O hey, I have a blog!

So I haven't written/vented in a while. Let's see what's happened since then...

July: Went to the beach in North Carolina with the fam, got to see the grandparents, and got to chill out.
Also went up to NY for a few days, got to see my "adopted" families up there and hang out with my girlies

August: worked 5 days a week for the first two weeks, then the second two was 6 days. Got some lovely paychecks out of that, and a have a kickin' recommendation waiting for me when I need it because I did pretty much everything there was to do there except pay the bills. Combine me doing everything with being respectful and honest (three of my coworkers got fired for skimming money...idiots) and being personable, they love me. My manager is practically begging me to work over winter break. I say this not to brag, but simply to show that it's really not that hard to please those in authority over us. To God be the glory. :)
Jennifer left in August :( I'm reallly hoping to go see her in Florida over winter break otherwise I don't see her until summer...
School started last week in August. The new freshies are (for the most part) soo cute! My class was definitely not that cute. First day of classes was Daddy's birthday :)

September: not much to speak of. School stuff, making new friends, catching up with friends from last year, all the first month of school fun stuff. Mom and Little sister's birthdays...Little sister is 14 now...growing up too fast :/

October: Grammy went home to be with Jesus Oct 2 :'(. Sad but I know she's dancing with the angels. God must have needed a little more joy up there in heaven :}

So far October has been up and down, just trying to keep up with everything. School is stressing me out but that's kinda life in college, right? One of my friends got robbed at gunpoint the other night...methinks I'll stop walking around at night by myself so much.

That reminds me (don't ask why, it just does) I need to get my hands on the rest of the books in Stephanie Meyer's Twilight series....OMG SO GOOD! Little sis had me read the first one and I was instantly addicted. Not that I have time to read for pleasure, since 3 of my classes are all reading all the time, but still. WANT!

I've also been introduced to some new music: Crazy Loop, Shake It, and White Tie Affair.

Upcoming events: License test #2 this saturday, Intervarsity Fall Conference at Summit Lake next weekend (YAY!!), Monsterbash 10/30 at Bedrock (woohoo!) which means i need to find time (as if there is such a thing) to go shopping and get my costume

Oye so little time so much to do....Now off to study for a history midterm.

Peace y'all!

P.S. Common Sense Life Lesson for the week: Don't let your little cousin climb all over you in dress clothes (Oh c'mon those stockings cost like $5 and she was too cute to resist)

nineteen :)

I'm nineteen!!! yay!!! Thank you Jesus for 19 years of grace and mercy on my life.
p.s. common sense life lesson for the week: when going to the movies remember to bring your wallet

I HATE THIS

I am so entirely fed up with being sick. Especially this nagging cold/allergy crap. If I'm gonna be sick I'd rather it be like last week where it was all out fever dizziness upset stomach etc. Since Wednesday afternoon I've had this nagging sinus crap that's fogging up my head more and more every day. Oh and then there's the lovely cough that comes between 9pm and 9am, wonderful conducive to sleeping. Everyday for the past 4 days I wake up and I can barely breathe because I'm stuffed up, or my nose is running like a sieve. I'd rather the runny nose today but no, I get the stuffed up head to such an extent that I can barely think straight and have absolutely no motivation to do anything productive.The only good thing is that my wretched sore throat has passed. I wish I could take my friend up on her offer and just go lay out in the sun or do hw outside. Unfortunately I have a paper to write that's due tomorrow and that necessitates my computer. Seeing as said paper will most likely consume most or all of my afternoon, evening, and night (here's hoping I make it to bed at a decent hour) I can't work outside because there is nowhere to plug in my computer. I would love to be outside on a beautiful day but being outside would probably make my head worse anyhow. Acetaminophen and Sudafed take the edge off the sinus misery but only for so long. I can only take them every four hours but of course they wear off after about two hours. To add to all this, I'm cold. It's something like 68 degrees outside and 75 degrees in my room yet here I sit in a fleece robe, fuzzy socks, and my favorite slippers (which just so happen to be falling apart). I don't think I have a fever, it doesn't really feel like I do. Even if I did, the acetaminophen should knock it down. I hate this so much! I wish I could snap my fingers and make it all go away. I'm concerned about this week. It's the last week of classes, and if this rotten head fogginess keeps up, my concentration levels will be even less than usual, when i need to concentrate more. Joy...*whines* ugh I have no motivation to do my paper or clean my room, both of which are high priorities. My room is a disaster and the paper is due tomorrow. I can't skip my morning classes to finish it because I skipped last week due to being sick. I'm sure my dance teacher loves me for skipping three classes in a row, two because i was sick, which hopefully she's leaning towards as an explanation in her head. I don't generally skip twice in a row, much less three times. *sigh* all I want to do right now is sleep, to escape this miserable cold or allergies or whatever the hell it is. Alas, a messy room and a paper command my attention, however disoriented I may be. Maybe I'll make some tea or hot cocoa. For now, I'm hungry, and need to get going on being one day closer to the end of school.

Peace y'all.

P.S. Common Sense Life Lesson for the week: when you know you're sick, and may be sick for a while, buy more than one box of tissues. Cough syrup and tissues may necessitate a trip to rite aid.

QUADMANIA Review

Sooo last weekend was QUADMANIA, or rather "Parking Lot 17 Mania". UMBC didn't want to mess up the pretty grass in the quad, so the carnival and live music was held in a parking lot on the outskirts of campus. Convenient for my dorm and the two dorms near me, but that's about it. If you didn't know it was going on, you probably would never know. Anywho...I had alot of fun. I had a perfect view of the setup a few days in advance from the window in my room, and I was very excited. On Saturday morning, I woke up to some of the music (nice day so window was open) and got to listen to it as I was straightening the room and getting ready for the day.

The Rides...Some people complained about how the carnival seemed to cater more to the local elementary and middle schools, but I love carnival rides so it didn't matter to me. If you went at night, there were less rugrats and shorter lines for the rides. $10 per day was, in my estimation, a tad pricey but I understand that SEB (the people responsible for the fun times) have costs to pay. The swings were fun, but a tad nauseating after a while. The tilt a whirl was tilting and whirling as one would presume, but there wasn't much cushioning so I got a little beat up. It was still fun, it would whirl you around and you would feel like you were going to fly out into the middle of the carnival full of people. The spaceship ride next to the tilt a whirl was tons of fun. It started out nicely just going around, getting a little bit higher with every rotation, then it picked up speed and used pressurized cables and springs to straighten the rods attached to the spaceship cars (kinda like pinkish purple versions of the Space Mountain ride at Disney World Magic Kingdom) which would throw the cars even higher suddenly. It got going fast enough that I almost lost my sunglasses, and had to take them off while trying to hold on as the ride was spinning around. Woohoo! The ride I went on the most was the parachute ride where it went up and around at an angle at a nice speed and gave you a little dip in your stomach right as it started going down (I can almost feel like I'm on it now :p). I went on that three or four times and had lots of fun.

Finally, the ultimate ride...the Zipper! This was very scary to look at, because it looked like it would break at any moment. Rusty metal cages attached to a long rotating vertical machine that was also rusty. You half stand half sit in this little cage, the only thing holding you in is the support bar attached to the door. If you wanted to live you held on to hand bars attached to the inside of the cage door. When this machine started going, it rotated 180 degrees and brought you up to the top (kinda like a ferris wheel) then would spin around and around. Meanwhile as this machine is flipping, your cage is also flipping. The first time I went on, I was petrified. My friend Caitlyn and I were going on it for the first time together, and she was excited. I was very scared, which is odd, because I love thrill rides/rollercoasters, etc and they rarely scare me. I've been riding rollercoasters and such since I was about 8 years old, props to Daddy for getting me hooked on them early. Maybe it was just the insecurity of the whole thing. So after we got off, I was ok, and then my friend DK finally showed up (after I called and texted him multiple times hassling him to get down there). He wanted to ride it and made me go with him. I had much more fun the second time (although I spent the first few minutes telling him to hold on because I wasn't bringing his dead body back to his girlfriend). After twice around the Zipper on a stomach full of cotton candy and kettle corn, I was a bit disoriented and took a break from rides for a while.

The Music...I saw a number of the performers, and enjoyed most of them, although Dan Deacon's antics were partially responsible for getting my friend thrown out of quadmania. Shoutout to Mother Nature's Recipe! These guys were great!! My friend Ben plays the keyboard and he and the rest of his band members were definitely one of the best acts at the whole weekend. They played a swing number toward the end, during which vocalist Leif came down and started dancing with a girl in the crowd. I had to laugh as I watched my friends Julian and Alli dancing as well. Julian was having fun, and I think Alli was too, but I could tell she was a bit "omg why am i doing this?" about the whole thing. Speaking of dancing, on Friday evening, me and my friend Rachel had tons of fun dancing to the closing act of the evening, a cool rock band. There weren't too many people around by that point so we had some space to just kinda do our own thing.

The Food...cotton candy and kettle corn kept me alive all weekend (temporarily lost my redcard so I spent all my money on carnival food). I couldn't bring myself to pay for the drinks when I had plenty in my room to drink, water, soda, juice, etc. I wanted funnel cake, but the line was always ridiculously long whenever I tried to buy some, and it wasn't worth it.

The Games and other stuff...I tried to win some stuffed animals, the shooting game, the basketball game. They were only three bucks so I figured why not give it a shot. Close but no cigar. Contemplated trying to win a fish, but carnival fish generally have a very short lifespan so I decided I'd get a healthier one over the summer. The trampoline things where you could bouncey bouncey bouncey and do flips were fun!!! Granted I have some bruises from the harness, but still fun. While I was on the trampoline thingy I got to see a step show put on by some fraternities and sororities from the National Pan Hellenic Council. Although the girl who was introducing the students was slightly irritating, it was still a cool show. One of those things I've kinda always wanted to try...till I remember I'm a skinny white girl. Yeah I think I'll stick to my ballet. The two things I didn't get to try was the blow up slide/obstacle course thing and the rock wall. Rachel and I were supposed to do the slide after the TPain concert, but the carnival closed an hour before we were told it would, so that didn't happen. I really wanted to do the rock wall, but refrained. Having dislocated my elbow twice back in January, the ligaments aren't quite strong enough to support that kind of tension/weight yet. Yes you're supposed to use your legs more than your arms, and yes I probably would have been fine with the short 20 foot rockwall, but no use risking it and ruining my weekend (and the next 3 weeks of my life) by injuring it again.

The T-Pain Concert...waste of $15 and two hours of my life. Seriously. Doors opened 20 mins late, show started 2o mins late, the opening act got old after 5 minutes. DJ for 25 mins after the opening act was cool but after a while the general vibe was "bring out T-Pain or someone we came to see please". Finally Jay Lyric and Tay Dizm came out, danced/sang/talked for a bit, and brought out a giant baby blue teddy bear with dreads and a tophat, claiming it was T-Pain's cousin. Shortly after, T-Pain decides to grace us with his presence. If you subtract the opening act, the DJ, the time they all spent talking/walking around the stage doing not much of anything, all the time he spent trying on his 10 different grills (cuz we all just really want to know how rich he is and how much they all cost) and the time T-Pain spent introducing all the people on his record label, he only performed for a grand total of about 40 mins. 40 mins out of 2 hours...NOT WORTH IT! Turns out that due to copyright etc, he couldn't even sing most of the songs all the way through because he only does part of it. The most ridiculous part of the entire thing was when T-Pain and his fellow rappers came strutting out on stage with their pants around their ankles, and boxer briefs showing the world everything we never wanted to see. Then they just had to shake it in our faces because "this is for the ladies". My friends and I examined the floor and each other's makeup during this little interlude. Oh and then T-Pain starts going off on how guys shouldn't act all ashamed to look, because "if you never looked at another guy's, you don't know how small yours is". Yeah...umm...how about no. So T-Pain, being the sensitive guy that he is, decides to do a moment of silence in memory of the VTech shootings. Legit, since the 1yr aniv had been that week. Then he extends it to all the people who are "dying for no reason". He lists examples like other school shootings, 9/11, urban crime, and then starts getting political with the Iraq war and just random "people who are dying". He of course exits the stage with an unoriginal comment on how much George Bush hates black people. I hate when rising celebrities start politicizing and just making random comments with nothing to back them up. Seriously, we didn't come here to hear you mouth off about your opinions on the war and the gov't...we came to see you try to rap/sing. So that was that.

Overall Quadmania was lots of fun. I got a pretty purple flowering plant and two henna tattoos, a purple lei and the beginnings of a tan. Not too much burn, thanks to Rachel H for the sunscreen :). I got to hang out with some really cool people, including a girl who I later discovered was the niece of my highschool history teacher...small world. The hype and my excitement were justified. Haters aside, I love carnivals. I can't wait till the moco fair this August!

Part two: "adventures after the concert" soon to come. Sleep now.

peace y'all.

P.S. Common Sense Life Lesson for the week: don't break in new shoes in bare feet...blisters anyone?

we all do dumb things...and then there's me

I love how just when life seems to be going along nicely and nothing is terribly bothersome, God sends me these little messages or allows me to do really dumb things to humble me and remind me of my own imperfections.

So I was having a lovely Friday night. Went to a campaign meeting, had productive fun times there. After I went and chilled with my apartment friends for a bit. Interesting side note, when I arrived, it was dry outside. Shortly after I got there, it started pouring, seemingly out of nowhere. Right around the time I left, it was slowing to a light sprinkle. Scattered showers I guess. Anywho...left there and went to play pool with some friends from the dorm. After the gameroom closed, we were looking for a bit more entertainment and food. One of the guys randomly decides he wants Smirnoff Ice, and another one wants peach iced tea. So we go riding around at 1230 am on Friday nite/Saturday morning looking for peach tea and an open liquor store. Thanks to Baltimore County's blue laws, this took a bit of time. We finally found a packaged goods store about 5 mins off campus (after driving around for half an hour or so). No smirnoff Ice, so we substitue Mike's hard cranberry lemondade. We go back to the dorm, chill in the room of the guy who's 21, and turns out I'm the only one drinking the Mike's, the other guys are drinking other lovely things as we watch superbad (not my favorite movie, but the ending is good). I had four to be precise. By the time the movie is over it's about 430am, and most of us, myself included are at least tipsy. After I got back to my room, I decided, in my rather tipsy state, that it was a good time to go leave comments on my friend SteelWolf's blog, jokingly referencing a disdain for Greek Life and mistakingly making his VP-nominee the author of a quote I inserted. (background: he's running for SGA pres and really working on getting the Greeks to support him). Little did I realize that this would proceed to blow up in my face, as people then start leaving angry comments on his personal blog and his campaign blog site as well. This I discover at around 330 Saturday nite/Sunday morning. Open mouth (or rather keyboard) and insert foot. I quickly deleted the original comment, and posted a follow up comment on both blog sites explaining that I commented solely in jest, taking responsibility for the seemingly anti-Greek life comment, and apologizing for my comment giving the impression that the SteelWolf campaign did not support Greek Life when in fact they very much do. I also shot off an email to the campaign email address apologizing profusely for the negative backlash caused by my lack of judgement and making it clear (as I did in my follow up blog comments) that although I was not entirely coherent, it was still no excuse for my lack of judgement and insensitive, possibly campaign damaging comments. Yeah...I'm an idiot.I felt horrible and still do. I'm praying that people accept my apology and ruffled feathers are quickly settled.

Other dumbness, but not to the same degree...went to dinner last nite with some friends from College Republicans after our convention. Found out when I got back that I left my phone at the restaurant. Joy. Of course the only way I find out is when my friend tries to call me and my phone is answered by a waiter or maitre'd. He then dropped by my room to tell me that my phone was at the restaurant and kindly offered to drive me up to the Inner Harbor to get my phone back. So that's what I'll be doing after classes tonite. Thankfully it was at the restaurant and not on a street somewhere or in a parking garage.

Well that was my lovely story for the day, time to go to class. Birthday shout outs to my wonderful suitemate Katrina and my friend Rachel W. God Bless girls!

peace y'all

P.S. Common Sense Life Lesson #2 for the week: 430 am and tipsy is not a good time to be posting comments on friends blogs...yeah...

SPRING IS HERE!!!!

I love spring so much!!! Warm weather, short sleeves, sunshine, flowers and trees, waking up to the smell of fresh cut grass...*sigh* yay! Finally finally finally spring is here :) I've had lots of fun over the last couple of weeks getting involved with my friend SteelWolf's campaign for Student Government President. I've learned alot about SGA and what it does and what it has the potential to do. Enough so to get me thinking about running for an SGA position next year. I've also learned how the internet provides a great forum for anonymous haters who won't back up what they say.
It's also baseball season...GO YANKEES!!!!! Life's gonna get crazy soon. Finals are coming up fast, I've got a couple of make or break your grades polisci papers due in the next three weeks (ack!) and I'm trying to figure out scheduling crap for next semester. Gotta love that my dance class is at 830 again ugh.

Got all sorts of ideas goin round in my head for summer...concerts, road trips, parties (my bday party is going to be absolutely amazing), work (yay money!), tanning, clubbing?, warm weather! I can't waaaiiiitttt. Also more time with the family. Miss them. Speaking of good times, next weekend is Quadmania---carnival, rockclimbing, food, T-Pain, a good time to be had by all :) O shoot I gotta make sure my friends have somewhere to stay the night of the concert...hmm gotta work on that.

I feel like writing tonite, so I'll probly edit this sometime in the next couple of days, or just post again, depending on how long it ends up being.

Peace y'all

P.S. Common Sense Life Lesson for the week: When your friend randomly decides he wants Smirnoff Ice at 1230am, be sure you know where to find the nearest open liquor store. Fun times...

this crazy world we call life

Sooo life is interesting no? The days seem to alternate between dragging on and going by too fast. Soon it will be summer...

Calculus is evil evil evil. It doesn't like me. I have an exam in two days. I should be studying. I am missing my original notebook with all my notes from the beginning of the year...not good. I can manage for this test, but if I don't find it by finals then...yikes. Here's hoping I pull off a decent grade on the exam and start understanding or at least memorize enough to get by.

Politics is a dirty business. I love it but it's full of backstabbing and trash talking and mud slinging. Everyone is just peachy until they're against each other competing for a position. Then it gets ugly. I'm not just talking national politics either. One of my friends is running for Student Government President and I'm learning a lot about the Student Government, how it works, what it does for us, and just how nasty people can be. It's interesting to see it all play out from a closer standpoint.

Yay for closure. Hooray for finally being free of emotional entanglements that have haunted me for the past three months. I feel like a huge burden has been removed; I have my life back! I can focus on the future and stop living in the past. The past week has seen me much more content and in overall better spirits.

Despite the wonderful emotional solutions, the physical problems come back to bite me. It's spring so sinus headaches abound. The past couple weeks my headaches have been worse then usual, some bad enough to the point where I skip class. Not so fun. Yay for meds but they only work for so long. I'm praying they ease up or else the rest of this semester will be not so fun. I don't want to have to go to the doctor either.

April fools is a fun day. I tinfoiled my suitemate's mirror and computer...she was so confused. The look on her face was priceless. She still doesn't know it was me, and I'll keep it that way for now :). I also had one of my skater friends believing that the university cops were gonna crack down on the no skateboarding policy and start giving tickets and fines. He was pissed. I was highly amused. I told him April Fools eventually, he was even more pissed. Fun times...

So ironically enough, just when I get free of the emotional entanglements, more options start presenting themselves. This frustrates me. On the one hand it's like why not see what might come of it. On the other hand it's like I finally have the peace and freedom I've been wanting for the past 3 months, though it seems longer. I don't really want to get emotionally attached/involved again so soon. Then there's always the likelihood that I'm completely over thinking things. I tend to do that a lot, too much for my own good. *sigh* at this point I'm just gonna chill out about it. I have bigger things to worry about, such as passing calculus with a C or better.

Anywho on to more internet surfing or piano playing.
Time to make a phone call to the best friend...miss her like crazy :)
Peace y'all

P.S. Common Sense Life Lesson for the week: when using your campus card to pay for the gameroom, make sure you have enough $$ on your card. Fun times