Wishing You Were Somehow Here Again

It's been awhile. I was very busy... mostly doing homework.

Thursday I did homework all day long, or at least when I wasn't at class, at dinner and lunch, or at Bible study. Friday I went to calc, failed the quiz, went to lunch, and wrote my great books paper (it sucked). After I finished my paper, I went to that one sub place with Alison, Caitlyn (Alison's little sister), Erin, Paul (a trombone), one of Erin's friends from home, and one of their friends whose name I don't remember. Then Alison, Alison's sister, and I went to cru.

Yesterday I was on an island... literally. There was this Cru "woman's retreat" thing which I was easily persuaded to go to. It was at least an hour away from Ann Arbor and I fully enjoyed the car ride. The event took place in a really nice three story house which was next to the water. It was an enjoyable time... except they talked a lot about boys and ate chocolate frequently. It was funny to see all the nearby people lunge at the chocolate whenever some was set out... and the chocolate never lasted long.

I like my leg muscle.

I might possibly be coming home this Friday.

Well, I'm boring. I have nothing else to say.

It's surprising that I have time to write this.

Actually, I have 10 minutes to write this... 10 minutes before I must leave for campus band.

I must say, today was the stupidest I've felt in a while. I went to the "physics help room" in Randall and neither of my professors were there so I went to someone who looked helpful. It turns out that he was a lecturer, possibly of physics 126. So I asked him stuff and the first one didn't go too badly, but during the second one, I managed to hit a local maximum in my stupidity vs. time graph. I won't go into it though.

Yeah, I'm completely behind in stuff, or at least I was. I have physics homework due tonight at 1a.m., calc homework due friday, a calc quiz friday, and a great books paper due friday. I just finished my physics homework an hour ago. My calc homework is kind of done but not really. I have not studied at all for my calc quiz. And on top of all of that, I don't even have a topic yet for my great books paper. I'm on a roll... or maybe I'm in a roll.

-----a few hours later-----

So, I still don't really have time to write this but I'm going to anyway. Campus band tonight was fun. I like band. We got our last song today. It's pretty cool. The girl next to me was way out of tune the whole time. That wasn't too cool.

I always have more to say than I can remember to write.

Find nothin' but faith in nothing

I'm in the process of adding songs to my computer that bring back memories from times past. So far there is:
Eve 6 - Inside Out
Matchbox 20 - 3 a.m.
Matchbox 20 - Real World
Fastball - The Way
Eagle Eye Cherry - Save Tonight
Semisonic - Closing Time (this one actually reminds me of playing Mario at Vanessa's although I don't know why)
and others. Most of these are from when I was in jr. high and consequently bring back memories of those good ol' days. A couple Smashmouth songs and a certain Sir Mix-a-lot song will always remind me of Heather and Vanessa... 3 a.m. by Matchbox 20 falls into that category too. But Real World by Matchbox 20 reminds me of going to piano lessons with my sister. The song Sex and Candy reminds me of thunderstorms and tornadoes and Rob Wells. Inside Out by Eve 6 was one of my favorite songs and so was The Way by Fastball. What It's Like by Everlast and The Way remind me of DJ. More recently, the whole Skillet - Collide CD and 3 Doors Down - Away From The Sun CD reminds me of my senior year in high school. The song Tipsy reminds me of going to and from Caseville with Aleica and Hannah, but that song along with Get Low and the one with Ludacris remind me of graduation, the party after graduation, and the weekend after graduation... specifically when Vanessa and Ross and I went to Essexville to see Harry Potter on Sunday night and forgot that he had to go back to school the next day. Ah, the memories...

Saturday night, I had a dream that Vanessa and I were in Aeropostale and she bought two big bouncy-balls from one of those candy machines that you stick quarters into and twist the knob. She bought two because she wasn't satisfied with the first one. Then we went outside and Vanessa started bouncing them really hard and chasing them around the parking lot. There was more to the dream but all I can remember from the rest of it was a really nasty guy and me puking.

I have no German final, two finals on April 22nd (great books and physics), and one on the 27th (calc). Great. Well, I guess it could be a good thing since I will have four days to study for calc, but I think I'd still rather be done on Friday.

Last night was evil. I could not get to sleep and ended up laying there for about 3.5 hours. Arg... not pleasant. On top of that, I didn't feel good. I felt kinda hungry and kinda barfy at the same time.

There have been so many times these past few days when I've almost fallen flat on my face. A few times I've caught myself with one of my feet and one time I caught myself on a car. Speaking of catching oneself, on the way out of calc today this one guy totally got caught on the door. That was kinda off topic.

I found this German song that I really like: "Nichts in der Welt" by Die Ärzte.

On facebook, there's this group called "It's Pop, Bitch!" (refering to soda-pop). It's funny; I laughed. After all, this is a subject that is very close to my heart.

I had to watch Lola Rennt (Lola Runs or Run Lola Run) tonight in MLB 3. It was like watching it in a theater. The movie was pretty good. It reminded me of The Matrix mixed with The Butterfly Effect.

The hiccups have been bothering me off and on all day. First they appeared on my way back to South Quad from classes. Then they reappeared after lunch and then after dinner and then again on my way back from the MLB. It's been a hiccupy day.

Well, it appears that we've come to the end of my post. My lab is dropped and gone. Life is ok. Stargate is on. I'm content for the moment... and I might even know what I want to major in... maybe... but it'll probably change my mind in a month or so. My birthday is in a month. Don't forget! ;)

Let's go to the hospital!

...or more accurately, let's go to L'Hospital. Yes, on Wednesday I did officially learn the rule of L'Hospital. I'm such a dork. Only Vanessa is going to understand a word of this.

I've invented a new word: accurfate. It arose from my inability to type, so naturally it is an adjective meaning being without the natural ability to type correctly.

You know that you're in the honors college when you are awoken by a heated argument in the hall about the treatises of Plato's Republic. Heh. This did not happen to me nor would I participate in that sort of thing (I'm not nearly opinionated enough), but it did happen to Bob.

Lately I've been craving human contact, interaction with a live present person... like bad. And yet here I am in front of my computer.

If only you could see...

Have a wonderful life.

I hate waiting...

I've seen Adam Supernant a lot this semester, though I doubt that he recognizes me at all. Many times when I've been in Mason Hall before my Great Books discussion, I've seen him walk by.

So I went to my German GSI's office hours and talked to her... in English for the most part thankfully. She read my Aufsatz and was impressed. She asked if I had written it with someone or if I wrote it by myself, and I said myself because I did write it alone.

I always have so much to say during my day but then when I go to write my blog, I always forget it all.

Something struck me today... not like physically hit me but a revelation came upon me. I'm not at liberty to divulge this information at this time to the multitudes that converge upon my blog every day, so just be content in knowing that I did realize something today.

My head is still kind of throbbing from when I hit it on the bed yesterday. It's really really tender.

The Calc Before The Storm

My calc teacher smells like an old-people home... or, more specifically, my great aunt Ruth's old house. German was once again evil. My day was going fine until German and then all the goodness was sapped out of me. And then I was attacked by mustard at lunch. At least I had campus band tonight and that was fun, except Talley wasn't there and we had the girl for the whole time. Also, they switched the slow song to "Amazing Grace". It's pretty but it's nothing overly special.

I saw Mike Dittenber on my way to my physics discussion this morning. It was kind of a really random thing.

Music has the ability to evoke especially strong emotions and memories. I love music.

I find it repulsive when people use the word "f***" and all variations on it. I see no point in it... no reason it must be used especially in normal conversation.

When I got back from campus band, I slammed my head into my bed railing so hard that I stumbled back a few feet. Now I have a large red spot right beneath my hairline, but it's not really noticeable.

Always remember, Scottie doesn't know

I did not want to get up this morning. Arg. After I turned off my alarm, I stuffed my face into the corner where my "head-pillow" meets my "wall-barrier-pillow" and thought, "wow, this is comfortable... I wish I could stay here all day with my face buried under inches and inches of cotton and fluff." I did not do what I wished though. But at times I wish I had.

German was rough again today. Why do they have German law students teaching German classes anyway? It didn't help that it was -572 degrees outside... actually, it was more like 8 degrees feeling like -5 degrees. Calc was boring. I ended up drawing a picture of a tropical sandy beach with jagged cliffs to the west.

Have you ever gotten a song stuck in your head even though you've only heard it once, twice at the most, a long time ago? That happened to me this afternoon around 1pm. I was going about my merry way when suddenly I realized that a song was running through my head. What song was it? I don't know. I've only heard once or twice a month or two ago. I think it's one of the songs they sang at a Cru thing, and the only line I could remember was, "and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever forever forever amen."

Today ended up being productive. I got $37 by returning some unneeded books at Ulrich's, bought a lab book, made a large dent in my calc homework, finished my online physics homework (I got 96%), finished my German homework for tomorrow, got halfway through the Aufsatz 1 (a German essay thing), made 3 CDs, watched Stargate, and managed to make my computer quit being dumb. Speaking of my computer, it can now play DVDs.

"Hello. Are you bipolar?" <-- part of our dinner conversation tonight.

In other (good) news, I have acquired a roommate for next year. Steph has agreed to share a common living space with me in the 2005-2006 school year. This is yet another example of how God will provide when you submit to his will and stop worrying and trying to push for what you want... the other example being my UM admissions crap last year. I'll explain more later when I'm not as tired.

Yesterday, Today, and Forever

Yesterday I came home. A lot of times when I leave Ann Arbor, I feel sad and yesterday was one of those days. I just had such a good week that I didn't really want to leave... but it's all good. My clothes need to be washed and I need to take a few more things back to college, so it's not like I came home for no reason.

I feel a bit sickish. I don't want to be sick.

There is much homework to do. I must read books 1-3 in The Republic by Plato for great books, do 8 calc problems, write an LLJ (language learning journal) for German, read sections 4.1 - 4.6 for physics, and do the 6 physics assignments. I need some help with my physics and hopefully I will get the help that I need.

I'm home but there's no one around to do stuff with. I guess that means more time for homework and movies. Speaking of movies, my computer still will not play DVDs even though it has the program now.

Have a good day. :)

Schizophrenic Weather

Yeah, I heard someone say that (the title) on my way back from German and I liked it so I used it.

I saw Nick Trombley today. It was weird. I had eaten lunch with Alison, Amanda, and Bob and we were putting our trays in the rack when someone said "hi" or something like that to me. I looked to my left and there was Nick with very short hair... I hardly recognized him. It was really cool seeing him.

So my day was good so far. The physics lecture was cool and entertaining. The professor did a lot of demonstrations, plus I got both in-class questions right (the answers were "v=0, a≠0" and "yes"). He took out a bucket of liquid nitrogen and dumped some of it on the table repeatedly. That was really cool... and also very cold (only 70ish K or 70 degrees above absolute zero). He also (successfully) did the thing where you set a table and then pull a tablecloth out from underneath everything, demonstrated a car accident with mini models and the one's head flew off, and dropped a piece of paper and a golfball together in a vacuum so we could see them fall at the same rate. The lecture has turned out to be consistantly interesting. On the way to German, I saw Chris and Sarah from my German class last semester. German was a little weird today... we learned some German pick-up lines. For example: "Sie haben die gleiche Augenfarbe wie die Ledersitze meines Ferrari". Then there was my fun lunch and seeing Nick. Great Books discussion was interesting, but I'll get into that later. After that, I went to the 9th floor of SQ and talked to the advisor there about my options with Physics 141 and I have officially changed it to pass/fail. Then when I got back to my room, I had a breakthrough on my calc and so that was cool. And now I'm doing a blog, Stargate will be on soon, and there is Cru tonight... what could be a better day?

The weather is quite weird...and cool. First there was a ton of snow, but then it rained for a few days in a row. Yesterday there was intense fog and that was awesome. It reminded me of London... even though I've never been to London, but in stories you always here about the fog. Today is was downpoaring the whole day until about 5pm and then it turned to snow. Hmm.

So Great Books. They were discussing how many religions were influenced by Plato and Judaism came up as one that came before Plato. So then one guy started saying that the god of the Jews was more of a spiritual force and was imperfect because of his wrath, and he used the book of Job as proof of this. I was like pishaw.

Someone just walked down the hall singing a Backstreet Boys song.

gotta love band

When I was in elementary school, one of my first good friends was Matthew Crafton. I don't remember how we became friends but I remember going over to his house and playing. On TV shows, a lot of the time they make it so little kids only have friends of the same gender as themselves. I don't remember it ever being that way.

Today was my first day of campus band. It was hot, let me tell you. The songs that my group, the 6pm group, is playing are Americans We by Henry Fillmore, First Suite in E-flat for Military Band by Gustav Holst, Scenes from "The Louvre" by Norman Dello Joio, Chorale Prelude: So Pure The Star by Vincent Persichetti, and one more that is on order. They weren't like insanely hard but they weren't a walk in the park either... at least for me, and there wasn't any "it's the first time through so let's take it slow" stuff, except (according to Alison) on the Dello Joio piece, although I sure couldn't tell. The Fillmore one is a march and it's pretty cool. I will probably like Chorale Prelude more once we play it better. First Suite was fairly fun and I liked it more than The Louvre. The two different campus bands are of equal abilities and Alison got second chair in one and Jenny got first chair in the other. I did not try-out and so you can probably guess where I am.

This one is short because I have much homework and many people are talking to me.

The master of multi-tasking...

It's like walking to class while many many geese with diarrhea fly over your head. Actually, it's more like they're sitting in trees, but whatever. ...What am I talking about, you ask? Well, let me explain. Last night it showed a nice thick, beautiful snow and Alison and I marveled at it on our way to Great Books this morning. Around noon after it had warmed up a bit and when I was walking to the MLB from Dennison, I noticed lots of thick, wet, white globs of stuff falling from the trees and as soon as I noticed it, I saw a huge glob fall on the head of the girl who was walking about 12 feet in front of me. The tree had crapped on her... heh. I thought it was fairly humorous. It happened to me a few times, but mine were just small globs, and it was only slushy snow so what did I care...

Physics lecture was fun today. I definitely like the lecture, and I like it more than the discussion and lab. Deutsche Klasse war heute nicht so schlecht als die andere Tage. Around 3:45 I went to the LRC in MLB and watched a German movie: Nach Fünf Im Urwald. Der Film war nicht schlecht... it reminded me of weird artsy movies that Leslie would like (not much of a plot, slow, not much happening, not overly interesting), such as Lost In Translation, or like weird old movies (The Breakfast Club). In a nutshell, this girl has a party and it gets out of control, her dad gets angry and grounds her, she runs away, almost gets involved with two different guys, and goes home. While she is doing this, her parents go out searching for her, find the parents of some friend of hers who stole his parents' car, both sets of parents hang out together, they smoke some weed, get into a fight, wash and blow-dry a dead rabbit... the usual. The rabbit part was funny. In it there were drugs, alcohol, nudity, swearing... such a lovely movie that we're required to watch... and they had my last name (or at least the German version of it). Anyway, it's a very good thing there were subtitles. I worked on my physics lab analysis while I was watching it. The results for part 5 are totally not right.

Yeah, so I don't know if you've heard about my multi-tasking exploits. Last night I was watching TV, talking on the internet, reading physics, and taking a few phone calls. This evening I was watching a movie in German, reading the subtitles, measuring the length of the trajectories, and learning about the lab that I had just done all at once. I'm usually doing at least two things at once... time management.

So in my physics lecture we had to answer three questions with the electronic response things, and I got two of them right. I should've gotten the other one right but I wasn't thinking correctly... I was really close though... well, as close as you can get with adding vectors. I guess I'll just have to settle for 26 points instead of 27 for the day.

I only got 5ish hours of sleep last night and I'm functioning really well. It's been a breakthrough for me.

I tend to relate things to things I have recently learned. In Great Books, the big thing has been Plato's theory of forms and, at least in the first book, love. The theory of forms is that there is an immortal world where there is the one perfect form or idea of everything and that there is the mortal world where everything is a variation of the perfect forms. In the mortal world, people try to realize these perfect things but can't because their human bodies prevent their soul from fully "remembering". And all of this was related to love in my discussion today and whether love had a perfect form or if it was just an intermediary between the immortal world and the mortal world and about all the types of love. So I got to thinking, "what would be the perfect form of love, if there is one?" and then it was like "duh"... God is the perfect form of love and all love here on earth is but a shadow of His love.

Listen

My life is one big fest of suckiness. Well... at least it felt that way when my day of classes finished.

During the physics discussion I revealed to my group that I have never had physics in my life. That broke a little ice between us. Calc wasn't bad but the homework assignment is insanely psycho. German was as crazy as ever. And then there was the physics lab. My lab partner was nice but we all know how good I am at labs. The lab wasn't really too bad but the write-up is going to suck. I have to find a ruler to finish getting the data that we didn't have time to do during the 2 hours of lab and I have to figure out what data I'm supposed to get. I'm considering dropping it or at least changing it to pass/fail. I'd feel bad dropping it now and leaving my lab partner all alone, but I guess I'll just have to do what I have to do. I'm going to talk to an advisor later this week.

I'm so hungry. It's currently 5:15 and I haven't eaten all day (I was about to put "eated" but I stopped myself just in time).

Everything is over my head and I'm struggling to stay afloat... trying not to get bogged down by all the work and then sink to the bottom of failure...

I went to a Cru thing tonight and it presented some interesting options. I definitely want to get more involved with things, help out where I'm needed, and I'm basically open to all the options... I just need to find where I belong.

I see enough to know I'm blind

"The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places" - from A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway

I made a major breakthrough in physics yesterday: I finished all of the online homework except for one question which should've been the easiest one on there but the computer kept saying it was wrong.

Steve was in South Quad for dinner and he kindly accompanied me at my table where I was all alone because my friends were otherwise occupied. It was there that I learned some interesting things about Kyle, but I won't speak about that here. Kyle showed up later to get something from Steve but that is inconsequential.

I was going to read The Symposium yesterday evening but I was invited to a Lord of the Rings marathon, and who in their right mind could turn that down? I got there about halfway through the first disk of the second movie and stayed through the first disk of the last movie. I was planning to stay for the whole thing but for some reason I became extremely tired. There were always more guys in the room than girls - most of the time there were at least twice as many. I guess that just goes to show that it's more of a guy movie, although I do love it. It was nice to watch it with people who love those movies as much as I and who know as much about them as I do. They were a bit more enthusiastic about things than the others that I have watched these movies with.

Every now and then I'll come across a song with incredibly amazing lyrics. Today it was the Jars of Clay song entitled "Faith Enough".

There's really not much to say today. "Better to be silent and thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt" -Abraham Lincoln.

Everything is Nothing

Calc was my only class today. So far we've convered sections 7.1 and 7.2*, also known as inverse functions and the definition of natural logarithms. Maybe I'll be able to pass.

After calc, I stood outside in the cold for 1.5 hours asking people if they wanted to do a short survey and receive a free candy bar. It was cold, but it was funny seeing people's sudden change of heart when they heard about the free candy involved. By the end of it all, my hands felt like they were back in advanced bio pulling pennies out of ice cold water.

Later in the afternoon, I bought my coursepack for German. The line wasn't as long as last semester but it was as annoying as ever.

It's currently 2:45 in the morning of the 8th, but I'm submitting this on the 7th for reasons I don't feel like explaining. I would be sleeping right now but there's extremely loud people in my hall (one of them being my roommate) and I'm not too tired anyway. Plus, I have a blog to finish.

I just got back from a thing at Christine's house. It's technically a sleepover but I'm not sleeping over. They were watching a movie when I left. We ate pizza and talked and played Catch Phrase and ate fortune cookies. It was a good time. Every person there was so unique and interesting...

On the way back to South Quad, there were a bunch of drunk people around, surprise surprise (note the sarcasm). At one spot, a guy was crying profusely, balling, weeping, and another guy was holding him, comforting him. It was an odd site... one does not usually see guys crying like that.

I always make note of things throughout my day that I want to write in my blog, but then I always forget.

Sometimes when I'm typing, my fingers won't listen to my brain and I end up typing words that I wasn't even thinking. For example, in the paragraph above, instead of typing "write" I typed "writing". I don't know... it doesn't sound too interesting (nothing that I write ever is), but lately it has been happening to me all the time. It's not that I hit a wrong letter or two or get my fingers disoriented, it's like my fingers decide to type a totally different word halfway through. I'm not dyslexic, I'm just an idiot.

snowflakes... lots of snowflakes

The snowball fight last night was interesting. I was sitting here at my desk with no motivation to go out unless the fire alarm went off, and I had decided that if the fire alarm didn't go off before 12:15 then I would go to bed. Well, 12:15 rolled around and no fire alarm so I took out my contacts and crawled into bed. Two minutes later, the fire alarm went off. I ended up outside with sandals and no socks, Michigan pajama pants, and my Michigan hat without the ability to see in the middle of an intense snowball battle. Bob found me eventually and inspired me to get involved in the fight. I threw a few snowballs... I was hit in the face once by some snow-shrapnel and I didn't even see it coming, surprisingly enough.

Apparently the parents of one of the kids in my German class came from a mennonite colony in Ukraine. Just thought I'd share that with you all.

Today was my first Great Books 192 lecture. It wasn't bad but the place was crowded. Physics lecture was next and it wasn't bad at all. In fact, it was rather entertaining. The professor, Roy Clarke, did a broad overview lecture, demonstrated some physics concepts, and showed us how to work the electronic response things. He is from England and has an accent... so far I have an English guy, a Russian (or somewhere around there), a German, an Indian (or somewhere around there), and I think my physics lab instructor is Asian. German was as bad as yesterday, but thankfully I don't have it tomorrow. I ended up daydreaming much of the time because she talks so fast and with enough of an accent to make following along arduous. The Great Books discussion was a relief. I have the same GSI as last semester and there's not as much writing required. There are about 4 of the same people as last semester. ...And that was my day.

I saw a walking banana giving out smoothie samples and playing guitar. That's a talented banana.

"An intellectual snob is someone who can listen to the William Tell Overture and not think of The Lone Ranger." -Dan Rather
...if that is the case, then I am an intellectual snob. I've never seen that show. When I was playing Cranium with my cousins we had a humdinger (where one person on your team hums a certain song and the other person has to guess what it is) where all the teams did it, the card called the song "Willian Tell Overture (or the Lone Ranger Theme Song)", and I yelled out "William Tell Overture" at the exact same moment as my counsin, Jon, yelled out "Lone Ranger Theme Song". That was kind of a pointless story.

It's official: I'm dead.

Last night was as miserable as ever.

This morning was typical. I went to my physics discussion. The professor is Ctirad Uher and he sounds Russian. He's old but he seems nice. We got into groups and I'm in a group with the guy named Kevin and this guy named Marwan. Calc came next. I saw some people I knew/recognized from last semester. The professor, Elmas Irmak, seemed ok. She was short and talked softly with an accent, but it might be ok. We went over inverse functions today. German was last and it wasn't good. Diana Mack, the GSI, was apparently from Germany and she spoke quickly with many words I was unfamiliar with. There are four other people in that class that were in my German 103 class last semester: Heidi, Shelly, Erin, and Mitch.

Lunch wasn't wonderful and none of my lunch buddies were there.

I went to the campus band meeting tonight. There are 70 billion flutes and I'm not doing auditions. I'll end up being last chair but oh well. I'll try out next year. There's going to be 3 bands: the top band which is audition only and two campus bands which will be equal. He listed some of the songs that he was considering, but I only remember "First Suite", "Variations on a Shaker Melody", "Scenes From the Louvre", "Salvation is Created", and (I think) "Overture to Candide". He mentioned marches, some songs in a different language, and some others that I would recognize if I saw the names, but those are the ones I remember.

Bam the Ram is here with me. He's my little stuffed friend.

Word on the street is there's going to be a fire alarm tonight because of the annual South Quad/West Quad snowball fight.

My hair is shorter than your mother.

I'm so incredibly thirsty and my head hurts terribly.

Sometimes when one is expected to be a certain way, it's hard to act otherwise... even if one is not really the same as the conditions that the expectations dictate. Welcome to my life. You'll find that in different situations with different people I can turn into an entirely different person.

Well, I'm back.

Yesterday was a bit disappointing for various reasons. I went into school with Vanessa, and no matter how much you know that it's not the same, it still feels like it should be the same and it never is. We saw various people... Mrs. Macheske, Kev, Steve, Ms. Parsell, Mrs. Derocher, Mr. Nowak, and various students. (apparently "various" is my word of the paragraph). The rest of the day was a whole lot of nothing with some Dunleavy's mixed in.

I watched some of the extras from The Return of the King Special Extended Edition DVD last night. It was about the filming of the movies and, towards the end, they were talking about the emotions that came with the last day of filming. I could see how it was very emotional, and, while watching it, my eyes became moist... not because of the movie but because it brought to mind all of the things in my own life that have come to an end.

My hair is shorter than usual. I got it cut.

We arrived here in Ann Arbor around 2pm. I moved back in, bought my books, and unpacked while watching the ABC Family channel. I was the first one back to our room. Steph was the next one to return and Rebecca has not yet come back.

The exciting news of today is that I figured out how to put the DVD player program back on my computer. That was genuinely exciting.

I suppose you think that was terribly clever.

Today started out slow, but then Vanessa called and we drove around delivering Christmas presents and we picked up several people on the way. Vanessa, Alecia, BethAnne, Ryan, and I then went to Pizza Hut and ate pizza. Vanessa had a one-trip salad bar which she was obsessing about. We saw Mr. Smith. Everything considered, it was fun times.

Afterwards, we went back to my house and played Phase 10. Ryan and I were on phase 3 forever but then I got it and it was all good. After I took everyone home, Vanessa and I went to McDonald's and visited Ross. On the way home, we witnessed a very strange car accident. The way I understand it, a guy rear-ended the other guy and sent him flying off the road into the ditch, and then the mystery attacker guy drove off after swerving a little.

I don't like it when people never answer the phone when you call them. Certain people are notorious for this. Vanessa, for example, hardly ever answers her cell phone and I always get stuck with her annoying voice mail recording, "Hey.... hi, this is Vanessa. I can't talk right now but if you leave your name and number I'd be glad to get back with you. You have a splendid day." It's something like that. I realize that she doesn't answer her phone because there's not much service here, but it's still something I've come to expect from her. There are others also, perhaps too many to list.

Sleep... I've been sleeping way too much lately. I always seem to be tired in the morning no matter how much I just slept. For example, I got about 12.5 hours of sleep last night and I easily could've kept going. I had to force myself to get up.

This blog was a little dull, but aren't they all...?

Where are these quotes from (including the title)? Who says them?

"So do all who live to see such times, but that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us."

"Many that live deserve death; some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Do not be too eager to deal out death and judgment. Even the very wise cannot see all ends."

It's all just crayon marks on walls.

I will begin by saying the thing that every other blogger is saying today: happy new year, it's 2005, auld lang syne, out with the old and in with the new, yadda yadda yadda. It has to be done.

Wolverine Access is ticking me off. Who ever heard of business hours for a website? Seriously, people.

I won't even go into the apparently big event of the day. I didn't watch it and I don't want to talk about it.

So I'm grumpy at the moment. Tell me something I don't know. I'm also tired and withdrawn. Go stick a toothpick up your nose.

Yesterday evening was fun... ping pong, Pit, Taboo, and Cranium... if only there had been some Dutch Blitz thrown in and less parental supervision (if you could see me, I'd be rolling my eyes... across the floor and out the door into a pile of snow next to a tree with one lonely leaf still hanging and clinging to its branch with a backdrop of the black sky spotted with sparkling stars giving off soft white light into the cold and windless night). I suppose it wasn't entirely meant as parental supervision, and the reasoning came together as the night went on, but it did get old and we are all old enough to monitor ourselves (the ages ranging from 15 to me at 18 with the majority of us being 17 or older). But I will stop rehashing yesterday's hashbrowns.

The time is quickly approaching when I will return to the mental agony which is school. I've been having many dreams about college lately and most of them have been quite odd.

I have nothing more to say... and yet there is so much left unsaid.