 543 class did not get work done on time, and I mean she really hurt me. I had planned out my work schedule for the semester to account for all the things I need to do in both classes, and then she completely changed things. I 've got all my major projects for both classes due at pretty much the same time. It's very, very painful. We were going to have spring break to work on our take-home mid-term, but because of pushing things back, we are getting our mid-term the week after spring break. Originally we were going to have three days to work on it and turn it in, which would have meant I'd have gotten the mid-term at 9 pm on Monday and have to turn it in at 3 pm that Thursday. In between, I would have two 519 classes and only one night off, which would have given me exactly one night to work on it. So I had to ask for an extension on that, just because the pushback was now hurting me. Just so the slackers in that class could have an extra week to read the ASSIGNED BOOK (!!! Jesus!!! am I the only person who gets annoyed when people don't bother to keep up?), the time allotted for the mid-term, a much harder project, got crunched in half. Dr. Payton agreed to push the due-date back to the following Monday, but that means I've got to work on that along with the work I need to do for 519 that weekend, and right now have no major assignments to do during spring break, the one chance I would have had to get caught up and do that mid-term. Now I've got compression. It's just so DUMB. I'm sure professors agonize over getting these schedules right. Why don't they just refuse to compromise? If students can't keep up they should just drop the class or drop out of grad school. No one said it would be easy to be a graduate student.

Breathe, Michelle. 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Okay. I'm done ranting now. And I'm not criticizing Jason (really). I didn't like Swales much, but I did read it. I guess it's from being a theology student, but I don't really feel like the reading for 519 was too much. When I was in upper level theology I had some classes where we were reading a book like Swales every other week. I remember my Honors Western Civilization class, and we had to read about 400 pages a week, of thick, impossibly-hard-to-understand theoloy and philosophy. If you disagree, try diving into Kierkegaard, or Karl Barth, or Hans Kung. Knock yourself out, baby, because the translation from the German will kill you dead otherwise. Maybe it's a Catholic school thing, or maybe I'm just . . . insane. But I read what's assigned for the same reason I always work for the A.

Name: Michelle Tackabery

Location: Raleigh, North Carolina, United States

I am a graduate student at NC State University and marketing coordinator/webmaster for a personal injury law firm. Married, four cats, no kids. I live with post-traumatic stress disorder due to childhood sexual trauma, and I hope talking about it will help other people deal with it in their own lives. My blog will have sexual topics in it of a delicate nature but I won't talk in a disturbing or titillating way about them, so if your looking for that, please move along. Along with the serious stuff I am also emotional about my basketball team, so if you don't take college basketball seriously, please move along also. Thanks for visiting.

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