Safe again!

So this week was pretty crazy.  It was the last couple days of classes and then the annual spring-fling and then reading period.

Then on Wednesday one of the students here at university was gunned down while she worked at our bookstore cafe.  The killer then fled.  Campus was shut down.  People made a mass exodus; leaving for home or anywhere that was not here.  Those who could not leave, or those (like myself) who chose not to leave stayed.  

Then tonight, as I was leaving the movies after seeing Star Trek, we got the news that the killer turned himself in!  It was a great way to end a truly epic movie.  Now things will return to some assemblage of normal, though we will grieve for the loss of our classmate.

I, for one, always felt safe here on campus.  The local police and the campus security really made me feel safe during this troubling time.  

Though this event has shaken our university to the core, I feel that it is important to rise above the situation.  An act of violence always reminds us of how fragile life is in the grand scheme of things and we should take some time to reflect on the things and people that are dear to us.  However, we should also use this as an opportunity to live life to the fullest.  Though one of our own has been taken from the path laid before us, we should walk on and honor her memory by treating each day a little dearer, and appreciate the gifts that we have been given.

I believe that the best way to honor the dead is to keep on living.  There is a time to mourn, but they would not want us to mourn forever.  I feel this quote nicely sums up what I am trying to say:

We cannot banish dangers, but we can banish fears.  We must not demean life by standing in awe of death.  ~David Sarnoff

Rest in Peace Johanna, I never had the pleasure of knowing thee and the world is a dimmer place without your light.

Sunday field trip to the beach

Why sleep when there's coffee?

Why sleep indeed...

This week I've woken up earlier and gotten less sleep than I have during any equivalent week.  Mostly due to procrastinating, but there was work in there also!  I've found that waking up early to finish work is really awesome.  Get some coffee in me and I am there!

We has our last lab field trip for my sedimentology class this week and I took some pretty good pictures.  I was finally able to get a close up of something with the object in focus, and the background not.  I was really proud of myself and now I am looking forward to taking more photographs of things going forward.

The work is starting to pile up, but I've got a plan: do it.  Plain and simple, but first we are going to present our data to the town from the frozen lake project that we have been doing all semester for my geochem class.  I had a run through today with my partner in front of our professor and he was impressed that we were so prepared so far in advance of our presentation.  We still have a few minor tweaks to make, but we are all set to do a great job next week when we present in front of like 100 people.

The Old Friend and I are going out for Mexican tonight and then to a show that her former roommate is in.  I am looking forward to it all, I just hope the rain doesn't get too crazy too fast.  Lots of rain will make it very much not fun to walk down Main Street eating ice cream.

This Sunday my sedimentology class is going to the beach to do look at some coastal processes (pictures to follow!) so I am really looking forward to doing that and learning about beach forms and such.

I'm brain dead from sleep deprivation.  More on how the weekend went in my next post.

Yeah, I'm a great blogger

So over a week without a post.  Go me.

So what happened in the last week:

Saw a weird puppet/dance/senior thesis production with The Old Friend.  It was a little out there, but the costumes were neat.  It was as is someone knew what they wanted to do and had the fabric all written down ahead of time, but then walked into the fabric store and realized, "Hey, look at all this other fabrics that they have in this store!  I want one of everything."  So there was about a football field's worth of fabric for each costume.  Plus it was very interpretive.  Weird all the way around, but definitely interesting.

Had a picnic in a cemetery...which was fun.  It was going to be just The Old Friend, her best friend, The Brewmiester, and I, but instead it was me, The Brewmiester, The Old Friend and a bunch of her friends (her best friend didn't make it).  It was a different experience.  Some of the people were tripping on...something or other.  We (The Brewmiester, The Old Friend and myself) didn't partake in any of that stuff, but it was funny to watch the tripping people interact with each other and the world.  Unfortunately there was not much in terms of food, so The Brewmiester and I bailed early to go get some food.

I GOT INTO THE BA/MA PROGRAM HERE AT UNIVERSITY!!!  Which means that I'm staying for a 5th year to get my masters, which is pretty cool.  It also makes sense for me, because I want to go into industry when I get out of school and having a masters makes it easier: I'll start at a higher position (and salary), I'll be able to move up more easily, and since I won't be getting a PhD (for now at least) I will be doing active work, rather than just research.  But overall YAY!!!

This week was fully of de-stressing: some good, some not so good.  Good de-stressing: drinking tea and getting enough sleep.  Bad de-stressing: get all of my papers due the last week before summer break.  Now it really is all on me to do them and not clusterfuck myself on that last week.  But on the up side I will probably only have 2 finals during finals week.  So that's kinda cool.

My housing for the summer is all but locked in place, unlike some of my other friends, so that is also a relief.

Aside from that, nothing else to report.  I know the garage still needs 2 more cars.  I'll get on that eventually...after I finish my first paper I will add a car.  How about that?

Today was super exciting, or not

Today I had roast beef for lunch and I was a little underwhelmed.  This is probably due to the fact that it was the last one at the cafe and a wrap instead of a sandwich.

In other more interesting news I have confirmed my classes, or at least registered for the classes I want to take.  Hopefully I will get them all!

Easter brunch and shifting papers

So you guys know when you go to a restaurant and you are kinda dressed up, maybe a nice shirt or a clean pair of jeans, and in walks some guy that looks like he could have just finished washing his car?  Yeah, that was me for Easter brunch on Sunday morning.  My mother called me to say she was in the parking lot and that we should go get brunch.  So I did what any self-respecting university student would do: NOT tell her to wait while I showered, but instead throw on clothes over my pj's and go to brunch.  Of course wearing a hunting-camo shirt might have been a little much in terms of tactlessness, but she woke me up!  So there!

And that brings us to today where I accomplished everything I wanted to do, and I'll be damned if I start tomorrow's "To-Do List" a day early!  If you put something off until the next day then why the hell start early?  You have already set time to do it tomorrow and starting today would just screw up tomorrow's schedule.

Speaking of screwing with schedules: professors that push assignments back.  On the one had it is amazing because you now have all this extra time to do the work, but now you also have all this extra time to procrastinate until the night before.  After having this happen to me twice within the past 3 days I am fed up.  As such, and I am saying it here, I will hand in one of my 3 research papers early!  Enough of this weekend before crap.  I am tired of not doing stuff and then letting it build to a fever pitch.  A little work every day will keep my productivity-self happy and I will probably do a better job than waiting until the weekend before.

I hope I don't end up eating that last paragraph.

Hahaha, what a great night

So this week I have been...off, but on the other hand I will leave that for another post!

Now we are going to shit gears *manual-stick-shift-motion*.  Tonight was awesome!  And by awesome I mean the lead tag on this should be: party, and nothing else!

So I was at the university sports grill, picking up dinner with my brother (a dinner I never finished, by the way) and I see JWB with his roommate and he stops me and tells me he is going to a movie and that it is an open invitation.  WELL!  After last night I jumped at the opportunity to do something social with people and my brother.  We go to see Adventureland (review not pending, it was good, go see it) and my brother, being the dumb ass that he is, gets hopped up on caffeine from drinking caffeinated soda and asks to leave.  I heard, "I'll go stand over there."  So then end of the movie rolls around and he is no where to be found.  I'm freaking the fuck out and for good reason: I just lost my brother at 10PM on a Saturday.  Luckily he was just sitting in the lobby playing his DS.  But he didn't have his cell phone with him so all the calls I made went unanswered.  And he blames me for him not having his cell phone.  I, apparently, rushed him out of my apartment too fast.  Whatever.  Everything was ok and we got back and hung out with JWB and all was well.

Then the boy felt that a movie and a concert would be "too much" and that he "wasn't me" and "couldn't handle the late nights yet" because he wasn't in college.  So, he stayed behind and I went out.  No big deal: he had his game and I had the world as my oyster!  

So I went with JWB to a ska concert at one of the frats here at university.  It is actually a "literary society", but anything with Greek letters is a frat...so it is a frat.  But it was GREAT!!!  I let my hair down (usually i have it parted and swept back) and rocked out!  I was dancing like I haven't done in a long time.  It was so much fun.  I am at a loss at how to articulate how great it was to just dance and enjoy the music.

Afterwards, I met up with The Old Friend, which was great since I didn't want to just go right to bed.  We hung out and compared notes on how our nights went and got to see each other and breathe for a bit, which was nice.

And now I am back here, in the apartment, writing this.  And tomorrow (later today) I will write more about what this post was going to be about when I first thought about writing.

Great night!

:-)