New Year's Eve 2009

I start off every year trying to make resolutions and to stick with them and every year I fail. So I think I'm with Jessica on the idea of making goals instead of resolutions and giving myself a shorter time period to accomplish said goals. I think that I'll partially steal Jessica's idea and try these out for a quarter and see how that goes. If I am successful, then I might decide to extend their applicability into the next quarter or whatever.

Goals:
* Excercise more often (because of potential wedding(s) this summer)
* Argue less (mostly with Jake but in general, as well)
* Drink less soda (hoping to average about 2 cans/1 bottle a day)
* Keep up with my reading for my classes
* Put my resume together/make an appointment with the Career Services Coordinator

I think that 5 goals is enough for me to keep up with during my 1st quarter of the New Year. Some of these things really need my attention, and so I hope that I can put forth the effort needed to accomplish my goals.

Wishing everyone a safe and magical New Year and hoping that it brings you happiness!

Book list 2008

I decided to revise my book list, yet again, but this time I put down all of the books that have been on my lists since the beginning and before they were crossed off after I finished reading them. I thought that maybe this would make me feel more accomplished, and it worked.

After finishing 4 of the books on my list over this break, I thought that my list could stand to be updated. I added another book, which I'm sure I can finish over the next 2 days (The Tales of Beedle the Bard) because it's not very long at all. So, don't be surprised if I make changes to this a little later on. :) (Original post at 8:55 AM - Revised post at 12:00 PM; That didn't take too long ;p)

And I added another book. I really want to read The Tale of Despereaux because I read an excerpt from the first couple of pages of the book and it seems really interesting. Plus, it caught my interest and so I want to see where the story goes from the first couple of pages.

Harry Potter (books 1-7) (Finished)
The Tales of Beedle the Bard (Finished)
A Night in the Lonesome October (Finished)
The Dark Tower series
The Belgariad Volumes 1 & 2 (Finished)
The Mallorean Volumes 1 & 2 (Finished)
Stardust (Finished)
The Tale of Despereaux
The Chronicles of Narnia
The Sword of Truth series
Eldest
Brisingr
The Dune series (old and new)
The Xanth series
The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Dark Elf Trilogy: Homeland/Exile/Sojoum
Daughter of the Blood series
Guilty Pleasures (Finished)
The Laughing Corpse (Finished)
Circus of the Damned (Finished)
The Lunatic Cafe (Finished)
Bloody Bones (Finished)
The Killing Dance (Finished)
Burnt Offerings
Blue Moon
Obsidian Butterfly
Narcissus in Chains
Cerulean Sins
Incubus Dreams
Micah
Danse Macabre
The Harlequin
Blood Noir
Skin Trade (coming in 2009)
The Talisman
The Vampire Chronicles (- Interview With a Vampire)
Starship Troopers
Ender's Game (Finished)
Ender's Shadow
A Song of Ice and Fire series
Angels & Demons
The Da Vinci Code (with pictures)
The Historian
The Wheel of Time series (Book 4 - ?)
Undead and Unwed (Finished)
Undead and Unemployed (Finished)
Undead and Unappreciated
Undead and Unreturnable
Undead and Unpopular
Undead and Uneasy + any new releases that come after this
The Catholic Girl's Guide to Sex

Happy Holidays!

I just wanted to wish everyone a fun and Happy Holiday season for 2008/2009. I know I'm a little late for Christmas, but I still hope everyone had a fantastic Christmas holiday! I know I did! Since my gift exchanges aren't finished, I still feel like it's Christmas.

This was probably the BEST Christmas that I've had in my entire life. Not because I got a ton of stuff that I wanted (even though I did), but because everyone was able to get together without conflict and just have a good time. I also enjoyed the fact that everyone got so excited when they opened my gifts to them. It makes me feel good when I know that they won't be exchanging their gifts on 'Box Day.'

My big gift this year was an iPod touch, which is amazing but I don't have the money just yet to buy music for it. If I could find any of my CDs, I could just load them onto iTunes, but no such luck there. So, all I can really use it for right now is checking the weather, looking up videos on Youtube, leaving notes for myself, adding things in my calendar or contacts list (which I really should use to keep track of everyone and their addresses!), and a few other assorted features. Even though I don't have music on it yet, it's still pretty freaking awesome!

I got tons of great stuff at Jake's family Christmas yesterday. A few articles of clothing, some smell-goods, a movie, a cookbook!, a talking Grinch plush, boots!, ruby earrings!, a beautiful heart necklace!, a couple of non-winning scratch-offs, and some candies for my stocking.

All-in-all, it was an awesome Christmas and I still have at least one more exchange left, so it'll keep being awesome for at least another day!

Autumn 2008 - DONE!

I finished Autumn quarter '08 with 2 As and a B-. Not as great as I was hoping for, but it's done and over with, so I can live with it. Anthro turned out to be harder than expected, so the B- that I received in there is fine by me. I'm just glad that I didn't bomb the final and get a C or worse! That really would have screwed up my GPA!

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I'm almost done Christmas shopping! After buying presents for my brothers and maybe Mom, it'll be finished, with the exception of a few after-Christmas purchases that need to be made. I did end up breaking one of my presents (a painted wine glass), so one person won't be getting one, but that's okay. It probably works out better this way, anyways. I still feel bad, but I can deal.

I'm still pretty excited about Christmas this year. We'll be giving our gifts to the kids that stay with us sometime early next week, and I can't wait to see their faces! I still have so much to get done before everything is ready (most of that involves wrapping the presents), but I know that it's getting close and that I work well under pressure, so it'll get done.

Happy Holidays Everyone!

Finals

As far as finals go, I have a pretty easy quarter this quarter. I have a 2-3 page final reflective analysis paper due for my Adolescent lit. class, basically an 8-page paper for my take-home final in English, and a final for my Anthropology class. I sucked hardcore on the last homework assignment for my Anthro class, so I need to get an A on the final in order to get a decent B grade, or maybe an A, if he uses a curve.

I've got about 1 1/2 pages done for the reflective analysis paper done and I've done a little thinking on what I want to write about for the English paper, but I haven't even begun to study for the Anthro, which I'll probably end up regretting after the final. That said, I'm pretty proud of myself for having gotten this much done already. :)

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Brittany and I went to Walmart today because I needed to pick up a few things and I decided to get some garland to put up outside and I got some of the cottony 'snow' stuff with the sparkles on it and some pre-lit (fake) pine garland for the inside of the house. I figured that would be enough for me to make the house look Christmas-y without overdoing it just yet. Plus, I didn't want to spend too much on decorations when we haven't even pulled the stuff we already have out of the boxes in the basement to take inventory.

So, with Britt's help, we strung the garland up outside and I put the 'snow' up on the gas fireplace mantle and the pine garland up on the mantle in the dining room. I spent about 45 minutes collectively cleaning off said mantles before putting the decorations on them, and had to literally scrape one of our candles off of the wall because, with the help of the Ben Franklin stove in the dining room, it had melted to the wall. ;p

I'm very pleased with how the mantles turned out, even though I think that we need to get some little village pieces to set up on the 'snow' and maybe a nice picture to hang up on the wall above the dining room mantle because, since it's cleaned off now, the wall looks so bare without all of the junk up there! Lol!

I'm in a really Christmas-y mood today for some reason. The shopping that I did earlier and the putting up of the decorations might have contributed to it, but I'm just really pumped up about Christmas this year. I can't wait until we put our tree up!

Close to halfway there

I worked on my paper while I was at work today because I was alone for a good part of it and I can't really do any filing or make copies or stuff like that when I'm covering the front desk alone, so I sat there and worked on my paper. I about about 2 1/3 pages finished, which is close to 1/2 of the paper (it's got to be at least 5 pages). I'm not feeling very confident about the grade that I'll receive on this paper, but I'll just be glad to have it finished!

I spent the last 20-30 minutes changing the layout of my Myspace page and making a playlist of Christmas songs to put on my page. I've gotten a decent collection of my favorites together, but I know that there are more out there, but I couldn't think of any more when I was searching for the songs.

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In other news. I have a pre-bachelorette party to attend this Saturday in Columbus. I'm not really sure what to expect from this party...mostly because I never even knew you could have a pre-bachelorette party in the first place. Lol!

So, I've got that coming up soon, and it should be an interesting new experience for me...I guess. Right now, I'm just trying to get thru this week, and hopefully I'll make it to the weekend without having a nervous breakdown. Tho, once Wednesday passes and I get my paper turned in, it won't be that bad, anyways. So, if I make it thru Wednesday, I'll be good. :)