Six hours!!

I met with my advisor at USF at yesterday, and I need six hours (two classes) to graduate!!  Technically, I could easily graduate in the summer, but I have no money saved or any real experience to help me get a job so I'm waiting and graduating in the fall.  I'll be graduating a year and a half behind my original expected date, but I've done a lot in the past five years so I don't care.  My advisor said that I can go ahead and register for graduation if I want to, and I just might do it over the summer so that I'll finally feel like a Senior!!  I have to take American Lit 1912-1945 and Professional Writing in the fall.  I'll graduate December 12.  I'm almost there!

These aren't bugs, they're monsters!

So I'm sitting on a bench outside of the lecture hall where my class will be in a few moments, and I was just minding my own business, reading the BBC, when an enormous palmetto bug crawled out of the trash can by the door and headed my way.  I'm not a bug person, and no one is a palmetto bug person.  These things are like cockroaches on steroids, to be kind.  They're hideous and scary, and they make a screeching noise when you kill them with bug spray.  I don't have any bug spray though, and the damn thing has crawled under a milk crate that is by my bench.  It's one of those out of site but not out of mind kind of things.  Honestly, Florida and my sanity would be so much better without these creatures.  I had one in my apartment when I first moved in, and I jumped about a mile high when it crawled on me.  Florida has bugs the size of small pets.  Okay well class is beginning in a minute so I'm off now.  Here's a picture for anyone who wonders.

What the??

Okay, so I just got to campus for my 9:30 lit and the occult class.  I always get to campus about thirty minutes early, and I like it.  I have enough time to not be in a hurry running across campus from the parking garage and then I also have plenty of time to read the paper and wake up before discussing things like Yeats.  However, I just noticed in the parking garage that the guy in the car next to me was sleeping.  This isn't the first time that I've seen people sleeping in cars.  It seems to be some kind of ritual here.  I guess it's people like me who get here early, but honestly, why come to campus so early if you're just going to sleep in your car?  Why not stay in your nice, warm, horizontal bed and do that?  I suppose they all have their own morning routine as well.  College is a strange place, that's all.  Now to get on with it.

Break

Here are some pictures from the first half of my last, and much needed, spring break.  I drove up to Knoxville on Saturday to visit my sister and my brother-in-law, and I stayed until Wednesday.  We had dinner with my brother-in-law's family one night.  We babysat their six month old nephew, Henry, and I played with two really big and happy dogs.  Finally, we topped it all off by hiking to Alum Bluff Caves in the Smokey Mountains, which aren't actually caves at all.  We finished off St. Patrick's day with a fire on the deck, steaks, a lot of Guinness, and way too many s'mores.  It was the perfect day and exactly what the three of us needed.  I left Wednesday morning and drove to my parents' house in Franklin.  I had a good time, and I got to see an old friend, but nothing much happened.  I drove back to Tampa on Saturday, and I spent two hours sitting in traffic on the south side of Atlanta.  The construction is going to be around for a while so avoid Atlanta if you're heading this way anytime soon!  Overall, the week was great, and I have to admit, I'm more than ready to graduate, but I'm really going to miss college spring breaks.  If you still have a few left, then enjoy them for me.  Okay, here are the pictures, enjoy!

Above: Clay and Lauren at Alum Bluffs

Above: Lauren and me at Alum Bluffs

Above: Another one of Lauren and me at Alum Bluffs with the Smokey Mountains in the background.

Above: "Bigfoot Henry"  

Above: Me and Bigfoot

Above: Lauren and me enjoying some much deserved s'mores with Abby (red collar by me) and Lucy (blue collar by Lauren).  And yes, Lauren built that fire - it lasted at least three hours, maybe longer. ;)

As mentioned above, I had a pretty good week.  I'm not ready for break to be over but that's usually how it goes.  I was sad to spend all day in the car driving back down to Tampa with dreams of sunshine and warm weather only to be greeted by a cold, rainy day, but that's life.  I have a 16 page case study due next Monday in my education class, a 3 page paper due in my legal writing class on Thursday, another one due in lit and the occult on the second, and a 20 page one for legal writing due near finals.  Break is definitely over, and I definitely have my work cut out for me!  One more semester...one more semester.  It's my bedtime now.  I hope that you enjoyed the pictures, I enjoyed taking them.  To my parents, thanks for putting up with me, and to Lauren and Clay, I loved painting the town red!  Here's to Tuesday.

One more day

If I can just survive today and make it to class tomorrow morning to hand in all of my work, then I will finally be on spring break!!  I have been working my ass off since the middle of last week trying to get ready for all the madness that is the week before break when college professors take it upon themselves to assign an ungodly amount of work and at least one paper that is due after the break.  So far, I've had a quiz in education Monday night, worked on a group presentation that is due in a few hours for my communications class, written one paper about Dracula, the Victorians, and empiricism for lit and the occult, and I was up until midnight thirty last night analyzing one of several court cases for a 1,500 word legal writing paper that is due tomorrow along with the Dracula paper.  

I'm rounding the last turn and racing, almost uncontrollably, toward the finish line.  I can see it, and although I'm working crazy fast and super hard, I feel like it's never going to get here!  Tonight, I'm living for tonight, and the moment when I finish proofreading the legal writing paper that hasn't been written yet, click "print," and breathe for the first time in weeks.  Although it seems like a million court cases away, I know that the end is near, and I rejoice in that knowledge.  Come tomorrow, all that will be left for me to do is drive to campus, hand in my Dracula paper and watch the Prestige, then I'm off to legal writing where I'll finally hand in my paper, discuss Jonathan Swift's, A Modest Proposal (which is in fact not such a modest proposal, but well written regardless), and leave campus, not to return for a week.  To think, tomorrow this will all be just another memory from my college years, "the best years of your life," as so many people have ignorantly told me - ha, right!

All of the madness ends tomorrow for my friend Julie as well.  She's been just as busy as me, and she had a weekend trip to Texas last week turn into a week long (mis)adventure.  She didn't have any of her school stuff with her, and she's spent this week trying desperately to catch up.  I saw her yesterday to work on the group project and have lunch, and I am happy to report that she is surviving, too.  We've decided that Thursday night, when it's all said and done, she is coming over to our place for movie night.  So far it's to be a night of classics such as: Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Citizen Kane, Casablanca, and maybe, Vertigo.  I can't wait!

Thursday afternoon or Friday I have to take my car to get an oil change and a tire patched.  Yeah, you read that right, I have a piece of metal in the back, right tire.  It was just what I needed Monday afternoon.  Luckily, the tire hasn't gone flat, yet, but I have been seriously paranoid about the whole thing.  With my luck it will go flat at eight a.m. Thursday morning, and all of my work will be late, or it will go flat in the parking garage while I'm in class.  I'm just waiting, but Maryanne is holding up well so far.  I'm going to Tn to visit family and friends over break, and she is getting some major upgrades when I get home.  She's getting four new tires (I've had the ones on her now since I got her three years ago), an alignment, the transmission fluid changed, and washed and waxed.  My car should look like a car again by the time I get back.  Right now she looks like the beach with sand from the causeway covering the doors.

For break I'm going to Knoxville for the weekend and, "painting the town read," with my sister.  It's going to be great!  I also get to see my brother-in-law and their two big dogs.  I cannot wait.  From there I'm driving over to Franklin to see my parents and a couple of friends for a few days.  I'll probably do more work at my parents' house, yuck!  Maybe though I'll drive out to the lake to see some sailboats.  That would be nice.  Okay, well my legal writing paper is demanding attention so I must be going.  Try to have a good day, and if you're a college student in the midst of midterms, then just hang on for a couple of more days.

Complicated

There are no other words to describe my life right now.  Everything seemed to be going pretty well a couple of weeks ago.  I was becoming friends with Julie, my German friend Michaela had just moved into my apartment complex, and sailing/beach season was rapidly approaching.  And then I got a phone call and everything changed.  A little more than a week ago my sister called and told me that she has bone cancer.  She had just found out about it herself, so of course, no details were known.  After being knocked face first into the ground by that news, I spent the rest of last week trying to pick myself up, dust myself off, and as Chris likes to say, "Get back on the horse."  Right - that could have gone better.  I did okay, I suppose.  I had three pretty rough days, three pretty damn good days, all things considered, and a lot of going half mad days.  Overall though I've done pretty well, and since I'm here to write this blog, I seem to have survived.  We're all trying our best to be in good spirits, and from what little we do know, the situation is looking as good as possible!  We should get more details this week, and I really just want the waiting part to be over with, but that will eventually happen.  Until then, I'm just trying to survive.

All of this happened in the middle of the semester, which means midterms.  Yeah, now does that not suck or what?  I have an education midterm tonight, but I'm not too worried about it.  I have straight A's in all of my courses so far so I can afford a couple of weird days - although I'd prefer that I don't have any of those.  It just sucks because this has been a really tough semester with legal writing (the class from hell), lit and the occult, and two senior level exit courses.  I've managed though to work my ass off, stay ahead in all of my classes, and just when we get to the impossible part of the semester, it got worse.  Mostly I just have all of these stupid 6-20 page papers to write by the end of spring break.  Break is in a couple of weeks, and I cannot wait!  Okay so moving on.

Chris and I took Julie out to Moon Under Water, a pub type place in St. Pete, last weekend and we had an awesome time.  I have pictures, which I'll post later, and then you can laugh at us all.  Julie and I have since done other things like go see the Body Worlds exhibit at the MOSI last week, and Chris and I took her to International Plaza one night last week to show her an "American mall."  We had fun, and I hope that she enjoyed it.  Julie spent this weekend in San Antonio visiting some family that she has here, and they apparently surprised her with a new camera and clothes!  She was supposed to get back last night, but thanks to all of the winter weather, she wasn't able to get a flight back to Tampa.  She might have to stay in Texas until Wednesday, but she isn't sure yet.  At least she's having a really good time.  I have missed hanging out with her though.

Everything is beginning to calm down around here and get back to "normal" although that term now has a slightly different meaning, and the semester is keeping me too busy to worry about anything else too much.  Chris and I went to Clearwater Beach Saturday and because the wind was 12 knots, we got absolutely blasted and buried by the sand.  I had to wash my hair twice to get all the sand out of it, and it's now Monday and I still have sand in my ears.  I determined, while being buried alive, eating sand, and trying to dig my flip flops out of it, that I really don't like the beach...at all.  I love Florida, and I absolutely worship the ocean, but the beach with all of its sand, obnoxious people (mostly parents and college students on break), and crabs, I've decided is for someone else.  As for me, I'll take that sailboat on the horizon that makes the sunset perfect for the sand covered beach bums back on shore.  That's one of my favorite places in the world - on a quiet sailboat with salt air, good company, and the beach as a small blur on the horizon.  When I was little I used to sit on the beach and watch the sailboats, wondering what I must look like to them.  Fifteen years later when I learned how to sail, the first thing that I did after we got the sails up and were underway was turn around and look back at the shore.  I had finally made it out there, and I pitied all of the children I saw on the beach and I wondered if they wanted to know what is was like to be me.  If they did wonder what it was like, then I hope that they find out someday.

Okay, well this post is already way too long.  Sorry about that, but I had a lot to say.  My life has been turned upside down for the past couple of weeks, but it's beginning to get back to where it used to be.  Just a thought for anyone who may know someone in this God forsaken position - don't offer advice unless it is asked for, just be there.  The most comforting thing in a time like this, at least for me, is to just not be alone.  You don't have to solve their problems, just let them know that you're as helpless as they are.  Believe it or not, that sharing of powerlessness is perhaps the best thing you can do.  I know that it sucks, but it is greatly appreciated.  Thanks to my two best friends, Rachel and Sara, for all of their helplessness and for their laughter.  Alright, I have to go study for that damn midterm so I better be off now.  Take care and try to have a good day.  People always say that no matter how bad it is, it can be made worse.  Well I prefer to think of it as this, no matter how bad it is, it has the potential to get better.  So if you're having a bad day, remember that you can still try to make it a good one.  It is far better to risk being happy than it is to know, with certainty, that you are miserable.  Again, I hope you have a good day.  I did.