Thanksgiving

It felt so nice to get out of S. Carolina for awhile. It was nice to have a break from school. Although now that I'm back it is really hard to get back into the rhythm of doing anything! I've been doing a lot of thinking about my future, but I have to get through next semester and summer and hopefully I will be done. fingers crossed.

My crazy brother!

Anyways, Thanksgiving was spent at my aunt an uncle's cabin in N. Carolina. It is probably a tradition now. We've been going for more than 5 years now. I love going to the middle of nowhere and not having access to the internet and not having good phone service. It forces you to get connected with your family. But its not hard. I haven't seen most of my family in months so there is always stuff to talk about. I arrived on Wednesday mid afternoon and was greeted by my brother and my uncle and his brother. I sat down and had some lunch and a brewskie. (much needed after the long drive.) I spend most of the afternoon talking to my brother. My dad drove up that night and hit a deer about 2 miles from my aunt and uncle's. Luckily he was ok and the car wasn't damaged. The deer was ok too! On Thursday, much of the day was spent cooking and eating. We had turkey, quail, sweet potato souffle, mashed potatos, broccoli casserole, rolls and of course multiple choices of pie. Much to my surprise I couldn't eat as much as I normally do, I have weight watchers to thank for that!

On Friday, my aunt and mom were not feeling well, but my mom wanted to get out of the house, so we went to Blue Ridge, Georgia. The town was so cute and decked out for Christmas. My dad, brother and I got to sit in santas sleigh, but I forgot my camera so I have no picture. It was cold that day, not even above 40! But it felt nice. We did a little shopping and then headed back.

River in N. Carolina

Saturday, my mom left to go back to Florida, cuz she wasn't feeling well and had to work the next day. My dad, brother and I decided to go for a drive and drive we did. Dad wouldn't listen to me and so he took a wrong turn. But I guess what are adventures for if you always follow the map? Needless to say I conked out on the way back. We went out for Mexican food with everyone. I tried to put my Spanish skills to use, but alas, I suck! We watched many college football games as well. Many good games and more shuffling of BCS standings. This makes me happy!

Looks like snow, but its frost!

Sunday I left. I didn't want to leave just yet! Mainly, because I knew when I got back I'd have to get back down to the nitty gritty final projects. Also, because I love hanging out with my family and being in beautiful mountains. My car needless, to say was completely frosted over. Luckily, my dad had given me a scraper before he left so at least I could scrape it off.

Just an Update

Well the 1st semester of my final year of college is coming to an end. We have the rest of this week and then the week after thanksgiving for classes and then exams and thats it. I have been crazy busy with projects, papers, studying, etc and I can't wait for Christmas break to come! Even Thanksgiving break will be nice, so I can get away for a little bit. I've also been babysitting a lot more than I usually do. Liam is so funny! You ask him a question and he won't answer anything remotely to what you just asked. Like last night, he spilled his spaghetti-o's on the floor and I asked him how that happened. He said, "It hit my head and fell off my spoon and in the garbage." Ha ha ha. I have no idea how that equates to it landing on the floor but its funny no less. Then I took my glasses off to clean them and he wanted to try them on, he looked so cute! I took some pictures and will try to get one on here. He's such a cheese! Anyways, I hope soon before I leave and have no internet access for thanksgiving, I can post a blog on here about the things I'm thankful for!

PEACE!

It's been awhile

It has been awhile since I wrote last. So much for trying to stay on top of this thing. But hey, I guess that means I have been busy with other things. Those other things would be school and work. There is never a dull moment in my life. Currently, having difficulities getting into a needed class for next semester otherwise I won't be graduating. That is never a good thing. But I guess when life hands you lemons you got to make lemonade.

In honor of all the struggles I deal with I know there are always good songs to remind me that things are going to be ok...Life Ain't Always Beautiful by Gary Allen

Life ain't always beautiful
Sometimes it's just plain hard
LIfe can knock you down, it can break your heart

Life ain't always beautiful
you think you're on your way
and it's just a dead end road at the end of the day

But the struggles make you stronger
And the changes make you wise
And happiness has its own way of takin' its sweet time

No life ain't always beautiful
Tears will fall sometimes
Life ain't always beautiful
But its a beautiful ride

And I wish for just one minute
I could see your pretty face
Guess I can dream, but life don't work that way

But the struggles make you stronger
And the changes make you wise
And happiness has its own way of takin its sweet time

No life ain't always beautiful
tears will fall sometimes
Life ain't always beautiful
But its a beautiful ride

Frustrations

The time has come where school is going to get really hectic, thanks to final projects, papers and exams. On top of all of that there is always outside stuff to deal with. I babysit and thats not a frustration necessarily, it is my break away from school for a few hrs. But sometimes when I have so much to do, watching a 3 year old boy isn't always easy. Even though I have to tack on a few more classes for summer and have no idea if I will be graduating in spring, but knowing I will be at the end of summer, freaks me out. I have to begin searching for a job. I have to figure out if I want to do some overseas work, not sure what I'd be doing. I want to travel, before I settle in on a job. However, I may need a job to pay for that travel. Putting together resumes and such is another added frustration...but needs to get done. Another issue is where will I be living after college. I know I don't want to stay here. I thought about going back to the midwest so I could be closer to my best friends, but I don't want to move back just for them. My dream state would be to live in Colorado. So maybe there. I know I have time to think about it, but life is going to begin picking up speed in the next few months and next August will be here before I know it. Another frustration of mine is the place I'm living at recently just changed all of the cable stations. I don't usually watch much tv, so I wouldn't necessarily have a problem with it, except for the fact they took away most of the stations I watched. They know have about 10 home shopping networks and 5 cartoon stations which all play the exact same show. They took away ESPN, which I find rather ridiculous. Not that I spend countless hours watching it, but usually at 10pm, I watch SportsCenter to recap on the days events. In place of ESPN they put the SOAPnet. How ridiculous is that?! Grrrr! A final frustration of mine is my toilet has been broken since last Friday. I went and put in a work order to get it fixed. I knew that no one would come and fix it because it was the weekend and apparently everyone I pay to fix these things weren't around. So I was anticipating for them to come sometime today...no! Granted its only 2:30...but usually they have come by this point. I'm annoyed because my toilet doesnt flush so every time I use the bathroom I have to stick my hand in the tank and pull the plug and then it flushes. I'm sick of it! I'm paying a ridiculous amount of money to live here and maintanence should be here and get it fixed. I feel that I have to fix all of their jobs. I was the one who had to go chase around cockroaches and then had to spray for them, cuz they couldn't do it. I apparently will have to find a way to fix the flusher, because people here have told me there are kits out there, which means I will have to pay money for that, something they should be doing. Grrrrrrrrrr!!!!

It's Been Awhile

I guess its been awhile since my last post. I can't say I've been terribly busy, I just don't get on my computer that much. I'm disappointed in myself that I didn't have a day to day journal this past month as I had hoped. But alas, I will try again next month.

This past weekend my parents came into town. It was nice to have them around. Got me away from campus and school for a bit. Gave me some time to reboot and get ready for the final month of school for the semester. Thats so wierd for me to think. I was getting excited for the fact I had only 191 days of school left, but I have to take summer classes which sucks, but hopefully after that I will be officially done. So I'm going to have to take on another 70 days to that and basically I'm back where I started.

Anyways, when my parents were here, we walked alot along the beach. My father and I attempted to go swimming, but the water was pretty darn cold, but so was the air temprature. My mom didn't even stick her toe in the water. We went to the CCU football game and they lost of course. During the entire game, we had this idiot sitting behind us. Yelling about this that and the other thing. He was yelling about the quarterback saying he sucked and that he didn't deserve to play, but then the quarterback makes a wonderful pass and then he's like wow I'm surprised he threw that good. All 3 of us were about ready to punch the dude's lights out. Mom was a popsicle by the time we got back to my place. On Sunday, we did some more walking and I took them to a couple of tourists shops. Then they had to get back home.

What I'm most looking forward to next is Thanksgiving break!

Pumpkins

One of my favorite things to do during the month of October is to carve pumpkins. Usually I would just draw the typical face and have my dad saw out the face. I don't have much patience to sit and work on a project for 5 continuous hours, but last night I did. I decided to carve out the Minnesota Wild's logo. They are my favorite hockey team. (It's funny my sister has a blog and her post had to do about sticking with a team regardless of how well they do.) The Wild hasn't been doing so well, but I'm not going to switch to another team, just because mine tends to lose.

This is my pumpkin. Not exactly the greatest picture, but I think it turned out rather cool.

As we were laboriously working on our pumpkins, one of my friends asked "how come we carve pumpkins anyways?" I thought that years ago people carved them and lit them to keep evil spirits away, but I wanted to find out more. It all started in Ireland and Scotland during the 17th century. They originally carved turnips but after the potato famine sent thousands of immigrants to America they then began carving pumpkins. There are stories about how the carved pumpkin got the name jack o'lantern. One version of the story that I like was "There was a guy named Stingy Jack and he was having a drink with the devil. When the bill came Jack refused to pay. Somehow Jack convinces the devil to turn into a coin. Jack puts the coin/devil in his pocket. Jack also has a cross in his pocket which makes the devil powerless. Before Jack released the devil he made sure the devil would never claim his soul. Jack managed to save his soul from the devil, but God wouldn't let him into heaven. So Jack was stuck to walk the earth in darkness. Jack cried to the devil and asked how he could find his way through the darkness, the devil laughed and gave him an ember from the eternal fire. However, the ember was too hot so Jack put the ember in a carved turnip." Thus we have the beginning of the jack o'lantern.

Ten Ten Ten

Yes its 10/10/10 today. Pretty cool. We are a third of the way through this month already. Rather hard for me to believe. Not much has been going on around here, besides school and chasing more cockroaches. :p I'm so sick of finding them and trying to kill them. I shouldn't have to be dealing with this. I shouldnt be having to spray roach spray and inhale fumes, isn't that someone else's job? Isnt that why I'm paying this school a ridiculous amount of money, so someone else can take care of the bug population? I should get my money back then, if I'm the one doing someone else's job!

Anyways, enough about that...I spent most of the day at the beach, since I couldn't stand the smell of bug spray fumes in my place. The ocean was near flat today. The weather was absolutely perfect. I walked about 3 miles down the beach and back and got to see 2 jellyfish, 5 crabs, a starfish and lots of unique shells and coral. My parents have also decided to visit me in 2 wks which will be nice. But that does nothing for me...because I want to get away from here for a bit. Only in time it will come. I'm also very happy that someone upset the established order in college football. I love when teams upset number ones. It makes me happy. Next week should get even more interesting and juicy.

From an amazing man and author, Mark Twain "20 years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So...Explore. Dream. Discover."