London in July

So my family wants to bring me on a trip to London next summer if we can pull it off. The problem is, they don't want to do anything exciting. My Dad wants to go to a graveyard where some of our ancestors are born and then go look at bookshops. My Mom is fixated on that huge building with the clock on it. I really don't care about any of that stuff. I am in love with anything that is remotely related to nature and culture, and I like taking time to stop, eat, meet people with great stories while i search for the most beautiful nature London has to offer. So my question is, where is the most beautiful nature and cultural spots in London?

In Need of Fresh Raspberries Recipes

I have a good amount of raspberries sitting in my fridge that i need to use up. My good neighbor just have around 5 pounds of raspberries he brought from Oregon ( how i just love him!)
I need to use them fast before they go to waste; I'm not a fan of freezing fruits. Every tasty sounding thing i can think to google calls for raspberry preserves. I'd make my own quick jam as a substitute, but that'd take way too much time i got to thinking about somehow incorporating cream cheese and chocolate if possible because that would be delicious. Maybe in a cheesecake, but i only have a pound or so of cream cheese and would rather not go to the store due to my low budget lol.. Maybe some type of oatmeal bar? have any suggestions?

I just made my mom and girlfriend a black forest cake, but instead of using cherries I used raspberries, since my mom does not care for cherries. I used up some of my berries making the filling, decorating it, and I even made my own raspberry-infused liqueur (although I just used chambord =p). And guess what? there are still plenty of raspberries left! They need to be put in good use ASAP, any any ideas are more than welcome.

Advise

A girl in my English class was asking my professor for advice about her boyfriend so my professor goes on a 10 minute rant regarding advice from others.

She says something like this, "Stop, stop this for your own good. If you let other people give you advice, whether its bad or good you are giving up what make you YOU. Why cant you understand that every choice you make is a string that pulls on other strings. Why do you want others to pull those strings for you, even if its indirect. Make your own choices, your own mistakes and learn from them. Everything is more complicated than you think. You only see a tenth of what is true. There are a million little strings attached to every choice you make; you can destroy your life every time you choose.

Then i argue to her, "Asking for advice gives you several different perspectives on a matter that allow you to see it from various different angles than what you, yourself can think up of. Following advice blindly is stupid, yes, but obtaining advice to consider and see how it fits into the equation is not."

And my teacher says, " Im giving you a wake up call not advice. Im just asking you to be yourself, and you say NO I'd rather be someone else. Everyone is somebody but nobody wants to be themselves. The worst advice someone can give you is to ask for advice. "

So i reply to her, "So you are giving me advice about not taking others' advice..."

HAHA! How i just love my English class, the only class that wakes me up in the mornings.

FRISCO: Nature and City

So most of my family lives in San Francisco and although I am not really found of cities in general I find San Francisco and exception. I lived  in San Francisco, California until the age of 12 and It is arguably one of the most beautiful city in the United States--a great combination of natural setting (hills, Bay, Pacific Ocean) and man-made beauty (lots of attractive parks, Victorian and other architecture, Golden Gate bridge). It's also within a few hours' drive of a great range of beautiful natural sites (redwoods, mountains, beaches that aren't too cold to set foot on). On a cultural lever Frisco is one of the most educated places in the country--they have a lot of incredibly smart and creative people running around (or maybe they seem smart to a 12 year old lol) . San Francisco also a very diverse and generally extremely tolerant place. Not to mention its restaurants and vibrant cultural activities. Not that there aren't downsides--it may be the most expensive place to live in the U.S., and the schools are struggling, so it's not a very family-friendly city. Also, the region's famously progressive leftist tendencies, while hardly monolithic, can get a little extremist and silly, although I'm a leftist myself. But aside for those typical problem every city in the US is a really nice that in fact bring me closer to nature than no other. The nice cold breeze down at the harbor, eating some chowder, next to the bay area wild life really connects my primitive self back to the outer world; I cant believe such a city really makes me feel alive.

School @ 6AM Tomorrow

Hello!!  I'm back from my 3 day weekend. I spent the whole 3 day weekend faarrr away from the city with my girlfriend and friends and we had so much fun bike riding. Now is time to go to school and I am not looking for to it. I need some aid here. I don't have the typical relationship dilemmas you see throughout your days, nor do I have self esteem issues. To be quite honest with you, I consider myself relatively happy and quite content with my life as far as internal happiness/joy is concerned. I am, however, concerned with my studious attitude as of late. For some reason, I've been completely detached from my studies this semester and I feel absolutely deplorable about it. Each time I pick up a book to learn, or to study, I feel somewhat displaced. Homework problems seem like a chore; classes simply bother me; assignments are nothing more than tedious tasks for me to complete. The tasks/assignments aren't easy either; a good portion of them are moderately difficult. Regardless, I feel as if my mind is miles away from my intellectual pursuits. Furthermore, I've been feeling very .. cloudy, as of recently. If not hazy, then my remembrance of certain concepts has seemingly evaporated from my mind. I just feel like a shell of my former self. I don't know what to do. The only thing i really think all day is being outside. Has anyone felt this way?
For the record, I'm a Science major with a relatively ''high'' GPA. I'm in the second semester of my Junior year.

Ohhh that Nietzche

So we are reading a lot of Nietzche in my critical thinking class and today I finally sat down and crack open my first book of the year. I tried to read Nietzsche: Beyond Good and Evil , and I just could not do it. Whatever brilliant points Nietzsche is making here, I can't even make out what they are. When he isn't complaining about other philosophers for paragraphs at a time, he's throwing in Latin phrases for no reason other than the fact that throwing in some Latin makes your sentence 500% smarter, or rambling about nothing forever with tons of obscure sentences that you have a master's degree to even hope to decipher. I can't even critique Nietzsche's philosophy, he's so far arrogant I can't even make out what his philosphy is underneath all that "prophetic words"t he uses.Maybe we are jumping into hard writters too soon? Maybe is like picking up a journal article in quantum chromodynamics and not understand it, same with Nietzche, expecting to be able to just pick up one of the most difficult philosophers and just read him. Why? I know that reading serious works requires serious background and serious training but if a writer isn't able to convey their point to the reader, then the writer is at fault. You can't blame the reader for not being willing to read a dozen other books first. The reader gives the writer their livelihood, so the writer owes it to the reader to make things as easy to understand as is reasonably possible. I have learned one important thing though. Intellectual does not necessarily mean good.

Rain in Southern Calirofnia

Alas! It's finally raining! How I missed the rain, to say how much i like rain would be an understatement. I'm about to call up some friends and go get WET! There is nothing better than feeling like a kid again, special with people you really like. Hopefully I don't get sick. I must leave know before this rain stops, knowing how how rare rain is over here lol.

Have a nice 3 day weekend friends.