I found this map-generator on my favorite blog: MyWorld66
It makes a map of all the places you've been - countries, states, provinces, whatever you want to categorize by. I really like this thing. I love traveling, and frankly, I'm the sort of person who would (and has seriously thought of) buying a map and putting pins on the places I've been, just so I can see where I need to hit next. Turns out I have a lot of traveling left to do.

This past week has been a ridiculous affair for me as I've been scrambling to get all my final papers in and studying for finals. The internet has not been helpful at all, and this blog has definitely been a procrastination tool for me.

It's funny that this blog is simultaneously class-related "work" and also one of my main sources of procrastination. This past semester, whenever I am not in the mood to study or am simply in a procrastinating mode, my tools for procrastination have been the following, in this order:

1. Email
2. Xanga
3. Facebook
4. This blog
5. Our wiki
6. Youtube

We've been talking a lot lately about the various issues that stem from reading hypertexts. All these discussions about reader participation and power dynamics in the hypertext world reminded me of something very random, but somehow related in a weird sort of way.

Does anyone remember these things? My mom got me one in sixth grade, and I was obsessed for several months afterwards. I would bring it with me to school and feed it, play games with it, clean up its trash--all so that one day it would grow up into the "ideal." Apparently, there's lots of different forms that each "pet" can ultimately grow into, depending on how well you take care of it. If you were a superstar owner, it would turn into a beautiful cat-like thing, but if you neglected it, it often turned into an ugly tadpole-like creature and "die" young. Basically our choices resulted in the final form.