I like Michigan.

1 month, 3 weeks, 3 days until my 20th birthday!

I am now closer to my 21st birthday than I am to my high school graduation... and it's been like that for a couple months.

My head hurts. I hate headaches. I think I got this one from watching too much TV. But I didn't actually watch much TV... just a few episodes of ER. I love ER. ER and Stargate are my favorite TV shows.

I made Christmas cookies today... only a few days late.

So Michigan is winning right now, but we all know how quick Michigan can blow it (though not as quick as Michigan State). It's been a while since the last time I was sitting at my computer, obsessively watching the foxsports.com page refresh. It's 78 degrees wherever they're playing... San Antonio, I guess.

Hmm... It's kind of fun when you're reading something you wrote and you get to the point where you left off and you want to know what happens next... like an actual story.

These Trees Were Cut Illegally

I went shopping with Ross yesterday and apparently I went again tonight with my parents. Yesterday I bought a PS2 game (Medal of Honor: Rising Sun) and a children's book (no, the book is not for Anna, it's for me). Thankfully, Ross did not get the jeans with all the holes in them. Jeans with premade holes are dumb. Afterwards, we went back to his house and watched the Christmas concert and Anatomy (the German horror movie). German movies are awesome. I liked it, but it wasn't too scary. Today I got another PS2 game and a memory card.

Christmas was the typical Christmas. I got books, DVDs, a couple CDs, a PS2, a stuffed penguin, and some other stuff. I could list it all in great detail, but I'm sure you don't care. Most of it was cool, some of it was a little less than cool. Alecia got me Michigan car floormats... heh heh heh. :) Michigan ist am besten. Ross came over in the evening and we watched Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

So they posted the details of our final grades in psych recently. My final percent was a 92.375 and it was an A. Hmm. I thought I did better on the final exam than I did (I got an 89.5%). I mean, I'm not complaining... I did get an A after all, but I still thought I did better.

It's 12:27 pm on 12/27/05.

I forgot what I was going to say...

My dreams last night/this morning were really weird... so weird, in fact, that I'm not going to describe them.

My favorite Christmas carols are the ones in a minor key. A year or two ago, Ross and I were playing some songs on trumpets and I said I thought one was cool because it was minor, but it went to major in one section and then back to minor. And he was like "what?" and so I let it drop. However, I was looking at it again this year and it really does do what I said it does. So :P to Ross.

I think they took down my favorite road sign.

Fröhliche Weihnachten!

Merry Christmas... Eve!

Fußball ohne Bier ist wie Tennis.

As a consolation for my B+, I got an A+. It was my first A+ at Michigan... maybe ever. It was only in campus band and it didn't count towards my GPA, but it's still fun. My final grade was posted today, and it was an A in psych. I definitely didn't deserve it, but I'll definitely take it. The reason why I didn't deserve it is because I went to my GSI three times and he was really nice and helped me out (I got a 94% on my second paper and that paper was crap). I put negative effort into my classes this semester... I think.

I gave Ross his gift yesterday... German horror movie (Anatomie). Hopefully he'll enjoy it. I want to watch it with him in German with the English subtitles. BethAnne got her gift of foreign chocolate today.

Don Juan DeMarco is a pretty good movie. At first it looked like it was going to be boring, but I ended up liking it. It wasn't what I expected... plus, it has Johnny Depp in it.

This morning/afternoon I went to Tawas with my father because he needed to get my mother a Christmas present (nothing like procrastination). It was good for me because I was able to buy tweezers. Now I have one for home and one for school. And I don't like the new KFC/Long John Silvers set-up. They don't have potato wedges anymore! Grr.

My parents are finally coming out of their initial grumpiness. It sure took my mother long enough.

Ryan and I played some Medal of Honor and Need For Speed III this afternoon. Ryan threw a grenade at me and I accidentally muttered "bastard" at him. Whoops. I killed him a few times though, so it was ok.

The German CD Ross gave me is hot. It's polka or something. There's one song that really annoys me though. However, most are rather pleasant. There is one song titled "Ohne Bier" and I put that into Google, and that is where the title of this blog came from.

On the border...

So now that I'm home and really have nothing better to do, you're going to be getting blog posts pretty much everyday. Now, doesn't that make you happy? And it's all going to be pointless stuff, like what I did throughout the day. I can't imagine how boring it would be to read about it when it was fairly boring doing it.

Right now I am bundled up in cool socks, fuzzy PJ pants, my huge ripped TFK sweatshirt with the hood on and tied tight, and my glow in the dark snowflake blanket. It's freezing in this house. I'm miss my dorm room... it was so warm and cozy.

Two more of my grades were posted today. And yes, sad though it is, I received my first B+ at Michigan. It was in calc, of course. I'm just glad I didn't get worse than that. I seriously put negative effort into that class. On the exam, I wrote the professor a few notes. One was a paragraph about my inability to do algebra, one was "this is wrong, isn't it? I suck this (this being calc)" by my answer to a problem, and the last one was "Hi, please don't fail me... Froeliche Weihnachten!". I hope he liked them. He had those exams graded and the final grades calculated in less than 24 hours. He's nuts. He seriously posted the final grades less than 20 hours after we finished taking the exam. Anyway, my other grade that was posted today was my German grade. It was an A. I thought it would be, but I didn't want to count my chickens.

I finished wrapping people's presents this afternoon. Yay. And then I watched Stargate. Ah, for the love of Stargate. And then Alecia showed up with fruit and got her present. I hope she likes it.

My 20th birthday is exactly 2 months from today. :)

Another comment about my parents: they're old and grumpy.

And another thing... there's nothing to drink in this house! We have condiments up the butt, but of course there's nothing to drink! Well, there's nothing in easily accessible containers.

I like my new computer speakers.

Ryan came over tonight so that I could give him his present. He stayed for a while. It was fun to talk to him.

I'm not going to last.

Last weekend was bad enough. How in the world am I going to make it through two weeks at home? My parents drive me insane. They are so dumb... I can't stand them! The ride home was annoying: dead silence except for the time my father flipped out at me for making an innocent comment. All I said was, "you know, this wouldn't happen if you would pass on the left," and he completely flipped out on me. Talk about mental.

Monday night, Ellie and Steph and I went out to dinner with Ellie's dad. We went to Red Hawk... the food was good and it was an enjoyable time. Ellie's dad is British (actually her entire family is) and so that was fun. Ellie's family just seems really fun.

I went shopping today and my Christmas shopping is now complete. :)

My last exam was this afternoon/evening. It went and it's done. I just wanted to be done with it and now I am. That grade is not going to be good though. It was calc, by the way... honors multivariable calculus.

So now I'm back at home, listening to the Harry Potter soundtrack and writing a blog post. How exciting. Oh, and if my parents take the insurance off of my car, I'm not coming home again. I'm not kidding. You will not catch me anywhere near my hometown anytime from January 5th until the end of April if I no longer have a means of escape while I'm there. So all of you wonderful friends of mine will have to come visit me in Ann Arbor if you care to see me. Maybe I should go to Germany. At least it would get me away from home for a good 11 months.

If you can't tell, I'm a bit frustrated right now, and it's not even really about or because of my awful exam. I tried to bribe the professor with $60 to not give us the exam.

Sometimes

Friday night, Vern the cat kept me awake practically the entire night. He kept walking on me... and that cat is not light! He was cute though, and I got to pet him while I was trying to go to sleep.

The Christmas program at church this morning was something less than good. If you know my church, then you understand. I don't hate kids in general... just some kids, but I won't be mean and name them (most people know who I'm talking about anyway).

I still haven't begun studying for my calc exam. I kind of started, but not really. I plan to start this afternoon.

People's Christmas presents are coming along nicely. A couple people's (BethAnne's and Vanessa's) are done but most are still in the process of becoming complete. Does UPS ship on Sunday? I pretty much know what I'm getting everyone though. I also wrapped them last night.

Sometimes I don't know what to think.

I wish my parents would get home so we could eat lunch. I'm rather hungry.

The life in GR

I'm here in Grand Rapids now. It's fun to see Anna and Hunter again.

My linguistics grade was posted: A. That's nice. I would not have been happy with anything less than an A. That class was so extremely easy, but I liked it (for various reasons). All that's left is calc. I'm not looking forward to that exam. It's not going to be pretty. I just want to get it over with.

Steph and Dan got me some good speakers for my laptop. Yeah, they're definitely better quality than the ones that are on the computer.

For some reason I'm really tired. It's not like I didn't sleep until 11:30am yesterday and then until 10:00am today. There's no reason why I should be tired at 10:00pm. Plus, I slept in the car on the way to Grand Rapids.

Das Ende.

It's all wrong, but it's alright.

Steph, Ellie, and I went out to dinner at Palio's on Main Street tonight. I believe that was the first time I've paid $18 for one plate of food. It was really good though. I'd say it was worth it. Afterwards we watched Dear Frankie, which I guess takes place in Scotland and so there are all Scotish accents in it. How pathetic is this: I had to have the subtitles on because I could not understand what they were saying. Is that not pathetic? The movie was in English and I still needed the English subtitles (for the hearing impaired, no less). It was a good movie, even though subtitles were necessary for the idiot(s) in the room.

I defintely did nothing today. I don't really need to do anything since my exam is on Tuesday, but it would have been nice to get started. All I wanted to do was sleep today. My bed and pillows were very tempting.

On Monday, I got a package from Lyne. That was fun. :) Thank you very much, Lyne. I had an audience of three when I opened it. Penguins galore!

This afternoon, Stephanie had a static-filled blanket and she thought it would be fun to put it on Sarah's head while she was nonthreateningly sitting at her computer. Well, it just so happens that Sarah had earphones in her ears, and so when Stephanie preceded with her plan, many many many shocks of electricity shot from Sarah's earphones into her ears. Yes, that was a bit of a shock to Sarah.

I will now be cryptic. So... there's this one weird thing. And, um, I'm not sure how I feel about it. It's difficult and not normal and takes a lot of thought and effort. But it's there and it's interesting... and maybe it is useful. I don't know what to think. What do you think?

2nd place... not bad!

I'm so tired, I can't even think let alone write. I got negative sleep last night. Arg. I stayed up late and got up early in order to study for my psych exam, which was today. Speaking of the psych exam, I think it went fairly well. Plus, I got a 94% on my psych paper.

"The Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures at the University of Michigan hereby presents the Second Prize in the Fall 2005 Kothe-Hildner Essay Competition in German 232 to Sarah Swartz"

It's true. :D That's what was on my certificate. It made me happy.

...

So... I've had three exams in the past 2 days. Today was psych and yesterday was German and linguistics. I finished the linguistics exam, which was supposed to take 50 minutes, in 20 minutes. I'm going to miss that class. I think German went pretty well too. We played Jeopardy today in German. I got the first question correct (the answer was "Kiel"), but my team ended up being tied for last with 0 points. Oh well.

...

My calc prof speaks a little German.

...

I made a gingerbread house today. That was fun.

...

Now I sleep.

Christmas Music is Awesome!

My dreams have been really weird lately. There was the calc prof/Mr. Currie one a few nights ago and then I had a dream about my psych prof. Then Friday night I had a dream that Alecia and her family moved to Wisconsin but she didn't tell me that they were. I was upset that she didn't tell me. There was also something about going to Florida with the Kauffman's and the youth group, and I was also upset about that.

Last night was the central campus Cru Christmas party. It was at the Nieman's. They have 10 kids. Yes, I did say 10. I know all of their names now, just not which name goes to which kid. The ride there and back was quite interesting (I was in Ross's car).

Then later in the evening, Jenny randomly stopped by my room. She stayed for a couple hours and that made studying quite a bit more fun and actually more productive.

The assassination:
I was sitting at my desk doing something on my computer. Beth and Christine had just left (and left the door open). Suddenly I heard a popping noise and something bounced off my back. I was shot. I turned around and there was Siew with her nerf gun. Schieße. I was dead. The end.

My German test and my linguistics exam is tomorrow. Fun. I can't wait for those exams to be over because then I'll be halfway done with exams for this semester.

Pinch His Tits

Yes, it's funny. http://www.freebeerandhotwings.com/Videos/pitch_tent.wmv

"You can't understand my words until you understand my silence."

The epic annual snowball battle between South Quad and West Quad was last night at midnight. I didn't really participate since I was wearing sandals (and no socks), but I did tackle Steph... twice. She deserved it. The snow was falling and the cops were blocking off the street and the snowballs were flying. It was beautiful.

Today I found out that my calc exam is going to be open book. I'm not sure how I feel about that.

Sirens I hear.

I am so tired right now. I've been really tired a lot lately. I'm so tired I can't even type.

Exams are rapidly approaching. I have two on Monday (German and Linguistics)and one on Tuesday (Psych). I started studying for psych today. There's still so much left to do.

I don't remember if I mentioned it, but I was killed Wednesday evening and Siew was the murderer. Bad Siew.

It's pathetic, but I really can't stay awake any longer.

I've never loved friction more in my life.

Yeah, I'm serious. Just the sensation of the friction between the rubber-soled shoe and the side-walk on the way to class is so beautiful after trying to walk on slick ice. But actually I've been thinking about friction a lot lately. Seriously. Friction is fun.

I was killed today. Grrr. Oh well, I wanted to be killed, but I wish I could've killed at least one person first. It's all good though because nerf dart guns are fun.

My last German paper of the semester is finished. It's not very good.

Ok, so I'm frustrated about something at the moment. Frustrated isn't the best word, I guess. It's more like a little confused mixed with a little bit of helplessness. But I don't know. Whatever.

Umm... I had this really weird dream about going to my calc professor's office hours. There were a ton of people there and he ordered pizza, but then I lost my backpack in the library and for some reason Mr. Currie was randomly around. It was weird and I've been thinking about it all day. And then I did go to office horus this afternoon.

Yeah, I guess those are my thoughts for today. ...not too interesting, but whatever. My blogs from last semester were more interesting.

Yes, I do believe I'll have a cow.

Today in German, the instructor handed my most recent paper back to me and asked to talk to me after class. Naturally I was a little worried (especially I hadn't said a word in class all day). But when I talked to her after class, she said that my essay was very good and that she thinks I am the only 232 student she has had who has written and essay with only one mistake. Then she handed me a little German/English dictionary with ribbon around it. Aww...
...
This afternoon I registered for classes. I got what I had wanted, but I didn't really want any of it anyway. Hmm. And then I found out that one of the German classes counts for the upper level writing requirement. I'm not sure how I feel about that. Anyway, I have two German classes (Structure of Modern German, German Youth Cultures), two linguistics classes (Sound Patterns, Language and History), and an environment class (it's something about terrestrial ecosystems... it's natural science credit).
...
The internet died and so I'm writing this in Tina's room across the hall. This whole no internet thing really sucks. I need it... NOW! I am addicted to the internet.
...
Random thoughts:
-I finally saw the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory with Johnny Depp Saturday night.
-Tina and Ellie think I'm insane.
-I dusted on Sunday night at 11:30pm.
-It's quite snowy here.
-I got an A- on my most recent German test.

In the absence of motivation...

Despite the bitter cold, winter in Ann Arbor is quite nice.

I went shopping this afternoon with Leah and I bought someone's Christmas present. Whose was it? Hahaha, I shall never tell. :)

Next week is filling up with appointments quite rapidly. It's nuts. Where did all these appointments come from? Already I have one on Monday, two on Tuesday, and one on Wednesday. Last week I had six appointments. Hmm.

So figuring out my schedule for next semester is a large pain. I just can't get it to work well and I can't find much that I want to take. Maybe I'm just getting pickier. I don't know. But seriously, none of the stuff I want to take fits with the ones I need to take, and most of the stuff I would like to take isn't even offered next semester. I have until Monday.

I've had three different calc professors so far this semester: Chris, Andy, and the lady. Andy was fun. I like how he explains things. The lady, whom we had today, was ok.

Im Juli is a fairly good movie. Ellie and I watched it this afternoon.

After getting out of Linguistics late and stopping and talking to Steve, I was 8 minutes late for my calc class today. It's the latest I've been so far this semester... unless you count the class I skipped on Tuesday. One can't get much later than not showing up at all.