It's summer!

...or at least it is for me.

So... I'm home. I didn't realize how much had changed here. It's not the same place that I left 8 months ago. It's a good thing that I did make the decision that I recorded in my LiveJournal a while back. I slept until 12:45 yesterday morning... I didn't mean to, I just kept sleeping.

Yesterday I finished the "Circuluar Reasoning" crossword puzzle on yahoo with only a little cheating. Here's the riddle: The round table was made by what knight? Now you have to guess. Crosswords are definitely not as fun when you do them alone.

My first year of college is over. What now? I've been thinking about the moment when I would come back home for the summer for a long time. Now that I'm here, it's weird and it's not like I thought it would be. Not much is the same... my cats don't even recognize me. I knew that I had changed a lot, but I never thought that everything here at home would change so much.

The Top Ten Things That I Will NOT Miss About College
10. Walking a mile in the rain (or hail!) and getting drenched because it wasn't raining when you left so you didn't take your umbrella.
9. Cafeteria food.
8. Almost getting run over by various busses.
7. The stench of garbage.
6. Community bathrooms.
5. Homework and quizzes and exams, oh my!
4. Loud people who would wake you up in the middle of the night.
3. Fire alarms going off at all hours of the day and night.
2. Walking for a mile in the freezing cold.
1. Living in a crowded room with someone you can't stand for 8 months.

The Top Ten Things That I Will Miss About College
10. Cable.
9. The classes that I enjoyed.
8. Not living with my parents.
7. Ann Arbor.
6. High speed internet.
5. Late night fun.
4. Almost everything being within walking distance.
3. Friends being down the hall... or up a floor or two.
2. Going to Friday night Cru, TNL, and Bible Study.
1. All the Cru people.

What did I take out of my freshman year in college? Well, academically I learned a lot... possibly more than in the 4 years of high school combined, or at least that's what it feels like. I had 8 classes: German 103, German 231, Calc 1. Calc 2, General Physics 1, Great Books 191, Great Books 192, and Music Theory... so you can imagine what I learned. I could tell you some of the academic things I learned but no one wants to sit here and read about damped oscillators, Plato, Dante, vectors, parametric equations, German history, German grammar, or the melodic minor scale. I learned and grew and changed in other ways too, but I don't know if I want to tell you. But I will tell you this: my journey through physics was a valuable one. I'm really glad I took it even though it was difficult and I didn't need to take it. Physics was my most rewarding class this semester; it taught me as much about myself as it did about physics.

You never know what great things will come out of doing something unplanned. Dreams are great to have, but why deny yourself the opportunity of something, which has to potential to be even better, just because it doesn't fit nicely into the dream that you created? Why decide not to do something just because it doesn't contribute to your plan? Who says your plan, your dream, is even what you're supposed to be doing, or that it will even work out? And if it doesn't work out, you'll be at the end of your road with no other experience or knowledge to help lead you onto a different path. When I was a sophomore in high school, I had a plan for the how the rest of my high school classes would work out... I was going to take college prep English as a junior and AP English as a senior. Long story short, the school forced me to take American Lit and thus I was unable to adhear to my plan. But if I would have been able to do what I had planned, I would have missed out on American Lit, the best, most interesting, most informative English class that I ever took in high school. Another example from my life is General Physics 1, which I took this past semester. I was not thinking about taking physics until my advisor advised me to do it. Even though it was hard, it ended up being my most rewarding class from my first year of college for many reasons. Also, not doing something because it's hard is just stupid. If you have that attitude then you are simply lazy and nothing else. Even if the class or the experience or job or whatever gives you nothing except for the experience and knowledge you gained from doing it, it was still worth it. What's so bad about having a wide range of knowledge? Here is a quote from Mr. Talley at the Campus Band Concert of Sping 2005: "If I could know half as much in their fields as they do in mine, I'd be a very happy man." College and high school and life give you that opportunity. Will you take it?

Is it just me, or is it hailing?

Yes, I definitely had an adventure on the way back from the MLB where I was picking up my German movie. I was just west of the Natural Science Auditorium and north of Angell Hall when it started hailing. It was some good sized hail too... and it stung. So I kept up my pace and then dashed into Angell Hall when I got to it. Of course, by the time I got there, the torrent of hail was almost done.

Calc final? Um... yeah. It sucked.

I am now home again. It's sad... but, at the same time, not. Reading people's away messages who are still in Ann Arbor makes me sad. I think I definitely belong there more than I do here.

Yes, that is all. This is a short post. Don't worry, I'll have my thoughts on the school year that has passed in an upsoming post.

It's Michigan... what do you expect?

Snow in April? That's just not natural... neither is this "saying goodbye to everyone because your freshman year in college is already over" thing.

Well, last night was interesting. I got back from Beth's room and went to bed around 1 a.m. Two hours later, the fire alarm decided to grace us with its presence. Yes, at 3 a.m. in the morning, I was forced to get out bed, put on some pajama pants, go outside in the snow, and stand there until they let us back in. Oh, I was not pleased. Many people were discussing the very loud annoying beeping tone that was present in the rooms and one guy said, "Well, you know, if they played classical music, no one would get up." How true. I know if the alarm didn't go off in my room, I wouldn't have gotten up and went outside in the dark freezing cold.

Four and a half hours later, my alarm went off. I turned it to vibrate (it's my cell phone) and hit the 10-minute snooze... 53 minutes later... Yeah, I definitely slept through my snooze and jolted awake at 8:38, and I had to meet Jenny in the lobby at 8:53. I then rushed around getting ready and just barely made it in time. Needless to say, I didn't have time for a shower.

Then, when I wasn't even through checking the daily blogs that afternoon, I went to Alison's room, leaving the away message "out for the moment" on my AIM... a moment definitely turned out to be almost 12 hours. After crosswords, white board drawings, Jimmy Johns delivered to the dorm, biting my tongue seriously hard, countless conversations (emcompassing Mennonites, alcohol, church, tarter sauce, German, Paul, and many, many other things), riding the bus to North Campus, hanging out in Bursley, playing with a frisbee fan contraption, euchre, jelly bellies, pillows, phone calls, the Simpsons, another bus ride, me pulling the yellow cord, and goodbye hugs, I am now back in my room. It was a very nice day.

And I definitely have more great news... wait for it, wait for it... Yes, it's true, I so totally got 44/50 on my physics final! That's an 88% for those of you who are as slow at this elementary math as I am. It's the best score that I have ever gotten on a physics exam! I'm so happy. After giving everyone "I'm so happy about my physics exam score" hugs, I beat Paul's pillow with joy when I found out. The average was 68%. I am ecstatic!

It's now 2:07 a.m. and I am heading off to bed... and happy birthday, Ross! :D

The End of All Things

I was taking my Great Books exam yesterday when, not even 5 minutes into it, my phone began to vibrate obnoxiously. Who could it be this time? Why it was none other than Vanessa (no, not Ross, who called during my Great Books 191 final... twice). It's too bad that I won't have any more Great Books finals so that I could see if the tradition continues.

The physics final wasn't bad... meaning it wasn't too hard, but there's no guarentee that I did well. The exam was two hours long and I was on number 22 out of 25 total after an hour had gone by, but I ended up using almost the whole time anyway.

All of my pictures have been taken down off of my walls and my bed and my desk and wherever else I put pictures. It's sad... everything is plain and blah again.

Star Wars Episode 3: Return of the Sith looks really good... a lot better than Episode 2. I'm not even sure if I ever saw all of Attack of the Clones.

Tonight I and 19 other people from South Quad went out to Friday's for dinner. We had to wait almost 2 hours for seats though, but that was fun because we got to talk... and Beth and I had a conversation in German. The food was good and the company was great.

Afterwards, I joined Beth, Briana, and Dan in Beth's room and we watched a movie about Dietrich Boenhoff. The movie was ok... they definitely could have done a lot to make it better and I would've enjoyed watching it in German instead of English. There was one funny part where a British prisoner said he was from the British "not-so-secret service".

Well, I really need to study calc tomorrow...

The Content Nutella

Only 3 more songs left to guess! Here's some hints:
3. band: a silverstein book
6. title: think beach
8. band: many pebbles, title: part of #3's title

There is a finals week south quad fire alarm conspiracy... and south quad is the most fire resistant building on campus... FYI.

It frequently surprises me how many things about Cru are similar to camp.

My parents frustrate me... but whose don't.

Someone has called me during every great books final that I have taken. It's crazy.

My physics exam is now over. YAY! It was actually a little fun... but now I can relax even more than I was before.

Those were 5 random things... There's really not much to say. It's going to be sad leaving on Wednesday, but I still can't wait for my last exam to be done. That's right... only one left... 10:30-12:30 Wednesday morning. Gross. I don't want to take more exams. I just want them to be done. It's interesting how, as the year progressed, late became early and the middle of the night became bedtime. It's only midnight... the night is young.

The Last Day of Classes!!!

Hahaha! German was great this week! Deutsch ist toll! We watched some of the movies that the groups in our class had made and they were great. It was said (by Hartmut, I think) that our class had some of the best movies in years. Ours was the second one that was watched and people seemed to like it and the ending. Diana (the GSI) said she especially liked the beginning and end. The other ones were titled "Die Bierpipeline", "Schlechte Kuhe", and "Deutsche Augen für den amerikanischen Mann". "Deutsche Augen" was the best. It means "german eyes for the american man" and is thus a parody of "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy". It was really funny. I especially liked their dancing and the "Hartmuthoff" shirt. Diana said to the whole class, "Ich bin sehr stolz auf Euch" meaning "I am very proud of you all"... awww.

My parents came down Sunday, brought me some clothes so I didn't have to do laundry, took home some of my stuff, and took me out to dinner. That was fun.

Yesterday was a good day of classes... and also the last day of classes. Professor Cameron was sentimental, Professor Clarke sang a song, I answered a question out loud in calc, German was great (naturally) and the GSI was a little sentimental, and great books discussion was typical.

Spring Banquet was cool. I actually danced, and most of you probably know that that is not normal for me. Shalako deserves the credit for that, because he inspried me with his infinite words of wisdom when he said, "Look at them... they all look dumb, and you'll never look as dumb as Jeremy!" and thus a dancing Sarah was born. Steak & Shake afterwards was also fun. I got a chocolate malt. We got back to south quad around 2:30 a.m.

I am so terribly busy and will continue to be terribly busy until Friday night at 9:30. I have a great books review at 5pm tonight and I have about 16 hours of physics studying to do before Friday, plus I have to finish my great books paper, which is coming along nicely.

Wish me luck.

Each day we live the difference...

Let's play a game! I think Vanessa did this awhile ago, but mine's not as long and not as broad of a selection. So guess the songs and the bands. Whoever gets the most wins. Italics designate songs already guessed correctly.

Name That Song
1. Your eyes they tried to search for mine, but I look away. Now your eyes are the only thing that can save me. I'm still afraid of them piercin'...
2. It's buried deep within the past , I hope it doesn't last. It's something I already chased, I already chased...
3. In timeless places, traced and faceless will I learn to let go...
4. When it's twice as hard to realize that I'm still trying twice as hard to satisfy myself on my own. And I'm still waiting for things to change.
5. The disease of self runs through my blood; it's a cancer fatal to my soul. Every attempt on my behalf has failed to bring this sickness under control...
6. The question again phrased a little differant: whatever happened to my beautiful innocence...
7. Justin is adjustin' to the odor from Theodore's Evergreen Incense, but aroma therapy don't make him any younger than Oliver's All Liver Supplements...
8. The pain inside, my love denied, hopes and dreams swallowed by pride, everything I need it lies in you...
9. Roaming through this darkness, I'm alive but I'm alone. Part of me is fighting this but part of me is gone...
10. Hail! to the victors valient, Hail! to the conquering heroes...
11. You know you just can't kill a man when he's dead, you know the spirit survives...
12. Acting like they wanna talk to me so fake, yet so friendly, my eyes can see even the back of me, won't you just let me be ...

Ok. That's all. They're not really random songs or anything... they're all songs that I like now or liked back in the day.

I slept for a long time last night: 11 hours. I was so tired. Today hasn't been very exciting. I took a shower, ate lunch, wrote my last German LLJ, read some of the Decameron, and hung out on the internet. I should have been writing my great books paper, but I didn't. Oh well. I thought about it a little and I picked my topic too. I tried out my Nutella last night. It's really good.

My "8" key is coming off. I accidentally hurt it when I was trying to wipe the crap off of my keyboard. Yes, it is sad. I'll have to get someone to fix it. My poor, poor "8" key.

Warum?
Ich weiss nicht. Weisst du?
Nein.
Ok. Magst du alles?
Nein. Warum fragst du?
Ich weiss nicht.
Ok. Alles ist ok.
Ja. Vielleicht.
Ich verstehe nichts...
Ich auch nicht.
...aber alles wird gut.
Ja? Wirklich?

"We're left with one conclusion."

Let it be known that I did partake in the pie!

Excuse me while my ear gushes blood. Moving on....

Apparently today was goodness day. It looked a bit like Festifall. There were a ton of tables in the Diag where people were giving away free stuff or performing. At one table, people were breakdancing. One of the people breakdancing was a skinny Asian guy wearing "Canada" clothes. Next to the breakdancers was a cotton candy table, but I didn't get any because the line was so long. I got some nice free stuff though, such as a button, magnet, bookmark, nutella... I'm excited about the Nutella.

Erin: Alison's having dinner with Briana, Tracie, and the other person that's not Jen. (talking about the people who will be sharing an apartment this summer)
Me: I thought there were only four of them?
Erin: Yeah, there's... oh wait, the other person is Alison.

My German slogans: Jetzt wird es mir zu dumm! and Mein Prinz wird eines Tages kommen!

There's about a ton of hairspray on my head right now. Yes, I am wearing my hair up, but I can't get it to work right.

About the pie (in the title), there was one being passed around tonight during TNL and I definitely took a spoonful... with a community spoon. Tonight was the last TNL. It was sad; it feels like an 8-month summer camp is coming to an end. Wow, it's going to be so sad to leave and not come back for so long! But like everything, it's the people that make it great, not the place.

I wanted to leave you with something great and profound and eloquent, and even if I did, it wouldn't be my own words... I would be quoting. But I can't think of anything right off hand and I'm tired, so here ya go:
"Life is real! Life is earnest! And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou art, to dust returnest, Was not spoken of the soul."

My 34 Cents

Yeah, I definitely did better on my physics exam than the kid in my discussion group who thinks he knows everything. Professor Uher said that our discussion section was better than his other 2... the overall average of the whole physics 140 class was 67% or something like that and our section's average was 72%. Yeah, we're hot like that. I feel like I just wrote this same thing in a blog... oh wait, seeing as my last physics exam was only a month ago, I did just write this in my blog.

Everyone has quit blogging and now I feel like a loser. I am the only blogger left. Everyone else has fallen into darkness. Hmm, oh well.

Our video project for German is now finished and it's good, I think. I'm excited. I didn't actually get to see the whole thing because I had to leave before they finished editing... but it should be good. :)

Day of Fire is a really good CD.

I went to the honors advisors' walk in hours and got my projective schedule approved. I'm not sure if that's a good or bad thing though, considering their record and reputation. But oh well, whatever. My classes are all open so far, so that's good. My schedule should be nice if all works out... 16ish credits, 2 classes on Friday, no mad-dashes between classes, no earlier than 10am, no more than 4 hours a day (not counting Campus Band)... in fact, it's looking fairly cushy. I might add another one credit class somewhere if I can find a good one that fits.

After I finished my physics and most of my German, I didn't do anything tonight... like my calc. Series are boring though.

Poetry is beautiful. Poetry with music can be even better. Music is beautiful. Words, the primary means of conveying and expressing one's thoughts, can take the meaning out of music. Can words enhance music? Can music detract from words? Ah, but words are to poetry as sound is to music. So I suppose the actual question is, "can music detract from poetry" and also the converse. What is the nature of the relationship between poetry and music? Can the right music always complement a poem? Can the right words always add to music? Why is it that the right combination of words or musical notes can evoke such emotion, that a chord progression can raise the hairs on your arm or send a chill through your living body as well as your innermost being, that well placed words and imagery can send your mind reeling in intense joy and delight? The same goes for photographs and art. How to the combination of colors and shapes and shading capture emotion and thought in such a way as to make you feel and know it?

Put the lime in the Coke, you nut.

Today was nice. I studied outside for a bit, trying to get my tan up to par. I think I got a little sunburned.

The soreness has overtaken me. I am quite sore, or at least I was yesterday. For some reason my left arm is more sore than my right, and that's kinda weird. When I was walking to the Frieze Building with my backpack yesterday afternoon, I could barely move. It felt like I was walking uphill the whole way there and back. But I've been sorer, much sorer. I forgot how much I like this feeling.

I spent 3 hours yesterday afternoon in the Frieze Building editing our German video. I was the only one there and I didn't get much done. But it was ok. I sat in the sun for a bit while I was waiting to get into the room. The room was air conditioned and that was nice.

Happiness. :) I got 34/40 on my physics exam, 85% without the curve. :D That's my best score on a physics exam yet!

Yesterday was beautiful and today was even better!

Girl, Interrupted is an interesting movie. I got it for $5 at Walmart.

You should see Rebecca's area right now. It's disgusting. There's nasty dirty clothes hanging from the drawers and draped over the chair that we all sit in. I would take a picture of it to show you just how bad it is if it didn't disgust me so much.

I love cats.

Should I take Latin, Greek, Linguistics, or Philosophy?

Everyone who guessed on my last post was wrong, as predicted. I was happy because I had Lime Coke... seriously.

Haben Sie eine gute Nacht und einen wunderbaren Tag.

Ultimate Everything

Guess what I'm doing??? Writing a blog post!!!!! AHH! I'm happy and just generally in a really good mood. I bet you can't guess why. You'll never guess. Have you thought of your guess yet? Come on, think harder! Have you got a good guess yet? I have a guess, but I already know so I don't count at all. Ok, so I've decided that I'm not going to tell you and you have to guess and post your guesses in the comments. If you get it right, you will a get a great reward to be named later.

Ultimate frisbee was great tonight. I wish I would've/could've been doing fun stuff like that all year long. I definitely caught a few and threw a few and blocked a few. And now I'm definitely sore. The best time to play Ultimate is naturally 10pm to midnight in the dark on Elbel Field with a frisbee with a little red light in the middle. Ah, good times.

Cru was great too. I love how they take old hymns and give them new energy. Tonight it was "It Is Well With My Soul". It's not like they make them weird and fast or anything... they're just energized. I'm going to miss Cru and all the people at Cru so much over the summer.

I talked to the guy behind the counter at the ConXion when I was buying part of my lunch... he was fun.

Tian and I met today after I was done with calc and went to the Diag and conversed in the nice warm weather. Shalako passed by after a while and we talked to him. There were people in the middle of the Diag doing a beatbox thing and there were other people around them who were making paper cranes of all sizes and colors and taping them to the Diag. Yeah, so there was an arrangement of paper cranes in the Diag this afternoon... some were on sticks so they were in the air and not sitting on the ground. AND my face got a little sunburned.

When I was getting ready this morning at my desk and Rebecca had already gotten up and was at her desk, a crow cawed really loudy outside our window.

I didn't sleep well last night. Maybe I should just quit trying to sleep.

Last night after Bible study I tried to find some classes to take next semester. Here is my current list of possibilities: calc 3, german 232, psych 111 (intro psych), psych 114 (honors intro psych), greek 101, latin 101, russian 101, italian 101, linguistics 211 (intro to language), linguistics 210 (intro to linguistic analysis), engineering 101 (computer programming), philosophy 202 (intro philosophy), philosophy 297 (honors intro philosophy), and composition 221 (intro elementary composition... as in music). So... yeah. I have two pretty nice schedules so far: one with calc, german, psych, and linguistics, and one with calc, german, psych, and latin.

We got ice cream at Stucci's during Bible study, but I just got a waffle cone.

And then there was my physics exam. I'm not worried about it, not because I think I did well but because I'm apathetic and I've realized that my life and future do not depend on the result of this exam or any exam and not getting all A's at UM isn't a bad thing. So yes, that is how it is. I'm just glad it's over with.

I can't believe my freshman year of college is almost done. It's insane. College will be over before I know it. It's going even faster than High School. Professor Uher mentioned a couple days ago in discussion how fast time goes now to him compared to when he was young.

The Day of Perpetual Physics

It was totally 80 degrees outside... and it was humid. I hope it thunderstorms.

My day pretty much sucked. After not getting a sufficient amount of sleep because I was simply unable to fall asleep, I woke up and went to physics discussion. Then I skipped calc and went to my physics professor's office hours, which made me late for German. Because I was late for German, I didn't have time to look over the stuff for the quiz and thus failed the quiz (or at least did very bad). No one was around to eat lunch with and I ended up with two people I hardly knew, and that was a little awkward. And then of course there was all the physics and dinner with five people squished at a table not meant for five.

What classes should I take next semester? I'm thinking honors calc 3, (honors?)intro psych, german 232, and...? Any suggestions? I was thinking maybe linguistics or philosophy or something even more random like Greek. I wanted to take a history class, but there doesn't appear to be any interesting ones for next semester. I looked into a world religions course, but it's MWF 2-3, and yeah that sucks. I'm not taking anthro. I'll find a different way to fulfill my R&E requirement.

So... I've read all of the sections from my physics book that will be covered on the exam, I went through all the example problems in those sections, I did all of the "test your knowledge" problems at the end of the sections, I took the practice exam 3 times and the old exam twice, I looked at another old exam, I made a list of all pertinent equations, I went to all the lectures AND took notes, I went to all the discussions, I went to my professor's office hours, and I spent hours and hours and hours doing all of these things. The only thing I didn't do yet was look over the discussion worksheets and I'll do that tomorrow.

"Like the leaves of autumn"

I have a physics exam on Thursday, a German quiz on Wednesday, and a German oral test on Thursday morning, so the fact that I’m taking time out of my busy schedule to write a post just for you should make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

Two roads converged in front of Angell Hall and I, I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.

The events of my day on Monday:
- Our calc exams were passed back and I got an 84/100. The average was high (80/100), but I was still pleased (a.k.a. relieved) with my score.
- During calc, I realized that I didn’t do my German homework for today. Whoops. It was on the internet, so I did it and turned it in right after lunch.
- I was hoping for hotdogs for lunch and, whadya know, it was hotdogs.
- As I was heading to the Diag area to study physics under a tree in the nice 66 degree heat, I randomly saw and talked to Greg and Carla Dittenber, Steve’s parents, outside of the Union. And then as I was heading back to South Quad, I saw and talked to Steve for a while on State St. near the art museum.
- I watched a couple episodes of Stargate. I had completely forgotten that it was on Monday night, but then my roommate mentioned it and I couldn’t resist.

The events of my day on Tuesday:
- I got to watch a wine glass shatter in physics lecture purely as a result of sound.
- It was very warm…. Over 70 degrees… and I sat under a tree studying physics in the warmth for 2 hours, and then there were 2.25 more hours of physics studying in the IRC.
- I drew pictures during calc.
- Dante is wonderful. I love Dante... or just The Divine Comedy actually.

Oh yeah! My concert! It went well and it was cool to play in Hill Auditorium. We played Noisy Wheels of Joy, Amazing Grace, First Suite in E-Flat, Scenes from the Louvre, and Americans We... in that order. The concert was quite long… almost 3 hours long, but it was good. My parents, Ross, Ryan, and Alecia came to see it. Afterwards, we got slushies and went to Amer’s for dinner.

I am the proud new owner of four new CDs… Wow 2004, Jonah 33, Day of Fire, and The Very Best of Chicago: Only The Beginning. They’re fun. I’ve listened to all but Wow 2004 so far and they’re all great.

One of my sweatshirts smells like wheat, as in dirty wheat that I used to munch on from the field.

Last week I had some pretty messed up states of consiousness; they weren’t dreams, I was fully awake. The one night I was woken up by Rebecca’s whatever she was doing and my nose was stuffed and all I could see or think about when I tried to go back to sleep were circles and polar coordinates. As I was laying there, it was a concrete fact in my head that it was impossible for me to get back to sleep because of my nose and the effects that the polar coordinates had on my nose. The next night I was again woken up. This time I had fallen alseep later than usual and as I was laying there trying to figure out how many hours of sleep I could get yet that night, I was thinking that it was hopeless to try to get back to sleep because of the hours left in the night combined with n/2 (n divided by 2). I finally managed to talk myself out of that crazyness, but I vividly remember having to consciously tell myself that I was thinking nonsense.

The correct answers to my blog title trivia are:
What Dreams May Come
- movie from 1998 with Robin Williams (which was so mentioned in my great books discussion today... what a coincidence)
- line from Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Act 3 Scene 1. “For in that sleep of death what dreams may come when we have shuffled off this mortal coil, must give us pause”
Into The Joy of Spring
- concert band song composed by James Swearingen
In The Spring, When Kings Go Off To War
- concert band song composed by David R. Holsinger
- verse from the Bible, 2 Samuel 11:1, “In the spring, at the time when kings go off to war, David sent Joab out with the king's men and the whole Israelite army. They destroyed the Ammonites and besieged Rabbah. But David remained in Jerusalem.”

Verrückt

If you have not already guessed and collected your points about the origins of the titles of posts 3-30, 3-29, and 3-28, please do so. I know there is someone out there who knows a couple...

So much has happened in the last few days.

Alecia came on Thursday afternoon and that was fun. We watched The Notebook around 12:30 a.m. She got a parking ticket on Friday morning. We got some pizza for lunch around noon and ate in in the diag while some people were having something that looked like an affirmative action rally. Because Alecia's mother didn't really want her leaving after dark and because Alecia wasn't overly enthused about watching us tape our German video, she left around 2pm.

I then got ready for the filming of our German video and walked to the CCRB to meet them. When everyone was ready, we drove to the Arb and began the grueling process. It was fun and enjoyable at first, but as time went on, it was apparent that everyone had their own ideas, which were all proving to be difficult to reconcile. I could definitely be a movie director... maybe. But one thing is certain, you can't have four directors of equal standing. Even so, it was interesting to see Erin traipsing around the Arb wearing liederhosen. When that was finally finished I returned to South Quad, my home sweet home.

The first place I stopped when I got back in the building was Alison's room, where I collapsed on the couch. I was drained and exhausted in every way imaginable. Paul and Erin were there also. After observing their banter for quite some time, I became very hungry and then we finally left and got some dinner at Amer's around 6pm where I had a turkey sandwich pita thing.

Cru was my next activity for the day. I dropped into a chair behind some South Quad people and contemplated how nice it would be to sit there, sleep, and never have to expend engery again. After a while, Jenn White and Jenny Lunger joined me and Cru began. It was a very good Cru, though I was too tired to really get into it. On the way back to South Quad, I had a nice conversation with Shalako about various things.

After Cru, a bunch of South Quad people went bowling at Colonial Lanes. I was on a lane with Craig, Jeff, Beth, Amanda, and James. The only one out of those five who I previously knew was Craig. Jeff kept up the Cru tradition (according to me) of asking difficult questions. I didn't do too well at the bowling stuff... 76 the first game and 81 the second, but Beth S. and I switched on and off on the second game. Craig did very well his second game and bowled a 203.

We went to Steak & Shake afterwards and at midnight I had my third meal of the day: cheese fries. I played the sugar-salt game and I did not get the salt, thankfully. And as I was sitting there, looking around, and waiting for my food, it hit me...

It was the winter of 2000 or 2001. I, a lowly 8th or 9th grader, was visiting my sister at college in Grand Rapids. After a day of doing stuff which I now don't remember, we went to Steak & Shake around midnight. I was sitting there with my sister (and possibly Dan too) eating my shake and talking with them. There was a large group of people sitting in the far corner having a great time and my sister mentioned that they were from Cornerstone (the same college as my sister). I think I asked her something like "why don't you go say hi to them" and she mentioned that she didn't really know them that well or something. And I remember wondering if Steph (my sister) ever came to Steak & Shake with a big group of people from college. Steph never talked about her friends and she was always with Dan when I was there, and so I remember thinking, "when I'm in college, I want to go to Steak & Shake late at night with a big group of friends." It became subconsiously the epitome of college life for me; I had even wrote it into one of the stories which I used to write when I was envisioning my ideal future. Now that dream was fulfilled. Whether or not I have actually reached the true essence of my wish, I do not know.

I woke up this morning at 11 a.m. My ankle, which was very sore last night, was not as sore this morning. I walked all the way to Liberty Video to rent a German movie for my homework, but when I got there, I was informed that I needed several picture IDs and things with my signature on them to set up an account and rent the movie. So I had to walk all the way back to South Quad in the cold wind and then all the way back to the corner of Liberty and Fourth. That video place is more than a little bit sketchy and not in the least bit "wholesome".

The movie, Das Experiment, was disturbing and I didn't really like the way it ended, but it was a good movie.

I saw a guy on Extreme Surgery whose face looked like the face of the one orc in The Return of the King who has been nicknamed "barf face".

My concert is tomorrow and so is daylight savings time!