HOME!

I am home for Thanksgiving break! Since my parents live 10 minutes from campus, it's not hard to get here. I come home about every Sunday to hang out with the fam before/after I go to work at Hy-Vee. But now I get to actually come home. Sleep in my own bed for a while, sit on the big, warm couch, watch the big, pretty TV... ah... the joys of home.

It's strangely weird and exciting at the same time to be home. I get to shower without wearing flip flops. I can sleep in basically complete darkness and sleep without worrying about anyone else hearing my morning alarm. But now I have to pack a TON of stuff to... come home? I am so firmly rooted in my room at Coe that it's almost a pain to have to come home. So much clothes, toiletries, power cords... ugh. It's just way to complicated (but welcomed anyway)!

Thanksgiving is right around the corner and I am really excited to be getting some good, quality food in me. I'll be gorging myself on my great-grandma's fresh bread, lots of turkey, potatoes and gravy, non-dried-out baby carrots.... yum.

And seeing high school friends will be the highlight of my week (shortly followed by my own bed... because that's always awesome). I've already met with two friends who I am meeting up with again this week. It's going to involve a lot of food, a lot of talking, a lot of being awesome and happy and stuff.

Then again, I fear that the end of the week will come to soon and I'll be piling back into my dorm again... ::sigh:: Let's cross our fingers that it doesn't play out that way. :)

Fun week!

This week has been so busy, but in the best way possible. :) I have had a ton of reading to do, but nothing boring, so that's a plus. I've started back up running this week after taking a week off, and the week off helped a ton. I'm running faster on day-to-day runs than I was a month ago.

On Wednesday, Hana Pestle came to Coe. She was amazing. She played a bunch of original songs that you can find on her Myspace as well as some really great covers. She played "Creep" by Radiohead and did a really awesome cover of "Zombie" by the Cranberries, which she finished by mixing it in with "Paparazzi." It was a really fun night, followed by a ton of writing for National Novel Writing Month (nearly at 50k now!)

Then last night, I went to the Coe theater production of "She Would if She Could." It was three hours long -- pretty much on the dot -- but it was really, really entertaining. I wasn't always quite clear on what was going on (or, rather, who was lusting after who). There was a ton of innuendo and between each scene there was a funny sexual song. It definitely wasn't for kids, but watching old men in the audience being serenaded by one of the actresses in the cast was hilarious for everyone in the theater. There are going to be more showings this weekend and next, so I would definitely recommend going; it was a blast.

WHAT IS GOING ON?!??!!

IT IS NOVEMBER 7th AND IT IS 58 DEGREES OUT AND COUNTING!!! I just went for my first run in a week (yay for healing my legs!) and it was HOT. I had to take off my shirt, which I haven't done since the beginning of September! This is crazy! It is supposed to be up to 72 degrees today, which is just so weird!

These prospies wandering campus have it so nice! It's a gorgeous day for touring campus. Whenever I came to Coe for a campus tour, it was cold and windy and cloudy and gross. :P

I definitely plan on soaking up some sun today... probably going to be the last chance to do so for MONTHS AND MONTHS so I better live it up while I can! NaNoWriMo, outdoors style? I think so!

NOVEMBER!!! :D

Can I just throw it out there that I am LOVING November so far?

My most stressful week of my life (last week) is over. I got my laptop back last Friday, right in time for National Novel Writing Month. I finally get to start training for my marathon (Green Bay Marathon, May 16). It is that comfortable cold during the afternoon that makes it awesome for running/walking around/being outside. There is a lull before the hectic holiday season. It's just a great time to be alive and living at Coe College. :)

But I really want to stress that... IT IS NATIONAL NOVEL WRITING MONTH!

For those of you who aren't aware of that that is, NaNoWriMo is a writing challenge in which you write 50,000 words over the course of the 30 days of November. This is the 11th year that it has been going on, and the fourth year that I've attempted the challenge. I finished my sophomore and junoir years of high school, but fell short my senior year because AP Lit got th best of me. But I am well on my way to winning it again this year! Five days and 18000 words in... I'm way ahead of schedule (by about 9000 words!). It's been a breezy.

We also just signed up for classes. I was going to petition for a fifth class, but that class is full anyway, so I think I might just chill with the four I have (which were all ones I wanted):

-Western Civ SINCE 1500

-US History since 1865

-Topic: Novels (::excited!!::)

-Topic: Dante (::more excited!!:)

Next term is going to rock.

But maybe not as hard as the month of November. :P

St Louis trip!

The fun of college is that not everyone you know lives within 10 miles of the school you go to. People come from everywhere and have all kinds of different stories they want to tell you about where they come from. One of my best friends that I've met since coming to Coe is from just outside St Louis. Coming from Cedar Rapids, it is pretty easy to show everyone my neighborhood, and she was totally jealous. So we took a roadtrip down to St Louis this weekend so I could be shown around her town.

We drove down on Friday (it rained the entire way) which was exciting. We went out to dinner and got "St Louis style" pizza (which basically means it is REALLY REALLY flat and the sauce burns your tongue) and saw "Where the Wild Things Are".

Saturday was a blast, though. We went to a marching band competition for her high school...

and took the MetroLink to Forest Park...

and went to the zoo and saw lots of animals...

as well as went to "The Loop" and did a TON of walking around basically all day. When we finally go to bed around 2 in the morning, we were totally exhausted.

Sunday was pretty chill. We went out to lunch, did a lot of packing and last-minute running around before we left around 3:30 and drove all the way back to Cedar Rapids... again in the rain. (But at least Saturday had gorgeous weather!)

The weekend involved a lot of Lady Gaga, poor gas mileage and lots of walking around, but it was a really lovely break from the stress of school. Now I'm totally overloaded with the weekly homework and the homework I didn't do this weekend (which all seems worse since my computer is in for repairs until God knows when and I am using my dad' big beastly laptop instead... ::sad::). It was totally worth it, though. :)

Fall Break! Yay!

So today is the final day of Fall Break. :( So soon!

Both of my roommates (I only have 2 now ::sniff, sniff::) went home for the long weekend, so I've had the whole room (and sometimes it seems, the entire floor) to myself. I've stayed up late watching tear-jerker movies and done almost all my homework for the week. It's been eerily quiet in the dorm. Hardly anyone is moving around! It's like a ghost town!

I went to the library yesterday and saw about 4 other people. Normally the library is full of people checking Facebook, texting instead of reading, trying to chat quietly with their friends... I went to lunch yesterday and they hardly had any food options and there weren't even tables because they were trying to clean the caf! I saw about 10 other people there. And I saw 2 people on my floor. All in all, a grand total of about 16 people all day. It's been very lonely. :P

But an excellent time for homework and organization and downloading free software trials (::cough:: iWork 09... ::cough::) and, in general, being a bum. It's been a really long weekend and I'm running out of things to do, so I'm glad my roomies and all my friends will be coming back today! The campus will actually be lively again!

In the meantime... a couple of pictures!

Our door after my roomie Bekah got into ASA. :)

My two desk monsters. One from Target, one made for my FYS.

All I can say is.....

BRRRRR!

Where did summer/warm fall go?!

I am sitting here in my dorm room with the air turned to 80 degrees, so that it won't turn on and turn me into an icicle every 5 minutes, listening to the wind whistle and howl outside my window. (This sound fills me with dread every day around cross country time...)

It is kind of sad that we've already gotten to the cold, windy part of fall. The warm, sunny autumn days that are reminiscent of summer are the best. It still lends a fun, whimsical feeling to the school year. But once it gets cold, I can't go out and get distracted in the sunshine... so instead I have to buckle down and get things done. Yuck!

I will tell you though, that cross country in this weather is all sorts of fun! It is colder, so I run faster, and feel awesomer. :P And it's like a game to try not to get blown off course by the wind when it's gusting at 40 mph. And sometimes, you can even compare who has the reddest legs at the end of practice. I just hope it stays this temperature for our HOME MEET at JONES PARK on SATURDAY MORNING around 10:30. (::hint hint...::). Because then we're going to smoke it!

And in case no one caught that serious pimpage...

Coe cross country has a HOME MEET on SATURDAY MORNING. Girls run around 10:30 and boys around 11:30 (I think). It is at JONES PARK. You should come and cheer us on, Kohawks and future-Kohawks!