Moving to Chicago!

Andrew has been accepted at the University of Illinois at Chicago- we'll be there August 1st!

Start planning your visits now :)

For all you literature geeks...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-NKXNThJ610

When we are all reunited we are doing this dance...

Missing Y'all

Ok, so I've come to realize I really miss all of you. Phone dates every couple months is not cutting it (if caro and andrew weren't here, I think I'd be in serious withdrawl from awesome people). SO WHEN'S OUR NEXT BIG REUNION GOING TO BE??? I have some ideas...

OPTION 1: I think it would be really fun to go to the carolinas to visit katie and lauren. If it's warm, we could go to beaches and go camping and all sorts of things (katie/lauren...ideas?).

OPTION 2: We could have a minnesota reunion. Reminisce about good times in good ol' northfield with nate, maybe spend some time at briana's and leah's, and we could even road trip to my cabin in canada for some crazy fun this summer.

OPTION 3: Let's travel somewhere. I feel like we're finally at an age where we can go on vacation ( I feel so grown up)...let's go somewhere cheap that none of us have been (iceland?) and make no plans for the trip, just go and have fun.






THOUGHTS?

OTHER IDEAS?

Reflections on Life at Huntington...

When I most miss living in Huntington with Amy and Leah: when I have to go to a "Hipster Party" and have NO IDEA how to dress myself because when I put random things on, they don't go together...somehow hipsters manage to look "put-together" while being conspicuously unput-togehter. I just look...silly. Leah, I know you would know EXACTLY what to wear. Sigh...

'Member when you went as BSC for Halloween?

Here's a hilarious guess at what the Baby-Sitters Clubbers are up to these days...

HEY THIS IS WHERE I LIVE

http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/371414/january-18-2011/the-word---disintegration

this is THE WORD on Wake County (it's currently all the rage locally---it's a nice crossroads of T-P'ers, NAACP, and Board of ED)

Yeah, North Carolina! You rock it.

PS I STILL DUNNO HOW TO UPLOAD WEB CLIPS.

This is what we need to survive winter...

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Coma Cozy
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog Video Archive

Haven't laughed this hard in a long time. :]

Need a laugh?

Look at this

Hehehe.

An update...

Hey friends! Hope you all had a wonderful Holiday/New Year. :]
Thought I'd post a list of a few life updates...click the photos to make them larger!

1. My job at Foss went really well this past session. I received a ton of positive comments on my parent evaluations. Including some parents who said I was the best instructor they have ever had and that they wished there were more instructors like me! Not bad for my first year! I think I have mastered the art of teaching nervous 3 to 4 year olds. Pretty proud of that, not gonna lie.

2. Winter here has SUCKED. I am really tired of SNOWMAGEDDON. Fortunately, it hasn't snowed more than a couple inches in the last few weeks. But that first bad 24 inch snowfall really sucked. As in a 7 minute commute taking 2 hours, getting stuck in the snow 5 times, losing all electricity/heat to our house for 3 days, and shoveling unending amounts of snow. haha. Here's a picture:

3. Attended my first Ugly Xmas Sweater party! Did you know ragstock was charging $15-$20 for their used ugly sweaters?? For real, those sweaters didn't cost that much in like 1982 before they were taken out of some dead old lady's closet or buried underneath the 75 cats she hoarded. Luckily I found a kids one that fit me so I only had to pay $7.50

4. I have spent inordinate amounts of money this winter. Black Friday/Cyber Monday really got me. Oops. No buying things for a while.

5. My dad and I have become obsessed with "The Dog Whisperer" on National Geographic channel. Seriously, Cesar Millan deserves a regular national broadcast like Barack Obama where he shares his expertise...he would save thousands of dogs around the country from being euthanized. He's also inspired me into fully believing I can have the perfect dog, and I'm someone who has never really liked dogs. This leads me to my next point...

6. Once I get A. a full time job, B. a car, C. my own place, I am going to get D. a Bichon Frise. I have been doing research for months and I think this breed of dog will suit my lifestyle perfectly. I can't wait! They are cute, even tempered, friendly, low energy, FLUFFY, and they don't shed! Look!:

7. For fun I opened an account with Model Mayhem, a networking type site for models/photographers/make up artists/designers/etc. You have to be approved by like the board of the site or whatever. Anyway, hours into my approval I had a bunch of messages and friend requests from photographers wanting to do photo shoots with me. (including one who offered $40/hr) lol. Cool, but honestly....I think I'm too afraid of serial killers to go do any of this on my own. So we'll see.

8. The Vikings were SO depressing this season. I had to celebrate when The Saints lost to the Seahawks this weekend! hahahaha. They lost to a team with a losing season. Revenge is sweet.

That's all I can remember for now. I miss you all. Like, A LOT A LOT A LOT. Its getting to the point where I feel like just kidnapping you all and bringing you back home to MN. Better watch out.

Group Brainstorm

Look, I don't know about you, but I'm getting frustrated, a flowery word, which borderlines discombobulated, undirected, impotent misanthropy, a term that will hopefully be taken lightly but not to the extent to which your eyes drift to the world above. You know I've been "into" environmental--apocalypse-driven--shtuff, things on the web that I glean off Google News and of course, friends. That doesn't particularly lead to amazing revelations on a happy humanity. Then in the life apart from the computer, I serve calorically-saturated, whip-creamed-nonfat/full-fat syrupy drinks to either very skinny, well-dressed consumers or very large, distinctly dressed consumers or other mall workers funneling their mall wages back into the mall. Couple this with scanning the follow-up blogs on nationally-ranked newspapers, the kind that are open to the reader, that are positively overrun with inappropriate punctuation, poor grammar and misspelled words, totally gagging on their very strong, mostly abysmal, and overall (I'm striving against pretentiousness here) uneducated (unthinking is more correct) remarks which inevitably disintegrate wholly into name-calling and religion invoking, utterly fallacious comments and you have this current entry, which perhaps could be seen as a rant, but I personally see "rants" in themselves as temporal and generally self-serving. Which this easily could be.

As you might notice, life after Arizona (timely! sort of) has been less than thrilling/mood-enhancing and I take this fact as well as the typified spoiled only child does (no offense intended to the only children here. you are not typical. and also i don't think anyone reading this is an only child). This has led to much internal negotiating and reflections based on the words of cynical narrators/writers (the pomo ones, at least). Thus, in this maelstrom which involves an increasingly inward spiral of conversations and a brief stint in delusional, technological schemes via hermitage as well as infrequent intellectual, actually significant external conversations and a respiration system that croaks out self-induced ennui and worldly pessimism, the following vices and "real" inquiries of thought have loosely converged:

(not in order of importance, please note)

vice 1) baseless political divisiveness (which i am a definite, self-proclaimed advocate OF and a thing that i'm very incrementally trying to change as I see it to be an infuriating reason as to why the government/general national population suck/s so much, militarily, politically, economically, racially, religiously, educationally, environmentally, socially, and intellectually. (not technologically---idea-crush here). But on second thought, if it weren't reps v. dems. t-ps as the easy public scapegoat, it'd probably more realistically be something else...)

"r"iot 2) the next step? this is where I almost always fail. despite the american studies degree which rather than leading to many potential solutions and in turn hope has led much more to a burdened conscience, cold aloofness, partially hardened apathy, and totally impotent fantasies. so my question is WHAT NEXT? the speculative fiction writers say the world will spiral into violence (plus four), ruled by corporations (plus 5), crumble into environmental disrepair (also plus 5), and/or burst with technological advances (plus two). the news reports seem to favor this with all their doomsday freakouts. and of course others say nuffin's rong, y'all, keep pollutin/keep shootin'/keep doing ya thaaaang

"r"iot 3) Are we eventually going to become people content in our jobs, taking joy in the small pleasures like baked bread and chicks hatching and ipads with 483957293475901gb and infinitely fast wireless and chatting with our good ol' friends and remembering nostalgically and looking out our windows at something green and maybe a sky austerely blue and think that this is it? And feel detached and chuckle and shake our heads at the sad, overdone, emotionally-touching aka manipulating things the news discloses and think then too, what is it that we can do and at that moment feel okay that the answer is nothing?

vice 4) I'm worried that I'm setting a life path that makes #3 possible.

I think that i'm just severely overwhelmed by the factious American voices that are all essentially clobbering one another and of course astounded by the middle and upper classes who are doing essentially nothing but half-living, mostly ignoring and wholeheartedly blaming (which I also can probably claim a part in this conspiratorial selfishness) and then also sorta pissed at the lower classes for un-pc reasons.

***sorry for the overwrought sentences. dfw does them so much better. and without reaching SAT/GRE words/synonyms.

My Life: The List

So as some of you know, since I've been back in the US things have been a bit of a whirlwind (punctuated by long stretches of complete lethargy). But during those times of chaos, wooee! I'm not going to do the "here's the last 2 months of my life in 10 paragraphs" thing. Instead, I'm opting for the "here's the last 2 months of my life in a list of events" thing.

Returned to US to realize that yes, this hemisphere is as cold as I remember; went through the cultural equivalent of a joint electro-shock therapy/lobotomy procedure; Thanksgiving; taught hilarious Spanish lessons to middle schoolers; answered inappropriate questions from middle schoolers regarding Spanish words for private parts and repeatedly corrected the pronunciation of the color negro; underwent knee surgery to stop my kneecap from falling out of place all the time, TAKE THAT KNEECAP!; became proficient on crutches; watched True Blood (disappointing); watched pirated movies from Bolivia (not disappointing); took painkillers (also not disappointing); watched television; stayed immobile for day-long stretches; started physical therapy with a disappointingly unattractive/married therapist; looked for jobs; received temporary admissions counselor position at Carleton out of the blue; accepted position; drove to MN in the BLIZZARD OF THE CENTURY; blown into ditch by said blizzard; spent NYE sober; moved to Northfield; saw lots of people I thought had been neatly left in the past; started job.

And now you're caught up to today! It's way surreal being back in Nofo but my job's going to be sweet and only lasts until April, 30th. I get to read applications and give info sessions and am solely responsible for accepted students days. AND, today I got my work laptop which is a real beauty with an extra screen so I can run lots of applications at once. It's like the future.

Also, some new things on Division: A pan-asian restaurant! A bubble tea place! A health food restaurant! A women's consignment store! A for-sale sign in the window of Tiny's!

That's it. Hopefully I have hilarious tales to report on my "Return to Carleton" experience soon. Happy New Year y'all!