Sunday, February 29, 2004

what do you mean, "starving?"

i think this is the first time i've ever really felt like a "starving college student."
right now i'm trying REALLY hard to enjoy this really lumpy, watery canned tomato soup, waiting for scott to call me so we can work on differential equations homework. scott's eating pizza. big new yorker. grrrrrrrr.... i want pizza. after i heard about the pizza, i said to myself, i'll be fine. i have soup!
true, i have soup, but i do not have a can opener or a roommate with a pocketknife at the moment, so i stared at the can for a while, wandered around the hall knocking on doors, came back to the room, thought about eating popcorn and tootsie pops for dinner, wandered around again...
finally amber saved me. saved me and delivered me to this mm mm good soup. whoops, i was typing for too long. now it's cold lumpy watery tomato soup.
i didn't actually open this up to complain... i was going to ask you all if you have heard Louis Armstrong sing "A Kiss to Build a Dream On." this is my song of the month. the second runner-up is "Hurricanes" by Five Iron Frenzy. listen to them! they are both fabulous.

Tuesday, February 24, 2004

now that i'm not spending ALL my time writing up my metallography lab, i have stop and breathe and sleep... and shower...
not really, it wasn't that bad, but it almost was. i didn't have time to eat or sleep, but i made time to shower. really, school shouldn't be this demanding. the basic life cycle shouldn't have to depend on the quarter-semesterly lab write-ups.
anyway, the thing i've been thinking about for a few days is how people in my life have so much character. it's almost like they are fictional and were made up to be the quirky personalities of a sitcom.
take my materials tas, for example. teri and jeb. teri is short and sort of wide and has kind of looks like a cartoon critter that wears clothes and walks and talks. she's really nice, she knows what she's talking about, but she's kind of shy about talking in front of the group. jeb is tall and skinny and likes talking in front of us even less. he also knows what he's talking about, but he's super shy. teri and jeb are always competing and arguing about who is right, but it's really obvious that they are really great friends and i get the feeling they stick up for each other a lot. apart they are normal lab tas, but together... i just can't get over how funny it is.
then take my roommate kim. she is just about the most talented person i know. i'm glad i'm not her sister. i would probably have a complex. she is one of the best irish step dancers in the country, and she is certainly the best in the state. she also plays the harp, so at this very second, over my right shoulder, she is teaching a boy from the dorm across the street how to play a simple song on her five-foot baby. and it really is like a baby. we have a humidifier in here and a meter that tells us the comfort zone of the harp. this week i've been sitting here studying to live harp music. HECK YEAH. and she decorates cakes and proofreads papers and is the president of the technical communications club... seriously, i would have a complex if i was being compared to her.
there are so many others... curtis is always bouncing off the walls, scuba steve is the sweetest guy ever, peter always talks fiv times faster than my brain moves... and jesse is now leaving my room and it just occured to me that he is quite the stero-typical Perfect Man.
my life is so entertaining.

Friday, February 20, 2004

hey kids!
i have ten minutes before class, but i wanted to let you know... what happened last night!
the "boyfriend applicant" that wanted to surprize me was none other than patrick, one of scott's roommates. he ran into me at swing and told me he had to show me something, and led me up to his apartment and gave me flowers and a manila folder with four letters of recommendation from one of his roommates, a girl that had been on a road trip with him, and a former girlfriend. and, uh... one was from him.
well, needless to say, kim and i were both freaking out, and curtis, scuba steve, trevor and travis were all trying to help us out, and we weren't sure if patrick knew that it was just a joke or WHAT. but we were both having a cow.
back at our room, after swing, curtis, kim and i read the letters, and they were SO FUNNY. the card in the flowers made it clear that patrick knew it was a joke and was just trying to stress us out for a while and give us a laugh.
we laughed.
he totally had us going though. whether or not this was serious, i need to learn to keep my big mouth shut.

Thursday, February 19, 2004

holy CRAP

okay, here's the deal.
carmen, steve and i want to go to california over spring break and hit san diego and disneyland. well, not really disneyland, but peter pan's flight. ANYWAY, steve said i needed to find a boy to come to even things out a little bit and so i wouldn't be a third wheel for all of carmen and steve's romantic moments. so he told me to find a boyfried. and IT WAS A JOKE.
so the next day i was at lunch and jamison said he didn't have any plans for spring break so i asked him, "hey, want to be my boyfriend?" and told him that he had to fill out an application and be approved by carmen and steve, since they are going on the trip, and kim, just for the heck of it. she's my roomie and she is wise. i said this because jamison is smart enough to realize that i was joking, and i WAS. unfortunately, a bunch of the guys at the table also heard and well... weren't that smart.
appearently the word on the street is that i am now accepting applications from potential boyfriends.
and worse, i just heard from kim, whom i haven't seen all day, that there are three guys who want the job and have been looking for her approval. she says that the phone has been ringing all day and one of the hopefuls.... WANTS TO SURPRIZE ME?!?
the plan right now is up in the air... we can either make this application process REALLY hard, or tell people that the position has been filled, and get someone who knows it's a joke to "be my boyfriend" until spring break.
how did this happen? i should have known better at this school. when there are four guys for every girl, there is no kidding around.
i'm gonna kill steve.

Wednesday, February 18, 2004

that was dumb

last night i wasn't really feeling well because some guys were stressing me out and i had a sore throat. (hey check it out! i can spell throat!) so my super-cool cutie roommate kim made me drink some "wellness" tea that was really gross... but it made me feel great! so great, in fact, that when kim was asleep and i was still talking on aim to a friend of mine, we decided that it was a beautiful night and that we should go for a walk at midnight and a half.
whoops... it's a beautiful night when you're sitting at your computer by your window, but when you're out there without a jacket it's pretty cold. he gave me his jacket in the first like five minutes. we got back at about two-thirty, because he said i was going to be sick.
he was right. now i feel terrible. kim got up about two hours before me and found me all sick and she can't figure out why her tea didn't work.
shhh... don't tell on me.

Tuesday, February 17, 2004

whoa!

here's what happened in materials today. dr. inal looked really terrible. he kept staring off into space and he didn't know what he was talking about and he wasn't making any sense at all. he'd stare at his notes and then say, "any questions?" and when people asked questions he said, "we've already covered that." we were supposed to be having a test reveiw, but he was losing it. josh and i thought he was going to pass out right in class and we'd all have to do emergency lifesaving techniques. he leaned over to see a guy's paper in the front row and it really looked like he was going to fall down and die right there. he finally told us that he wasn't feeling well and to come back at five for the test reveiw.
today we had metallurgy lab, and terri and jeb (out t.a.s) told us that inal had a stroke, maybe right in class, and he was in the hospital.
this is the second time something like that has happened in one of my classes.

Monday, February 16, 2004

fear of short people?

did you ever notice that most things that people are afraid of are either really big or really small? no one is really afraid of medium-sized things. by medium-sized i mean between your waist and your chin. i wonder why that is? how weird. maybe when people's minds were fabricated, there was a built- in margin that made things appear non-threatening according to their height.
adam would really hate this line of thinking... he's below my chin level i think. :)
hooray for me.
today i took a diff eq test that i am pretty sure i flunked. and i've been doing homework since eleven. now it's six thirty. i started my geometrical optics lab and had an error of 94%. THAT'S BAD. i got stuck on my e & m homework, stuck on my materials, and stuck on my physics lab. now i'm moving on to mechanics, maybe there i will have more luck, but it won't get done tonight.
sometimes school just doesn't click with me.

Sunday, February 15, 2004

I LOVE GLENN!!!

cheers, and here's to the best valentine's day i've ever had!
... and just so you know i didn't have a valentine. i've never had a valentine. but instead of dreading this time of year and avoiding the shiney pink and red displays in the stores, i go into this head on. it's so much fun this way!
last night i went to the a concert at macey center.... no, not just any concert. the GLENN MILLER ORCHESTRA itself was in socorro, new mexico at my huble little college on valentine's day. if you know who glenn miller is, you are way cool, and you should tell the next person you see how cool you are. if not, there's still time!
glenn miller disappeared in the 40's, not without composing some of the best swing music ever. his orchestra kept going though, and they are still one of the most famous swing bands. of course i'm completely stoked that they came here!!! so this was a concert and a dance. yeah, i dressed up... red dress, red and gold paint in my hair, body jewles, makeup, the whole works. no one at this school had ever seen me in a dress before, but no one freaked out that i could see.
the band was SO awesome! i have never done anything so cool. i danced a LOT, with curtis, james, trevor, josh, adam, dude that dances well but i don't know his name, and james' dad, ron, who really was the most fun, i think. after that we all went to steve, james, and jamison's house and ate the dessert that adam made. it was SO GOOD, and it looked even better than it tasted. carmen and i gave adam an apron that said kiss the cook. adam gave me a glenn miller t shirt that he had the vocalists and the director sign.
WHAT a great valentine's day. if only they were all that cool.
what i really like is the rose in my vase.

Monday, February 09, 2004

Faithful

It has happened before, and it will happen again. Every once in a while I am overwhelmed by the sudden realization that humans are hopelessly silly. This time it happened while I was stringing tiny beads onto a very fine thread.
My best friend was driving us away from the city, back to our small-town college. The main purpose of the trip had been to get stuff to make us gorgeous for the upcoming Valentine’s Day dance. I had borrowed a beautiful red dress from my sister, and found myself with no matching jewelry and not much money to spare, so I decided to do what I usually did—make my own. So there I was, going seventy-five miles per hour along the road, checking in the flip-down mirror to see whether or not the choker I had just finished looked acceptable draped around my neck, and wondering if I should make a matching bracelet. That’s when it hit me.
Where did necklaces originate, I wonder? Who was the first person to think that wrapping something pretty around one’s neck would be attractive? And where did bracelets come from? It occurred to me that humans wanted to be noticed, so they adorned themselves with jewelry, not where their bodies were most attractive, but wherever it wouldn’t fall off. When you think about that, doesn’t it sound silly? The reason I’m wearing a chocker is because my neck is a skinny appendage that will hold a decoration. Same with bracelets, anklets, rings. That thought led to thinking about piercings. People pierce every thin flap of skin they can find. And what is it, really? A piercing is a piece of metal stuck through any convenient body part to help the wearer look exotic. Doesn’t it seem ridiculous? We’ve made ornaments for every part of us that we possibly could.
Then I started thinking about makeup, clothes, everything. Sure, we paint our faces to cover up what we don’t want people to see and show off the stuff we like. The right pair of jeans will make a girl’s booty look big, her thighs look small, and her legs look long. Just that morning I had spent an incredible amount of my precious college cash on body jewels. It was nothing inappropriate, just a sparkly heart or two to put on my back or face for the Valentine’s dance. I wanted to glitter! It’s what people desire. Makeup, jewelry, tattoos, hairdos, bows, bells, whistles… and I couldn’t help thinking that the closer we get to becoming the ultimate decoration, the further we get from looking human; the further we get from how we are made, how God intended us to be.
Strangely enough, the pastor’s sermon that night followed the same reasoning. He talked a little about physical appearance, but then looked at the bigger picture. It’s all a façade, he told us. Like Disneyland. In the park you see princesses and talking animals and adventure and magical lands. You enter on Main Street, USA, where life was never really so perfect. People don’t see what the speaker had seen, behind the scenes. In the back there is a service entrance, and here are the real things that make up the glitter and sparkle of Disneyland. Here are the dangerous explosives that make the magical fireworks. Here are the dirty broken-down cartoon seats from roller-coaster cars that no longer function. Here is Goofy, holding his head under his arm and smoking a cigarette.
Here is Disneyland, a microcosm of the façade of life that is just a little exaggerated. From the entrance, we are bombarded with what people call perfect. Main Street, USA, the road to happiness! Happiness requires money and intelligence and good looks and success and sex appeal! It requires a well-paying job and a perfect family unit! These things together make up the ideal outfit for the dance, and if you’re missing just one aspect, you are incomplete! This is the false front of life. Like a pretty dress and matching accessories, none of these things are wrong and many are quite admirable. But looking to them to find happiness is a huge mistake. People always want more. Both the secular and Christian societies know that wealth does not bring perfect happiness. If it could be found through sex, of all people the prostitutes would be the most content. Even if people look great, they will always need to be more beautiful. They need a better job! They need more success! I need a necklace to match my new dress! I need more body jewels so I sparkle all over!
The truth is we can’t obtain perfection or happiness on our own. We’re not perfect, and the only way we can accomplish things is for God to work in us.
“But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us.” 2 Cor 4.7
But what about all this work I went to? The jewelry I made, the shoes I borrowed, the cash I spent on the embellishments? The good grades I worked at all my life, just so I could get into a tough college and make more good grades, just so I could get an exhausting but financially rewarding job? All the work I put into my system for locating Mr. Right, so I can find love and have the perfect life? Sorry, but I’ve got my future all planned out! I can’t afford to hand over the reins now. I’m practically dressed for this dance, body glitter and all.
That’s where the faith comes in.
“We having the same spirit of faith, according as it is written, I believed, and therefore I have spoken; we also believe, and therefore speak; Knowing that he which raised up the Lord Jesus shall raise us also up by Jesus, and shall present us with you… For this reason we faint not; but though the outward man perish, the inward man is renewed day by day. For our light affliction (which is but for a moment), worketh in us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory; while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen. For the things that are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal.” 2 Cor 4.13-14, 16-18
Faith means we know God won’t abandon us. True faith is faith in God’s Faithfulness, trusting that he will keep his promises to us. Because of this we can loose the tight hold we have on our expectations and give him control. Because of this we can take our eyes off of the façade and look at what really matters. Because of this we know that no matter how bad things are on the outside, God will always take care of our hearts and our joys. The trials of this world only last for a little while, and then our Abba takes us to be totally perfected and established forever in heaven.
While I listened to the preacher and thought about God’s promises, it seemed like an apostle had written a letter directly to me. God is faithful, Christian, God is faithful. Rejoice! God is faithful. Remember this, and do not faint. Do not be discouraged. Take heart, for God is faithful.
Do not faint, do not be discouraged. Take heart, for God is faithful.
Take heart, my Daughter, for I am faithful.

Sunday, February 01, 2004

i'm a mech-e techie

how did i come to pick such a cool major? i love mechanical engineering. and the weird thing is that not everyone likes it. i go to my metalurgy lab and have a blast learning about the properties of my iron sample (even if it does take four hours), and then i go work on my mechanics of materials homework and kick butt! but adam and scott see what i am doing and shudder. they are so glad they aren't in these classes. that's so weird! i would think that dynamics and statics and materials are so much more interesting than their horrible ee classes. i would die in a circuits lab, or digital, or micro-controlers. but they seem to like it! i don't understand.
it's a good thing that we can put aside our differences and come together on the common ground of differential equations and physics. especially physics! i can do the mechanics, but i have a feeling that electronics and magnitism is going to kick my butt. lucky me, adam's on my team!

fly, fly away

why am i stuck here on this ground? i wish i could fly away. the sky is so, so much taller than i am, and i can't stop thinking about how short i look from way up there. i want to swim in the air and play in the clouds. then i could look down on all the other people and they will be short and i will be the tallest! all the people who can't fly will be like bugs. come on, arms! turn into wings for me! my hands could be wings and my feet could be hands, since i wouldn't need to walk anymore. is it my shoes that are holding me down? why are my feet so heavy?
i had the most beautiful thought the other day. all my little balsa wood airplanes that hang from my ceiling came to life and buzzed around the room with real engines. they let go of the ceiling with their strings and tied themselves onto my chair and lifted me up into the air and took me for a ride.
if happy little bluebirds fly beyond the rainbow, why oh why can't i?