Sunday, October 30, 2011

Heath Nuts and An Oxymoronic Week

Another week down, and what a week. Have you ever had one of those weeks that fly by, yet crawl? That was this week. It seemed as though the days went quick enough, but Friday never came. It probably didn't help that the normal routine got kinda thrown off by some oddities in scheduling. For starters the 'Bayou Bowl' or Rice/UH game was this week, on a Thursday which is odd, and made Thursday night very loud, giving the it the feeling of a Saturday. An art history test on Wednesday felt rather odd also, the last one was on a Monday, so ya get the picture. Good news being that October is no one day away from being a calender page in the bin.

It seems as though fall has come. Although the last time I thought that, the weather warmed back up to the 70's and we were assaulted by mosquitoes. It does feel nice though, not sweating on the way to meals, although the trek to the cafeteria at 7 in the morning is a bit on the cold side.

Wow, what a week for knitting though. The blue still unnamed is now off the needles and has already had its maiden voyage in the cold chapel for mass this morning. Out of Cheese is almost done also. The rows drag, but the project is speeding towards the end. As of right now I am on row 164/168. That now brings me to the point in the semester where I start questioning whether I have enough project to get me through the remainder of the semester. I think I will be ok, but that is what I said the past 2 semesters, and fall last year there was a package in the mail with emergency yarn in it about this time last year, and spring semester I was searching ravelry for a project quick because the other projects I had got ripped out. I may be coasting home on fumes (or rather stray fibers being a knitter!). Or I may be just fine, we shall see.

I had a strange thought recently. I was walking back from breakfast, and the crisp fall air has a way of blowing out the cobwebs and sparking some strange thoughts. I have been reading The Once and Future King right, and I had just finished the part where Arthur pulls the sword form the stone and Merlin explains to Arthur that he remembers swaddling him up as a baby and putting him on Sir Ector's doorstep. So I guess my question is, if Merlin lives backwards (death to birth instead of birth to death) then how can he remember something that he specifically hasn't done yet?

I got called a heath nut. Me, a health nut. I mean don't get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with being a heath nut, I have nothing against people who are health conscious. But me? I have kinda gotten into the habit of every Monday and Wednesday stopping by the c-store in Oberholtzer hall and getting a snack to tide me over through French class. Since it is later than any of my other classes, I probably shouldn't pass out, get woozy or zone out in the middle of it. So I stop by, get a protein bar of some kind and a diet coke after Intro to Fiction and have a snack before French at 2:30. The cashier, who is also always there at that time when I was checking out said something to the effect of 'I am surprised that a health nut like you would be drinking this stuff.' I know she meant nothing by it, but I couldn't help thinking that someone thought I was a health nut, me, the one who takes all redeeming value out of a salad with creamy poppy seed, ranch, and blue-cheese dressing. I know, I am taking this way to seriously.

Oh, and before I click post, I know you are all wondering the result of the biggest UH rivalry, right? Well, it was a very close game, really close, 73-34 Coogs. So we kill the Owls and stay undefeated. Everyone wins right? Before you call me a huge sports/football fan and a coog true and true you should know that I found out the score when I got up the next morning, after never attending the game.

Thursday, October 27, 2011

Mum has had a bit of knitting time

A hat you say well not any old plain hat run of the mill hat get it from the store hat oh no this is a hat Racheal finally finished. Yippie :) :) So that we could send it off to a friend who is due any minute now. Not like we were cutting it right down to the finishing line. Okay I had the baby sweater done in like a day and it waited and waited and waited. I think the next hat Racheal crochets will be done in half the time. Why am I so sure if it.....well this was her second hat the first got a knot the size of Michigan and wouldn't come out so she had to start again with a whole lot of tears. But it is done the new mum just loves it and I am now the nice mum again :)
They look nice together well I think.
Had to replace my MP3 case. The banana one was beyond looking nice. Had a snag and some dirt just wouldn't come out.... yuck. Meet red love love love the purl and will never give up my big button stash it really came in handy see. Oh it is soooooooo soft and yummmy I could wear it all day....wait I do wear it nearly all day.

Clearance bin sock yarn. I will have to admit I just picked up this yarn because it was 3 bucks and my budget is really tight. I thought hum colors are nice I can live with them. Then I knit them up and wow do I like them or what. I have a couple balls more of cheep sock yarn and I sure hope they come out as nice as these.
Okay you can't see just how nice this green is and you can't feel how yummmm it is and it's way to nice to be put on a boys feet but well they are going on Ian's feet once I knit them up into a nice nice pair of socks. Now the reason they are, half because I was asked really nicely by my wonderful husband (hey he asked really really nicely even poured me a glass of wine as he asked and I don't think it was the wine who said I would be happy to knit up a pair of socks for the nose picker boy who yells at me) the other half is when the boys goes out walking in the woods for a boy scout merit badge he wears a whole in his socks and I can't keep getting him new socks. The money fountain has just dried up. So I will have a pair of socks on my needles by the end of the week. Really need knitting to stash in my purse so I don't have to wait and deal with rude people.
Oh Lindsay I ripped out the neck....... don't hate me I didn't like it. I saved the sweater and love how I reknit it way higher. I love love love the real wool but it isn't holding up the way I want so I think I will be knitting up a cheepo sweater that will wear like iron as my winter work horse sweater. Any idea's ladies, for patterns feel free I'm plum out of ideas. I really could wear this sweater all day everyday if it would hold up better. About to cry yes I feel a tear.....stop laughing ladies not funny making fun of you dear old mum and don't think I can't hear it. ;)
We have our pumpkin for the season. Just went out and got it 3 bucks so I broke down and bought it. I think it will be a lovely jack o lantern this year. Justin has big plans for this pumpkin and the way he is saying it well I'm a little frightened. Still have no idea what they are going to be for Halloween not even a inkling.

Oh I thought I would send you some of our weather. It is getting colder here and I'm really loving it. Just wanted to share it with y'all. Can you say sweater weather.

Wednesday, October 26, 2011

Procrastination, thy name is Facebook

Sorry i've been away for so long......school caught up with me. I meant to blog last weekend, but as seems to be a weekendly occurance, the internet was down for the entire weekend. Alas, I committed to writing the following week. Unfortunately, as there is no post before now, it was to no avail. I do not really have an excuse for this, only that I seemed to have become desperately lazy for that one week. I had no major papers to write, no tests that week so I decided to take a week to relax since I was recovering from a nasty cold that lingered for almost a week. I don't normally have anything on Wednesdays, save Student Association meetings every other week and 1-on-1 meetings with Ed Reilly where we talk about any problems that have arisen on our floors, and other random things. It was our off week for SA, all I had was my 1-on-1 at 2:30 that ended up being mostly about how Ed's new cat was coming along. Ah! Now there's some news.
Ed Reilly became the new director of Residence Life last year, and for almost a year he has been scouring shelters for the perfect cat for his apartment. Success came two Saturdays ago when he, another RA, Amanda and I went down to the animal shelter in the hopes we would find a new cat for him. Unfortunately, he was not successful, and I left truly wishing that I was allowed to have a cat in the dorms. There was this gorgeous, white with tan, dark brown and black patches. Sort of looked like my first cat, but with much more white. Maybe that was why I was drawn to her. Or maybe it was that she was very shy, an obviously abused cat, and I have a soft spot for those ever since we had our cat Roland. She was in a little cubby in a room that had all kittens, though she was almost and adult cat. The only part of her you could see was her tail hanging out the side. Her eyes could melt even the coldest of hearts. She flinched when I gently stroked her tail, and coaxed her out. She finally did come out but ran to the corner and cowered. It took several minutes to get her to come out, but when she did she was quite friendly, if a little shy. She was only comfortable with me, and thoroughly enjoyed the attention if I do say so myself. I fell in love. I wanted to take her home so bad. It was not to be though, and Ed did not find one that he liked, so for a last resort we went over to the SPCA at the mall. Success!!! There were several kittens that had been just dropped off because they had been with a foster mother since the were found by the side of the road. So Ed found little Leota, the newest addition to the residence hall. It is quite nice to walk back from the PVR and see little Leota in the window, curiously looking at all those walking by. And from what I've heard, she is a right and proper kitten, always energetic and teething. But most of all playful!
Wow, tangent. But that needed to be updated. Thursday it turned out that all my classes were canceled and so I took another mental health day. But I couldn't shake the feeling that I should have been doing something. Friday rolled around and sure enough, I had a Bio Lab practical coming up on Monday! That's what I forgot. Okay, so I have the weekend to memorize bones, muscles, the anatomy of the heart, how to tell male skeletons from female skeletons and how different cells look under the microscope. I'm sunk. And thats not just my pessimism, our professor told us that we were screwed. Encouraging, right???? Okay, I'll lock myself in the library for the weekend and have no life. I can live with that. Oh, shoot I have a Statistics test on Tuesday that I also have to study for. Okay, maybe an all nighter. Catherine's coming to visit this weekend???? Snap! Catherine is one of my best friends who graduated last year and is now in graduate school at George Mason University in Washington DC. So of course I will have to go out with her while she's here. Ok, socialize with Catherine, and then squeeze in as much studying as possible and deal with the consequences later. However I vowed to spend more time in the library to be more productive in the future.
Monday came around, stressed about the practical, took it. Wasn't too bad. Today started off on a high when I got back a paper with a big fat A on the top of it! Granted, its political science, not all that hard, but hey! I'll take what I can get. Then today took a nose dive. I was so prepared for my stats test. I put a solid 6 hours of preparing last night for it. I knew the material backwards and forwards after reworking the homework questions. I sat down in front of the computer for my test, open excel and plug in the numbers in formulas just like in the homework. Well, I must have done something wrong, because I kept getting answers from Excel that I KNEW weren't right. I was the third to last person to hand in their test after I sat there for so long trying to figure out what I was doing wrong. To no avail. 1 hour and 15 minutes later I handed him my test frustrated, gave him a death glare and walked out. All the questions are answered, and thats the best I can say. That is one test I'm not looking forward to getting back! But no matter, off to the library to fulfill my promise myself: to be more productive. This is where the blog title plays a role. I sat down at the computer in the library prepared to do my political science homework when I decide to check facebook. Then, the little chat pops up and Katie wants to know if I want to talk. We had started to talk this morning before class because she was on duty the night before and a stupid, immature incident happened that she was upset about. Hmmmmm, homework.............or girl talk with Katie and Amanda????? Which do you think I chose ;)
And with that you are up to speed on my life that seemed slow, but turned out to be really really busy still.

PS: that lab practical????? He emailed the grades Monday night. 98%!!!!!!!!!!! Boo ya Mr. "you're all screwed for the lab practical on Monday." I showed you! :)

Saturday, October 22, 2011

Insert Creative Title Here

Wow, it is the end of the week, and I actually remembered to post. I actually remembered a week after my last post, I actually remembered! You can tell what kind of week it's been when the remembering to post on my blog is an achievement. Reminds me of a webcomic I read, Sheldon. Lets see if I can link it... http://www.sheldoncomics.com/archive/090719.html Hopefully that works. I love the strip, and this one especially.

Well today itself has been a rather busy day, it is homecoming, laundry day, wet sheep day, and on top of all that Zac Hanson's birthday. We won this afternoon against Marshall, 63-28 making us coogs undefeated. Pretty sweet. It was also laundry day, which included the wonderful task of washing my collection of wool socks. The sink in the bathroom doesn't have a plug so I had my socks soaking in a pyrex measuring cup, then ending up with a sock on each of the ends of my hangers and a binder clip to keep them from sliding off the end hanging up in my closet. Vicky (roomie dearest) is gone for the weekend so I get to fill my dorm with the lovely scent of wet sheep until they dry. Good thing we have community property febreeze! Gotta love real wool, nice and warm but a real pain to wash! And happy 26th birthday to Zac Hanson, youngest brother from the band (there are 4 younger Hanson siblings not in the group), drummer, and occasional lead singer, on songs like Go, Broken Angel, Marshmallow Lovers, and Devil's Nachos. I kid you not, Devil's Nachos.

Alright, well school has been going well, and flying by. I realize now it's time to schedule an appointment with my adviser, and in two weeks register for classes for next semester. In four weeks it will be Thanksgiving, and then a week from that Thursday I will be taking my first final exam. It's rather weird (fighting the urge not to write the rest of the lyrics!) thinking of finals. Next weekend I have a trip to the Menil collection for my art history project, a nice 6 page paper due before Thanksgiving, that I will probably be writing the three days before it is due, and dreading every single word. That is usually how it works.

Surprisingly without any major assignments due this week, I haven't gotten much knitting done. On the still unnamed shawl I have gotten through another 6, maybe 8 rows, and on Out of Cheese I have finished the first of three final repeats. I haven't even thought about the vest I have to redo, that shall probably be next week.

A quiz and an exam in the middle of the week shall promise to make this week interesting, but might help it go by fast, so before I know it, I may be once again before my keyboard typing out another installment of my life.

Sunday, October 16, 2011

Over Halfway Done

Well the ending of this week marks the official halfway point of the semester. Good thing for me being I only had one 'midterm'. And that was grueling, so I am glad I only had one. After taking that test makes me even more thankful none of her tests are cumulative. If they were, I would be dead by finals. And then instead of being able to crash back at my dorm, I had a paper to write. Good thing it was an English paper on a story I had already read. Procrastination, gotta love it!

This weekend has been disappointing on one front, and that would be the knitting front. I pulled Dad's Christmas vest out of my closet (I learned my lesson with the drawer!) and decided to finish the armholes and neck edging. So I put on You've Got Mail and 3 needle bound off and did the armholes. This morning I finished the neck, and had the idea to try it on, since My dad is similar in size, just taller, and without 2 size D's. So, I tried it on and realized that he has a bigger head, and I had trouble getting it over my head. So after having everything done, it has to all come out, and the front has to get redone. That is never the way a project should turn out.

But, I have gotten some good progress on Out Of Cheese. I am now on row 139/168. It is going along nicely, despite the bazillion gillion stitches on the needles right now. My blue shawl is also going well. I am getting close enough to start the countdown of rows. As of now I am working on the 33rd row before the bind off. Row 35 was a bit tricky, but 33 is nice.

On the subject of hobbies, since I had nothing to do on Saturday, I found myself in the musty, dusty bowels of the brown wing of the library and despite the asthma attack, managed to pick up some reading material. I was looking for Douglas Adams, and after picking up the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, my (high school) senior English teacher Mrs. Mendek's favorite book grabbed me by the scruff of the neck and pulled me back and I ended up checking out The Once and Future King by T.H. White. I had forgotten about her mentioning that book until I was a few racks past it and stopped in my tracks and went "wait a minute" backed up and picked it up. I shall report later as to if her like of the book is founded or not.

As a sad ending note, Betty Driver, better know as Betty Williams on Coronation street died this weekend. The Rovers Return will now be deprived of its hotpots. A wonderful character and amazing woman, such a full career and a much loved actress. She will be sorely missed.

Monday, October 10, 2011

Road Trip!!!!

I can safely say with finality that Hanson is one of the best bands out there.  As it was Columbus Day weekend and both me and my friend Katie are HUGE Hanson fans, we traveled out to her house in Southwick, Massachusetts for the weekend because there were two concerts in her vicinity.  However way before I can talk about the concerts Friday and Saturday night I must update you on the events that led up to this concert. (Mostly what caused us to be so sleep deprived that day!)
On Thursday night Residence Council subsidized tickets to go see Lion King at Shea's Theatre in downtown Buffalo.  Even though I had seen it once before at Shea's, $20 for a ticket couldn't be beat.  And it was amazing!!!!!  We got back to the dorms around 10pm that night so it was perfect.  I would do my stats homework that was due Friday night at midnight (since I would be at a concert, I didn't want to risk it!!!!)  Instead, Ed Reilly, our building director and our boss as RA's was hungry, so a group of us did our usual late night run to Denny's.  That pushed my arrival time at the dorms back to 1am, with stats homework left to be done.  That was finished at 3am, and I had yet to pack.  Quickly shoving clothes and other essentials and completing other tasks that needed to be done before I left (aka, tidying up my room!) I exhaustively climbed in bed at 4am, expecting a good solid 4 hours of sleep before I had to get up to be on the road by 9.  Low and behold that did not happen.  Much to everyone in Marguerite Hall's dismay, the fire alarm went off at precisely 6:06am (total sleep for me: 2 hrs!) and rallied us all outside in the parking lot, putting us all in a very grumpy mood.  However the night/morning could still be salvaged!  Normal fire alarms entail: we all evacuate, the fire department comes, clears the building and then we all file back in, usually only taking up about a half hour, putting us at 6:30, plenty of time to go back to sleep and get up in an hour and a half!  It did not.  We passed 6:30, and after doing head counts of our floors both outside and then when we got in the gym, everyone was growing very grumpy!! 7:00 rolled around and Katie and I were getting worried that we might miss our planned departure time.  Finally at 7:35 we were allowed back inside the building for a total time out of the building of 1 1/2 hours, with still to find out what happened.  Once inside, the residents who were able to take the elevator came across the very potent odor of burning metal in the elevator and above the 7th floor.  Thus the problem.  A mechanical error in the elevator resulting in the upper building filling with smoke and me coughing half a lung out when I finally got back to my room. 
Drawing by Katie forshadowing our weekend!
While most residents were able to go back to sleep Katie and I had no such luck.  We showered, packed up and headed out at 9 as planned.  6 1/2 hours later (see picture drawn very well by Katie on the way to cedar point) we arrived at her house to be greeted by a large, adorable basset hound named Forest who was very happy to see Katie home.  But still, no rest for the weary.  We had dinner of home made pasta fa joule (delicious!) got ready and then drove an hour to North Hampton to the Calvin theatre for the concert!!!!! It was amazing, once we got past the droll opener.  However I must say my favorite moment out of concert #1 was at the end when Taylor brought a little girl up on stage to dance with them. And i've already found a video someone uploaded :) 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zGrtgugeiYY&feature=related
However after the concert is why I now know that Hanson is the best band around.  If you wait outside their bus after the show, they will come out and sign autographs and take photos!!!!  This is where I get angry at Hanson fans.  I met Isaac Hanson, and talked to him which was AWESOME!!!!  But by the time he got to me and Katie he wasn't taking photos anymore because the fans before us were being a little too over the top :(  But I did meet him, and there was always Saturday right??? (note there is no huge picture of me and Isaac and that will give you a clue to what comes next).
Saturday's concert carried us 2 hours from Katie's house, to a club near Yale.  We had no idea about that part, but it was neat.  This concert was even better, if that's possible.  Kind of weird, but 2nd favorite moment was when they forgot the lyrics to "Kiss me when you come home."  Zac saves them, but its hilarious!!!  And again, I have video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFF7hAIVMN4.  But the first favorite moment from this concert was when they played me and Katie's favorite song "Man From Milwaukee"  as the last song.  Amazing!  But I had yet to meet them!  We stood by their bus yet again only to be disappointed.  Seems that Taylor was coming down with a cold so they all wanted to play it easy so they could stay healthy.  Though I'm upset I didn't get my photo with Isaac, I admire them for not cancelling the concert when Taylor was feeling a little under the weather and they are still one of the best bands around. 

Thursday, October 6, 2011

Back on track

Hi Everyone! My hectic life has taken a break (actually my life is still hectic and this is called procrastinating studying for my Political Science test haha) and a little birdy ( a post from mum on faceboook) reminded me that we have this little blog going on that we were all going to post now and then on. So here we are.

Soooooo so so much has happened since the beginning of the semester. I will try to recount it all, but forgive me if I fail. The biggest trip that sticks out in my mind is our school's sponsored trip to Cedar Point. Residence Council rented a nice coach bus that we all piled onto bright and early at 8am (stop laughing Lindsay, real college students find it hard to get out of bed at 8am) on September 10th. We made the four hour journey to Ohio where about 30 stiff and sore college students piled off the bus and ate lunch. Then the fun began. 10 hours of riding rides to your heart's content. It was an overcast day, but it was to our advantage because the longest we ever had to wait was about a half hour because a ride broke down. Every other ride was wait 15 minutes,pick your ride buddies, then hop on and enjoy! It was an awesome day. Surprisingly every rollercoaster that our group went on, I went right along with them, though by the end of the day my stomach was a little twisted up! At 10pm we piled onto the bus, all tired and sore from our day of fun. However little did we know that the fun had only begun! After falling asleep to Psycho (bad idea!), we hit some lovely road construction. So began our final rollercoaster ride. Needless to say, it is an interesting sensation to be asleep, hit a huge pothole on a bus and wake up as you are in midair! By the end of the bus ride we were tired, sore and frustrated. The groans were audible every time we left our seats and our sleep was disrupted. 2:30am arrived and so did our bus in front of the dorms. I don't think many of us were fully awake as we gathered our belongings, trudged up the stairs and into the building, into the elevators, then to our rooms to collapse on our beds. I think I can probably say that most of us were asleep before our heads hit the pillows. But we dreamt of thrilling rollercoasters and a day of fun, friends and excitement.

Then there is the late night taco bell and dennys runs at 11pm with the RA staff. I must say that they are needed. While my waistline does not particularly care for the extra meal, my limited social life likes to go out with the staff and get away from all the incidents filling the RA life. However in college its ultimately about finding free meals. Last Thursday I was invited to the scholarship dinner because apparently I can carry on intelligent conversation ;) and they needed such students so it wouldn't be populated by just adults. Free food??? Yes, I will most definitely attend!!! Additionally it was a chance to dress up from the everyday jeans and t-shirt of a college student. And today was the President's Round Table. It is a chance for heads of clubs and committee chairs to meet up and say what they are doing for the year. As co-chair for the yearbook, I was of course obligated to partake in this free lunch. And what would a DYC event be without a raffle???? I won under armour shorts. Overall a good day I would say.

With that, I will close. There have been many more exciting events, but it will require a much longer post. I will leave you with crafting news. And is there big news!!!! I will save that for the end though. First off I was asked to do a scarf for a former professor going to a football game. He bought the yarn, and I was happy to make it. There was even enough yarn for two!!!

I am also in the process of making a black and white variegated sweater for our cashier at the cafeteria, Evelyn. She is awesome. By the second week of school she will know most everyone's name, and always say hi. She knows what is going on in everyone's life, and is like our surrogate mum. In the newspaper last semester in an article what to do before leaving DYC number 55 was "Meet Evelyn in the PVR." Don't get me wrong, all the staff are really friendly and caring, but Evelyn is loved by all. It brightens up your day to swipe in and she's there saying "Hi honey, how're you doin' today? My, I just love that/those (insert article of clothing/accessory) you're wearing today." We all love Evelyn. So when she saw this sweater that I made for another friend for her birthday and wanted one, how could I say no? She bought the yarn she wanted, so I am now in the process of making it.

Now onto the big crafter news. Drum Roll please......................I have a sewing machine!!!!!!! My good friend Erin got a newer, fancy dancy one last year, so guess who got her old one????? This girl! I am so excited!

With that, I will sign off. Good study habits are calling so I think I will study before watching Whose Line is it Anyways, which is quickly becoming a nightly routine (Now that I know when it is on). Then its bedtime for this girl in the hopes that I will not be woken up by a jack hammer like this morning. Alas, another story for another time!

Wednesday, October 5, 2011

Knitting yes I had time to knit but it was on the run ;)

Fed up yep me fed up with patterns that should be given away for free and some clever person decides to charge, how much well I have seen prices range from a couple bucks all the way up to 20.00. Not one to keep my mouth shut even when I know I should I just happened to say "I like the pattern but no way would I pay for it." Should have shut my mouth and kept knitting. Well that lead me to think I do knit a lot of items from a photo and I don't pay for patterns I can knit. Just how much do I knit that is posted for free? Should I keep track of what I knit? Yes I know that is what we have Ravelry for but I don't up date my finished items near as much as I should.

So what is that blob up top, well a shawl I have come up with out of my own brain that and a lace book for the lace work. I fell in love with the arrow pattern and thought it would look great on the bottom of a shawl. Funny things happen when my brain starts to work I cast on before I really know it. So if this pattern works out well I'll post it and it will be FREE.
I had forgotten this red sock yarn in my stash and when I was just looking to see what I had in my stash.....well it just happened to pop into my hand and I had to knit it up. Oh it is a dream. Now I didn't use the size 3 needles it asked for. Way to big and loose. I knit this up on size 2 and now the sock fits like a dream. Now that I'm nearly done with the first sock I feel the itch to start the second sock. This project is going in my purse so just in case I need emergency knitting I'm covered.
Okay mum go get your coat on lets go and get the girls. I know you miss them and Christmas is tooooooooo long to wait. Coming yet? Okay I miss them but if they ask I'll blame it all on you.

Sunday, October 2, 2011

Time flies

Well, I'm back again, after a rather busy 2 weeks-ish. Papers, exams and homework, oh my! And amidst all that I did manage to have some social life, at least for one night.

To the boring stuff first though. After a french exam, french paper, art history exam, art history paper, an upcoming sociology exam and really confusing psych stats assignments I am flat amazed I am still functioning. I think the only thing keeping me going is a diet coke in the morning and knitting before class. The only silver lining is that it happened in the period of 2 and a half weeks, and not a weekend, or worse one week.

It also doesn't help that these six weeks into the school year, the lovely dorms I live in have had 4 water main breaks that have shut off our water for three hours or more. The never want to tell us that the water is off, we always have to find out afterwards when the toilet won't flush. Lovely I know. It also is just my luck that when the water goes out, the nearest bathroom is a good 5 minute walk away. Which is fine and dandy when you are going to go eat, but when you need to pee, your tired, cold and just want to get ready for bed, the search for a bathroom and the stupidity of the night shift on the front desk never goes over well. And then to add insult to injury, the water comes back on after I have already gotten comfy, and its already 45 minutes past the time I wanted to be in bed. Its times like these that I really miss my old dorm, in the now year old facility.

Onto much better news. Hanson came to town on the 23rd of September, and surprise surprise, I actually bought myself a ticket, caught a cab and went to the concert. And even more surprisingly, I stayed up until after midnight on a Friday. Amazing I know. But it was all worth it, totally worth it. Even the wait at the bus stop that was changed without any notice. And the 3-4 hours on my feet in a venue with no chairs. And the fact that I wasn't able to get a t-shirt either. Nevertheless it was awesome, they played most/all of This Time Around with some forays into The Walk, Underneath, Middle of Nowhere, and of course Shout It Out. They didn't play Man From Milwaukee, but I saw a few live versions on youtube, and realized that the studio version is much better, the walkee-talkee part near the end isn't as good on stage. If the very few readers out there haven't heard Hanson since Middle of Nowhere/ MMMBop, then I would strongly urge you to check out anything since then, awesome awesome group. can you tell I am a tad bit of a fanson??

And some more, more recent good news. I finished my cross stitch. Yup, all done, no back stitching, no final stitches, all done. Too bad a summer in storage started to yellow a bit of it, it didn't turn out too half bad. Oh well. It seemed to go much faster than I had anticipated, I was foreseeing the hoop coming off a week or two, or even a day or too before packing up and heading home. It seems as though Out Of Cheese will have to become my television, and overall computer project. More to come on the other projects, some of them have stalled, and others are making good progress, but not in the grand scheme of things a chart or two here and there, but it doesn't seem like much.

It was over a year ago that my dad, Kathryn and I traveled cross country, and it still seems as though I cannot listen to Jenny/ 867-5309 by Tommy Tutone without laughing. For 2 whole weeks, no matter what state we were driving through, no matter what time of the day or kind of station we listened to, that song was always on. It was ridiculous, at that time Viva La Vida by Coldplay was very popular, but we never really heard it, which kinda baffled both me and Kathryn. Tuning Pandora tonight just kinda brought that all back to be, the first measure and then a rush of memories.

Alright, that's it for me for tonight, its almost my bed time, the prude that I am, I need my sleep so that when the alarm goes off at a quarter to 6 I am not too repugnant looking. So I shall fail to proof this, hit the post button, and then immediately see a mistake and have it bug me. Until next time...