Sunday, April 29, 2018

More Reading: Babbitt's More Jataka Tales

The Girl Monkey and the String of Pearls
A king, queen and their family went to the river one day and the queen left her pearls on the side of the river when she got in. A Girl Monkey waited for the servant that was guarding the pearls to fall asleep and then stole the pearls. Everyone was looking for the pearls and couldn't. The guard suspected a monkey because no one could have gotten in or out of the castle. He set a trap with glass beads and one of the monkeys stole them. He then knew that it was a monkey and finally caught the Girl Monkey. The king was very grateful.

The Tricky Wolf and the Rats
There was once a wolf that wanted to eat a colony of rats. He stood outside their colony and tricked the Chief of the Rats and made him think that he was lame and pathetic. The Chief believed him so he stood outside their colony every day and ate the last rat to leave. The Chief noticed this one day and decided to be the last one to leave. The wolf tried to eat him, but he avoided the wolf and bit the wolf's neck and killed him.

More Jataka Tales by Ellen C. Babbitt
Girl Monkeys (Jataka Tales)

Famous Last Words: Lake and Dead Week

Last week I talked about my excitement for the lake trip I was going on. Well, now I'm back and let me say, it was such a nice, relaxing weekend with my roommates and I'm not ready to get back to school life. I only have two weeks left in my senior year, and after that, most of my friends are going on separate life paths. I still have another year in school, so I get to soak up Norman for a while with the remaining friends I'll have here, but a lot of my other friends are moving away to jobs or grad school. It's weird. College has gone by so fast, I barely got to process it. That's why this weekend was so nice. I have lived with one of my roommates for three years, and the other one for two years, so it was a super nice time getting to spend this weekend with them at the lake. We went out on the boat, drank some beers, ate some good food and just had some good roomie time for one of the last times. It was bittersweet but still an amazing way to close out the semester, school year and last year living together.


Grand Lake (Lee's Resort)

Thursday, April 26, 2018

Reading B: Inayat. Twenty Jataka Tales

The Guilty Dogs
There was once a group of palace dogs that destroyed the King's saddles for his horses. When the king found the saddles destroyed, he knew it was dogs that did it. But he didn't know which dogs did it, so he ordered every dog in the city to be killed. When the dogs heard this, they went to the wise chief dog and had him talk to the king. The dog knew that it was the royal dogs, so he had the king test them by feeding them buttermilk. Once they drank the buttermilk, straps of leather fell out of their mouths and the king knew it was them. He stopped the killing of every dog and started to give all dogs in the city royal treatment. 

Dog (YouTube)


Twenty Jakata Tales by Noor Inayat

Monday, April 23, 2018

Famous Last Words: The Lake is Near

With school almost ending and this being my last year of living with my roommates, we planned a trip to my roommate's lake house on Grand Lake. It's been a tradition to go every Labor Day for the past 3 years and with this being one of the last weekends of senior year, we decided to make a trip up just as roommates. I have a pretty busy upcoming week with a huge final presentation for my Ad Research class that's worth a huge portion of my grade, but once I'm finished with that, it's lake time. The lake is so relaxing. You can do whatever you want without worry. There's a boat, a canoe and a nice big dock where everyone hangs out and swims in the lake. It's one of the most relaxing places that I've been to and I can't wait to go back. This semester has been so busy with almost no free weekends for any of us. But this weekend, we're finally all free and have planned on this for a month. It's going to be perfect.
Roomies at the lake

Tech Tip: Typing Test



I used KeyHero to do a typing test. I liked how it highlighted mistakes in red until they were fixed.

Friday, April 20, 2018

Week 13 Story: The Monkey and His Peas

As I sat in the tree, my stomach grumbled. What was I to eat today? Would it be bananas? Maybe some mangos? Or would I be lucky enough to find something better? As a monkey, you eat whatever you can find, but as a vegetarian, it's quite difficult.

All the other predators make fun of me for only eating fruits and veggies but it's not my fault. I didn't choose to be a little chimp. If I could turn into a tiger and eat whatever animals I wanted, believe me I would. But alas, a monkey I'll always be. My stomach is growling so loud I can't hear the sound of my own thoughts.

But suddenly, I see them. Humans.

They stop to feed their horses and eat something for themselves, and I notice something quite appealing: peas. My favorite food of all time. Oh how I love peas. There's just something about the little rascals, I love popping each individual one in my mouth and savoring the amazing flavor.

My window of opportunity is small, so I act fast. While the humans are looking away, I swoop down from my tree and snatch the can of peas without a sound. Oh happy day! What luck that on the day I am most hungry, I find peas! I'm not letting anyone lay a paw on them.

As I enjoy the little morsels, I get a little too excited and let one fall from my tree and onto the jungle ground. Oh no! I'm not going to let this pea go to waste. I went through too much trouble to let any of these delicious treats get away from me.

As I shimmy down the tree to get my pea back, the humans notice me. I cant get away in time and they start chasing me with sticks.

"Shoo shoo!" they say.

I am so frightened by the sheer number and size of them that I completely forget about my peas. I drop them as I run from the men and they are crushed one by one under the mens' feet.

Oh how I wish I let that one little pea go! For if I had, I would have still been eating the dozens of other delicious peas in my grasp.
Monkey (Wikipedia)

How greedy of me to lose everything while trying to gain one little thing!


Author's Note: This story was based off of Spend a Pound to Win a Penny. I wrote it from the monkey's perspective. I wanted to make the story an internal dialogue from the monkey's head and go through the situation of him losing the peas while trying to get one back.

The Giant Crab and Other Tales From India by W.H.D Rouse

Thursday, April 19, 2018

Reading B: Buddhist Jataka Tales

Spend a Pound to Win a Penny
A monkey took some peas from some people below a tree. He dropped one pea, and in trying to get it, dropped all the other peas. The people saw the monkey and shooed him away. He realized that he shouldn't be so greedy with his peas because he lost all of them to try to gain just one.


Silence is Golden 
A lion had a cub with a jackal. The cub looked like a lion but had the yelp of a jackal. Other cubs didn't think he was a real lion, so his father told him to keep his mouth shut. For the rest of his life he was quiet so that others thought he was a lion and weren't frightened by his jackal yelp.

The Cunning Crane and the Crab
There was a crane that lived by a pond. He hatched a plan to catch the fish and make them think that he would take them to the lake, but he would really eat them. He tried this same thing with a crab, but the crab was smarter and knew the crane had other plans. He threatened to kill the crane if the crane did not let him live. The crane let the crab down at the lake but the crab killed him anyway.


The Crane (Blogspot)

The Giant Crab and Other Tales From India by W.H.D Rouse

Wednesday, April 18, 2018

Reading A: Buddhist Jataka Tales

The Giant Crab
A giant crab would eat the animals that came to the lake to drink and got bigger and bigger as he ate. An elephant and his wife planned to stop the crab. The crab hurt the elephant and was infatuated with his wife. So while he was distracted by elephant's wife, the elephant crushed the crab.

The Dishonest Friend
A man trusted his friend with a plough. The friend took the plough and told the man that a rat ate it. The man knew the friend was lying and he took the friend's son to another house and told the friend that a hawk took the boy. The friend didn't believe that a hawk could take a boy, the man retorted with no one could believe a rat could eat a plough. The friend gave the plough back and the man gave the son back.


(Freebookpalooza)



The Giant Crab and Other Tales From India by W.H.D Rouse

Sunday, April 15, 2018

Tech Tip: Canvas Dashboard



For this week's Tech Tip. I changed the colors and changed the names of all of my courses on the Canvas Dashboard. It's easier to navigate than to remember the course numbers and ID's for each class. This makes it a lot easier.

Monday, April 9, 2018

Tech Tip: Twitter Following

For this Tech Tip, I decided to follow a new Twitter account. The account I decided to follow was John Krasinski's. He was Jim Halpert in my favorite TV show, The Office, and he recently directed a new thriller called A Quiet Place. I'm interested in seeing that movie, so I decided to follow his Twitter account to see what he and other people are saying about the movie.

Learning Challenge: Sleep

Sleeping Baby (Independent)
In the article I read, How Sleep Deprivation Decays the Mind and Body, it said that no one knows exactly WHY we sleep. I thought that was so interesting. We all get tired, and if we don't sleep, we feel awful, we look awful, and if we keep it up, we'll live shorter. I have no idea why we sleep either, but I think it's interesting that scientists don't even fully know the reason.

Friday, April 6, 2018

Week 11 Story: Three Fishes

Once upon a time, there were three fishes. Their names were Very-Thoughtful, Thoughtful and Thoughtless. 

Very-Thoughtful, the leader of the group, was a smart and cunning fish. He always excelled in whatever he put his mind to and he never was easily influenced by bad decisions. 

Thoughtful, although not as smart, was still a relatively intelligent fish. He always thought things through, and weighed the pros and cons of every situation before he made decisions. However, sometimes those decisions weren't always the right ones. 

Finally, there was Thoughtless, the weakest-minded fish of the group. Who knows why they kept this guy around. He had the attention span of a nematode, he was always getting himself into trouble with sharks and such, and he never thought about a decision before making it. 

One day, the three fishes were swimming towards a city. Very-Thoughtful felt weird and told the other two that they should swim back home. Civilizations have people that hunt and eat fish like them and it would be too dangerous for them there. It was a better idea to just go home. 

However, Thoughtless had to go running his mouth again, "But the city is so cool! Our home is boring. Don't you guys want to see what's in store there?" 

Thoughtful weighed both of the options carefully in his head, but in the end, he went with Thoughtless' idea to keep swimming towards the city. In his mind, what was so bad about a new experience? 

Very-Thoughtful was hesitant but he couldn't let his friends keep swimming alone. Who knows what kind of trouble Thoughtless could get them in. 

When they got to the city, they immediately regretted their decision to keep swimming. A huge net suddenly surrounded Thoughtless and Thoughtful with Very-Thoughtful watching from the outside, helpless and not knowing how to save his friends. 

Suddenly, he had an idea. If he distracted the fisherman, maybe he would try to catch Very-Thoughtful and his friends would have a chance to escape. He began to flail and splash around in the water and the fisherman took his net from Thoughtful and Thoughtless as he tried to catch Very-Thoughtful. 

This was their chance. The second the net was gone, Very-Thoughtful shouted "Swim away! Swim and don't look back!" The three fishes might as well have been Michael Phelps with the way they booked it out of that city. 

3 Fish (Blogspot)

Author's Note:  This story was an expansion on the 3 Fishes story in Jataka Tales by Ellen C. Babbit. There wasn't any real story change, I just wanted to expand on the story and make it a little more interesting by describing the fish more and giving the situation more detail

Wednesday, April 4, 2018

Reading A: More Jataka Tales

The Cunning Wolf
A man goes to hunt wolves for his dinner. He lies on the ground and plays dead until one comes up that he can hit. The king of the wolves sees his trick, and runs away before the man can hit him and throws his club but misses. The rest of the animals run away.

The Three Fishes
Three fishes leave their home and go towards a city. One of the fish, Very-Thoughtful, tells the others that they should go home because there are fishermen in the city. The other fishes don't pay attention and get caught in a net. Very-Thoughtful creates a distraction for the fisherman and the others escape. They return back to their home.

The Penny-Wise Monkey
A king and his men from a rich country go to take a far away country. They see a monkey eating peas. The monkey drops one pea and tries to retrieve it, but in turn, loses his other peas. The king learns a lesson to be grateful for what he has and not try to gain a little but lose a lot.

The Golden Goose
There was a golden goose that decided to help a family by giving them its golden feathers every day. One day, the mother gets greedy and decides to take all of his feathers. When she takes them, the feathers grow back normal, not golden, and the goose never returns.

The Golden Goose (The Baldwin Project)
Jataka Tales by Ellen C. Babbit

Sunday, April 1, 2018

Fake Social media Tech Tip



Famous Last Words: A last time for everything

As I look upon the week in front of me, a lot of different emotions hit me. I am a part of OU's Sooner Scandals, and Brackett week (show week) is this upcoming week. If you read my intro, Sooner Scandals is an on-campus event that involves organizations writing, directing, choreographing and writing music for a 12-minute musical. And because I am a senior, this is my last year to be a part of it.

I started Scandals when I was just a sophomore. I was involved with theatre in high school, but I wasn't serious enough about it to go to college for theatre or anything. But when I heard about Scandals, I knew that it was the thing for me to do. There are so many people in Scandals casts that have no musical bones in their bodies, but they are a part of the show and learn the dances and songs like everyone else. It's a thing that anyone can do, musically inclined or not.

Our awards from last year (Facebook)
Scandals means a lot to me, not just because it's a fun way for me to be creative and still be involved with music and theatre, but it means a lot because of the friendships and relationships I've formed throughout it. Last year, I was the head director for my organization and we were paired with a sorority. The head director for the sorority and I hit it off and got to know each other throughout the process, she became my girlfriend, and we're still dating, more than a year later.

It's a stressful process with a lot of different people working on one collective show, and I am going to be relieved when it's over. I'll have more time for myself, for my friends and girlfriend, and more time for school. But I will also be sad that I am no longer going to be a part of Scandals. It was a huge part of my college career and now, that part of college is done for me, like so many other things soon will be.