winding down

i. first semester of non-nursing based courses completed: 2 As
ii. christmas shopping is almost complete (one more elusive gift to buy)
iii. completed six months on the "weekend program" at work, and loving the schedule still, which i wasn't sure if i was going to at the time of the switch
iv. first season of x-files veiwing finished with james
v. registered for next semester - a little late and attempting to get into a closed class

the thruth is out there.

last night i rekindled my love for this man.

frustrating.

constant miscommunication i hate you.

my guilt(free) pleasure these days.

finals

it's december and it's 60 degrees... in pittsburgh. i'm loving it. ridiculous.

finals are this week, so thats what i've been up to mostly these days. reading this was way more helpful than the actual text book ordered for my class. hopefully it will actually do as it is advertised and make me understand morphology. other than the obligatory study routine, i'm not worried about over-doing it this semester. i am going to miss Claude and David, though. they both were class acts, in their own ways.

scott isn't coming in, now, i don't think. which is a huge bummer. i was looking forward to having him here for a few days. we could've gone skiing and whatnots :(. garrett is still coming and staying with steve and nick, though so there will still be some new faces this winter.

finally, i recently realized feta is amazing in everything. that is all.

Girls Day Prevails!

Koi

my lovies.

i heart honey!

simply delightful.

to new england and back

james and i just came home yesterday from our northeast coast outing. the purpose of our drive was to survey two universities' programs in First Language Acquisition. the first was Boston University located in the middle of Boston. first impression of the city/campus was great. i loved it there; enough green space, lots of little shops/restaurants, seemed to have a great population base (a general intelligista attitude), and had some awesome tunnels. the program director was out for the day, and i met with one of the assistant directors. she seemed overall optimistic in my potential for acceptance into the program, gave me a few pointers on what they weigh more in their candidates, and supplied me with some graduate pamphlets - pretty general stuff.

from BU we headed south to maryland. University of Maryland was a beautiful campus as well, but the city surrounding it left much to be desired. the general population was a little more diversified than i'm used to, the traffic around Baltimore and D.C. really blew. as far as the program, it was amazing! the linguistics deptartment is really well funded and supported through the university and the labs they had! my, they were nice. now down to business: the director informed me of the "competitive nature" of their program and advised me to try to pick up some more experience for my CV before i apply to make me a better candidate. this pretty much boils down to me being very nervous for actually being accepted. i don't know if i'm ready for such an intellectual-heavy field yet. i feel like i am very much behind the curve and i have a lot of work ahead of me that i need to make up. i do know that i thought that all of it (everything that i had seen in the dept there) made me very excited.

moral of the story is, it looks like my free time is going to go down to 0 if i have any shot at getting into a school of my choice. we'll see how this story will turn out.

to a much neglected blog:

i am sorry little blog, i haven't been able to tell you all the happenings that have been happening to me lately. i give you No-Face as a peace offering.

i am selling my car and bought a new one (similar to this). my best friend is moving here and i haven't seen her all summer. that makes me really sad, and at the same time i'm confident things will work out. i am letting my job intefere with my life... well my job and my love for sleep. maria is camping this week with him, and i would like to get together with her when she gets back. i will be registering for classes this week - i have to make myself! and i will be working the last 3-day weekend for a long while which also makes me happy. oh, and my new favorite item i have purchased (while in a time warp with Beth) is this.

top ten simple sounds:

[1] flip flops hitting bottoms of feet
[2] clanking of make-up being thrown back in my make-up bag
[3] quite hum of fans
[4] james laughing
[5] lighting of a gas stove
[6] light rain
[7] clicking of keyboards
[8] biting into apples
[9] opening of pop cans
[10] water/steam in a hot iron

night people:

i'm returning to a night-work schedule after enjoying many months of daylight. i feel like i can get more done when i am up early in the day, but i can definately see my friends more when we get together late at night. it'll be much needed catch-up time, in my opinion.
last night james and i met up with mike and tessa at india garden. oh man, it was tasty. i haven't been there in over a month - maybe longer. after that mike brought an anime called Spirited Away to our house to enjoy. James enjoyed sleep and i asked many questions. i liked it a lot, but was confused a little in the middle. it was nice to watch something that was a fun adventure.

Drinks at Six...

Dial M for Murder

last night we all headed to Em and Jay's, they did the first read through of the script, i think it will turn out really well. i might have a part... the party extra. i think i have what it takes to go big time, hopefully i can get in a good word to the director. a few days ago james and i showed steve and his friends buffalo 66. i forgot how great that movie was. if you haven't seen it - you better. what else? nothing really seems exciting since we got back, i have had 2 weeks of classes so far, linguistics is interesting. i'm not sure if it is what i expected, it seems realitively easy - but then again this is just an intro. i'm really hungry and heading out with the chicas from work! mmmm vanilla bean cheesecake i love you and i am coming to eat you!

Eurotrip

the following are pictures from our Eurotrip. they are a little bit extensive, but we had a good time trying to photo journal everything we did. we spent a total of 2 weeks over there and traveled by plane, train, taxi, bus and metro. it was a blast!

London, England

Victoria Station

hah, they're real cops

best ever

Buckingham Palace

gates of Buckingham

statue dedicated to Queen Victoria

St. James Park

James and Big Ben hanging out

Big Ben and Parliment

Tower of London

Tower Bridge

Detail on Westminister Abbey

Westminister Abbey - i'm actually in this picture

slough.

Cambridge, England

bus ride from Oxford to Cambridge

St John's College

inside St John's cathedral

outside of King's College

King's College courtyard

Bruxells (Brussels), Belgium

national Palace in Bruxells

we need more statues like this

National Basilica of Belgium

James and I on the steps of the Basilica

view from inside

Keukenhof, Netherlands

this was actually in Leiden, Netherlands

brilliant.

best.

hedge maze.

amazing.

pretty.

tons of bikes.