It Feels Like Friday

1. It's not all about you.


2. Missing someone doesn't give you the right to be mean to them.


3. Sometimes your best friends shut you out because they care too much about you to let you be disappointed in them.


4. Dogs will always love you, no matter what.


5. Things happen for a reason. No exceptions.

6. Jesus LOVES me, even when I don't exactly love myself.


7. No matter how bad your situation, people will always care about you enough to help. Sometimes these people don't even know you.


8. Keeping everything bottled up inside you is worse than just telling people and getting it over with.


9. When a guy asks you for you number after seeing you in a bikini, he does not want to get to know you better - he just wants to get you in bed.


10. Live in the now because tomorrow never comes and yesterday is history.


11. Allow yourself to be creative.


12. Spend some time alone everyday. We all get sick of the people we live with, it's a fact.


13. Reality TV is what you watch when you're bored and no movies sound interesting.


14. Take pictures. Of everything.

15. Don't follow the crowd. Allow yourself to make your own decisions because the best paved road can often lead to the worst town.


This is my thinking face. K asked me what I was doing on her side of the room. I told her we don't have sides. :-)

A picture taken over winter break. Beautiful glass bottles. Beautiful.

16. Appreciate the beauty in the simple things in life.

17. Sleep with TONS of pillows.

18. Do at least one nice thing for someone a day.

19. Eat dessert.

20. Sing your heart out, even if you suck. :-)

21. Learn something new.

22. Stretch your achy muscles.

23. Do something you're horrible at.

24. Write with your non-dominant hand.

25. Find something to laugh and smile about everyday. It gets rid of the stress in your life.

Sister, Sister

My sister has recently discovered the joys of instant messaging. Her favorite thing is all the games you can play with the people that you are talking to. She always wants to play tic tac toe with me, but I school her at it every time. Ha, ha.

However, she does miss me because I don't live at home any more. So for her to be able to talk to me online is just amazing to her. And I don't mind because it's amusing for me as well. We are 7 years apart and haven't always been that close, but as we get older we have more things in common. I'm just excited for her to grow up even more and go through things that I can relate to even better. It will be exciting! Some people aren't excited for their siblings to get bigger and get older and grow and spread their wings, but it doesn't bug me. I'm excited for life to continue. It's amazing to watch someone grow up right before your very eyes. A little bitter sweet to say the least.

This picture was taken on a family ski trip in Montana. She was learning to snowboard and me and my two brothers were teaching her. It was an awesome trip. We had lots of fun.

Random Fact: In every episode of Seinfeld there is at least one superman reference somewhere.

Beautiful Key Notes

Yesterday was music day. K and I ventured down to the lounge with or respective music books and set up in front of the piano. She had her music sheets and her flute and I had my Disney Piano for Beginners book. K is quite accomplished at the flute...and I am not so quite accomplished with my feeble attempts to pretend like I know what I am doing.

I have always loved the piano. My grandmother had a piano for a lot of years, but they have recently ridded themselves of the contraption - much to the disappointment of my siblings and me. I used to sit at the piano with some old music books she had and pretend like I was a great concert pianist. From what I hear, my grandma was a great pianist. I, however, haven't the long fingers that make playing a bit easier and I also didn't really have the drive to learn. I took lessons for two years, so yeah, I can read music but I can't play anything really worth listening to, ha, ha. But I do try. :-)

So I thought that I would take some pictures of the piano in our lounge. The piano isn't really anything really special. It could stand to be tuned, but it works well enough for all intents and purposes. It's way more in tune than the piano on second floor, so I can't complain too much. Ha, ha.

During my first week of college I spent more time in front of this piano than I would have thought possible. And it wasn't really for my love of music either, I have to admit. It was really the fact that the lounge was pretty secluded and not many people ventured inside it. The Janitors go in every so often to clean out the dust bunnies and vaccuum the carpet, but other than that it's pretty empty.

I have shed more tears in front of this piano than any other inanimate object. I have said more prayers in front of this piano than a normal person would think. I have just sat in silence, not playing, not moving, just thinking. That whole first week had more drama than the following two months combined. And I smile to say that the piano helped me through it.

So pianos don't talk back. They don't have good ideas, or warm comforting arms to sink into. But the piano held memories for me. I always wanted to be amazing at it, but I'm just not - which is okay. But the fact that I grew up around a piano - even though I didn't have a big one in my house (I just got a keyboard which was nice because it fit under my bed when not in use). I think that the piano will always hold something special for me. Like my old house in my old neighborhood. Like country music will always make me feel better. Like standing on the back porch and watching a lightning and thunder storm will make me smile. Like I will always miss gymnastics.

K and I stumbled through our awesome attempts at playing different disney songs, laughing and dancing as only K and I are capable of. It was hilarious for us because our books are in different keys and they don't compliment each other at all. And we tried to sing along, but it just wasn't working on SO many different levels. I still managed to have a good time. And I felt like K and I were actually friends again, since as of late I haven't been feeling really loving towards her. It was just a good experience all around.

Random Fact: In Minnesota, it is illegal for women to be dressed up as Santa Claus on city streets.

The Frosty Air

I walk outside at 8:15 in the morning. My cheeks are frozen. My ears are frozen. And if you were to walk outside after taking a shower, your hair would freeze. My nose has froze to the state of being considered 'crunchy nose.' A condition my father has termed, meaning that the hairs and what-not inside of your nostrils have frozen solid. It happens to everyone - don't deny it.


The thermometer says that it's 10 degrees out there. Good thing I only have two classes today, because going out in the cold isn't something I'm feeling up to right now. I do enjoy the snow, if the truth be told. But I'm really wishing I hadn't left my face mask in Hayden.



It's all about your perspective:

Random Fact: If you yelled for 8 years, 7 months, and 6 days, you would have produced enough sound energy to heat one cup of coffee.

Visiting The Past

Oh Sundays. I love going to church with my boy. What I don't love about Sundays is leaving him and coming back to Moscow. But school comes first because I'm paying for this education - it isn't free. Ha, ha.

But I didn't get to take any new pictures today, though I did think that the little bird prints in the freshly fallen snow would have made a sweet photograph. I just didn't get out there with my camera before it was dark.

I stumbled across these pictures on my laptop. I got them off of a CD a while ago and today when I was looking for pictures on my blog I thought they would make for an interesting post. They are all older pictures - me when I was younger. And they brought back some awesome memories.

Fishing. I have been fishing since I was big enough to hold a pole, aka about 2 years old. I didn't always like fishing, but I do enjoy a good fight. And the best camping dinner is a fresh rainbow trout cooked over an open flame with a little bit of mustard smeared on the inside. Okay, okay, so it doesn't sound like it tastes the greatest, but believe me. It's awesome.

Riding Horses. A passion. Always has been. Westport, WA. I love the smell, I love the experience. I love being in the saddle. I love the freedom that you feel when you are riding on the beach, when you are riding through the woods, and just what you feel when you are sitting on top a horse. The air smells different. The world feels right. I love it!

Goofiness. I have it. I've always had it. I think it comes with being in my family. In fact, I'm pretty sure we ALL have it.

One of my favorite places. The house on James Crowe Dr. I grew up there. It's my home. I miss it.

The backyard. The happening spot in the neighborhood. My thirteenth birthday party? I think. Or my 12th - I don't really remember. The girl on the right, if you don't recognize her is my lovely roommate K and my partner in crime. We have been friends for a long, long time.

Gymnastics. My favorite sport ever. Sure, pole vaulting in high school was fun too, but this will forever remain my favorite. When I was six I wanted to go to the Olympics. This picture was taken in the Memorial Gym which is actually on my campus at school. I was 12 in this picture I think. How funny that I competed here before I actually attended the school.

Arabesque. My favorite pose on the beam. This meet was an over nighter and I slept on a big squishy mat. One of the best places I've ever slept. Too bad those mats cost hundreds of dollars or I'd totally buy one to sleep on every night. :-)

Bars. This picture was also taken in Memorial Gym. I once scored a 9.9 on bars. The best score I've ever recieved. I was so excited and so were my teammates. We'd thought for sure I'd nailed the first place spot. And then I was beat out by a perfect 10.0. What a joke! Ha, ha. The gymnastics way of scoring has always been controversial. I'm not sure why. The judges I guess just don't realize the skill and strength required to do the moves. But that's part of the reason that I left the sport in the first place. Boy, do I miss my gym days. Ha, ha.

Frozen Toes

Today was daddy/daughter day at my house. My dad and I went up to Lookout Pass and I boarded my little heart out. It was overcast today, and foggy at the top of the mountain - but boy did I have fun! I haven't had that much boarding in ages.



This is what I go through on snowboarding days. Beatuiful isn't it? Note the painted toenail :-)



Me and My Daddy on the lift headed up the mountain to make our first run of the day!



Dad on a run at Lookout Pass on the backside of the mountain. It was really beautiful there today. The mountain wasn't that crowded and the backside was virtually empty. It was a blast!



Evidence that I too can board down black diamond runs! Okay, so I don't do it a lot, and I'm not really that fast, but hey! At least I can make it down without falling every six feet. :-)

Random Fact: Men's brains are bigger than women's, but women's brains are more active then men's.

Modified Warhol - N Style

I know that Warhols are traditionally all the same image, but to me that gets too boring. So I like to mix it up and do different pictures. Mostly I just like messing around with my Adobe Photoshop 4.0 program. I've done several "Warhol" pictures. The first one I ever did was of my grandpa. It turned out better than I thought it would and I was quite pleased with it.

Here is one that I did of the four kids in my family. My two brothers and my sister and me:

Warhol created his images to show the objectivity of the items in his pictures. My favorite Warhol is the one of Marilyn Monroe. I think that the conotations surrounding the picture aren't really the greatest. He's comparing her to other items - saying that she is a commoditity and not very human at all. She is an item used to sell things. But I think the Warhol look of pictures is interesting. How you take an image and distort it a few ways so that it kind of resembles an acid trip - not that I have any experience with acid trips. Ha, ha.

Ha, ha. This post reminds me of my first semester of college in English 101. We talked about Andy Warhol one day in class and I was one of the only people who knew who he was and what he was famous for. My teacher was convinced that I could have just taught the class and I didn't really need to take it. Especially the grammar portion. Aparently freshmen in college have no idea where to place commas in a sentence or what a dependent or independent clause is and how they are different. It's a bit ridiculous considering it's stuff you grow up learning and in high school it was really emphasized in ALL of my English classes, especially junior year.

Anyway, here is the Random Fact for the day: In Australia, the number-one topping for pizza is eggs. In Chile, the favorite topping is mussles and clams. In the United States, it's pepperoni.

However, if you order a pepperoni pizza in Germany, you don't get sausage - you get pepperocinis.

Brain Full Of Art

Digital Art. Amateur. Self Portrait. Your picture for the day:

In my high school photography class that I took senior year we had to make 'self portraits.' They all looked similar to this one. It was a fun thing to do and since I was incredably bored today, I decided to remake one. It was fun and kept me from being too lazy. :-)

Random Fact: Hamsters are only capable of blinking with one eye at a time.

Oh I'm So Mundane...

Today has been rather uneventful. I mean, it's just really been a regular day. I did go to the gym and bike for 7 miles. I also did a killer ab workout and if I'm not incredably sore tomorrow I'm going to be very disappointed! Ha, ha.



Also I got to hear M's voice today! I don't talk on the phone really, except to my mom or dad. But on IM you can 'call' people. So I got to talk to him and have his voice reply to me. It was nice. :-)

And I'm so excited about Spring Break! California here I come! Though M isn't so happy about that. But I'm going to come home tan. :-)

My wonderful grandparents who have agreed to house me and my friend Ali while we galavant through San Diego :-0

Of All The Days

January 20, 2009. A day that made history when the first black president officially took office. Some people say that it won't last. Some people think that Obama will be assassinated before his term is complete. Others think this is the greatest thing since sliced bread. I think I would have rather seen McCain in office than Obama, but you can't change what's already been done.

January 20, 2009. The day that my Momma was born over 45 years ago. She is my Momma. She is a shoulder to lean on when times get tough. She is a sweet caring loving lady and life would be so different if I didn't have her. She's strong. She's independent. She raised four children. She's been married and faithful to the same man who is my awesome and amazing father for over 2o years. And she still loves him and she still loves us! I love you Mom. :-)

January 20, 2009. My Frozen Tundra. The walk to class is mostly silent, save the sound of the cars on the street and footsteps of fellow student. A few conversations linger in the frozen air and the trees are permiated in a beautiful white frost that makes their lovely branches look like contorted frosty fingers. They stand on the campus looking so majestic in their white robes and no one dare disturb them. The frost stands in spikes on the metal surfaces of railings and various other objects. It's beautiful. It's inspiring. It's somewhat poetic. It's peaceful. It's reassuring. And it's appreciated. Spring is coming, but for now I love me some frozen tundra frosty tree branch Idaho.

The interesting frost patterns cover the handlebars of this motor scooter in the tower parking lot.

Students make their way to and from class beneath the shade of frost covered trees.

Random Fact: Mothers were originally named Mama or Mommy (in many languages) because they have mammary glands.

Portraits in Style

Okay, so I've been in a drawing mood lately and decided that I would try for portraits again. I used to be fairly good at them, but I haven't drawn a real portrait in over a year. I thought I would make a go of drawing my cousin, and then I stumbled across a picture from Christmas Eve.

This picture I thought would be okay for a first attempt. So I made a contour drawing of it to kind of sketch out where things should be located. I am NOT a professional by any means, but I think that my drawing came okay.

The next day I drew in the hair and filled in the shading. I think it looks fine for my first attempt, but I'm not very happy with it. There are things that I'm going to go back and change, but I thought I would post what it looks like so far. Princess M's hair is my favorite and I will probably leave that just the way it is. However, I've made the chins too big, ha ha. So I will fix that and I think my mouth is just a little too small. So we'll see what it looks like after I go back and revise it. :-) Maybe I will just not draw myself and draw only Princess M because she is cuter than I am. Ha, ha.

Random Fact: Rhythm and syzygy are the longest English words without vowels.

A Wandering Spirit

If there is one thing I love more than anything else on Earth, it's traveling. The whole experience is just awesome. (And that word "awesome" isn't the one that means "totally radical and wicked dude!" but the one that is more serious, meaning "awe inspiring, wonderful, and completely and totally amazing.")

Going to new places and experiencing new life is something that I have been doing ever since I can remember. I've taken plenty of family vacations and I've also gone places on my own. I have always been fairly independent, and I think that's partially a result of being the oldest of four children.

I attribute my love of travel to my dad. He always gets excited when we go on trips and he plans out things for us to do and places that he wants to see. I blame him for my love of photography too. Always taking pictures wherever we go. It's nice though, to have documentation of a trip so that you can look back on it years from now and sigh and say to yourself, "I remember that."

When I started high school it seems I started traveling more. That had to do with sports and so I'm not sure if you really would call it traveling. But nights that I spent in hotel rooms in different parts of the state count to me as travels. Lewiston and Boise for my track experiences, Twin Falls for a drama competition, and Boise also for DECA when I was a junior. It was all fun.

We've been taking family vacations and mini trips ever since before I can remember. Our longest one that I remember is when my dad was switching jobs and he had something like a two week gap between his last day of his old job and his first day of his new job. We hit the road like there was no tomorrow. I don't remember everywhere we went, but I believe it had something to do with Oregon and I also remember the Red Woods of California. This last summer we went to Southern Utah and saw the glory of the red cliffs. We visited something around 7 parks in 9 days? I don't remember exactly, but it was a lot of beautiful red rock.

Soon enough we all got tired of the red everywhere we looked and high tailed it up to Grand Teton Nat'l Park so that our eyes could feast on the lush greeness of the mountains. Grand Teton and Yellowstone I think are my favorites. I know that Jackson Hole, Wyoming is my favorite town. I would live there, but it's ridiculously expensive. :-)

Another trip I feel fortunate to have taken is the trip to Mexico with the Jesbergers. They had been my neighbors for nine years. I call Jan my Mom and Emily is just like another little sister. Mexico was beautiful and invigorating. I want to go back someday.

The sunsets in Mexico are exquisit. You can sit on the beach watching the sunset and it takes exactly 1 minute for the sun to disappear beneath the horizon once it has touched the edge. It's an amazing phenonmenon that I was priveleged to have witnessed.

The third trip I'm going to talk about in this post is my Germany trip. Two weeks around southern Germany living out of a backpack and staying in youth hostels located in basically a different town every night. It was exhillarating and fast paced and also exhausting. But it has kindled a love for foreign travel deep inside my nomadic heart.

I took four years of German when I was in high school and I have instilled a love for the language in each of my siblings. When I first started taking German, I inspired my Oma to look up our family's history because her father is German. This trip was just something special in every sense of the word. I got to practice my use of the language, I got to see many sights, including a concentration camp from WWII, and I got to bring back many pictures so I could share the experience with my family.

The town of Ottobueren, nestled beneath a mountain, on our way back from the Breitachklamm. Very beautiful.

Random fact: Bambi was originally published in 1929 in German.

Boredom Leads To Creativity

So today I am just sitting in my room by myself, listening to my music and minding my own business. K is in Walla Walla with her boyfriend until Monday, which I guess is tomorrow. It's nice to have the room to myself. It's not really lonely here though because there are plenty of friends who live on my floor and B and A are both still here with me. But holeing myself up in my room can still get a little boring.

While I'm just sitting at my computer avoiding writing my 900 word rough draft of my Essay #1 for English 102 an idea hits me! Why don't I draw? I haven't drawn in a while. So I grab my sketchbook out of the cupboard and flop it on my lap. Now the question is what do I want to draw? Well, I am taking a dance class - it's not a technique class though, sadly. But I decide that I want to draw dancers.

The drawing below is my pencil sketch. You can make up your own story for the picture. I'm thinking something like the ballerina really wants to break her classical mold and become a hip hop queen, but who really knows? Only the ballerina can tell her own story.

Well, I finish my pencil sketch and I'm staring at my sketchbook not really wanting to break out the awesome water color pencils that my Oma bought me a couple years ago. And then I get the idea to photoshop it. So I break out the digital camera and upload the picture into my computer.

Below is the final version of my sketch after I photoshopped it. I think it turned out great, but still a little amature-ish-tic. Ha, ha. But I am my own worst critic and so there are obviously things about it that I don't like, but there are plenty of things that I do like. So we'll see what happens. I may turn more sketches into photoshopped "works of art." :-)

Random Fact: Beijing boasts the world's largest Kentucky Fried Chicken Restaraunt.

Days of the Lazy Sort

Today has really been non-eventful. I did some laundry, went to the grocery store, watched some movies and took a nice nap.

Here is a photo that I edited for today's picture.

I really have nothing very good to say today, but I thought I'd at least post a picture since that is my goal. At least one picture a day. I think this will be fun. :-)

I really would like my blog to be interesting all the time. I want to write something inspirational or funny. I think it would be great to get a bunch of readers. But then again, maybe I'm just not that kind of person. I have a lot of friends out here in the real world and not on cyber space. But I think I'd like to try and see if I can get people interested in what I have to say, or what I feel about something.

I'm only just starting out in this blog business with this particular post being my 25th since I've started here on Blogger. I love reading the blogs of note - the ones that seem to get recognized. They are all so different from each other and I don't know yet which one I want to model myself after.

But then I think - why be a copy? I can just do what I do and write what I write and I don't have to try to mimik or mock the other blogs out here in cyber world. Granted, I'm not interesting all the time and I don't always have something funny to say - though God knows that I try hard! But I'm always just myself so why would I change that for this blog? Isn't that what people appreciate? Authenticity.

So anyways, I haven't got a billion comments and I don't have a massive following for my blog. It's just a place where I post little stories and pictures. It's just a place where I have the creative freedom to write what I feel and post what I think and be who I am. So if you stumble upon this blog by accident, maybe you'll come back. Hopefully you'll revisit it. Maybe someday I will get followers for this little blog - but for now, it's all a part of the growing process. You never stop growing - ever. And you also never should trust your three year old brother with a tomato. Ha, ha.

One Of The Guys

I remember when I first got here I felt out of place. I would head to class and just feel like an imposter, like I didn't belong here. I felt way too young and too naive and just, not like a college student at all. As the semester continued and I began to work, I started to feel more like I belonged.

Now that I have one semester under my belt, I'm feeling more like I do actually belong here. Granted, one semester does NOT make me an expert by any means - but I was excited that someone was asking where the Niccols Building was and I could tell him. :-)

So I don't know what made me think about that this morning, but I took a picture of students walking to and from class. See? I look just like them. What a sheep. Ha, ha.

Extended Shock of Day Two

In my CORE class this morning we did an activity more focused on ourselves. The real name of this class is "The Movies, The World, and You." So today we were doing an excerise to focus on "you." Each person in the class had to answer some questions that reveal a bit about their personality. The questions were simple enough, but they did make you think. People's answers were indeed very similiar and very interesting.


First we had to introduce ourselves, even though we've had the class for a whole semester. There were a few new people so in order to accomodate them every said his or her name before answering the questions. These questions were developed by a French talk show host. I don't remember his name, but he would use these questions when he interviewed people on his show.

I'm N. *waves*
What is your favorite word? Ridiculous.
What is your least favorite word? Mundane.
What turns you on creatively, spiritually or emotionally? Authenticity.
What turns you off creatively, spiritually or emotionally? when people are really fake.
What is your favorite curse word? Frikk. :-)
What sounds or noises do you enjoy listening to? Thunder storms and rain pounding on my window.
What sounds or noises do you not enjoy listening to? dogs barking in the middle of the night
What profession, other than your own, would you like to attempt? Teacher
What profession would you not like to attempt? Stripper. Ha, ha.
If there is a heaven, what would you like to hear God say to you when you reached the pearly gates? Welcome my child, I'm glad you made it.
You should answer those questions too, or at least think about them. Post them in a comment if you should feel so ambitious. :-)

And now your pictures for the day:


This was my breakfast! Woo hoo!

The ground outside :-)

Take Two: The Beginning Of The End

My first day of classes is officially over! Celebration! Woohoo!

It started with English at 8:30 this morning. Easy to find in the second floor of the TLC. Today was just about introduction. Concepts. What are they? Ideas. But ideas are not all concepts. We talked about it for a while, but no one really seemed to have a set answer. We related it back to higher education vs. high school education. Is higher education really necessary?

Then I left for my 10:30 class a half an hour early because I had NO idea where this class was at. All my schedule told me was that it was in the PEB. Where is that? So I high-tail it to the Memorial Gym, because that's where I think I'm supposed to go. Well, I open the door, and it's all Army ROTC parphanilia covering the walls. I'm in the wrong place. There's another door farther down, so I head to it. Nope, more ROTC stuff. Crap! Where do I go? There is a guy smoking a cigarette standing outside the door. He sees my confusion and tries to help me. There is supposedly a hallway that I need to get to that should take me where I need to go. Back to the other door I go and emerge myself in the Army ROTC information. There is no hallway that I can see.


I poke my head into the doorway and there is a man sitting behind a desk. "Can I help you?" he asks me. "Yes! I think I'm lost," I answer. He asks what I'm looking for, and once informed he tells me again of the same hallway. But this time he tells me where the hallway is, ha ha. One step closer! So I finally find this hallway and I travel to the end of it, where I am greeted by two large gray doors. The sign on the door says "Be respectful, don't open while class is going on." Well, sure enough there are voices on the other side of this door. I really feel like swearing.


The class ends and I walk into the room as students disperse. I'm so lost. There is no number here that says 201, which is theoretically where I'm supposed to be. I walk out another set of doors on the other side of the room, but this leads to an empty room and it appears as if there is no way out. Now I really like saying some sort of dirty words because I have ten minutes to find this place that I'm supposed to be for a class that I was previously excited for, but now after this adventure I'm beginning to hate it already. So back to where I came from I go. I manage to find a teacher and the frustration and fear in my eyes must have tipped her off, because she kept telling me that it was going to be alright. God bless her heart! She tells me that I should be in the PEB building and not in the Memorial Gym. Aparently they are not the same thing. Dirty word.


So I make my way out of the Mem Gym and up this hill towards this building that I'm hoping really exsists. The farther I walk the more worried I become. Did I hear her right? Am I going in the right direction? Did I miss the building? But then I see a sign! Oh glorious sign! Physical Education Building here I come! I fling open the door, and immediatedly I start looking for signs about where 201 may or may not be located.


I see some stairs, and to me this is good. 201 - should be a second floor room number? Let's check it out! So I get up the stairs and there are no room numbers. Dirty word. I walk down the hall, maybe there is some indication of where I need to be? I see a sign that talks about UI Dance, so this MUST be at least CLOSE to the right place....right? I turn around to see another girl behind me, with what appears to be an equally confused facial expression. "What are you looking for?" I ask her. "Room 201," she says. "Me too," I sigh. She walks ahead of me. Sure enough, there on a door it says 201. I enter the room to find it almost completely occupied. I sigh with relief - at last I have found my class. We spend an agonizing amount of time going over the sylibus before class is finally over.


Next is Math 143, which I am NOT excited for in any way shape or form, but my teacher is an awesome Chinese lady. Her English is very broken, but she's just so cute that I can't help but smile. She talks about our math related things, like the Polya Lab where we need our "Wendell Caws" (Vandal Cards) to sign in. And on the Polya website we have to watch "weedeeos" (videos). Her language is going to make me love her and dislike her. It's hard for her to explain things, but mostly I learn by doing, and numbers are the same in any language. Math was a class that I wasn't looking forward to at all, but now I kind of am. :-)


And here are you pictures for the day - there are three of them. Be happy. Ha, ha.

The Calm Before The Storm

Today is Tuesday. Tuesday is historically the most ignored day of the week, and this week Tuesday is my last day of winter vacation - which makes Tuesday important and not ignored. And to top it off, I am not at all well.

I'm waiting for three of my text books to get here, and I have class tomorrow beginning at 8:30. I am not in the least bit excited for classes to start back up. I am taking 6 courses this semester, and tomorrow is the first day. It's a Wednesday. Humpday. The hardest day of the week. Definitely not my favorite day.

Last semester my favorite day was Thursday, because I had nothing to do on Thursdays. But now, that's changing. However, I don't have a class after noon ever and my latest days will be Wednesdays because math will go to 12:30. Yuck.

But I have an idea, I want to take at least one picture a day. One picture that will represent something or nothing. But one picture for each day. We'll see if I can do it. I don't care if I take the picture with my camera or with my cell phone, but somehow I'm going to get one picture for everyday.

This is my sentiments of Wednesdays and how they suck. This picture was not taken today, but because I have not yet showered and I'm sick, perhaps I will come back later and post a picture for today. But for now, this is how tomorrow makes me feel. Acurate representation right there. Ha, ha.

By The Grace Of God

So today has been....eventful. I started off with a trip the computer guy. My laptop has been acting funny ever since I got Anti-virus 2009 on it. We got rid of the virus, but the computer just hasn't been the same. So I'm having windows re-installed and hopefully that should fix the majority of issues I'm having trouble with.

Then we were off to Great Clips for a Great Haircut. Ha, ha. I brought D with me because his hair was covering his eyes and he wanted to get it trimmed so that he could see while he was skiing. "That way it doesn't look like there's a tree in the middle of the run, when it's really just my hair," he says with a laugh.

While M and I are sitting at Great Clips waiting for D's haircut to get finished, I'm texting K. She's hanging with another friend and they are headed to Ross, which is RIGHT by where M, D and I are. "Oh my gosh, I can see you! I can totally see you!" I practically shout and wave through window at K as she and J walk up to Great Clips to meet us.

D eventually is finished a few minutes later, so we pay and then head over to Ross. We look through the clothes, aimlessly wandering around. K and I pull out various clothing items and make random remarks about how cool or ridiculous they are. K and I love to make fun of clothes. Some of those items though, you just have to wonder what kind of crack the designer was on when they created the (insert clothing item here).

Our adventure continues with a trip to Panda Express where K and I are the only ones who get food. M is tired of "mooching" off of me, though I don't really consider it that. I did buy D a chocolate chip cookie and gave him my fortune cookie. He's not a big asain food eater, even when the asain food has been americanized. Ha, ha. So anyway, K and I finish up and then we head to various other locations around town. There's not really very much to do in CdA at night. There's not much of a night life here. And since it's winter, all outdoor activities are pretty much out because of the snow on the ground. Had it been the middle of summer there are a plethora of parks, and even the boardwalk, that would have been welcoming to our company.

So we decide that we feel like bowling, but we get to the bowling alley and there are a million people there, with a million cars and no where to park and no open lanes. Just our luck. So we decide to head to K-Mart and figure out what we want to do next. K-Mart isn't really my favorite place to be, but we had fun. There are a bunch of Valentine's Day gifts out - the plush teddy bears that sing and the stuffed animals of gigantic proportions that hold hearts with sayings on them. I held up one that read "kiss me" to M, who lovingly granted me a peck on the lips. Ha, ha.

I picked up a bottle of Lipton white raspberry tea, which I think is absolutely declicious and doesn't really taste like tea. K and J have grabbed bags of M & Ms and we proceed to the check out stand. K and J pay first, and I grab a Mr. Goodbar for M because he's hungry. I go to grab for my debit card - uh oh. It's no where to be found. I'm looking in my various pockets, and it's really not here. I'm starting to get panicy. "This is not good," I said, my voice slightly shaking. I'm not going to lie - I'm scared. What if someone took it? Where could it be? What if I dropped it? How am I going to find it? No, it's not gone - it has to be here. I know I got it back at Panda Express... uh oh. Panda. I swallow and hand the cashier my credit card to use in place of my debit. She says that if I did leave it at Panda that I should go back and get it because it would be a lot of heartache to get a new one. First I'd have to cancel it and then wait 8 weeks for a new one to arrive. And that would just suck.

K says I probably just left it in my car because she knows that the girl at Panda Express gave it back to me. I nod and hope and pray to God that K is right in her thinking. M thinks we should wander around K-Mart incase it fell out of my pocket. But to me that's not possible. I didn't have it out ever in K-Mart. We venture out to my little green Pontiac that's sitting in the parking lot waiting for our arrival. No good. This debit is just not in there. I don't know what to do. I don't want to go to Panda because I hate talking to people, but I have to get this card back and I really don't have any other options. Back to Panda I go, bringing D and M with me.

I pull into the parking lot at Panda Express, holding my breath and praying to God to just let us find it. I walk into Panda with D and M trailing behind me. There is only a woman and her two children up at the counter paying, so I just walk up on the other side of them. The cashier turns to me and asks if she can help me. I start to ask about my debit card, and she goes back to ask some other people who were there earlier. Two other girls emerge. I recognize them from earlier, and they recognize me. We're talking, but no debit card has been turned in. During this whole time, in the back of my mind, I'm wondering if I threw it away...

I ask if they've already taken the trash out because maybe I threw it in there. One of the girls puts on a pair of gloves and asks me which can I tossed my tray into. I point to one across the room and we walk over to it. She pulls out the trash can and starts digging through it. At first it looks hopeless. How am I going to find my debit card in all this gross trash? But then I spy a folded receipt with a red edge that looks like my debit card. "Is that it, right there?" I ask, pointing. Her latex gloved hand flies to the spot in which I point, and she pulls it out of the trash can. Sure enough, that's my debit card.

She wipes off some of the grime, and hands me the card. The receipt had kept most of the icky left over food from contaminating my card. Grins cover our faces in the excitment and relief of finding my card. "Can I hug you?" I ask the girl, I'm that happy. "Sure!" she says and we embrace for a few seconds. I sigh with relief. "You guys have a good night," she says. "You too," we answer, and we part ways. I turn to M, who's smile seems to be as big as mine. He hugs me to his chest. Crisis averted. Thank you, Jesus!

So now, I'm going to sanitize my debit card and keep it in close proximety to me at all times. Ha, ha. And my haircut looks fab. Totally fab.

Unwelcome Changes

I am 18 years old. Legally, this makes me an adult. I can vote, I can die for my country, I can gamble. I should be able to stay out past ten o'clock, but not in this house. I should be able to do what I want - with in reason, obviously.

I think that as you grow up, you should be allowed more freedoms. The freedoms that I've experienced while I'm living on my own at school have been nice. I can go where I want when I want to go there. And random Winco runs at 1 in the morning are always a total blast. And then I come here, and it's like all freedom has been stripped away.

Lately I feel like I'm at odds with my dad too. He's annoyed at something and that makes him react strangely to me. I don't want to complain about it, but writing it down gets it out of my system. I just want to be treated like an adult. I want to stay out later at night than 10 o'clock, because that is a ridiculous time to me. I understood that when I was still in high school and lived at home permanently - but now? I mean, really? I feel like such a little whiney brat writing about this in my blog. It seems so insignificant, and yet still so incredably significant to me.

I really have decided that I don't want to live at home anymore. I like visiting, but I like having my freedom and being able to make my own decisions. I don't know if that is selfish of me, because I think my perception of what is or isn't selfish is a bit scewed, but I do know that I don't like it here. And this is the first time in my life that I have not liked living at home. It is indeed an unwelcome change.

This Semi-Charmed Kind Of New Life

Welcome to the year 2009! Welcome to the snow and the hope of summer coming to rescue you from all the cold. Welcome to the month of resolutions and newly perchased gym memberships. Welcome to the month of 'no sweets' and 'eating healthier.' Welcome to the month of 'i want to remember my next thirty years.' Because that's how long it usually lasts - a month. Maybe two. But most people peeder out after a while. There are the lucky ones that can make the change, but face it - we are America and we are lazy. But we fully enjoy our laziness and our awesome procrastination skills!!

I don't typically make new year's resolutions. Simply because 1) I can never remember them and 2) I think it's pointless....because I never remember them! So this year I have resolved to not resolve. I think setting goals for yourself is a good idea, but some people just weren't built to be goal setters. I have my own little goals and things - namely to survive college and save up money this summer so I can have my OWN car. But to me, these aren't new year's resolutions because I've had them before the new year started.

But the whole resolutions thing is only a part of the new year's celebration. The other part, and what everyone lives for, is to stay out until midnight. Some people light fireworks, some people watch the ball drop, and some people ring in the new year on a public bus headed back to a parking lot so we can leave before the rush of traffic.

I spent last night walking around the streets of Spokane at the First Night celebration. I don't understand why they call it First Night though, to be honest. Because it's really the Last Night of the old year. If they wanted to celebrate the first night, the party should be tonight instead. That would make more sense to me. Ha, ha. But they don't live to please N, so I'll just have to deal. Whatever. It's not that big of a deal anyway. :-)

It was fun, and I was distantly reminded of being back in Germany. Taking public transportation, listening to music on every corner, walking around town with tons of other people in the streets - it's all very fun and interesting. There's all sorts of music, from street DJs, to electronic harmonicas, to folk songs and simple accustic melodies. I thoroughly enjoyed myself.

We decided to head back to the parking lot and skiddaddle out of town before there was a big rush of cars and everyone was trying to leave. So we caught the bus and started to head back to the car. There were some premature firework displays that we could see from inside the big bus, and E notices the time on his phone. 11:58.

"We're not gonna make it to the car before the new year," he says. So we 'count down' to the new year from out seats on the bus. Two minutes later E shouts "happy new year!" so the whole bus can him. Couples kiss, people kind of half cheer, and then the bus pulls up to the stop outside the parking lot. We exit the bus and the first fireworks of the year greet us for a whole minute. It was beautiful.






So now I'm going to start this year with my semi-charmed life and my thoughts and my feelings and my self. And I'm going to party like there's no tomorrow because I am so epic that it's totally legit. Fact.