i have so much to say! First, michelle came this weekend and it was fun to have her, even if she was only here for 18 hours and I had to wake up early to see her go. sadly, we went out to eat and i didn't stay on my diet, but i did meet new people this week! oh and exercised a bunch and didn't drink, and I think i'm adding stop cursing entirely to the list.

Anyway, it totally makes me laugh how some people can make you feel like crap and totally dogg something (i.e. my room) without meaning to. I realize she didn't try to hurt my feelings, but suggesting a makeover on my room, after i've put thousands into it, before she barely says anything nice. and i know she doesn't mean it, but i'm really proud of my house right now, and someone who can't manage to say something nice before talking about what i should change, as if i give that many hoots about what she thinks.

hmm next comment, I think God really works in funny ways. I went on a retreat on sat about forgiving people and the power of prayer, and it was really cool. anyway, when i was cleaning the house before mich came (i had 1 hr between the retreat and when she came) ricardo (my roommate who has never cleaned our bathroom and has vacuumed any room of my house less times than manda....) said "what are you doing". yeah i kinda went off with an annoyingly calm tone "well i'm cleaning because no one in this house does, and instead of just doing a regular, i had to scrub and everything.. blah blah blah".....so anyway i felt bad but mich came right after that and everything i said was true. so today i get some stuff from my car and it turns out my passenger from last night apparently didnt shut the door so the lights dont come on and the battery is very dead. i leave it for a few hours, apologize to ricardo when he got home, and tried to start the engine. yea...it started....God is amazing. I never really know what to take as a sign from Him, but a dead battery that miraculously regains power after i apologize....amazing :)

Long story short: life is good, i'm glad i'm an optomist so i can easily brush off comments that weren't meant to be hurtful yet really were, and am so glad to be Christian right now. Being contrite can make your dead car battery start, oh and did I mention that I think life is great! :)

PS Linds: i got the 3rd bonus pet, hahahaha

I slept almost 12 hours last night, then when I woke up this morning, I went to a movie with a friend, then lunch, did homework for a bit, came home vegged and yelled at my bunny. Life really is good :)

Ok so I was sitting through this seminar (cuz that's such a fun and required class) and we had this speaker from NASA, who while he's very smart (i didn't understand very much of his talk because it was so above my head), he was totally uninteresting, until he said 'as time marches on'. What a stupid phrase from such in intelligent person.

well this got me to thinking about how time can't actually march, or drag or race for that matter. Change in time is constant, not time is constant, because it's not always 1.3e56 seconds from when the earth was created. But time changes at the same rate it always has. For years physicists thought that gravity all over the earth was constant, and for that matter they thought the whole solar system revolved around the earth because the planets movements seemed to reflect that. And hell, it turns out the earth isn't actually a globe, it's oblong shaped and spins on along an axis not parallel to the sun. Point being: there's so many things in this world that we were sure of from taking measurements, but slight differences between the model and data made us realize we were wrong.

For this reasoning, I must ask: What if change of time wasn't constant? What if your emotions do actually dictate how time is felt to you. The clock does appear to tick slower during class and waiting in traffic, yet hours can pass when I'm at a grocery store or Hobby Lobby without me realizing it. What if things like color of the wall or seeing new people, just having your senses change (like going down ailes of a store vs sitting in the same class with the same people). Does that mean that to make class seem more interesting, all i have to do is bring different lotions to class, or maybe put color in my notebook, just to break the monotony so time moves quickly?

I wish we actually lived in the Age of Enlightenment, (not the one from centuries ago) but the true one, when we as a human race (or at least me) have actual knowledge of these crazy things. Maybe I just need a few more psychology classes, but those were the thoughts I was thinking while the man droned on about Continuum Mechanics and how it relates to viscosity and laminar flow of non-compressible fluids.

Bottom line: Change in time is constant. Crappy.

Week Review of goals:

1. Definately worked 20 hrs! (including the 8 hrs off cuz mon is a holiday). ok technicality.

2. went to grocery store 2 times per week, ate lots of healthy fruit minus the chocolate thingys that are just so good! (3 musketeers)

3. Didn't drink.

4. did 5 workouts plus walking 0.4 mi to and from work every day, oh oh and i took the stairs 6 flights up and down a few times

5. No new phone numbers (manda and kim prevented me from going), but did say hi to the new kid from france in my class (there's only 6 people in each class....only 1 new kid....)

Ok i would like to hear how your week went goal-wise! Libby

Bottom Line: 4.5/5 isn't that bad! what are your new years resolutions??

Ok so the real story: Yes Kim and Manda came over on Thursday night and we played monopoly and catch phrase and sorta the friends game and pigged out and had a real sleepover (we watched a really bad movie called 'sleepover', hehe). then the next morning we were discussing what to do and we were in my living room and I was facing my hideously 80's wall that the people left, and I was just saying I'm going to paint this eventually,, what do you think of light blue and they were like, that's what we can do! so i said...ok....are you sure?? I feel bad, and they're like, no we want to, so either they were lying to me or to their xanga...hmmm. But they did and great job and looked totally cute in my mom's hospital scrubs and i gave them dinner as their reward, haha. no it really was fun, even if i had to watch like 12 hours of sports. oh and the manda hair cutting thing: we both have short hair, i know how to cut short hair, and it came out pretty good...yea manda??

anywho after they left on sat i went and got some more stuff done then made these pillows to match my new wall. aren't they cute!?? And i added a pic of the wall the girls improved:

                           

(The pillows are powder blue and dark blue, some with chords around the pillow.) (The wall is a really nice powder blue).

Bottom line: manda and kim lie...i'm not a slave driver, i just expect my guests to earn their dinner :)

This semester's goals, because I know you all want to know this, but I'm mostly writing it because it's been on my to-do list for much too long, and there seems no permanent appropriate place to write it:

1. Work 20hrs per week at school (last semester I managed about 5, and i just felt guilty getting paid for doing almost nothing). I have a schedule so i should be at school everyday by 11am.

2. Eat healthier (save money by not eating out, and have lots of fruit and veggies). This means going to the grocery store more than once a month, but it can be done! Along with this I think I'm including minimize the drinking, not that I drank a lot over the last semester, just a few concentrated days that were bad, or rather the next day was very bad. Ok it gets its own goal

3. Don't drink.

4. Exercise 3 times a week - I feel really good when i exercise so this is good. To ensure I achieve this I plan to park in the last row of the parking lot every day so that's at least walking 0.25 mi to class and back....i'll measure tongiht.

5. Meet more people. I like to have a healthy social life and considering the most people I meet is at my first grade ccd class, that's just sad. I want to know more people that I can call when I'm bored, so the goal is actually: 'find more people who will let me store their number in my phone and answer when i occasionally call'.

Ok that's all I guess. I thought there was more. This is good, because I can totally do this. Notice there's nothing about getting better grades or pay more attention in class or anything, haha. Ok well. Like I care. Ok I have to run to class now. Yippee! (that's genuine excitement, I assure you!)

Bottom line: Eat healthier, drink less, exercise, meet people, and go to work mon-fri. wow, it looks like the only thing I won't be changing is my wardrobe.

At church tonight, I saw one of the kids from my first grade class for the first time! It was Ross, and he's a totally cute kid and waved really big when he saw me. It was so cute! I love how simple life in first grade was. One kid in class yells 'poop' and the whole class giggles...hehe. One girl in my class cries every time we do a fill in the blank because it's too hard. Man, the number of times I was doing homework last semester and wanted to do just that.

I think i'm in a rut. I dunno. I don't really enjoy my research. i don't dislike it, it's just that i don't care about it at all either. Classes are okay. the only thing keeping me in school and motivated is that I have a house that would be too much work to sell and if i did leave school i would have to get a real job and work 40 hours a week. It feels like i'm in the best of the worst situations I want to be in.

Hmm on second thought, maybe it's just that I've spent the last week in my room barely leaving, trying to avoid work. I miss first grade when it was so easy to make friends.  Everyone says moving is crappy because you have to make all new friends - in first grade that was no problem. Now, it's actually hard. In grad school everyone is married or a dork, or well I guess, me.  There's a college age group that meets at church that insists it's not a singles thing. I think I'll go. I can't wait for next wed to solve my next problems on a first grade level.

bottom line: based on first grade psychology, i think i'm in a rut, or maybe i just need to make more friends. I'll ask my first graders what they think this week (to which i'm sure the answer will be 'jesus' or 'poop')

Yeah! My room's done! I just bought all that furniture and my room was a mess cuz i hadn't unpacked or anything, but now it looks awesome! I'm so excited! I no longer have a dorm room, I finally have an adult looking room! yeah! Oh meanwhile I haven't done 5 minutes of work....whoops. Ok...now this bores me. I don't even want to put a bottom line, so sorry suckers. back to family guy :)

We got a dog! I forgot to tel you! her name is Joy and she's a champion show dog, but she has diabetes, so she's retired. She's totally funny because she doesn't understand what petting is, and has no idea how to play. ok not funny, it's sad. it shows how much of a monster her past owners were. she's gorgeous though. picture to come! :) I decided she needed her own entry even though the last entry was written like 10 min ago. Oh ps she's an american eskimo just like minnie and candy :) she doesn't look much like them though.

P.S. (post-script): joy is s a totally pretty 3 yr old eskie, and she's totally cute!

so i'm back at college. sorta. i got my new furniture this morning...it was more than i could afford, but then what else are college loans for!? you'll have to come visit it and see it. My room looks totally different now, well mostly because it's a mess b/c i'm completely redecorating it. soon though...

skiing was awesome. linds and i took lessons for the first time in a while and found out what we were doing wrong. it turns out we're decent skiiers now...a level 6 or 7 on a scale of 9. yea! the teacher said we could go teach kids how to ski if we wanted. mmm....new dream. screw the masters prog and go ski for a few years.  :)

seeing my family in idaho was way fun. my cousins are cool .... they've reached my maturity level...(they're 15 and 12). hehe what does that say? my grandpa was way cool too. we got a pic with him and his eagle from where he volunteers.

then i went to colorado springs to visit my sorority sisters, and celebrate a marraige (that was in alaska over christmas). it was fun. i got to see my 3rd cousin at the air force academy - i now really appreciate how privelaged  and free my college life was. Oh and i got to drive a golf cart (a first) without having to go golfing! and i drove my friend's mom's mustang. yeah!

ok so i'm back here...and i'm ready for a brand new semester. I really hope manda and kim come see me tomorrow. I barely saw anyone over christmas. Plus if i clean up tonight it would really suck if they don't cuz i could have spent that time working. (come!). ok back to work!

one liner: christmas was so great, i'm going to quit school and be a ski instructor, as soon as i pay off my new furniture.