We have got mice. It is driving me absolutely crazy. One of these little bastards camps out outside my door every night, waits til 3, 4, 5, and then just starts scratching. What's a mouse doing scratching? What's he got to scratch about? Dogs scratch. Mice scrounge. He has woken me up just now. Before, every night, we would have light wars. He'd a scratch away, and I'd turn on the light, and that'd stop him. Finally tonight, he seems to be on to me, so I turned on the light and he just kept on a scratching. So I got up and gave the door 3 good WHAPS! to show him who's boss. He seems to have stopped, but once I quit stirring, I'm sure he'll wake me up with another scratch. the bastard.

We've set out some delicious poison for them, so hopefully, any day now, they'll be turning up dead. We tried to do the humane traps, but everybody knows those don't work. Fucking mice, turning good folks into killers, poisoners, making me uneasy in my own home, stealing my good 7-8 hours of sleep, and my Cadbury Christmas chocolate, knocking over tupperware left and right. I hates em. I do.

I just finished Mother Night by Kurt Vonnegut. I started it yesterday. I read it like lightning. I think my reading days are back. I've been watching too much tv lately. Anyway, it comes in a disappointing last place among the Vonnegut that I've read. It barely even felt like Kurt Vonnegut. In his earlier days, he wrote a lot about the Holocaust, since he was a prisoner of war in WWII, and as much as I love WWII literature, I just don't think it fits well with his voice, even though Slaughterhouse Five, about the Holocaust, is his most commonly read book by far. I mean, a sort of "post-Holocaust" tone comes across in just about everything he writes, and when he just writes about his experiences biographically, it's fascinating. Just not so much dressed in fiction. The Nazi theme in this book, combined with the fact that it's one of his very first and so of a less developed style, made it feel like nothing special. It's weird though, Sirens of Titan and Cat's Cradle were written right around the same time. Sirens of Titan was even before it, I think, and both of those were much more quirky and science fictiony and funny and hard-hitting and though-provoking and classically Vonnegut than this one was. Maybe I'm being too hard on him. Listen to me, playing like I'm a literary scholar.

For those among my readership so interested in Kurt Vonnegut, as I know there are many, I will list his books I've read, in order of favoriteness:

1. The Sirens of Titan
2. Cat's Cradle
3. Deadeye Dick
4. Breakfast of Champions
5. Bluebeard
6. Jailbird
7. Timequake
8. Slaughterhouse Five
9. Mother Night

I am just kidding. I don't know why anyone would care which of his books are my favorite. This was just a little amusing exercise for myself. He is the only author I really need a steady diet of in my life.

Here is one quote from this book I liked, though. "There are plenty of good reasons for fighting, but no good reason ever to hate without reservation, to imagine that God Almighty Himself hates with you, too. Where's evil? It's that large part of every man that wants to hate without limit, that wants to hate with God on its side. It's that part of man that finds all kinds of ugliness so attractive."

I like myself.
People are always talking about how crappy they are. That is a really unhealthy thing about Christianity, I think. people who can't get over how crappy they are long enough to let themselves change. I am glad I am not that way anymore.

It is weird to spend whole days sitting in my pajamas in front of a computer. Like today, for instance. I can't help it, because I have to read all this stuff for Mountain T.O.P. which is all on the computer, but then you find all these other things to read, and people to talk to, and it just takes up your day. Ooh, I have brownie mix downstairs! Why am I not eating it?

Ok, brownie mix in hand. So I am going to the beach tomorrow.

Bah. I don't know. I'm gonna go do something else.

You Should Learn French

C'est super! You appreciate the finer things in life... wine, art, cheese, love affairs. You are definitely a Parisian at heart. You just need your tongue to catch up...

I knew it! I need to do that soon. mmm French philosophy. Can't beat it. Unless it's Descartes.

Additionally, I've discovered that my love language with pets is acts of service. CERTAINLY not physical touch. bleh!

Just wanted you to know.

Whoa.
Whoa whoa WHOA whoa.
So, um, I only have ONE day of classes left in my undergraduate college career. A few tests, a tiny dumb paper and that is it. Done.
Whoa whoa.

The Five Love Languages

My primary love language is probably
Physical Touch
with a secondary love language being
Quality Time.

Complete set of results

Physical Touch:		12
Quality Time:		8
Words of Affirmation:		7
Receiving Gifts:		2
Acts of Service:		1

Take the quiz


I really wonder if this should be able to transfer into all kinds of relationships or not. I don't think so.

Wow. Get ready to get sick.

So this is shaping up to be basically the best weekend ever.
Amanda and I laughed embarrassingly loudly tonight at the Blue Monkey. And also, screamed a lot (There was loud music). And she said ridiculous things. She was a two and a half by the end of it.
if you know what I mean.
There must be more to say. Where are the words.

So I went to Ireland. And I'm back now. I guess some people were unclear about that. Here I am! It was only a 9 day trip. If you have facebook, I put about 100 pictures up over there, so you can look at them. Don't get intimidated by all the pictures. You can pick out only the pretty looking ones to look at.

Daisy, I got you a postcard. I still haven't mailed it though.

It was absolutely amazing. I think I make it out to be more amazing every time I talk about it. I mean, it really was that amazing, but that becomes more clear the further and further from it I get. I'll restrict myself to posting only minimal pictures here.

( Ireland )

( New Buddies Made in Ireland )

I am eating a solid chocolate delicious bass.
At midnight. A midnight snack.
Woo! Life is cRAZy. Going to Ireland in 60 hours.
AH!

I can't believe this.
We'll miss you, Stell.

I feel like every day since I've been back to school has been perfect. I love these people so much.

I am really thinking about going to Cincinnati after I graduate. Oh yeah, by the way, I decided against London. Or anywhere out of the country. I think since I'm supposedly spending the next year or two preparing for and looking at grad school(s), it just wouldn't make sense to move somewhere from which I can't visit schools. But I talked to my friend tonight, who had told me about a worship leader position in Cincinnati, and found out that she was indeed serious, so we'll see where that goes.

I went to Gatlinburg this weekend. It was perfect. Just like every other day. ( A Few Reasons Why: )

Who wants to move to London with me for a year?

There is a boy on campus who rides a unicycle.
I have seen him three times so far;
once strolling into the Student Union;
another time typing away in the computer lab,
his cyclops perched against a wall by the door;
and just once now, in motion,
wavering in the rain,
his little legs spinning away,
always clad in biker shorts,
ever alone.

It always makes me feel like I'm in a movie.
Were I ever to make a movie,
you can be sure,
the unicycler in his shorts
would be a recurring absurdity
peddling through scenes,
at first invoking only curiosity,
but then,
only by repetition,
a delightful laughter.

I just had a dream that I was best friends with Britney Spears, and that I saved her life from a ghost called Clarence. I had somehow captured Clarence in pictures twice before at summer camp and knew he was bad news and out to get Britney. But then, the three of us became great friends and wreaked havoc on a local hospital. What exactly that havoc was and why we felt compelled to wreak it, I have already forgotten. Also, we were all in high school.

It is strange how I so often feel God like a responsibility, like this guy I have to get around to, when really, our relationship does me much more good than it does Him. The emptiness I feel when we drift seems to be evidence enough that He is real, that I need Him, and that there is a part of me that isn't alive without Him. Why do I let myself get so busy with nothing?

create your own visited states map
or check out these Google Hacks.

Man. I gotta get to traveling.