September 2007 Archives

My family is awesome because we put on some '70s music, turn it up, and go around the house singing along. Sometimes to the instrumental parts. "Afternoon Delight," "Hooked on a Feeling," "The Night Chicago Died"....

I randomly played handbells in church this morning because they needed someone. It was a part and a piece that I'd never played before, and I hadn't played handbells at all for several months. But the piece was easy and I was able to practice it beforehand, so it worked out. I think next Sunday I'm going to go to Incarnation [the church I went to for most of my childhood]. I'm looking forward to that.

Luke made me an apple pie (!!). It was REALLY REALLY GOOD. My mother can testify to this. Speaking of which, her birthday is tomorrow, so HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOMMY!

One day this past week, my German teacher mentioned das Telefon. He told us a bit about telephone etiquette in Germany, then proceeded to hand a walkie-talkie to one of the students and leave the room. That was the most hilarious bit of class ever. There was something quite hilarious about his voice asking these random questions: "Kann ich mit __ sprechen? Ah, __, wie alt bist du? ... Haben sie Geschwister?" The conversations had little to no resemblance to actual phone conversations one might have, which is, I think, why it was so amusing. You really had to be there for the full effect, but it was definitely still quite amusing.

On Thursday night I watched Grey's Anatomy in Jerome [girl's dorm across campus from me] with a bunch of girls...and two guys. One of these guys really likes the show; he owns seasons 1 and 2. I'm going to be borrowing season 2 from him. He's in my Lit Trad and Politics classes.

Parallel Fiction [Aaron's and Nathan's band] is doing a show Oct. 20th. I'm really hoping to go to that since I missed their other show.

They're remodeling my workplace. It's a mess. I don't know my PLUs quite as well as I did while working 20 hours a week, but that's okay.

Okay, that's random bits of my week. Now I need to read some Federalist Papers and hopefully go to the Cap Bar with Amanda. I'll try and update again soon!

B+ on my first Lit Trad paper. I'm quite happy with this, especially considering the average was Cs and Ds. Also, everyone has to revise the paper and turn it in for another grade, so I should end up with an A.

So I have a cold. It sucks. And somehow I managed to get all this other medicine, but not decongestant. Thankfully other people have decongestant, so I took some Sudafed and hopefully that'll help. I'm getting Claritin from another friend tomorrow, and I'm going to be picking up some decongestant and vapour rub on the weekend.

Oh yeah, I'm coming home this weekend. And going to Ikea on Saturday afternoon. It should be fun. Not sure when I'm coming home though.....*coughDadIneedaridehomecough* Not sure if there's a football game either. If there is I'll probably see if someone's willing to take me home later on Sunday....There is a football game but it's at noon. So it should all be done by the time I get back. Yay!

Did I mention that colds suck??

That's about it. I get my English paper grade back on Wednesday. I will post that at some point on that day.

It took me years to figure out that the guy that Caractacus Potts buys Chitty Chitty Bang Bang from is named Mr. Edison. I wonder if this has any significance? I haven't seen that movie in forever. Maybe I should get Danny to get it from Netflix. [Yes, this particular college student has a Netflix subscription! How awesome is that?]

I need to get dust rags. Because my room is ridiculously dusty for reasons which I have not ascertained.

Last night I went to the Dallas Museum of Art. We took the 7:45 shuttle provided by UD. It was fine, all the seats were full....And then a whole bunch of people got on and ended up standing in the aisle of the bus the entire way there. We had to go on an overpass, too. Yeah, it was kind of freaky. Crowded private transportation, what?

The DMA was cool. There's this one Monet painting I love and they didn't have it on display anymore! I don't seem to have the postcard with me either....Mom, do you know what I did with that postcard?

My room is all clean and organised now, because my roommate was cleaning and then I decided to clean. It looks very nice. And my bed's all made and pretty.

Luke and his sisters are coming to visit, so I'm excited about that.

Okay, so what's the difference between tags and keywords? Because I sure have no idea.

So apparently certain of my family members have blogs, but I am definitely not seeing them. Anywhere.

And I have no idea how y'all can comment now. I'll experiment with that later.

Also, I do spell "color" "colour." It's what happens when you chat online with too many people speaking British English.

I think I might major in theology. But, seeing as I'm not Catholic, I might have to transfer if I decide to do that. Unless I become Catholic, which I don't think is going to happen.

Or I could just major in German. And become certified for secondary school education in German. Ooh....

I'm going to the DMA tonight to see the Ashes from Vesuvius exhibit yay! And apparently I get free Starbucks!

I've been reading the Catholic Catechism, because Amanda had it and I thought it looked interesting. Plus I've been wanting to learn more about what all these people actually believe.....I could go on about that but I'm not going to. Because I need to go eat and stuff soon.

It wasn't so long ago that my sweet little girl (uh, this is Hannah's dad writing if you haven't guessed) running up and down hills with me, climbing stairs, and dressing as a newspaper for Halloween. Now she's out of the house far far away at some college (OK, so it's less than 20 miles) and now she tells me that she wants a blog. -- what's this world coming to? [or "to what is this world coming"].

Some of you early adopters of Hannah's blog may have noticed that it looks different. You may also have noticed that your comments are gone. Sorry. I'll try to get them back. Late Breaking News, they're "back".

Here's the deal. This blog was originally set up with Textpattern, which is great Content Management System, that I (again, the Dad, not Hannah) have used on several web sites; however, I have been experimenting with Movable Type (MT), and When I showed it to Hannah, she preferred it. MT actually costs something, but it's more advanced and our Web host, Pair Networks, inc., are partners with them, so...it works, why not. Besides, MT is related to Facebook, and Hannah's familiar with that, so it's all good-speaking of which, when leaving comments you can sign in with your facebook account (or something like that, sorry I'm a facebook luddite, but if you try to leave a comment, give it a try.)

The bad news is that I am still figuring things out, so if something breaks all of a sudden for some unknown reason (like it did last night) it's me. Live with it, it will be running soon. :)

The National Merit Scholar reception was today. There weren't that many people there, though I did find out a couple other freshmen were national merit as well. All the upperclassmen with scholarships were there as well.

They gave me another certificate. See...I've gotten LOTS of certificates from being a National Merit Scholar. I got one for being a semi-finalist - actually I got three...one from the corporation, one from the school, and one from a state representative or something. Then I got the nice official framed certificate for being a finalist, along with something from the school....And now I get another certificate for getting the scholarship. But this one is from UD and is hand-signed.

I met the lady in charge of alumni relations. It was extremely amusing, because we had a conversation about linguistics/accents that lasted for a good five minutes. She's one of those people who picks up accents really quickly as well, so we talked about that. It was really random and fun.

This Friday I'm planning on going to this From the Ashes of Vesuvius exhibit at the Dallas Museum of Art. It's going to be really fun, I think.

So Dad, you should get Esther down here on a Thursday night sometime so she can go swing dancing. I have no idea when this would work, but it would be so much fun if it did.

I have some homework now, but not too much. [Well, obviously; if I had lots of homework I would not be writing long blog posts!] I think this is a fluke week, if my friends' amount of homework is any indication of the proper amount of homework here.

"Summerlong" by Kathleen Edwards is one of my favourite songs, and Blake Lewis has a CD coming out sometime in October. Ivannah met him. I am very jealous.

So, I am right now in what could be termed "student heaven."

I have no homework.

Specifically: I have already done my geometry homework to the best of my ability, I have read Genesis several times and see no need to read through it yet again, I read book 10 of the Iliad during work study today and don't need to have books 10 through 12 read until Wednesday morning, I have done my German homework for tomorrow already, and I have no more politics reading for the rest of this week.

Unfortunately, none of my friends have this problem. So I am forced to entertain myself by writing blog posts about how I have no homework. I think I'm going to go downstairs and borrow Amanda's Catholic Catechism and take a look at it; it'll be interesting.

Oh, and I WILL be in bed by 11:30pm tonight.

So Ivannah (friend from college who lives in my dorm) and I were trying to go to Hobby Lobby, which was somewhere in Irving.

However, we went towards Loop 12 and therefore Texas Stadium, and there's some concert at Texas Stadium. So we got caught up in the parking and had to go all the way through a certain section of their parking in order to get out. It took 20 minutes.

Then we got somewhat lost, which led to us driving by Oak Haven Methodist and Plymouth Park Methodist churches. We decided to just look for the Michael's I thought I'd seen, but it was an Italian restaurant, so we went to Wal-Mart, which didn't have what we needed, and then we went to Jamba Juice. Because that was way too painful.

Before that Ivannah, Becca, a guy who I think is named Ryan, and I all went to Target and then to Tom Thumb. Mom, you got a 10 cent off fuel discount because I used our phone number so they could get the savings, and we put everything in one order. Luke, I didn't go to the produce section so I didn't have a chance to start reciting PLUs.

My first paper is due tomorrow - it's for English. I am slightly nervous, but it should be okay I hope.

Tonight I am doing LAUNDRY for the first time. This should be exciting. And I have vitamin water and Jamba Juice in the fridge, which is actually my roommate's. She's not back from her trip home yet.

Now I am going to go find Amanda and go to dinner! Talk to you all later!

By the way, we never got to Hobby Lobby

So I didn't realise that when it rained, there were going to be RIVERS and LAKES of water lying in wait on the sidewalk, waiting to trip up the poor souls with slippery-soled shoes...

Unfortunately, that is how it is when it rains. I'm buying rain boots tomorrow.

My little siblings keep making me pictures. I love them and will have to get some sticky tack so that I can put them up on my wall. Everything else I've received so far has been junk mail, though.

I've been approved for each Chase Platinum card at least twice, I think (and they have a Visa and a MasterCard). It's rather ridiculous. Yet I haven't heard back from the one I actually applied for....I've also been pre-approved for WaMu platinum MasterCard at least twice.

Anyone who has a copy of a DHS newspaper in which I had an article published, could you please get that to me somehow? I need it so I can provide a sample of my writing to the UD newspaper. Oh yeah, I should see if they have a lit mag....

Tootsie rolls are definitely overrated.

As I find it highly unlikely that I'll be able to get to Lamar in order to watch the Duncanville/Lamar tennis matches, I'm going shopping tomorrow with two other girls. It will be a lot of fun.

Today was my first day of work study at the library. It was all right. They said we weren't going to have time to study, but we definitely do. Since I'm working what are nominally hour shifts but in actuality are fifty-minute shifts due to having to get to class, I haven't done much as well. I get to check out books and stuff though. It's fun. And my cash register experience helped with figuring out the cash register in the library.

"Germans don't need spell check." -- Dr. Eidt

Yeah, this way I don't have to keep sending you all emails! Fun, huh?

So my window's looking out on rush hour traffic right now...Not much of it, just this ramp onto a highway which I can see a small bit of from my window. It amuses me. Also, when I'm walking back to my dorm along a certain way I see this highway, and I have yet to look at it without seeing at least one eighteen-wheeler.

I don't know if I told you all this or not, but there are definitely bunnies on campus. It's pretty awesome.

Politics was actually rather interesting today, despite my professor's declaration that "my voice is at the same pitch as the air conditioner." Lit Trad was rather a blank - we didn't do much...It'll be difficult to have any good discussions in fifty minutes though. German was quite good, as always so far. We had a quiz. I got the article for "Schreibtisch" wrong, but otherwise got everything right - and I didn't study at all....Gotta love having had three years of high school German and going back to the very basics. Oh, we did math in German, it was fun.

I have a two-hour break between Politics and German, and it only takes me about half an hour to eat lunch. Today I ended up filling most of that blank by talking to Bill, a sophomore with bright red curly hair. Among other things, we talked about theology - on a surface level, but still, it was fun.

I've discovered that staying up till 1am when one has a 9am class is not the best plan. Last night was the second night in a row I did this. [What can I say, people are fun to talk to!] I ended up getting up about 7:30...was going to take a shower but the line was rather long, so I just pulled my hair back in a ponytail, got dressed, and went to breakfast. Oh yes, I've been getting up rather earlier than I technically need to, but it's a good thing. Anyway, I was having a bit of a hard time keeping my eyes open in Lit Trad - so afterwards, during my hour break between Lit Trad and Politics, I went to the Cap Bar and got an iced cappucino. I put two spoonfuls of sugar in it and it actually tasted pretty good - and I was awake for Politics, which is good because if I was tired it would be really hard to concentrate. By the way, next week I will be doing work study during those hour breaks for the most part.

I went to a focus group after my German class. It was six students and three admissions counselors in a room, with admissions counselors asking questions about the admissions process/experiences of students to figure out what they can do better. I met someone who's from Sunnyvale, CA. Oh, and I met my admissions counselor. That was rather amusing, since I talked about her without knowing she was right there....I got a Cap Bar ticket for doing it, which is awesome because that means I won't have to pay for caffeine next time I need it. Amanda mentioned Monday morning in conjunction with needing caffeine, to which I replied "Thaaanks..."

Amanda is the girl whose birthdate is the day after mine, but the year before me. We started talking and pretty much haven't stopped, and she's my best friend here at this point. We have a lot of fun together. She's one of the people I've been staying up talking to....

I got to go swing dancing last night! It was inexpressibly fun, even just watching. Oh yes, apparently I can dance. I did learn how to swing dance somewhat at TAC, and I caught on pretty quick last night - though it probably helped that I was dancing with people who knew what they were doing. I guess I could follow the guy or something. Anyway, it was SO MUCH FUN. Oh yeah, they have this Winter Cotillion dance where the girls have DANCE CARDS and there's real ballroom dancing and they have dancing classes so that you can actually do the dances and oh my word it's going to be SO MUCH FUN!!!!!

I own Hitch now. The team I was on for the orientation scavenger hunt got second place, and so we all got DVDs!

Anyway, I think this is quite long enough....In about twenty-five minutes I'll be going with Amanda and this other girl who's driving to the hospital where Amanda's going to be volunteering, so she can drop off some paperwork. Then we're coming back, eating, having a movie night or some such, and hopefully going to IHOP at one in the morning - because I've never done it, I've heard it's tons of fun, and it seems like it would be awesome. This, of course, will only happen if we find someone with a car, which may or may not happen. Not everyone has a car around here.

Oh yes, I'm really glad I'm living on campus.

That is really all. Sorry for the length, but...Yeah, hope it was worth it!