Spring Break!

So, I've been on spring break for the last week, and it has been a whirlwind. Mostly a whirlwind of wedding-dress shopping, actually, but I've done some visiting with friends and, yesterday, homework got thrown into the mix as well.
Today, I surmise, will be my most restful day of Spring Break. My plan is to finish up around the house, go shopping for a bridal shower present, and then head to Muncie and spend the rest of the day with Josh. I'm very much looking forward to seeing him- because the wedding has been on my mind all week, with dress shopping and securing a reception place and such, I've missed him terribly and been all the more excited and impatient to marry him. This is going to be a long year.

Home.

Spring break officially started for me at 2:00 in the afternoon yesterday, and I got home late last night. I don't have any big, exciting plans for the next week & a half, just staying around home, spending time with a couple friends and my family. Meanwhile, Kristen will be having grand adventures on her journey to a foreign land. You can read about that below.
Tonight I went out for ice cream with a couple friends I haven't seen in a LONG time. It was delightful. They both sound like they're doing well, each in their own stage of life, each different than mine. Fun people.


Pet peeve of the day: I've meaning to mention this for quite a while, it's been bothering me alot. By 'alot' I mean 'several times a day' and 'every time I reload the CNN.com website.' So, CNN, a news network? Claims to bring us relevant, significant world events? Then why, EVERY DAY, are there AT LEAST two links from CNN's front page to the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit edition?!!
A)Models != Athletes, so these links don't belong in the sports section of the site. C'mon, we're in the middle of major league baseball spring training and the NCAA basketball tournament-- it's not like the sports section is hurting for legitimate news stories. Yet they insist on putting a link to the 'Model of the Day' in this section. Completely unjustifiable.
B) Pornography != News. A link to this magazine edition is completely uncalled for on a site purporting to have reputable and accurate world events. There is nothing newsworthy about pornography, period, and it is ridiculous that a news organization has thought so for so long. The link's been there for months! (yes, this has been bothering me for that long.) I've seen up to 3 links on the CNN front page to the SI swimsuit site

There. I said it. I've been meaning to for a while. I suppose it will continue to bother me, and that I should find another reputable news site to read. If you have any suggestions, let me know.

Whoops

In my haste, I forgot to put up the link for my personal blog. Click here to go to my personal blog. Once again, bye!

Off on an adventure

This Thursday has to be the best one yet this year for me: I am leaving in about an hour to go to the Dominican Republic on a spring break mission trip with my school! I don't have much time to say all the things that are on my mind: I am excited, not really believing it yet, a little scared, not sure what all I am thinking. I have been running around this morning trying to get everything I will need. Anyway, please pray for me and our team's safety. Also, check out my other, personal blog for more information about the trip. And with that I will close with "Happy Easter"!

Another Thursday

Let me tell you one way to make a normally good Thursday go not so well: getting a vaccination. See, I am going with Taylor University on a mission trip for spring break and I need to get this vaccination. The problem was, our health center didn't get enough for all those that needed it and therefore they had to transport a group of us down to Anderson to get to shot. That wouldn't have been as bad, except for the fact that we had to leave at 7:30 in the morning. So I got to start my Thursday off by waking up to travel about 45 mins. to get a vaccination and then another 45 mins. to return home.

The rest of my day has gone well so far; work, some homework, phone call from my grandma and dad and a workout. Plus, it is finally warming up and looking like spring. Anyway, that's about all, until next week.

Crazy week

My week's been crazy, fairly stressful, and I am officially exhausted. On top of my normally manageable schedule of meetings and classes, I've had:

Monday: A Systems Seminar Paper due
Tuesday: A British Literature take home test due, a Natural Language Processing test during class
Wednesday: An Interactive Application Development project due
Thursday: A Natural Language Processing presentation in class, a Bowling final test
Friday: Interactive Application Development quiz

But I'm almost done. The week's almost over. That's the upside to Thursdays, I suppose. Kristen & I got to bed early last night, which helped a little bit. Except for the guys in the room above us decided to vacuum their room at 11:00 at night. I thought there was a weed-whacker outside our window.
Hopefully it will be a restful Thursday, after surviving the beginning of this week. Wish me luck.

Thursday 3

I didn't so much get the hang of Thursday this week. But it turned out all right.
Wednesday evening I had the hang of. I was sure that I had nothing due Thursday (because I never do), so I was carefee and having a delightful time. I had a wonderful afternoon with my fiance, and after dinner he dropped me off at my dorm. Wednesday night, however, not long before I was ready to go to bed, I suddenly remembered something my professor Tuesday had mentioned briefly, something about a test Thursday. I confirmed this with my classmate, then scrambled to find the Powerpoints on the network where they ought to be. They weren't there, and I assumed this was because I was trying to access them from my room, rather than from the CSS network.
I hatched a plan.
I would go to work 8-11 Thursday morning, as I always do, then, right after work, get on the CSS network, copy all the powerpoints I'll need to study to my USB drive, bring my laptop to bowling, and study between frames. Brilliant! Then, I went to bed.
After work today, I get to the CSS lab and discover, no, it wasn't that the powerpoints weren't accessible from my room, it was that they weren't accessible from anywhere. Cool. No one in my class has studied. So I sought out a sysadmin and he remedied the issue, I copied the files, and the plan worked! I then went to lunch.
During bowling, another guy in my class and I tag-teamed, frantically studying-bowling-studying-bowling. I'd say it worked rather well. I also thought it was an interesting study in multitasking- I've heard that girls can multitask better than guys, and I bowled better in all the games than he did while we were both multitasking, while normally we are about even. Fun stuff.
So after bowling, I feel only slightly more prepared for the exam, and am still a bit annoyed that the notes weren't up for us to study until 2 1/2 hours before the test.
After all this scrambling, I get to class and mention the dilemma to the professor, who says the test will be on Tuesday instead.
All that work for nothing.
Happy ending, though. On other happy notes today, I got a summer job, went to dinner with Kristen, Josh, and Josh's friend Phil, went to a very fun concert, and went to Ivanhoes.
Now for homework.

My addiction

Ok, to begin, mine is not nearly as serious as my roomie's. Today, as my "free day", I spent most of the day either working in the DC or feeding my addiction: Boy Meets World. My neighbor has the first and second season and I thought today I would share some quotes I heard today, during my watching of season 2, disc 2.

• I’m a damsel. But not the distressed kind; one who's totally together and completely in control of my own destiny.-Topanga


• She's scary looking.- Morgan => Boys like that.-Cory


• I’m Swedish.- some girl => You're from Switzerland?-Shawn


• The mac & cheese had more grease than Harley’s hair.-Cory


• On the husband highway, there's very little forward traffic, just a million well-intentioned men backing up frantically.- Mr. Feeny


• Nobody saw us! Without witnesses, it just circumcised evidence.- Shawn


• You're thinking too much. Do what I do, don't think.- Shawn


• Hey, look at me; I’m a couple- Cory

And remember "They want you to take the rolls!"

3/3/05

In Hawaii, we would always celebrate Girl's Day on March 3rd. It's a Japanese holiday, and all we did to celebrate it was, at the end of the school day, when we were all supposed to put our chairs on our desks so the cleaning ladies could clean the floor when we left, the boys would have to put our chairs up. That's all I remember. On Boy's Day, May 5, we would have to put the boys' chairs up. I always knew when Boy's Day was coming up- there would be windsocks in the shape of fish hanging outside every home with boys, one for each boy.
Today has been long. And it's not over yet. I'm just taking a break right now.
I've had hiccups on and off all day. It's been irritating.
I've been working on my Algorithms project, and am mostly done. I'll be glad to be done. I had really good, random conversations with friends yesterday- Patrick, Matt, & David. It was refreshing. Small group was last night, and it went moderately well. I didn't get to talk to Josh at all yesterday, and I miss him terribly today. I hope to talk to him later tonight. If I can get this silly project done.

My musing as of late:
Last weekend, my dad made the comment to me, saying I am 'surprisingly open-minded.' I thought it was a great compliment. It's something I value in myself and others- open-minded-ness. I have a hard time communicating and having patience with people I come in contact with that are NOT open minded- that refuse to think through things, that never concede points, that 'have all the answers,' and yet can't persuasively explain why they think the way they do.
My dad also said I am able to be open-minded because I know what I believe and am solid in that. I know that is a big part of it. I feel like I come across peers who are not open-minded (which irritates me), and also seem not to have good, thought-out reasons for why they believe what they claim to believe, and oftentimes have an inconsistent belief system. I guess I'm not afraid to hear and even consider different and new ideas or ways of looking at things because I know where I'm coming from- I know why I believe what I know to be true, and I am not afraid to reconsider what I myself am not sure of. I want to be consistent, I want to be correct, and I want my world view to line up with the way reality is based on truths I already know. If all that happens, I have no reason NOT to be open-minded- I can listen and consider ANY point of view.

And that's my Thursday thought. Have a good week, till next Thursday!