So it's basically official: I completed my last final exam as an undergraduate last night at 7pm...and if I wasn't completely exhausted, I'm sure I'd be ecstatic. :)

So I've managed to fit in hanging out with three different friends this week thus far...planning on seeing three more before I leave on Saturday. It's harder than I thought, hanging out with everyone for the last time...especially Jas. Sometimes it just stinks saying goodbye, knowing you'll never meet someone quite as, well fill in the blank, as that person. I'm realizing this week that I will miss my friends here for how awesome they are, but also how much more awesome I am around them; my friends really have made me a better person.

Enough with all this seriousness...so I was walking back from class last night and took the path next to the volleyball court. And I am SO glad I did. A bunch of EMU student employees were playing, and alternating singing annoying songs to each other in order to mess with their concentration. As I was walking by one team was singing Christmas carols, and the other was alternating between N Sync and the Spice Girls. Totally hilarious. :D

T minus two days til my departure. Is the world outside of my school ready for me? Probably not. At this point, do I care? Not a bit. :D

All-nighters: productive? Yes. Conducive to sanity? Maybe not.

Right now I literally feel like I could sleep for two days straight. Taking a five-minute breather from the final exams study grind...thinking about going to the "Snack & Study" event tonight, cause a) it will be nice to be around other people again, and b) Jas just told me there's going to be free food. Yes, I am that pathetic. :)

So I ran into Alex yesterday at the eatery, whom I haven't seen or talked to since last semester...it was awesome to catch up with him. And his boyfriend was with him, so I got to meet the infamous Remy, and amazingly enough, he lived up to his rather outrageous reputation. I don't think I've laughed that much in literally weeks. It's so awesome - sometimes right in that moment when I'm really down, someone's suddenly in front of me that encourages me in exactly the way I need. It's comforting to be reminded that Someone a whole lot smarter and more observant than I am is in charge.

Alternating between listening to Mikeschair's "Let the Waters", Jeff Buckley's "Hallelujah" and Wild Cherry's "Play That Funky Music"...a good idea of just what a neurotic state I'm currently in. :D

where's my other sock? why is it 45 deg. in April? what song is the guy in the room above me singing in the shower? and other unsolvable mysteries...

My life has currently devolved to the point where I feel quite comfortable claiming hermit status. The only real human contact I've had in the past day are the exchanges between myself and the employees at the eatery. This is how dedicated (pathetic) I have become about school. Seriously though, I have concluded that if I mess up this week, my last week of undergraduate final exams, I shall never forgive myself. Thus my voluntary vow of isolation.

Socks are quickly becoming the bane of my existence. I've lost three more socks in the past week...can someone explain to my WHY it's ALWAYS an uneven number?! On the plus side, my feet are toughening up at a very fast rate from my almost exclusive use of flip flops over the past week-and-a-half. What I should be doing is practicing walking on my heels, so when I walk next week I don't trip and fall on my face. There are obvious downsides to avoiding heels for the majority of ones' adult life. :S

So on Thursday, my prof. for my Honors Ghost Stories Lit class is allowing us all to vote on which film we want to watch during our final exam period (she's giving us a take home final to bring to class already completed). As there's only about eight of us in the class, we're having issues agreeing. I feel guilty though, because I realized that Kristin and I both want to watch the Robert Downey Jr. film "Heart & Souls", and based on the fact that both of us are going to vote for it, and everyone else has their own films they want to watch, by default we will be watching "H & S." Well, I should probably clarify: I think I SHOULD be feeling guilty. Mostly I'm feeling powerful and manipulative. Probably should work on that. :D It really is so hard not to enjoy getting ones' way, though.

So I have four people I've promised to get together with next week, and as I stare at my day planner (which looks like it's been hijacked by the uni-bomber who's scribbled tiny illegible codes in it), I see no free time jumping out at me. I should hold a drawing, and whoever wins gets to have lunch with me on Tuesday, for about 15 min. between my work at the VISION office and my meeting with Professor Norton. Seriously, though, leaving campus for good next weekend is really starting to make me miss everyone around here already. In all likelihood I will just have to postpone sleeping until next week, and see everyone here that I love at least one more time, if only to say goodbye...

what is sleep? and other questions I ask myself daily...

Holy Serengeti, has it been a long time. I didn't realize just how long until I realized I needed to update my profile info, as much of it has changed. Apparently a lot can happen in about a year. :)

Two weeks until I am officially a graduate of Eastern Michigan University. I started doodling in class the other day (which for drawing neanderthals like me, consists of random words and sentences) and ended up starting a running list of things I will miss about EMU. Some highlights:

I Will Miss:
-the walk to the campus library
-lunch on Mondays with James
-hanging out at the Student Center with Lindsey on Wednesday afternoons
-watching different student groups play volleyball and basketball with Jaz, and providing our own awesome commentary
-staking out my chair on the first day of class
-the laughter at the VISION office
-free movies on Friday nights
-Sidetrack Bar & Grill
-making fun of MSU
-living in an area with ten pizza joints within five miles
-living in close proximity to friends who not only understand your life, sympathize with your stresses and acknowledge the insanity of college debts, but will still listen while you complain for the upteenth time about how poor you are and how some days it seems like the only thing that keeps you going is Starbursts and absolute hysteria.

This growing nostalgia I'm feeling is definitely connected at least partly to the fact that this place - even my dorm - has in some ways been the one constant in my otherwise completely insane life over the past three years.

the exfoliating benefits of sand...

The beach. Possibly my favoritest spot in the entire world. Mom and the lil sissies and I went to the beach this afternoon/evening, and six hours later the feeling is beginning to return to my extremities. So yeah, the water was cold. But it was completely awesome fun, exploring the water and the rocks and the dips (Shelby and I managed to experience these dips, or "gaping chasms," as she likes to call them, first hand...). Shelby and I also waged war with the wind...we spent at least two hours attempting to fly a kite, and about 20 minutes actually flying it. It was an experience. A wet, cold, frustrating, tiring experience, but somehow it was still fun.

I've laughed more in the past couple of days than I think I have in MONTHS. My lil sisters are good for me, I think. I've also slept more in the past two days than I have in the past week. Combined. Pretty amazing. I think I should live my life on vacation. It suits me. ;)

i am a gypsy, I have no home...

So I just realized I am living in three different places at once. I'm spending this summer at my older sister Heather's house (since the total cost of rent is mowing her lawn and doing the occasional dishes, among other perks!). I am also living at Eastern Michigan University...I count myself as there because my favorite magnet is still hanging on the metal rod on the wall in my dorm room, and that magnet is what I use to designate my living space. (Hey, for some people it's a picture, or a pet...my thing happens to be a black and white magnet with an inspirational saying on it. Sue me.) For the next month, however, I'm in Vancouver, Washington, visiting my parents and younger sisters at their new house on the edge of the planet. Seriously, I just found out it's going to cost fourteen dollars to ship something here. It's like we're in Timbuktu or something.


So this was my view for six hours yesterday as I flew over here. I suppose the view could've been much worse...I keep hearing rumors of planes inexplicably crashing...so, you know, MUCH worse...

Megs and Shelby and I are conning Mom into taking us to the beach tomorrow afternoon, and I'm actually more psyched about that than I think I've been about anything else all summer. I've really missed truly relaxing...I'm grateful I'll get to do some of that before the grind of my last semester begins in September...

So this guy in Joanne Fabrics was totally staring at me this afternoon, and it made me surreptitiously check my fly and the seat of my pants for any major gaps, rips or spots. In hindsight, I've decided what I should have done was stare at this guy right back for BEING in Joanne Fabrics in the FIRST PLACE!! I mean, a DUDE, with man parts and everything, in a JOANNE FABRICS?!?! Seriously, who's REALLY the freak here, man?!?!?!?!

:D

sleep deprivation, violent storms and wind, and other phenomenon currently trying to kill me...

So I guess it goes without saying that with only three weeks left of school, my life is total chaos. But I'll say it anyway. :D It's the strangest feeling ever, because half of me is DYING for summer, but the other half is dreading the unknown that summer will bring. What will I do for work? When will Mom and the girls move away? Will Heather's basement be completed in time, or will I be spending my summer doing that? It's all up in the air right now, and despite how much I really do enjoy adventures and change and the unknown, this particular kind of uncertainty is pretty daunting. But then my mind inevitably swings back to just how frickin SICK of school I am, and how I'm about to the point where I'm ready to work at McDonalds and sleep in my car, as long as I'm not here in Ypsi anymore...

In some ways I feel like my entire life right now revolves around checking my email. This publisher is supposed to email me soon, with details about the process of getting my short story in his literary mag, and if I thought I was a compulsive email checker before, I was very much naive. The entire situation feels so surreal, but it has me kind of frozen where my next story is concerned. How do I top, or even match my first story in this class? It's almost past the point of pride, and into territory where I just don't want to disappoint my prof. But I'm also terrified of disappointing myself, I think. The other problem I'm running into is the story currently circulating tirelessly inside my head is based much more heavily on my own life than my last story. That makes me really uncomfortable for certain individuals from my past...something I never want to do is hurt people, even those who've hurt me. Such a dilemma...and yet, in some ways, not really. I'm starting to feel like I have such little control over the words that come out of me...they're there, and they have to come out. That's the beginning and the end of it.

So I just found out that someone got held up at gunpoint at a location I was at just two hours before. It's kind of a strange sensation...makes me terribly glad that I have a tendency to be over-cautious. It also makes me terribly glad that it wasn't me... :)