Aah February…

New Classes having actual homework due, Valentine’s Day, Tax Season, FAFSA time, School Fees, and more snow.

Well, my taxes, FAFSA, and fees are done.  Valentine’s is planned and homework is being actively avoided, so go me!

Matt and I are doing up a fancy dinner at home for Valentine’s.  I’m very excited about the fancy meal, but not so much about the challenge of cooking a real meal.  We’re doing battered green beans with remoulade sauce from a southern cookbook, steak au poivre (which i’m pretty sure just means with peppercorns), and for dessert we’re doing some form of napolean filled with mousse.  Aren’t you proud of you Amy?

Then sunday I get to write papers and read about my professor travelling around the world to volcanos.  Yay!

that’s it for now,

yours,

alaina

I walked all the way to the bus stop today and then discovered that I had forgotten my bus pass, which means actually paying $2 to ride the ten blocks to campus, or however far it is, which sucks.  So, I got the money and decided, just in case the driver would be nice, to ask if i could get to campus today without it.  It’s my first day back on the bus for the new term and I was hoping he’d feel generous.  And, he was.  He not only let me on and was totally nice about it, but he also was feeling quippy!

He made jokes to me, and the next guy who got on without his pass because he was new, and the next set of people.  He asked the first one on, “Did anyone order a bus?”  The idiot had headphones on and didn’t appreciate the joke, but I thought it was amusing.

When we pulled into the campus he announced on the loud speaker “Alright, ladies and gentlemen, we are now leaving warp speed and entering CSU airspace.”

And, lastly, when I pulled the cable to make my stop he grabbed the loud speaker and said, “Okay, who pulled that cable?  Whoever that was I’m afraid you’re going to have to exit the bus at the next stop.”

These might not seem that funny, but if you rode the bus every morning in the land of headphones, scowls, and/or ridiculously loud conversations about nothing anyone else ever needed to hear about, you would be able to fully appreciate the lovely break this was.

Best bus ride ever.

So, if the bizarre feet of snow weren’t enough, it is now officially winter in Tillamook.  I.E.  It’s flooding!  Supposedly the Wilson was going to crest at 19 feet and you have to take detours to get to the other side of town.  Woohoo…

Anyway, Becky and I are sitting at Main Street listening to the arcade machine noises (the techno version of The Simpson’s theme) and I’m finally getting to use internet of proper speeds that I’m borrowing from the Radio Shack down the way.  How sad is it when the Starbucks in this town doesn’t even have wifi?

And, now for the exciting part!  I’m typing on my new mini notebook!  It’s an Acer Aspire One, and it’s beautiful and so far very lovely to use.  I think it’s a pretty quick and powerful little thing too.  I’m a little irked it doesn’t come with office to stay, only a 60 day trial.  Grrrr.

Happy 2009!  I’m still in Tillamook for a couple weeks, Mom and I have big intentions for housework and improvements.  We might paint, we will clean out and I’m not sure what all else she has planned.

Okay, much else to do unfortunately and no idea how long this whole borrowed internet thing will last…

yours,

Alaina

So, Thanksgiving Break has finally begun.  I don’t think I’m capable of being more full of thanks.  I started the break right, with the world’s worst teenage girl movie with Shauna, Karyn and Emily, which was awesome.  The movie sucked a great deal but watching in a theater of people who couldn’t decided whether to laugh or cry was a lot more fun than I would have thought, despite the angry ushers trying to get people to stop holding seats.  We did Rockband afterwards so Matt could have his fix before Emily bailed on us for the rest of the break.  Yesterday we spent cleaning, seriously, the whole day.  This place hasn’t been so clean since it was made, because it sure as hell wasn’t this clean when we moved in.  The whole cleaning process confused and upset the dogs who took to following us around and looking perturbed, but it’ll be worth it when Mom isn’t horrified when she arrives tomorrow.  Which is the most exciting part, of course, Mom will get here tomorrow evening and then we’ll have grocery shopping to do and lots of tv watching to veg through and it’s going to be wonderful.  I’m so excited to see her.  We’ve got our turkey, and I’m going to try to make some of the Thanksgiving stuff early so it won’t be so ridiculous in our tiny kitchen on the day of, and matt and I are going to decorate our live mini tree as a table centerpiece and this Thanksgiving is going to be better than I expected when we came out here.  I’m completely excited.

On the other hand of course, I still have a twenty page paper to write, a 5-10 page paper to write and 8+ books to read for a 6+ page prospectus and annotated bibliography all ideally started before next Monday, so it’s not as lovely as I’d prefer.  They really love to pile it all on at the end, don’t they?  Oh well, I guess on that note I shouldn’t really be procrastinating.  Margaret Atwood scholarship and Judith Butler are impatiently awaiting me, and the angry looking face of Raymond Carver on his book is making me nervous, so I had best begin (or at least flip that Carver book over).

Happy Thanksgiving Break to all of you, whether or not you are experiencing any sort of actual break at this moment!

yours,

alaina

So, the contest winners announcements supposedly came and went and I haven’t heard anything so I’m assuming I did not win, but two of my photos were displayed as finalist and I get pretty framed and matted copies of them when they are taken out of the gallery, so either way I’m stoked.  I’ll attach them below for those of you who wanted to see them.

Everyday I think I should find something to post about and then don’t and it’s becoming a dirty habit, I’ll have to try to do better.  My classes have once again picked up the work load.  My teacher assigned a full length book review, a three part midterm, an assignment and over 130 pages of reading for the same two weeks and needless to say I’m attempting not to sink under the joy of that much busy work.  Other than that things are just peachy…

Matt’s dad, Larry, for those of you who read this and aren’t his family, will be here anytime now and Matt is super excited to show him around.  I couldn’t even convince him to go out for Rockband the other night – he had to get ready for Larry.  I just finished making a movie for a class project, which was incredibly neat.  It’s five and a half minutes of stills and video with voiceovers and background music and a dvd menu and credits that call me the co-director.  I’m massively egotistical about the whole thing.  Although, I must give credit to just about everyone else who did all the tough parts – Matt – for acting like a really old drunk suicide risk & Brant, of course for telling me how to do things on the mac besides check my email and admire it’s aesthetics.  I will post a link to the video on Youtube as soon as I remember to ask Emily to borrow her password to post on her account.  And, then, you can all congratulate me and Shauna on its supreme marvelousness.  Now, I’ve got three weeks of clean laundry to put away, a paper to finish and a ten page article to read before tomorrow morning so I’ll leave all the other goodness till next time.  Wish my belabored brain luck.

yours,

alaina

So, it is a lovely Friday here in the middle of the country.  The sun is shining, I’m sure a bird is singing somewhere and I don’t have a physical boatload of homework this weekend!

I forgot how quickly school weeks go by whether or not you accomplish anything…..  But I’m hoping to do better this weekend.  I’m also hoping that next week I wont have to walk past a 20 feet tall anti abortion display with graphic pictures everyday of next week…  Keep your fingers crossed!  It was there all week in the middle of a walk way and it got really offensive.  I mean, why do they get to put up the display on campus?  The pro-kill-the-fetus people mind their own buisness, why can’t everybody else.  However, it was humorous that on one of the free speech boards in front of the madness someone wrote “WARNING: Necrophiliac Prenatal Pedophiliac Photos Ahead!”  That was hilarious.

Matt and I are getting new couches next week!  YAYAYAY!  We’re buying the cast-offs of a friend who got a new couch and I’m super super unbelievably excited.  They are a honey beigey color and very cushy.  And there is no evil spine killing bar in the back!  Matt has his doubts about them but I’m excited enough for the both of us and at the very least they aren’t too expensive and they will be an improvement.  We even found a friend of a friend to save us from having to pay to rent a truck to move them…  It’s so exciting.

Tonight is RockBand night at Emily’s where I’ve promised to try and sing on Medium instead of Easy, which is scary and means I will suck, but apparently we will get more “fans” that way, so I’m taking my lumps.  Tomorrow is bad movie night with a bunch of girls from my class, I think this week is “From Justin to Kelly,” which I can’t actually say I’m looking forwards to, but “Crossroads” was fun so I’ll go with them that they can improve the experience.

I think that ends the interesting things I have to say, so I shall now go pretend that I’m going to start homework.

We miss you all and Happy October!

yours,

alaina