Your Daily Forecast

"You aren't entirely sure what's going on with your mate or your best friend, but you should be able to clear things up if you can let them know that you're confused. Don't let misunderstandings come between you!"


This little quote right here was taken from my daily horoscope on Yahoo!'s homepage. These little sayings make me wonder, how often are horoscopes not true? But more importantly, how eerily true are they sometimes? A horoscope is a forecast of someone's future based on the alignment of the stars and planets. Make sense? Not really to me. I don't understand how the stars can predict my love life or how much money I'm going to make this month. Astrology has always been a matter that confuses me. While I can distinguish the Little Dipper from the Big Dipper in the sky, that's about all I know from the star gods. So how do the alignment of the sun, moon, and some celestial bodies pinpoint exactly who I am? I'm a Gemini, as is my twin brother, and what's weird about this sign is that we're twins. The sign for Gemini is twins. Because Geminis are known to be versatile and two-faced. Let's just hope two-faced in my situation is talking about my other twin, and not another personality. They're considered leaders and stubborn people. Another weird fact is that my name Jordan, in Hebrew, means "ascending from the gods, a leader to all." Which parallels with my Gemini description of being a leader. Creepy, I know. While these may not always be true, horoscopes are an entertaining way to pass the time. It's the tarot card readers that I'm scared of. I don't want someone telling me my future and ruining it for me. No thank you. I'd rather just trust the stars' definition on my Yahoo! homepage.


http://shine.yahoo.com/astrology/gemini/daily-overview/;_ylt=AqVcGGx2sMiE9G.xj7Ob5GN6b6U5

Going the Distance

Someone once told me, "Relationships are made out of convenience." People meet and stay together when it's most convenient for them. If you think about it, it's kind of true. Your mom and dad said they met in college, another couple met in the line at the post office on a certain day, and other people met by sharing a broken down elevator together. Yep, I've heard all these stories. What they all have in common is one thing, the right place at the right time. Coming from a divorced family, you realize relationships are all about timing. My father, who actually told me this quote, experienced this firsthand. He met his future wife, my stepmom, while he was living in Texas and she was in Tennessee. Well as fate would have it, they fell in love. Six states away. Basically convenience became an issue and they both knew they had to do something to salvage their relationship. So my stepmom, Shelby, packed up her bags and moved to Texas three weeks after meeting my dad. Too soon, some would say, but eight years later they're still going strong. And they credit the lack of distance between them.

After hearing this story you wonder do long distance relationships really work? Can people actually go the distance? Obviously there are people who have tested this and proved that long distance relationships can work. Props to them. I, however, am somewhat skeptical. That saying "distance makes the heart grow fonder" is true. But how long does that distance have to be? And what if the opposite happens, and you forget about them? Although I stand by my theory that relationships are formed from convenience, there are examples that make me doubt my theories. Look at all the wives and husbands who have spouses in the war overseas. One of them is my cousin and her new husband. Through Skype and "Dear John" letters, they make it work. It's cute, true love stories like this that give us hope. Overall though one thing's for sure. If you want to make it convenient for you, it'll happen. If you make the effort and go the extra mile (or thousands of miles), long distance relationships can work. It's just how much you're willing to tread that'll make the difference. 

Cock A Doodle Do!

Can't seem to wake up in the morning? Take a Rooster Pill! And what in God's name is a Rooster Pill? Well they're pills that regulate your body to wake up after 7 hours of sleep. Not only do you wake up on time, but you also wake up not feeling groggy or tired. It's a miracle pill. Made by a single mother, stressed and never getting enough sleep, the pill contains an assortment of vitamins including Vitamin B, thiamin, and riboflavin. These pills are known to maintain health and boost one's energy. The coating on the pill is said to get into your bloodstream so that you don't wake up feeling tired. Does it work for real? Honestly, I've never tried it. But for the decent price of $30-$40 per tablet, I'd be up to try. I wonder if they work for hangovers too...?

The Real World

The Real World. No, I'm not talking about the TV show like a lot of you probably thought when you saw this title. I'm talking about the actual real world of reality. Living in America, it's like we have no clue of what's going on in the outside world. The fighting in Libya, the earthquakes in Japan, and let's not forget the royal wedding in England. Well we all probably know about the last one. That's had about as much media coverage as the U.S. presidential election. All we know about is Jake Gyllenhal's new haircut and the tornado that hit the St. Louis airport. We are literally suffocated in a bubble. We're ignorant to the world around us. 

This subject bugs me a lot actually. A lot of people say they've experienced the world yet they've never even had a stamp in their passport. They say that they're concerned about world hunger, yet don't even donate a penny to the cause. We seem to give no credit to other cultures or their problems. In fact if you haven't been to Pakistan or Libya, you'll probably judge them poorly just because of the news coverage you've seen about them. But have you ever thought what other countries thought of us? What do they read in their newspapers every morning? Probably about the heightening price of taxes, our nomination of an African American president, and Reese Witherspoon's recent marriage. Even though we are one of the richest nations, with a ton of diversity, and a wealth of opportunities, are we in the real world? We're not the ones suffering for food and water like some poverty stricken countries around the world. We're not the ones who are afraid to step out in the street, because they're afraid of getting shot from the war violence. Not to mention, a war they have nothing to do with.

Even though I say all this, I have ironically never ventured past the North American continent. It's not that I don't want to, I just haven't had the opportunity to. I dream of the day that I can go abroad and see the world for what it really is. Different people living in different ways in different places. However I think I'm most interested in just experiencing things in someone else's life. Seeing the daily struggles of someone and all they go through to survive. I'm not talking about a five star resort vacation where shopping and tanning are the priorities on my list. I'm talking the real, up front way of living. I know it sounds somewhat depressing, but it's one of those things that will make you appreciate what you really have. And hopefully make you a better person. Ultimately it's a tough world out there. I hope one day I'll get the chance to at least try to understand it. And maybe, just maybe, find a way to help.

What Came First, the Chicken or the Egg?

This age old question is probably the most annoying question someone has ever asked me. No, I have absolutely no idea what came first. Because don't you need an egg, to make a chicken yet you also need a chicken to make an egg? It's all quite confusing. This question is also one of Google's most asked questions in the past year. Well apparently "eggsperts" Professor David Papineau and poultry farmer, Charles Bourns, said that it was the egg. Why the egg? Because eggs were around long before the chicken was. Think back to prehistoric times when even dinosaurs had eggs. Every type of animal lays an egg. So if the egg didn't come first, how would all animals be here? Bourns says, ""Eggs were around long before the first chicken arrived. Of course, they may not have been chicken eggs as we see them today, but they were eggs" (CNN's "Chicken and egg debate unscrambled"). But do we really believe these "eggsperts"? Or is it just another theory trying to be proven by people claiming to be knowledgeable? In any case, it's just one of those questions that can never truly be answered. "What came first, the chicken or the egg?" will forever stay scrambled in my mind. 

http://articles.cnn.com/2006-05-26/tech/chicken.egg_1_chicken-eggs-first-egg-first-chicken?_s=PM:TECH

Blind As A Bat

Being blind from the time I could remember, I've never really remembered what it was like to wake up and be able to see the world. To wake up and not have to squint at the alarm clock and to not have to spend a good five minutes every morning trying to find where I put my glasses the night before. The funny thing is my family didn't even know I was blind until I was six. We were driving in Michigan and I asked my grandma why there were such big sticks in the snow. They were telephone poles.

Being legally blind is common these days and more kids than I thought have grandpa vision like me too! Being in college made me less insecure about my vision, because it seemed like everyone else around me couldn't see either. You'd be surprised how many people have the words "Restrictions to the Road: Needs Corrective Vision" on the back of their driver's license. Yes apparently I could be a danger to the road if I drove without glasses. To be honest, I can't even see the color of the stoplights when at the intersection if my contacts aren't in. I'm surprised they even let me get my license. 

A mere 10% of people in the United States are legally blind. Hey, I'm one of them! It kind of makes me feel special considering I'm pretty much normal otherwise. It's like one of those quirks everyone has about him or herself. Mine's that I can't see the person who's talking to me. But that's about the only good thing I can name about being blind. Try being in college and being blind. Having to somehow keep track of your contacts and pray to God your eyes don't get red when you're out at night. An eye doctor once told me to stay away from bars because the smoke in the air was causing eye redness. Obviously, this guy had never been to college. Or to a bar. That's why this year I decided to stop worrying about my eyes and find something that adjusted to my life. These wonderful things were daily contacts. And next up is LASIK. That's just if I don't go blind beforehand. 

He's Just Not That Into You... Because of You

"He should call me first." "Never be the first to text." "Play hard to get and he'll want you." These are lines that our friends tell us when first meeting someone of the opposite sex. It's like from the get go all we hear in our minds is "Play games, play games." But do games really help in forming a relationship? Does it really matter who texts first or who didn't?

I did a little experiment with one of my good friends and a guy she had just met. She met this guy one night at the bar and the next morning decided she really liked him. They had swapped phone numbers and planned to meet again. However when asking when she was going to talk to him she just blatantly replied, "He's texting me first. I'm the girl, I don't do that." Three days pass and... nothing. I insisted that she text him and she refused. She stated her reasons being that if a guy really wanted to talk to you, he would. Needless to say, they never ended up talking. Seeing him out a couple weeks later, he came up to me and asked why my friend was not into him. Little did he know, she actually did like him yet was too afraid to just be herself and text him. She let playing a game ruin the possibility of a relationship.

So this begs the questions, should we play games in relationships? In a society run by the ideals presented in the chick flick, He's Just Not That Into You, girls became even more afraid than ever to talk to a guy. Seeing Ginnifer Goodwin get denied over and over again by guys and Bradley Cooper cheating on his wife with a  young Scarlett Johanson made us wonder if there was any truth to any relationship. Do we have to play hard to get to... well, get what we want? Does playing games keep you from getting hurt? My answer to this is no. If you ask someone in a relationship how they got together, the majority will say that "It just happened." The reason it happened? Because both parties were interested... and showed it. Don't be afraid to look stupid by texting someone. The thing is if they don't text back, well move on. It wasn't meant to be. There's a lot of fish in the sea. Just man up and make the first move. I mean look at all the famous love stories. Romeo didn't find his love by waiting for Juliet to text him. Or send a messenger dove to him, whatever they did in those days.