trying to get my headache to subside.

it's currently february 17th. housing sign-ups for next year begin on april 15th. that is nearly two months away, but the topic is on everyone's mind, and i feel like it occupies every conversation. It's stressing me out beyond belief. do i want live on campus or off campus? and more importantly, who do i want to live with? i have offers on both sides, but i just don't know what to do. there is a major part of me that does not want to disconnect myself from the whitworth community just yet by moving off campus. i fear that if i live away from campus, i'll only be there for classes and will lose some of the friendships that i've made. plus, i don't want to deal with commuting to class every day. on the other hand, i'd love to be on my own in an apartment - i'd be able to cook my own meals and live the way i want. i'm ready to live on my own, that i know for sure. i just don't know if i'm ready to give up the 'college life' of living in the dorms and in community with everyone. it's definitely something you only experience once in life, and i may as well enjoy it while i can, right?

i just don't know what to do. technically, i have time to decide - two months to decide. but everyone's making decisions now and i feel pressured to make mine.

yesterday was not a good day for me. for some reason i was just really down and i'm not quite sure why. it happens once in a blue moon, and yesterday was it. it was weird. i finished class and went and ate lunch. we said goodbye to our prefrosh (who was super sweet) and then i pretty much just hung out in my room. at like 6:30, i came back to the room to chill and got a horrible headache, and i never get headaches. i laid in bed for two hours listening to music, staring at the wall, and thinking - trying to get my headache to subside. it never did. i met jared and kristina to go watch heroes, but we couldn't find any where to watch it. so i came back to the room and then left to go return a movie to videomatic. it was actually good that i had to return the movie - driving clears my head better than anything in the world. i pretty much did nothing until 11:30, when i decided i should at least get in bed and try to fall asleep. i was completely restless and the last time i looked at the clock was at 3 am. i'm feeling slightly better today. yesterday was just an anomaly that i don't understand.

i started the third week of ice skating today. i fell on my butt. it hurt (mostly my ego), but the worst part was that when i tried to get up, i fell again. the teacher came over asking me if i was okay. i was physically okay, i would just rather not have the teacher point out to the other thirty kids that i fell down. it was sorta embarrassing. i do think i'm getting better, but i still suck bad. at least i'm getting the credit out of the way - at least that's what i keep telling myself.

two more years and i'll really be kicked to the curb.

i wish whitworth didn't disrespect the presidents. i love the presidents, but mostly because they have a holiday which usually results in the cancellation of classes. not at whitworth. apparently, we answer to Jesus, and not the president, so we don't celebrate their holiday. how lame.

it's only the third week of the semester, and i'm already over it. luckily, there's only five weeks of ice skating left since it's only 1/2 semester long. it's not an unbearable as it was, but i don't look forward to it, by any means. i have noticed that i'm getting better, it's just not quite at 'enjoyable' status yet. i'm not convinced it will ever get to that point. i guess i will reevaluate in five weeks.

sometimes i wish i knew the future of my life. not necessarily how i will get there, just what the end result will be. the rest of the in between stuff can stay a secret. who will i marry? where will i work? how many kids will i have? where will i live? these questions seem to occupy my thoughts more often than they used to. is it because i'm "growing up" now? two more years and i'll really be kicked to the curb. i'll really have to start a career. i'm not scared of the responsibility. it's just a scary thought to be completely on my own.

i need a hair cut badly. i haven't had it cut since thanksgiving weekend. it's too long and the layers are all growing out. the longer it gets, the longer it takes to straighten it every day. i want to wait until spring break so i can get it cut at a salon in bellevue, but i don't know if i'll be able to wait that long. it's already driving me crazy.

naps have been my savior this year. i'm gonna go get saved.

i'm utterly exhausted from such a long day.

i'm sitting in the white-walled study room of ballard basement. i finally finished my managerial accounting assignments. i am beginning to remember why financial accounting made me want to scream last semester. it is such a guess/check game that i can never seem to perfect. is bad debt expense a variable cost or a fixed cost? you tell me, cause i have no idea. blah. i hate it.

i made a horrible decision this week. that decision was to put off all of my work until tonight, thursday. i figured i would take the week to recover from my sickness, take lots of three hour naps, watch tv shows on my computer, go to bed early and get up late. unfortunately, i let a weeks worth of work pile up until tonight. i realized this at about 2 pm today. i just now finished managerial accounting, and i have yet to study for my macroeconomics quiz that i have tomorrow. now, you're probably wondering why i'm blogging instead of studying. and my answer is simple: if i sit here any longer without a break for my mind, it just might turn to mush. it's already one in the morning and i have lost all motivation to study for a ten point quiz. unfortunately, i forgot about last week's quiz and received a six out of ten. i cannot afford to get a six on all of the quizzes.

i'm finally starting to get a little better. i think i'm finally on the tail end of the cold, after almost a week of being sick. on the downside, emilie just got sick tonight. it is sort of inevitable, since we live in such a small, confined space. i actually felt well enough to not take a nap today - though i'm regretting it now since i'm utterly exhausted from such a long day.

i've decided that life center is the best out of all the churches i've been to since moving to whitworth. it is the place where i feel god's presence the most, which is kinda important. i've been going with emilie the last couple weeks, which i'm happy about. though, my radio show is scheduled for sundays from 7-9pm, so i won't be able to go with her any more. we went to the college group tonight. it was my first time going, but emilie had gone once last year and hated it. she wanted to give it another try and i wanted to give it a first try. i am really glad i went. it was so much better than i had expected. the worship was powerful and the message was entertaining but informative. i think i'm going to try to continue going every week. also, they have a bible study that meets at whitworth. i may try to go to that on monday nights as well. we'll see.

my guitar is giving me problems lately. i few days ago, i woke up with an unexplainable pain in my left hand. it was sort of in my wrist, but also my thumb. i couldn't really place it - there was some popping and pinching going on. i puzzled about it all day, until i realized later while i was playing my guitar, that i'm pretty sure the pain is from that! i was watching myself, and sometimes i sort of have to contort my hand in order to make my short fingers reach all the strings. and also, i'm starting to do a lot more work with bar chords, and you have to pinch with your thumb in order to get enough leverage to get all the strings down. honestly, i probably play my guitar at least an hour a day, give or take. it makes me sad that it's physically hurting me, if that's what the problem is.

exhaustion is taking over. it's nearing 1 am, and i still have yet to study for my macro quiz. maybe i'll get in bed and try to study up before my eyes drift off into an unwakable sleep.

negatives outweighing the positives.

here is a list of all the things that happened to me that i would not want to happen during the first two weeks of a new semester:
1. i fell down in ice skating four times and bruised my wrist and knees. then i accidentally rammed my bruised knee into the corner of my desk the same day. this cause me to double over on my bed in pain and my eyes to water.
2. i caught some sort of illness a couple days ago. i have been taking three hour naps every day. my nose is runnng constantly. i even wake up in the middle of the night needing to wipe my nose. i am constantly fighting back the sneezes during class. luckily, a dear friend gave me a package of fisherman's friends, the best cough drops known to mankind. but, they don't help the runny nose or headaches.
3. there was a power outage in my dorm last night. but, of course, the power outage was only on my half of the building. the other half had their lights back after a quick second of blackness. i am equipped with a flashlight, but the batteries were dying, naturally. the power was out for about three hours before i decided to call it quits and try to sleep. then, apparently, in order to fix the problem, all power to campus needed to be turned off for a half hour. i went to sleep before that happened, but slept horribly because i kept thinking it was morning. plus, randall's light turned on in the middle of the night because of the reset, which jostled me in my slumber.
4. i ended up having to drop a class because it was going to be way to much work and my grades would have suffered.
5. my saturday night was spent alone.
6. the first cd i reviewed for radio class was probably some of the worst screamo i've ever heard.
7. I had to dig my car out of a four foot block of ice that was blocking it.
8. I realized yesterday that i haven't been to a show since november. NOT okay.

Positives:
1. I bought the Hey Monday cd with a gift card. it is fantastic.
2. i am finished with class at 11:25 on mon/wed/fri.
3. my marketing class is my favorite. it's the first time i've actually wanted to participate in class. i guess that's a good indicator that i've chosen the right major.
4. i finally decorated my room after rearranging it last week.
5. my sister might come visit at the end of the month.
6. new episodes of lost, heroes, and the office are currently running.

so, unfortunately, the bad are currently outweighing the good. son of a B. at least it is already wednesday. my week is exactly half way over right now. i have marketing tonight, which i am excited for. but it also means i miss lost...so, plus and minus. i hope i will get better soon. being sick blows.

i miss the people. i miss the pinecones.

i cannot believe it's already thursday. we fly back to spokane on sunday night, and i can't wait. i honestly never thought i'd ever miss whitworth as much as i do right now. last year, i would have given anything to get away, at least for a while, a weekend, anything. this year is so completely different. i still don't know if i can ever consider spokane 'home,' but whitworth is my temporary home, and i miss it. i miss the people. i miss the pinecones. i miss reading and studying in the coffee shop. i miss saying hello to people on the hello walk.

i have had such a good time on this trip and i've learned so much. i've met a bunch of new people and seen so many new places. i feel like i haven't experience DC at all since i've been here, mostly because we haven't gotten out much. we got caught up with all the inauguration stuff, and then the last two days we've had meetings all day. i'll basically only have saturday to sight see, and i know i won't be able to see nearly everything i want to see. i've basically come to the conclusion that i'll come back here some day (i don't know how soon) so i should just enjoy myself and not stress about trying to cram it all in.

this trip has been go, go, go non-stop. i'm ready for a break. i go back to school on sunday and then i get to go home for jan term break on tuesday. i'll be home for almost a week, which will be much needed. i can't wait to have some home-cooked meals. i've already told my mother that i don't want to go out to eat at all while i'm home. i've had to eat every single meal out for the last two and a half weeks and i'm so sick of it. though, i'm pretty sure i've lost some weight with all of the walking we're doing. i'm a horrible gauge of miles and such, but let's just say it's more than i've ever walked in my entire life in this short time span. it's good though, because these winter months are the hardest for me to get up the energy to work out. when it's this cold outside, i never want to put work out clothes on and walk to the gym in the snow and freezing temperatures. i'm glad to have gotten off campus for jan term because of that, but i almost miss the really relaxing time that it allows on campus.

i'm a little worried for spring semester. my schedule is sort of up in the air right now. my marketing class (that i built my entire schedule around) got moved to a night class. fantastic. so now i've been trying to rearrange things in my schedule, but now it's going to be really unbalanced. i have four classes on monday, plus yoga, so five hours of class. then hopefully i'll have marketing on tuesday/thursday mornings, but that'll be it. it's kind of stressing me out to not have my schedule set in stone going into the semester. i'm not taking a night class, but if i don't get into the other marketing class, i don't know what i'll do. i have to take it this semester.

i'm trying not to think about it. i'm trying to think about how i get to go back to whitworth on sunday and see my friends. and then how i get to go home on tuesday and relax for a week and eat amazing home cooked food. mmm.

The 4 AM wakeup call didn’t rustle my feathers.

During my senior year of high school in 2006, my US Citizenship teacher, Mr. Belcher, showed the class a taping of an Oprah show. On this particular show, she spoke to Barack Obama, who was currently the senator of Illinois. At this time, he had no intention of running for president. I turned to my classmate and said, “I hope he runs, because I would totally vote for him.” On November 4th, 2008, I did just that. Today, I witnessed his inauguration as the President of the United States of America.

Today was a whirlwind. January 20th, 2009 is a day that will go down in the history books for generations to come. The first African American president was inaugurated into office in the United States, and I was there to witness history in the making. The 4 AM wakeup call didn’t rustle my feathers. The anticipation of the event was enough to keep me from a deep sleep.

The most recent estimation I’ve seen is roughly 2 million people in attendance. When you hear the number, it seems like a lot, but it is a completely different situation when you are there in the middle of it all. In fact, it was quite amazing to see. This inauguration brought the country together in a way that I have never seen. As five other students and I walked through the crowd, we heard the stories of people from all over the nation. Many spoke about how Obama represents hope, change and forward movement. There were no racial barriers in the crowd, just 2 million united Americans, cheering for a man that can hopefully change this country for the better.
I feel blessed to have been able to attend Barack Obama’s inauguration this morning. I think the whole country is ready for a new leader, one equipped with plans to help pull the United States to its feet once again. With tiny American flags waving violently in the wind, 2 million people shouted “O-ba-ma” at the top of their lungs to ring in the new president – a new era in American history.

New York to DC.

i left new york city yesterday. it was a whirlwind, to say the least. i was there for about nine days. my group stayed at a hostel in Manhattan called Hostelling International. the first floor/lobby was really nice and hip. there was a nice room with couches and a wii and a little cafe that sold breakfast and lunch foods. they also had coffee, but i was never brave enough to try it. i'm such a snob...that's what seattle will do to you. unfortunately, the next few floors were a different story. we were on the third floor and we all gasped as we walked into our room. there were 8 beds, 4 sets of bunkbeds. there were also 8 small lockers along the wall and a chair crammed in the corner. there was probably three feet of walking space in the middle of the room. it was so small that we didn't even have a place for all the suitcases. some girls had their suitcases at the end of their beds and others had them on top of the lockers. luckily we had one extra bed which we used for storage of luggage. even worse than the cramped room was the bathroom. there was mold on the sinks and in the showers, tiles were coming loose in the showers and they were clogged so when you showered, they overflowed and stuff was floating in the water. not to mention there was a sign hanging up that read "please notify us if the bathroom needs cleaning," meaning it was not regularly cleaned.

after all of that, on our first night in the hostel, we heard a mouse in someones bag at three in the morning. it had chewed a hole in a plastic bag and we all heard it. no one knew what to do, so we basically freaked out for a while until we called the front desk and they finally sent someone up with mouse traps. the next day, we got what we like to call "the mouserator." it sends out high frequency sounds to keep the mice and rats away. it has worked quite well and kept the mice at bay.

new york city is so large, that i feel like i barely saw anything, but i saw so much! we walked through central park to get to the metropolitan museum of art, which was so cool. there was so much to see there, but i only saw a little over half of it. i can't even list everything we saw, because i don't remember it all. i really enjoyed my time there though, for the most part. i definitely think i could live there, at least for a year or two, but not for much longer than that. it was so high energy, that it was almost draining, but it was still a lot of fun.

yesterday, we took the train from new york down to DC. we passed the train that Obama was on - from philly to DC. there were secret service guys standing at all the entrances to the train and there was a huge crowd just waiting to see the train he was on. it was really crazy. once we got here, we came straight to the hostel. luckily, it is much cleaner than the one in new york was, and the room is a lot bigger so we have more space. there are sirens going off constantly because of all the politicians and the like that need police escorts. there are cops everywhere! i went to a souvenir shop today and they have the most random stuff, like obama nail clippers, obama coloring book, pens, pencils, bells, spoons, mugs, posters, shirts, sweatshirts, banners, ribbons, and all sorts of other stuff. the only accurate way to describe it is 'obama madness.' the energy here is insane, but i love it! i am so excited that i get to be a part of this historic inauguration. i've been all for Obama since before he even announced his candidacy for president. i can't believe this date has actually come!