Thanksgiving Thanksgiving Thanksgiving Thanksgiving Thanksgiving Thanksgiving Thanksgiving Thanksgiving Thanksgiving Thanksgiving Thanksgiving Thanksgiving Thanksgiving Thanksgiving Thanksgiving Thanksgiving

I have FRIENDS and PARENTS and SISTERS and DELICIOUS FOOD and a MASSIVE BED and CATS (which have already lapped my soup when I wasn't looking) and it's almost CHRISTMAS and I get to go to *MY* church tomorrow and the house isn't freezing cold and life is SO AMAZING RIGHT NOW.

Also, my church sent me a college student care package. It included things like dinner rolls, cans of soups, flour, sugar, vegetable oil, soymilk, condensed milk, surprisingly high quality chocolate, and AN ENTIRE FROZEN TURKEY.

I *LOVE* my church!

:D

Life is joy for these few hours. ^^

And also? I just found The Forbidden Game. Recaps shall recommence! :D

 Writing essays at 2:30 in the morning again.  Just like old times, huh?

Dammit, and I even started this one BEFORE the night it was due!  Why did I have to go for such a complicated thesis?

Tomorrow: Hand in essay, choir concert, study/crash at Nathaniels, Chinese history midterm, .... write in?  I'm so behind for Nano.  :(

YAY YAY YAY YAY YAY YAY YAY YAY YAY!

I wish I knew someone else that read and loved this webcomic like I do.  I don't have ANYONE to be excited about it with.

http://requiem.seraph-inn.com/viewcomic.php?page=1 

 A further note:

Today I saw a bunch of people folk dancing to Pinky and the Brain's musical rendition of the parts of the brain in the middle of the courtyard in front of the MU.

It did not make sense at the time, nor does it now.

First day of classes, and I'm already staying up stupidly late for no reason.

Bed times. 

Today has been a truly awesome day.

It was my first day at OSU.  I biked from my apartment to OSU and it was a relatively painless affair.  My French class was a breeze.  I auditioned for choir and got into Bella Voce, the women's choir, which only takes 40-50 students per term and was the one I really, REALLY wanted to get into.  (Self-esteem boost!  Yay!)  I learned that by being in that choir, it is MANDATORY that I go to Hawaii next May.  Like, for serious.  HAWAII.  If I don't go, THEY FAIL ME.  And I get to do Chrismas performances (YAY!).  There was a mini-crisis where I thought I wouldn't be able to be in the choir because it conflicts with my French class, but I went and talked to my French teacher and she agreed to do an override so I can be in an earlier class even though it's full.  YAY AGAIN!  

I went to meet with Nathaniel in the MU and we climbed up a TINY spiral staircase, played pokemon, and were generally silly and had fun and I realized once again that I am without doubt THE luckiest girl in the world.  (Seven months, as of last Saturday.  ♥)

I went to the TAPS office to follow up on a job application and the woman gave me the phone number of the guy I needed to call and told me that they were also hiring in the office.

I biked home.  Okay, that kind of sucked.  Hill is death to bike up.  Pushing bike up it wasn't great, either.

Watched HIMYM.  Called my parents and told them about Bella Voce, and instead of them saying Hawaii would be too expensive and I should drop the class (especially since they have to pay my rent for October), they were really excited for me and really encouraging.

When Nathaniel heard that Tanja was sick he biked to our apartment at 9 at night in the dark and the rain to bring her some cold medicine.  Seriously.  THE best boy in the world.  He then discovered that the keys to his bike lock were in his other pants, had to borrow my bike, biked back to his place, got the keys, then biked back to my place, traded bikes, and went back home.

I can't believe how amazing 2009 has been.  Best year of my life, without question.  

Tomorrow Tanja and I are walking to school because her car is broken and she doesn't have a bike.  It's going to rain.  I'm in such a good mood and I'm so excited for fall that I'm actually psyched about this, too.  Walking two miles in the rain at 9 AM to school!  YEAH!

:D  

I love my life.  I love being me.  YAY LIFE.

 It's 9:30 and I am a sleeeeepy Jackie. Lame, me.

Still unemployed.  My job standards have slipped dangerously low.  I've applied at the Deli in Winco, at the kitchens at school, and goodwill.  I'm planning on picking up an application from Taco Bell tomorrow.  Next step is bars, and the step below that probably involves selling my body.  Reeeaaaally hoping that doesn't start not seeming like a bad idea.  

In EXCITING news, the MU building on campus has a shop that sells Crunchie bars, my favorite English candy bar.  GLEE!  Tanja bought me two today.  :D  SO MUCH HAPPY.

I've gotten most of my textbooks, a painful amount of my mother's money later.  It turns out the most dauntingly titled book, "Les Jeux Sont Faits" or "The Chips Are Down," is an existentialist novel written in 1952 by the leader of the philosophic existentialist movement.  Sounds like a fun read.  In French.  o.o

I absolutely adore living on my own.  SO much fun.  Tanja and I are managing to laugh at how poor we are, and at all the little things that go wrong.  The night before last, the power went out in our bedrooms, and the fuse box was sparking and sizzling, so we had a merry time calling the maintenance guys.  And now our wireless is on the fritz; after the power surge, we weren't able to get our router's wireless to work.  The wireless light stayed determinedly dark.  Today, desperate for internet, I logged into an unsecured wireless network, at which point the wireless light on our router turned on.  Somehow...  Our internet lost it's name and security?  We ought to get that fixed, but... well, I'm useless, Tanja is too, and Nathaniel is off camping with his 60 new boyfriends.

I'm so happy for Nathaniel right now.  He's been denied a lot of male comraderie and personal freedom in his 19 years, and now all of a sudden he's sharing a room with this guy named Seth (who seems pretty cool from what I've overheard while Skyping with Nathaniel; he likes Dr. Horrible and has a Captain Hammer T-shirt) and going on pointless, random late-night bike rides and then having to scatter when the police show up because all the guys are shouting and disturbing the peace.

I think he's having fun.  This year is going to agree with him a lot.

IN OTHER NEWS.  I'm living with possibly the biggest Halloween enthusiast ever, so costume shopping has already commenced.  I was daunted because, as it has already been emphasized, I AM BROKE. BUT!  At Goodwill we found THIS for $6.99:




I'm fulfilling a secret dream and going goth.  I just hope I don't screw it up.  (I think goth can be really really pretty.  o.o)

Aaaaand yes.  Life is chaotic and precarious yet STILL AWESOME and I have hope for the future.

I'm either going to go to bed, go do dishes, or just screw around on the internet some more.  I suspect the last one is the winner here.

Or play solitaire.  Dammit, Katie!

PS: Oh, and I have at long last found an Anime I actually, genuinely like.  Vampire Knight.  This is a breakthrough, as I've spent much time TRYING to like anime because all my friends did.  After I finish this series, I may begin Bleach.

 Young Victoria is an absolutely adorable movie.

Today Katie and I ran in slow motion across streets in Portland, because the countdown in the crosswalk was clearly counting down to an explosion.

I got a new Terry Pratchett book for $5.

We found some truly HORRIBLE romance novels.  One involved were-arachnids.  EW.

I had my first pumpkin drink of the season (YAY)

A pretty awesome day. 

See? Happy post!  :D

In Accordance with the Oven of Apt. A-5

Preheat the oven to 425 Turn the oven to 300 degrees and throw the fish in immediately.

Cook for 20-23 minutes.  Set the timer to turn the fish halfway through. Set the timer for 10 minutes.  Flip the fish six minutes in when smoke starts filling the kitchen.  Fish is done five minutes later when smoke alarm beeps.


And thus went my first home cooked dinner.  Fish didn't turn out too bad, though; a little crispy, but overall delicious once I scraped off the black parts.  Good thing it was breaded.

First, a note: I have been working on this post as I had the time for ages now.  This was some time ago, but...  ah well.  It wasn't last week, is all.  Anyway, moving on.

Last week was an awesome week.  Ridiculously awesome.  I don't have words for how awesome last week was.  I...  This MAY compete with England trip in levels of awesome, but I'm not sure.  I mean, there was international travel, and the weather was better, and there was a Cassi and a  Nathaniel AND a Melody AND a Tanja, but there was NO Katie, which alone is a big hit because Katies are a hard to come by commodity and the addition of a Katie to any situation makes it infinitely more awesome than said situation would have been alone.  

I digress. Let's not make it a competition, and simply announce that this week was at the very least AS AWESOME as England trip, which is saying, I'm sure you know, a freaking LOT.

( CANADA! )

"What additional resources do you need to enable you to perform your job better?"
Quite frankly, a larger file room with better lighting, its own power plugs, and a chair.  That room is incredibly claustrophobic, dimly lit, often requires a heater even in the summer because it gets the same amount of air conditioning as the whole of the parts department, and is generally unpleasant and depressing to spend any length of time in. 

I wonder if I'm overdoing it.

 "Be A Man" in French is possibly the most amazing thing I've heard in my life.

"Attaquons l'exercice!  Pour défaire..... les Huns!"  

Except of course the french don't think vowels are actually all that useful, so "les huns" sounds like "le uuuuh" and makes me giggle.

Also, "A Girl Worth Fighting For" translates to "A Beautiful Girl to Love" and "A Whole New World" has been renamed to "The Blue Dream."  A lot of the lyrics have been changed there, I think, but I'd need to see them to see exactly how much.

Also, I'm starting to enjoy accordion music, which may be an indicator that I enjoy French too much.

Oh, and the company owner has informed Amy and I that the three months of backlog in the filing needs to be gone within three days.  He's brought in three bemused and nearly useless temps in to help us.  Awesome.  Also not going to happen.  But it means I haven't had to work in the Admin office like I was afraid of--I can't BELIEVE how catty the women here can be, and the admin office is where most of them live.  I went in this morning to pick up a few things and was nearly knocked over by the overpowering smell of Girl.  SO.  MUCH.  PERFUME.

The new conditioner I'm using smells exactly like the hairspray I used about this time last year, so I'm constanltly having a mini-time warp in my head.  It's really throwing me for a loop, actually.

Trying to work on the positive thinking thing I used to be so good at.  Today I think it's going well.

ALSO.  I left my copy of The Forbidden Game with Melody so I can't cap it until I get it back.  MELODY.  I NEEDS IT BAAAACK.  

Unless you gave it back to me yesterday and I left it in your car or it fell out of my bag at home, in which case, nm, I'm a loser.  LOVE.

Anyway.  I should probably go back to work or something.  Technically I have a whole hour for lunch, but I like monies.

Today was SUNNY AND PRETTY AND I GOT TO WALK TO TARGET IN A DRESS WITHOUT A JACKET AND I ATE OUTSIDE AND IT'S FEBRUARY AND I LOVED IT.

The rest of my day was kind of lame, but sun made up for it.

Also, I've never been one for blasting music, but today, I dunno why, it feels awesome.  

So, moving on.

( The Forbidden Game, The Hunter: Chapter 4 )

 In other news, I cut my hair and, while I liked my previous style better I don't HATE it, and I got my permit again.  Also my moods have been arbirtrary and I'm deeply annoyed about it.

And so, on that note:

( The Forbidden Game: Chapter 3 )

 So, Katie sent me a book.  It's called THE FORBIDDEN GAME and, according to her is actually *worse* than Twilight.

I am expected to READ this.

And so, for her benefit, and yours, I guess, I shall share my reading process WITH YOU.

...  *cries*

( The Forbidden Game- Chapter 1 )

I have the best freaking friends in the WORLD.  It's like awesome people are somehow inconcievably attracted to me, and now I have a posse of OSSUM that together makes a POSSUM yeahiwentthere and they just HANG AROUND ME ALL THE TIME and make everything a bazillion times more awesome than it would be without them.

Melody and Katie and Tanja and Nathaniel, even if the last two of you don't read this, you guys are the most amazing people in the world, and the rest of the universe is jealous of us.

You guys make my life amazing.  The end.

It's very hard to write convincing scholarship applications when your self esteem has tanked.  The reason I'm applying to this school is, in addition to the fact that going to school with Tanja and Nathaniel would be awesome, essentially because I've failed at everything else I've tried to do since I graduated high school.  (UO? No, PCC.  Hokay, um, Schools in England?  Lolz no.  Right, Whitman!  HAHAHAHAno.)  SAD DAY.  And I know it's just God saying, 'no honey, you need to go THIS way, no, no, THIS way... THIS WAY,' and I'm just chasing after shiny things, but it still doesn't make me feel good when I look at the 'goals achieved' section of the scholarship process.  MY LIFE IS BUILT OF FAIL.  *drama llama*

This frame of mind wasn't helped by the notification that I wasn't called back to be in the show I've been dying to get into for nearly a year, making it the first audition I've ever done where I wasn't called back, but then, my audtion really,  -really- sucked and I'm actually still quite embarrassed about it.  This ruins my one-show-per-year dealio, unless I manage to get into a summer show, and with this careful balance broken, I wonder if I'll ever actually make the time to do a show again.

My depressing mindset also probably wasn't much helped by having the 'omg cancer your mom's dead now' dream I had last night that made me wake up on the verge of tears, even though the cancer's gone, followed by work, where I'm left to my own devices, which has been established is a BAD IDEA because if I'm down I spend all my time dwelling on my flaws and what life would be like if my mom actually WERE dead.  High five, me.

I actually just high-fived myself there.  Oh, ME.

And while I'm here, I would like to take this moment to give massive public hugs both to kasdie  and hobbit_eyes , because they are AWESOME PEOPLE who will do AWESOME THINGS and I'm incredibly lucky to have them in my life.  **HUGS**

And kasdie , if I get this emo when I'm stressed after a -reasonable- amount of sleep, I really can't fathom what you're like at four in the morning when you're about three times as stressed as I am, doing homework and posting pictures of you and your boy on facebook.  >.<   I love you, don't forget to have a life?  **HUGS**



UPDATE:
Purchased: 1 cup pineapple and 1 bottle blackberry currant SOBE.
Mindset: Some improvement.

UPDATE #2:
Viewed: Chris Dane Owen's video Shine On Me (http://chrisdaneowens.com/video/shine_flash.html)
Mindset: Considerably improved.  =D

I had an unfortunate encounter with a staple and typing is really weird with a bulky fingertip bandage on your middle finger.

I put too much hot sauce in my tomato soup.  (I didn't even know people put hot sauce IN tomato soup before today!) :O  I am tired and my tongue is burny.  But not in a bad way.

I've barely spent the night at my own house at all this week.  I'm half-moved in with Melody and Nathaniel in the midst of studying and OSU applications.  Que ridiculo!

It snowed on Tuesday and my bus got stuck on a hill on the way to school and we nearly took out a BMW and ended up nearly flipping into a ditch and in the end wound up blocking much of the road.  I took the company of a few random people and we walked back to Tigard in the snow.  It's a good thing they knew where they were going, because I was hopelessly lost.  Also, I was wearing my slip-on flats, which are not good snow shoes.  My feet were in agony by the time I got home (3 hours after I had left) and the only reason I knew I wasn't in danger of frostbite was because every now and then a fresh chunk of snow would slip in under my foot and I learned my feet could be EVEN COLDER.  Even so, the tips of my toes were blue when I finally got home.  It was not very fun.

But hanging out with Melody and Nathaniel and Tanja IS fun, and I've been doing that a lot.  Even if all we do is stay up until 5:30 in the morning homework.  Or pretend we're going to do homework and watch Top Gear instead.  

I'm excited for monday.

Life is still weird.

I want a sleep day.  But not as badly as Melody does.

 EVERYONE IN THE WORLD NEEDS TO WATCH THIS.

http://chrisdaneowens.com/video/shine_flash.html


IT WILL MAKE YOUR LIFE MUCH, MUCH BETTER






OR MUCH MUCH WORSE



(AND WHEN YOU'RE DONE WATCHING THAT, YOU CAN READ THIS: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/music_blog/2008/12/an-internet-sta.html)

Life is so, so, so weird.  My head is filled with buzzy, scribbly thoughts that aren't doing a lot for my need to get homework done.  Rational thought doesn't seem to be working.  Not that I was ever very good at it to begin with.

Also weird: My spam box.

"Any women will jump into the abyss for a man that wears a Submariner SS watch. "

Who told the internet that I have a watch fetish?!

Audition tomorrow.  Quietly panicking.  Less panicky than I was before, though, and crazy high note has been removed from the picture, which will make me NOT SUCK.  (as much?)

I dropped Sociology and feel lazy for doing it, even though I know that it was a sensible idea and that keeping it would have caused a lot of undue work and stress.

Ahahahaha, life.  You so crazy.

MY MOM IS CANCER FREE!  I screamed about it on Facebook last week, but, just in case someone missed the memo.  ^^  A few more months and all this cancer crap will be over with.

EDIT:  Upon re-reading this post, it sounds depressing and emo.  I AM NOT DEPRESSED AND EMO.  Life is pretty awesome, actually.  Just... confusing and busy.