An update especially for Courtney
So a lot has happened since my last ramble, but I'll start with today! Snow day!!! For me the effects were minimal since I still had to get up at 7 to go to work, but at least I didn't have to hurry over to my discussion afterward or take my psychology exam at 3pm. I am definately glad I'll have extra time to study for the exam this weekend. As for today, however, Im planning on taking a nap after this entry or sometime between now and my 5:00 shift.
Yesterday was a pretty sweet day. I got up early for my 7:00 shift, but the sunrise on the walk over made it all worth while. The greatest surprise of the day was when I got a call from Chuck saying he was coming to visit me with Sam on their way back to Maine. I obviously called up Meg right away and got my meeting time moved up so I'd be done in time to have lunch with them. It was an excellent lunch, and I even got to meet Chuck's new kitty. To my delight, I found out shortly after that my 2:00 discussion was canceled! This gave me a little time to study psychology before it was time to leave for geography. After geography, I grabbed some dinner and then headed over to Taiko drumming. That's right. I joined Taiko drumming. Jealous? Diana would be proud as I can now count to 8 in Japanese. We even get to hop during practice! Its awesome. I can't wait to see the group perform for Asia Night tommorrow. Hopefully its not canceled. The snow didn't wimp out like I thought it would, and we might actually get a couple inches of accumulation today.
As you can probably tell, I've started working at South Dining Hall this semester. I have four shifts a week. One on Thursday mornings form 7-10:30 and one on Friday mornings from 8-10. I also have Tuesday and Friday shifts from 5 until close. I like the job so far. It varies from day to day, and in the mornings I get to help the chefs prepare food. There's this one chef named Linda who has been calling me Mary ever since the first day, and I simply don't have the heart to correct her. The music they play is excellent. So far I've heard Fleetwood Mac, Beatles, Eagles, Clapton, and a bunch of other good stuff. We also listened to the Greece soundtrack, usually only when you haven't heard it in a long time. Night shifts are out on the floor or in the dish room. I have yet another friend named Chris at work now for those of you already confused when I use the name. We rack bacon together on Friday mornings. I'm not sure if that sounds dirty or just disgusting, but working together is fun times. My favorite shift so far has been making pizzas. Mike is by far my favorite student manager. ; )
In other news, I have been hanging out with some friends from Mississippi. We even have group dinners every so often. I've also gone to Jason's for a party and hung out with Andrew quite a few times. We played Nintendo at his place, and I've met some of his friends from Coventry. There're all awesome. We even went to the Barack Obama convention in Hartford the monday before the primaries. It was awesome! People were lined up several times around the building to get in, and Lady Kennedy gave the introduction speech. My favorite line from the ralley was "Hope, education, love," and I hope that on the chance that Obama does get elected he sticks with his campaign principles. I've been drawing some ties between the Progressive movement that we're learning about in history and the current campaign. Obama took Connecticut which to me was unexpected. Who knows what could happen?
Dave surprised me after breakfast the other weekend when he brought me to Walmart and bought me a new Guitar Hero game after Chris accidently knocked my playstation off the tv and scratched the disc. What a sweetheart. He also got accepted to play in Rome this summer. I'll take this oppurtunity to brag about how awesome that is as well.
I'm officially done applying to the School of Education now. I had my interview a couple weeks ago, and I'm not really sure exactly how it went. I'm going to go with alright. Now I just have to wait until March 1st to see officially whether I get in or not.
I cantored for the first time up at school this past weekend. I was super nervous and messed up some things I had down before mass. Still, someone awesome reminded me that performances are rarely perfect and you should just aim to get as much out of them as you can, and so I'll call my singing decent. My choir director is having me cantor again this weekend. We'll see how that goes.
Don came up the other weekend and hung out. It was good times as usual. Colin, Luke, Steve, Don, and I even sang Dont Stop Believing kareoke style. It turns out Steve can play Layla on keyboard. It was friggin' sick.
I picked up some of Descartes' works at the library. They intrigue me, and I plan to check them out if I ever find the time.
A lunar eclipse was the other night. Good stuff.
The power in our building went out for quite some time last Wednesday. Rachel and I had to make our way over to Whitney for dinner. Steve was also super aweosme and let me stay at his place to work on some history homework and spend the night over at South so I didn't have to walk there for my 7am shift. I miss hanging out with him.
Katie had a birhtday! I'm sad we couldn't spend it together.
Tons of my cousins are having babies. When I say tons, I mean Gillian, Lauren, and Erica. I'm pretty excited to be bombarded with cuteness.
I haven't been getting much sleep lately. My schedule is super busy, and not too long ago I had a week where practically every single night I had a paper due. I stayed up until 3 or 4 every night, even the nights where I had to get up early for work the next day. Hopefully it's not like this all semester. I'm going to have to seriously start doing more reading on weekends.
Now for some fun I'll throw in some Wizard of Oz ties to the Populist Movement in America:
Silver (changed to ruby slippers in the movie) slippers: the way home
Yellow (gold) Brick Road: not the way home
Emerald City: Chicago (represented the fraud of the Gilded Age)
Oz: America (name from Baum's second drawer labeled "O-Z")
Dorothy: American people if they would only use their power to bring change (Obama's campaign slogan anyone?)
Scarecrow: American farmer shown to be smarter than folks think
Tin Woodsman: American factoy worker (not a worker but a man, called "hands")
Cowardly Lion: American politician who needs to find courage in change
Wizard: Bryan (Democrat posing as Populist)
Wicked Witch of the East: Wall Street
Wicked Witch of the West: mining/railroad corporations
Flying monkeys: Native American tribes
Other interesting facts:
America didn't enter World War I until the last 6 months, and 3.9 million men were sent over.
The contagious yawn people talk about has been statistically shown to occur most commonly when you see the other person's entire face rather than say just their eyes or mouth.
John Muir was this awesome Progressive who lived out in the mountains, advocated an appreciation for nature, and established one of the first National Parks at Yosemite in the Sierra Nevadas.
Mary Jones was this awesome Progressive Irish lady who is known for holding up her hands at gunpoint during a strike and saying "Go Ahead and Shoot." She also organized the wives of the mine workers in jail with their babies and got them to sing lullabies loudly and off key until they got let out of jail. She later led the March of the Mill Children where she brought these young kids who had been laboring hard in the mills from Philadelphia to the Bronx Zoo in New York and compared the treatment of the children to that of the animals. She then brought the kids to a senator's hotel for breakfast and charged the children's meals to his tab. How awesome does she sound?
"The House of the Rising Sun" Are you familiar with the song? Can you guess where it came from? It was actually a folk song from the rural South about a bar. The song promoted the temperance movement and talked about what alcohol can do to you.
There's only two weeks until Spring Break. I'm pretty excited. I'll get to see Mark's recital and then before I know it, it will be time to see the Lion King on Broadway.
Love to those I love and epecially to those I miss!