Inside on a beautiful day.

Today, I declared, would be a research day. And it was. But unfortunately, unlike the previous few days beforehand, today has turned out to be absolutely gorgeous weather-wise. And I spent all that time in the basement of the library, surrounded by a vigorous lot of books, scribbling on college-ruled notebook pages as I listened to Band of Horses and Cat Power on my ipod mini until the battery died. Lines from Bright Eyes pop to mind, "I'm hunched over a type writer / I guess you'd call that painting in a cave." In case you were wondering, yes, I am writing my senior thesis in a physical, tangible notebook, using real pens and everything. I got roughly three and a half pages written in four and a half hours; that's over 10% of my final paper! Always good to be optimistic.

But I do think I got some good work done on it today, and I paced myself, stopped when I felt that I wasn't going to write as well anymore. I got one third of the first part of three completed - and I mapped out where I was going with things so that I would be able to keep better track of how stuff flows and what I should be researching and looking up next, et cetera. The trick will be citing all the sources properly when I type it up and making sure that I'm not forgetting to utilize any of the sources that I have. It may sound kind of odd, but the deal with history papers is that the more sources you can use, the more work people think you've put into something, so if something is in two books, you cite it from the one you haven't used as much, and so forth. I've got this whole paper-writing thing down - I just wish I could focus more.

Not that I can't focus, but just that I know I have to write another term paper (though certainly not as big) for my 1960s and American Culture course, and our Pre-Study Abroad seminar requires a research paper (albeit a small one) on something to do with our host country, and I'm going to have to write a full lab report for Biology soon, and there's always all the little papers that come up in the course of things... I kind of wish that I could have nothing to do except write my senior thesis so that I would be able to do my absolute best on it. But I guess such a setup doesn't really exist ever.

Anyways... it's a beautiful day outside, and I'm going to go get my homework taken care of for the week, because Lord knows it's not going to get done tomorrow!

Papers up to the knees...

Ok, maybe that's an exaggeration. But I'm feeling the homework load on my shoulders this week, for sure. It was nice to not think about homework all weekend at home, but I'm paying for it (as I knew I would) this week. I've got a mid-term due on Thursday, a Biology ethics paper due Friday, and I should start writing my senior thesis this week if I can. Not to mention the non-paper aspect of doing the reading for my Thursday classes. Let's just say that I'm going to have to be super-productive in these next couple days.

So right now I'm working on that BIO ethics paper. I've got my first paragraph done, but the important part is the research: this thing only has to be 5 pages, and I'm certain I could spit it out if I went into the zone for 2 hours. Maybe even less. It's funny - all the freshmen in that class are balking. The professor reminded us last week like it was a big deal, and I couldn't help but chuckle to myself that 5 pages is nothing. It requires no prep, and not much effort to push out a 5-page paper. But when I was a freshman, it sure seemed like a lot. Nowadays I can hardly get myself to write a paper that is less than 5 pages!

Anyway, the non-tutoring is up for tonight, so I'm going to go home and probably plug in my laptop and go at it on this paper. It'll be tough, though. Bekah's mom just flew in for the week, and I'll be so tempted to just chill and talk with her. But when I'm done in two hours... then I'll let myself relax a little bit.

Growing up

Currently listening to Hem, "Half Acre".

It's funny how things change.

Mom and Dad are wondering if I'd move into Mike's old room and sleep on the double bed.

My brother is married and he and his wife just bought a new house that everyone is working on fixing up - mostly painting and the like.

Every time I come home I am more disgusted by all the stuff that clogs my own room. I just want to be free from it all.

Television is disturbing - I don't think I can watch it at all anymore, and I'm glad we don't have one in our apartment.

Cars are scary, and have so many things that can go wrong with them. I've seen three recent crash scenes in my driving around the past few days. I feel increasingly less interested in having one - at least out here, where things are closer. I wish there was a decent public transit system in place around here. I can remember being a kid and thinking that cars were neat, that there was something intriguing about highways and byways.

I can remember the days when I wanted a cell phone so bad - when I thought it was cool when all the other kids got new phones. Now the company is trying to strong-arm me into getting a new phone. The salesman is a despicable materialist tool, thinking he's so cool because he's got this awesome phone and that I'm dumb and should just get a new one, but he's completely oblivious to the fact that hundreds of women are being raped and children abducted to fuel this country's blind desire for new electronics. He's just another American, capitalist fool.

Is that what growing up does? Does it make you look back on things that were once intriguing to realize that they are ugly and deformed? Does it take the mask away from the monster?

And yet there are things that I appreciate more, now that I'm older. I can feel so much in the breath of air that flows in an autumnal breeze, whistling about, shimmering sunlight, quaking leaves, the smell of damp and earth. There is no way that I can hug it tight enough to me. I take joy in answering a phone that's bigger than my head, feeling its healthy weight in my hand, twirling the chord with my other. I wish I could have a landline at school. I can't wait 'til I can actually have a landline of my own. My own plot of earth to plant and harvest. My own little home to heat in winter and decorate with drying herbs and summer harvests the rest of the year.

I am feeling out the future, starting to make tentative idea-plans as to what will be, where I will go, and what I will do. I have learned what I do not like, and I have learned to love what I do. If this is growing up, I suppose it's not so bad; in some ways I know more of what I want to have from life than I ever understood before.

Home again, home again, jiggidy jog.

I'm home. It's a good feeling. I can't help but stare at all the trees that light up like fire against the blue skies as I drive down rough rural roads. It's so beautiful here. Finally I can breathe again, it seems. One thing that I can't get over is the fact that we have sunrises here. It may sound strange, but I feel like there is no sunrise in Chicago - I've woken up before the sun many times, and it just gets steadily lighter. There's no morning glory, no radiant color changes. I always thought it was strange, that I was missing something, or that maybe I was confused about what sunrises actually should look like. But I'm back here and I know there's no denying it: we have sunrises here in Michigan. I'm not sure what does it, or why it's different, but when the sun come up over here, you can't miss it: golden and orange, pink and yellow. Clouds break and golden-yellow beams stream down, and just like that, you have a sunrise.

It's rather impressive.

Learning

Today was an interesting day. I went to Bio this morning and took our second exam - think it went alright. Afterwards I went to REI to purchase a backpack - and yes, I got the red one. :) The fun part was that I decided to make the whole transaction in an Irish accent. It was a lot harder than I thought at first, because I ended up talking to about five different sales people, and I'm pretty sure each of them heard another locality of the UK... needless to say, it's been awhile since I've done this and I'm definitely a good deal rusty. I'll have to work on my skillz.

In the afternoon when I got back, I had a learning experience with one of my roommates. We had a bit of a spat about something, and she's really good at talking things out - I'm not. But I figured it out and was able to talk to her and show her my view and then we ended up hugging and apologizing for hurting each other. Kind of cheesy, but it felt good. I'm learning to be an adult. It's hard, but I think it's the better way of going about things. Because otherwise I would've been upset when I went to Jazz Band, and there's no need being in a bad mood when you're playing good music!

After rehearsal I asked Joe if he could "teach me how to solo" - he just kind of brushed it off. I'm not sure what he wants, it's like he wants me to solo, but he wants to work with me, but when I say I want to work with him on it, he just blows me off. Anyway, I suppose I'll have to try and figure it out myself for now. We'll see how that goes. But I am proud of myself: for the last two days now I've managed to get a half hour of practicing in. I've been reading up on this simple living stuff, and they've got a lot of good things on how to get stuff done that you need to get done during the day, so I'm trying to put it into practice, and I think it's working. :)

The heat is on (again)

This may sound a bit redundant, but they turned the heat off when we had that warm spell a couple weeks ago, but since it's dipped down into the cold range for a week or so they hadn't turned the heaters back on - which meant that we were alternately freezing our little butts off in this apartment! But this morning all that seems to have changed: in fact, our dining room sounds like it's about to take off into outer space any minute now... :)

This morning my 1960s class was cancelled. I now have an extra hour and 40 minutes. Yay! I think come 10 o'clock I'll go to the practice rooms and work on my concert band stuff, considering our concert is next weekend.

I proposed my new topic to Prof. Ayot last night and it went over really well. In fact, when I told her I was changing my topic, her response was to go into a spiel about how she was so happy because she knew I was capable of something more, but she had been holding back from telling me, and on and on.... Needless to say, it was a well-greeted proposition.

Thank Goodness

I've been stressing a lot about my senior thesis lately. I know, it sounds weird, because I'm a junior, but it's not that I'm thinking ahead, it's that I'm taking the Capstone course right now. Finally I came to the realization this past week that the reason I was having such a hard time with researching for my thesis was that I wasn't really "feeling" the topic I had picked: negative effects of corporatization of agriculture in America. Yes, I'm passionate about it, and I believe that buying local is the way to go, but I was feeling too much opinion and too little academia, which was making it difficult to find good sources.

So last night I decided that I needed to relax my brain and then come up with a new topic: one that I would be interested in and would be able to passionately, enjoyably research. And I did just that. I wrote some letters, read some a real book, and relaxed. The result: a new topic popped into my head. Then this morning, as I was developing it, the thing took on a life of it's own and became something with a positive point and something exciting to research.

Now my thesis paper is "Battles Lost and Won: Development of Water Politics and the Restoration of the Owens Valley". That is, I'm going to write about how the concurrent events of Owens Valley and Hetch Hetchy Valley were both conservational battles lost to big cities, but how Hetch Hetchy became the proverbial Alamo of anti-damming environmental activism, which led to a shift in water politics and policy, eventually allowing the Owens Valley aqueduct to be revisited and setting the Owens Valley on the road to restoration.

Yeah. I'm excited to write about this.

Texters beware!

Today is a beautiful day. The breeze is blowing softly, the sun is shining brightly, the fall leaves are crackling melodically. It's saturday, and I'm busy doing saturday things: laundry, cleaning, homework, errands. Last night I made myself an ordered list of things to take care of so that I wouldn't waste any time trying to figure out what I should be doing. I think it was a pretty good idea - a planned day seems to be far more productive than an unplanned one. It's a good discipline. And I'm trying to learn some better self-discipline these days.

But on a side note, and hence the title of this post, can I just say that I hate it when people text me? I tell all of my friends that I don't have texting, so they shouldn't text me, and yet some people still do. And when people who aren't my friends text me, it's insulting - they just assume that I must have texting since I have a phone. Forcing me to pay money to read what they say, when they could've just left me a message for free, or even called me and held a real conversation! It's disgusting. Forgive me for ranting, but it bothers me so much: I really think I'm just going to stop opening texts altogether. I don't want to pay for other peoples' disregard and assumptions.

So, back to fall. Next weekend is Fall Break, and I'm super excited to go home. I'm going to do most of my packing this weekend, I think, so that I won't waste time on it during the week. Not that I'll be completely done, but just so that I don't choose to waste time on packing when I should be doing something else later in the week. I've got to bring back all sorts of clothes that I won't be wearing now that the weather is turning colder, as well as books that I've finished reading, and anything else I can spare. I want to make it as easy as possible to move out at the end of the semester.

I suppose that's all I have to say for today. Most of my words were spent in that rant. Besides, my laundry should be done now, and once I take care of that it'll be off to other things!

Flying

So there's this bird named Jay who now has tickets to fly to and from Botswana next year.

Just thought I'd share that.

:)

A good day.

I would say that, overall, today was rather successful.

This morning I woke up, ate a good breakfast, dressed up, and went out. I brought Jen Pope my paperwork for studying abroad and she faxed it in for me this morning. Dad's been working with a travel agent and we should have my tickets booked by the end of the week. Botswana is becoming more and more of a reality every day.

Today I discovered that you can get a locker in the library for a $10 deposit, and I jumped on it. I only wish that I had known about these lockers last year when I was hauling ridiculous amounts of books back and forth from my dorm room to the library. Now I can leave the research in there at night. I have to admit, I'm pretty stoked about that; so is my back.

The day passed a bit wistfully: nothing in particular got done, nothing in particular was left undone. I'm going to have to work hard to crank out a good 7-8 pages of who-knows-what for my capstone course, but I'm sure I'll be able to buckle down these next couple days and get whatever-it-is done. My Vietnam Film Project, technically watching and analyzing episodes of M*A*S*H, is coming along quite nicely, and I'm sure I will easily put out 4 pages (if not more) by Thursday. And then I'll have to start thinking about my research topic for that class.

The day ended in a nice, relaxing grocery round with Marlee: Trader Joe's, Whole Foods, and Jewel. I bought just a few essentials at each place: food, bandaids, deodorant.... Now I'm charging and resyncing my trusty ole tank of an ipod and getting ready for bed. It's been a good start to my new life so far. :)

Craziness - Done.

We did it!

Now on to start my life anew....

Into the Fray

Here it goes! The weekend is here, time is bearing down on me: now is the call to get a crap-ton of homework done and to execute a successful event on Sunday. I'll let you know how it all turned out once I reach the other end of the tunnel.

Nearly through!

The weekend is here, and that means that I am almost through this crazy time. And boy has it been crazy. But it's like falling dominos now: things have started, and they'll all just play out to the end, and then I will be done and able to step back and look at the design they created when they all fell into place like that.

Enough prose. Today is Friday, and that means Biology, Yoga, lunch in ARA, and working on a lot of stuff. I need to work hard today, because I'm a bit behind in some things, or not as far along as I'd like to be in others. I've got to put up flyers for the Falling Whistles event on Sunday. I've already got one half of the campus, now I just need to get the other! :) I could ask for help, but I figure it's a) not that hard, and b) easier to do myself than to contact people and wait for them to get back to me (or not) about whether they can do it (or not) and then wait for them to pick up the flyers (or not)... you get the idea. Then, of course, it'll be Cornerstone today from 4:30-7pm. And after that: more work. I might watch a M*A*S*H episode or two with Bekah. I actually have to watch them for a movie project that's due on Thursday of next week. Kind of exciting.

Saturday will be more work during the day, a band concert in the evening, I might swing by the North Park vs. Wheaton soccer game, and then a work shift from 10-12 in Hanson, during which I plan on getting a fair amount of reading done. Well, as much as can be done in two hours so late at night.

Then Sunday is the big day: the day this event either goes down or doesn't. I find it somewhat hard to believe how much things have fallen into place in these very fast-moving two weeks. I just hope that things fall into the right place, and certainly that the technology works well for us. I would not be happy if mics and LCD projectors decided not to cooperate... Anyway, I'll work all day on stuff, setup will be at 4pm, and the event will start at 5pm, go for a couple hours, and then I instructed Spoo to escort me home and make sure I get right to bed when it's all over and done.

Because frankly, I'm exhausted. And I want next week to be different. I think I'm going to work this weekend on created a schedule of when I do what, in general, and try to stick to that schedule religiously so that I get some discipline in my life and in my time, and so that I can free up some more time on the other end of life for relaxing and hanging out and just being with people. Like that rather awesome girl Emily I met last night: we should hang out, and I'd better make the time. Or even my roommates - I just don't relax and spend time with them as much as I'd like to be. But until then... I need to survive this weekend.

Busyness!

I'm working tonight. Sitting the student security desk in Carlson. Big whoop. But it gives me lots of hours, which means I'll rake in a decent amount at the end of this pay period. This is also the last time I get to sit the long-haul in Carlson for the month. Sad. But I've got plenty of other things on my plate.

Things are falling into place nicely for the Falling Whistles event on campus. For those interested in coming, it'll be Sunday, October 10th, at 5pm, in H-23 (the top floor of Hanson). Falling Whistles will be the main event, but Little Things will also be there selling jewelry and to present a little bit on what they do. It should be good. I just hope we get a good turn-out. But of course, that's not until Sunday.

On Saturday we've got the Concert Band concert for kids with autism/special needs and their families. I'm... mostly prepared. I need to find some way to squeeze in practice time between now and then so that I can polish up those licks and funky measures. Today in band my clarinet didn't want to play anything properly above a high C... thanks for that. So I'll also have to be looking into that one in what little time I have.

I'm sure that I'm just stressing and everything will turn out fine. I really need to relax. I can't wait to get this weekend over with so that I can take a step back and reassess.

Autumn is all around!

Currently listening to:
Empire of the Sun, Walking on a Dream
Miike Snow, Animal
Del Barber, 62 Richmond
Sufjan Stevens, The Lakes of Canada

Autumn is here, and I love it. This is my favorite time of the year, for sure. Cool breezes, warm rays of sunshine, and a certain crispness to the air that can only be described as the smell of Fall. Every time I look through our kitchen to the trees behind our back porch I have to smile: their leaves have become yellows and oranges, a dying fire of color in a world that slips towards winter. It is a time that needs to be savored to the uttermost.

I'm trying to figure out what to do with my life right now. Not in the grand scheme of things, but in the current scheme: day to day, using my time in a way that will make me feel good about myself. I have deleted my Facebook, and that feels good. I've wasted a lot less time on the internet in the last few days, and rediscovering the patience to read peoples' blogs and actually feel a bit more seriously connected to what's happening in their lives is a refreshing discipline. Trying to find that healthy balance between homework and socializing is tough, but I'm working on it. The hardest part is muscling in the exercise aspect of things. I've been looking at a very clever and helpful website recently for tips on simplifying your life. It's been useful: things like trying to make a list of my top 5 priorities and figuring if things are actually worth it or not. Currently, my list is something like this:

Friends & Family
Nature
Music
Good Grades/School
Exercise

Obviously, these are some broad categories, but I could say that they are all important to me. Not that I'm an exercise-aholic, but certainly cycling and hiking and the like have always been a big part of my life, and yet where are they when I come out here? Nature is a huge part of my being, and yet I connect so little with it when I am at school. And I wonder why I can have such a hard time here. What's happening to my priorities? It is indeed true that something's got to give, and I think I know exactly what things they are.

Change is imminent. It is happening. It is on the air: that crisp, cool, autumn air that whistles through these gray Chicago streets. It's in these leaves which burst into flame and then fall to the ground. Indeed, it is here. It has already begun.

The heat is on!

It's a lovely, fall day. Cold, windy, and the heaters turned on in our apartment, making it sound like an engine room. I worked a morning shift for security, then crashed and slept until 11:30. Now I get to bundle up, and then I'll head off to the block party for some free ribs that'll hopefully still be there. I can't pass up bbq ribs - they're so delicious!! Autumn colors are settling into the trees, and I am wishing I had less to do so that I could spend more time in the woods. But for now, I've got to eat some lunch, get ready for Homecoming Pep Band, play that, do homework, get groceries (possibly), and go to the Homecoming Dance at the Field Museum with my roommates. Tomorrow will be a very work-heavy day after all this, I can assure you.

A new coat of paint...

Last night I deleted my Facebook, and in honor of that (along with the recognition of my previous blog template on several other blogs) I decided it was time to give my own blog a new coat of paint. I hope you like what I've done with the place. :) When I get some more time I think I'll update what pictures I have on the side bars too, but that'll have to wait for now.

So I've finally done the deed, and I have to say that I'm feeling pretty free already. Aside from the habit-breaking part - kind of like a smoker who has quits by throwing out all their cigarettes - I feel good about myself, and I'm encouraged that I'll be using my time a bit more wisely now. Not having a Facebook is going to make my life a whole lot simpler. Now I just need to figure out what else I can get rid of...

And that's an honest statement. In the next 1.5 weeks I will be going crazy, because research paper prep, Concert Band concerts, theatre performances, and a Falling Whistles event that I'm planning, are all going to come to a head. On the same weekend. The same three days. I might die. Honestly, though, how do I get myself into these situations? I want to do everything that I'm doing, and I'm excited for all of them - they just all happen to happen at the same time. So does that mean that I'm doing something that I don't want to do, have to cut out something that I want to do, or that I'm just unlucky enough to have everything all happen at once!?

The question of the week.