I'm a pretty wild college kid... not gonna lie...

Last night was a certifiably crazy set of events, and I wasn't even drunk.

After class ended, I headed over to Stepan to set up for relay for life. My favorite part was the NDSP guys driving around in their warm SUV calling out the window, "Hey, Georgia girl! You ok?" Yes, I'm fine, thank you, I just can't feel my fingers.

I went back to Farley for a little bit, mostly to check on Joey, who had been through health services for a foot issue (my phone was dead). The boy will live. He left to find a halloween costume.

A little while later, I convinced Nicole to come back to Relay with me, promising good food (it's true, good food was to be had there, but I also wanted someone to watch the opening ceremonies with). We realized, upon arrival, that opening ceremonies weren't at 6 like I thought they were. Oops. We walked around the booths and tents instead. We located good food in the form of charred half-chickens from a visiting "port-a-pit"- yes, a portable barbecue pit. I was excited. Thanks to some nice librarians, we had the means to eat said chicken, which was quite happy. Opening ceremonies showed no sign of starting, so we amused ourselves further by attaining for Nicole a monkey-in-tree balloon hat from a nice clown. Finally people gathered for opening ceremonies (they were at 7... oops) and we sat through half an hour of flag ceremony, pom squad, and cinderella. As we were heading out to walk the first lap, Annie and Michele showed up. We walked behind the survivors and caregivers and then headed back to Farley.

Nicole abandoned us, and after a brief chat with RA Nicole, in which I determined that she was not suffering from some weird African flu (with the help of my mom), Annie, Michele and I went out in search of food. This somehow became a trip to Recker's, across campus.

Joey returned from costume shopping at about that point, and the kind boy brought me Chickfila sweet tea. He left again to go "make" his costume... at one point this was supposed to invovle sewing with staples, and I was afraid. But I've learned not to fuss, so I sat and sipped sweet tea and mooched off of Annie's burnt cheese pizza.

Eventually we headed back to Farley, and I spent an hour or so getting ready for Farley's halloween dance. None of our "circle" of Farley girls were going, but I kinda like getting dressed up and such. Plus everyone kept talking about how much fun it is, and I like to dance, so why not? And I was quite proud of my costume, I must say:

<-- Costume in its final form... I never got a picture head to toe, which is sad, because the skirt is a really full and pretty, and I was wearing some killer cute sandals.

<--I'm such a bad pirate :-P I was trying to look intense here, I think. Heh, that didn't work so well. Joey showed up late, but we still got into the dance.






















As soon as we got inside, I realized that my carefully put together costume was rather lacking in the sexy department, comparatively speaking, and apparently the reason that the dance isn't until 10:30 is so that everyone has time to get drunk beforehand. We tried to have fun, gave up, tried again, and eventually gave up and left at midnight. It was sad. The people dancing in couples for the most part were too concerned with other things to actually dance, and everyone else "dancing" was dancing in little circles or close groups of friends. If we go to a dance again, we're going with a group. The music sucked too- not stuff one can actually dance to, mostly weird hiphop. I was pretty disappointed, because everyone had built it up to be so awesome... but life goes on.

We went back to Farley and hung out in the big lounge in the basement with our friends, who were watching the mockumentary Thank You For Smoking. Not exactly light and fluffy, but it was humorous.

At 3, I bundled up hard-core style (my 3-in-1 parka was in 1 piece for the first time this winter) and dragged Joey, Michele, and Annie out to Relay to walk with me. It was fun and peaceful. We walked and talked and sang along with the songs they were blaring. Michele and Annie bailed after half an hour, but Joey stuck it out with me in his mad ninja costume. He walked with the swords and numchucks. We even got free Krispie Kreme doughnuts out of the deal. Definitely the best part of the night. And it was nice to know that my hard-core winter stuff works; it wasn't below freezing outside, but it was in the 30s, and I was perfectly warm the whole time. Good stuff.









By 4:30, I was back in Farley. I took my parka, gloves, fleece hat, and wool socks off, and promptly collapsed on the futon. My back complained this morning, but my thighs were thankful. Dancing in heels + walking in the cold= sore Laura.

See? Crazy. But life is good.

This made me smile. We work so hard, no matter how hard we try to keep things simple.

"Tired" - by Shel Silverstein
I've been working so hard you just wouldn't believe
And I'm tired!
There's so little time and so much to achieve,
And I'm tired!
I've been lying here holding the grass in its place,
Pressing a leaf with the side of my face,
Tasting the apples to see if they're sweet,
Counting the toes on a centipede's feet.
I've been memorizing the shape of that cloud,
Warning the robins to not chirp so loud,
Shooing the butterflies off the tomatoes,
Keeping an eye out for floods and tornadoes.
I've been supervising the work of the ants,
And thinking of pruning the cantaloupe plants,
Timing the sun to see what time it sets,
Calling the fish to swim in my nets,
And I've taken twelve thousand and forty-one breaths...
And I'm tired!

REAL snow!!

There's seriously an inch of snow on the ground- real, packable, playable, snow! I just got back inside from frolicking/ romping, because I have my limits in the cold and wetness areas. It will be slush in the morning, but it's SO pretty and infinitely preferrable to the silly little flurries we've been having. Pictures will follow tomorrow! Yay!

(edit)
Ok, so I stole these pictures from my roomie Annie, but it's legit because half the time I was shouting "Annie, take a picture of that!" So they're my pictures, in a way.


Me jumping in the snow... it was exciting :-)


















Me catching snowflakes on my tongue (and whole face, for that matter).

















Annie catching snowflakes... I think she missed the memo about sticking out your tongue











Michele and her adorable snowman

















Lookit, I made a snowball!

















The dome was so pretty. Poor Mary had snow on her head.












That's me and Juliet hanging out under the streetlights- guess which one's me? Yes, of course, the one with her arms out.















Me being excited some more...













me wondering what Joey's doing there... seriously, he has me GPS tagged, he just happened to show up at the grotto when we were there.










Michele thought it would be a good idea to lay down on a bench. I'm not from Nevada, I don't know these things.











Joey, Annie, and Michele made snow angels. I was the offiicial photographer of this event.












Our frolicking also involved an intense snow ball fight, but Annie didn't take pictures of that as she was too busy lobbing chunks of frozen water at me. A good time was had by all.

(much thanks to bego, aka Maria, for sharing her blogging wisdom)

A day in the life of Laura

Life is good! It was a busy first day back in class, but a pretty good one.
7:50- alarm goes off

8:10- Laura actually gets up

8:30- Laura's in her Foundations of Theology class, which was (as per usual) rather uninteresting. Laura, being the nerd she is, takes tons of notes anyway.

9:20- Her first class behind her, Laura departs in search of breakfast and Joey, but not before taking note of a poster outside her classroom about an upcoming talk on Mother Teresa by Mother Teresa's physician. After getting outside, Laura grumpily notes that once again, it is snowing.

9:40- Laura settles in to a nice warm breakfast at SDH. Their hash browns just don't compare to her dear Waffle House's, but Laura makes do.

10:30- Laura walks to her second class. It's still snowing.

10:40- Laura learns about how to write out proofs in predicate logic! Turns out, it's much the same as propositional logic, but it looks a lot more complicated and thus cooler. Yay.

11:45- Laura arrives at the place of her third class, only to find the auditorium empty and "No class!" scrawled on the board. Score.

11:55- Laura arrives at Waddicks, a cool little coffee shop, and reads from her sociology book while sipping a fair trade coffee mocha.

12:30- Laura hikes out to the Rock (gym) for swim class. Laura is very grateful to her mother for providing her with a portable hair dryer, as today would be a really bad day to walk around with wet hair. Thankfully, the snow has stopped.

2:00- With Joey in tow, Laura heads out to the bookstore and searches around for a suitable birthday present for one Nicole Campo, who turned 19 today. She settles on a nice scarf, packaged in a wine bottle gift bag with lots of big plastic beads for weight. She also locates an incredibly perfect card. And there was much rejoicing.

2:45- Laura devotes a goodly amount of time to homework and the signing of Nicole's card. Laura congratulates herself on being almost totally done with her reading for the week.

4:30- Laura returns to Farley, where she vegs on the couch (you guessed it, with Joey). [Laura just realized that "veging" refers to being a couch "potato". Awesome!]

6:00- Laura's stomach rumbles, and fortunately Jean's and Joey's do as well. Laura makes a couple of calls and decides that it's time for dinner.

6:30- Laura digs into a bowl of pasta stir-fry at Nicole's official birthday dinner, along with Nicole herself, Joey, Jean, Annie, Michelle, Michele, and Nicole's roomie Steph.

7:10- Nicole opens her presents!!! Yay!

7:20- Annnd break. All dinner guests disperse. Laura returns to Farley.

7:55- Laura heads over to the Center for Social Concerns building (all the way across the street) for Amnesty International.

8:30- Laura returns to Farley after a rather uninspiring Amnesty meeting. She laments not being more involved. Laura kicks Joey out of Farley and sends him back to his own dorm to study for his calc exam and practice piano.

9:00- Laura goes back to CSC for her first-ever Peace Fellowship meeting. While the group was intimidating at first, Laura eventually relaxes and enjoys the somewhat random, but pleasant meeting.

10:00- Laura's back in Farley! She decides to go to Mass in the chapel, as Farley's only daily Mass is on Mondays at 10. At the end of Mass, Laura hears that 1-3 inches of snow is predicted to accumulate overnight. Laura's soul cries out for mercy. [It's only October, God]

10:35- Laura arrives back in her dorm room and decides to celebrate her momentary victory over homework by writing a hugely long blog post that no one will read except Joey. Laura feels accomplished.

11:00- Laura finishes said blog post and resolves to practice guitar. G'night!

old friends, good memories

Now that I’m in college, I can look back on “generations” of friends. First there were my childhood friends, mostly at my grade school, my beloved St. John Neumann, but also a few at church. Then I left the best of these behind when I went to high school and I (slowly) made a whole new group of friends. My group changed again when I came to Notre Dame, with the exception of my boyfriend. The point is, now I feel like I can call some people “old friends”. Some of these I’ve kept in touch with, and some I wish I had.

I tried to reestablish one such friendship over fall break. Mike and I met online. We both were extremely cool enough to join the same online Star Trek simulation group. Basically, you make up a character and meet with everyone else once a week to “sim”, or act out Star Trekky plots. In between times, you write logs detailing your character’s work and personal life. It’s a lot of fun, and you meet a lot of great people. I stumbled upon the USF and its “fleet” of sims when I was about to graduate middle school, and my Starbase Everest sim community supported my fragile ego as I made the transition. At least once a week, I could ignore the loneliness of high school and play the part of an outgoing, pretty girl in dangerous missions. It was great therapy.

I know, this was supposed to be about me and Mike. He was a veteran of the sim even when I joined, and our characters interacted a fair amount over the two or three years I belonged to Everest. In fact, in the last six months or so that I was there, our characters had quite the romantic relationship going. I’m sure you can fill in the blanks; the real Laura was lonely, and developed something of a crush on the real Mike. For a while, he was the forever-unobtainable bright spot in my life, someone who kept me going when I felt like no one cared. I have a few of our AIM conversations saved, and for some reason I came across them last week. On one hand, I blush as I read how stupidly obvious I was being, but on the other hand, it was comforting that he didn’t respond by ignoring me, but talked to me like I was his equal, even though he was several years my senior and had a steady girlfriend. Even though I was obviously rather enamored by him, we still had a great friendship. I told him a lot about what I was feeling, and he cheered me up when I needed it. I remember him talking about being afraid to graduate and go to college. We had a friendship that was stronger than my silly crush.

I dropped out of the sim, mostly because I didn’t need to pretend I had friends anymore. I was coming into my own in real life. Mike and I kept in touch for a while, but he was in college and I was busy too. I kept his screen name, though; it’s still on my buddy list. So last week, having no other way to contact him, I IM’d him. After re-introducing myself, I said something along the lines of I had been thinking about what a great friendship we had had, and I would love to hear how he’s doing. When half an hour later he hadn’t said anything, I sent him my email address and said I hoped to hear from him soon.

He hasn’t emailed me, and when he’s signed on to AIM, he hasn’t IM’d me. I suppose some things aren’t so easily recoverable. Still, he was a great friend when I really needed one, and I’m thankful to have had him in my life.

Update… ok, this post is kinda a moot point now, as he caved and IMd me. So he didn’t think I was a stalker; this is good. I still put a lotta work into this post though, so I’m keeping it up :-)