No matter how old I get, it is still always exciting to get packages from my mom. Today, I recieved one with the following contents:
Thanks, mom!
After spending 18 hours at Heartland* Thursday night/Friday morning, I came back to my room to find my phone light blinking. It seems that Professor P. Walshe (no one seems to know what his first name is) had left me a personal message letting me know that our classroom has been changed to Brownson. Great. My Tuesday/Thursday morning walk (and by morning, I mean 12:15pm) just turned from an easy 8-minute walk to Debartolo to a long, I-don't-know-how-long-it-takes-to-walk-to-Brownson-since-I-don't-walk-there-on-a-regular-basis-or-ever walk. I saved it just to listen to his British (South African?) accent. What can I say, I'm a sucker for those accents.
In other news, time seems to be passing quickly which means my decision of what I'm doing next year is looming nearer. It doesn't help, though, that I don't hear from most law schools until April, and the same for the teaching programs I'm applying to. (Unless you're Booter, who seems to be certain that I will get into PLACE and be living in Los Angeles next year). Ah well, worst comes to worse, I'll be in Houston.
Happy Birthday to Katie J! We had a party in Erin's room and busted out the Cuarenta y Tres, which I grew oh so fond of in Spain. Seeing as the band dance is coming up on Saturday, we were reminiscing of dances of yore, and Dave getting locked in the basement of Dorm Marion, which turned into Martin Luther King in the keg. And Squeaks and I were the only ones that laughed. Oh dear, I'm getting old.
*PS - No, I was not at Heartland for 18 hours, but my away message made it seem as it were so. I actually went from Heartland to Castle Point, to lunch at La Esperanza, and back to Castle Point before I returned to see that people did in fact think I was at Heartland for Thursday night and the majority of Friday.
Last night, as a triumphant first Thursday of our last semester, the entire senior class and most of the junior class went to Legends and Heartland. After a looong stay at Heartland which produced some unexplainable bruises, somehow a large group of us got over to Jenna's apartment. It was last night I realized, my friends, that Jenna, Chris, Greg and I, however good friends we are, cannot be left alone in a room together. Here is a basic idea of what happened.
Everyone arrives. Jenna and Emily make mac & cheese.
Jenna and Greg start arguing about something. Chris joins in.
Everyone gets tired of listening to people's political discussions and leaves.
Chris, Jenna, Greg and I stay in the kitchen and argue until 6am.
See, in Paris it was fun and insightful. At 3am after Heartland, it's just annoying. I'm sure Emily loves us right now and thinks we're really insightful... uhhh...
Today was the last first day of class I'll have in undergrad... yes a very small distinction, but a landmark nonetheless. I've struck the scheduling goldmine this semester. Tuesday and Thursday begins at 12:30 with my last senior seminar - Religion and Politics of South Africa. This is going to be waaay different than DPK's Religion and Constitution class. Instead of assigned readings and thorough discussions, we have a list of readings that we should use in our 10 page paper due at spring break. And he's basically going to lecture for a month, then let us off into the wild to write our own research paper after that. Walshe is an extremely intelligent man, plus the British accent is awesome! I mean, the title for our first paper is, and I quote:
"Religion and Politics in South Africa: A Comparative Study of Afrikaner Nationalism and the Anti-Apartheid Liberation Movement"
Don't worry, it's not as complicated as it sounds... oh wait, yes it is. Especially since I know zero about South Africa and I guess Walshe assumes we know some basic fundamentals about it, such as the capital or what language they speak. Yeah, no clue. I'm ignorant.
After that, there was the first day of Acting: Process. After about fifteen minutes with no one showing up, the class elected me to go find Jay, since apparantly I'm the only one he knows. He gave an impromptu speech for about 15 minutes on acting in general, throwing in humor and curse words in the appropriate places to get a laugh out of us. Turns out our good man Anton Juan is supposedly on his way into the country and should be in class in Thursday. Ha. Ha ha. Let's hope so. He's arriving one day before auditions for our play. Maybe on the day of auditions. Christ, I hope this isn't a sign of how Laramie Project is going to be all the way through.
And for today's Arrested Development quote of the day:
Buster: We're having unlimited juice? Man, this party is gonna be off the hook!
[later, after drinking two buckets of corn syrup aka "juice"]
Buster: I love JUICE!!
If there's one slogan I've seen in the many, many hours of TV I've been watching it's "New Year, New You!" As if, "Oh, the calendar has changed? Well, time for a complete lifestyle overhaul!" I know every year the gym, diet, beauty companies etc. use this slogan to try and get people who are so desperate to make themselves over in the new year to buy their overly priced and completely useless products. But for some reason, perhaps because I'm watching a lot more TV over this break, perhaps because there are that many more products out there, the rush for a new you seems bigger this year than ever. For example, 24-Hour Fitness has a commercial where they discuss how our cells regenerate and some die, so, on a cellular level, we are actually reinventing ourselves, so why can't we do it at the gym? My body is constantly reinventing itself! I want to be a punk rocker now! What's that you say, my cells have regenerated again? OK, now I'm a cowboy! Hmm, not quite the same thing, I don't think.
In other news, today is the Orange Bowl. Wait, scratch that. The FedEx Orange Bowl. Pardon me. Needless to say, there's been a lot of buzz about this game, some thinking that other teams deserved to go, some just wanting to blow it all up so neither team can win (I'm thinking of Texan Domers... ahem), but I guess we'll just have to see whether Matt Leinart really deserved that Heisman tonight.
