I hope you enjoy photos, because this post does.

Let's see, since I last updated... campus has become beautiful.
Here are some photos from said days:




Linka & I also went to Midnight Madness. Here is the halftime act jumping over 11 people. good times.


The houses up here have also decorated for Halloween. There are SO MANY cute people up here that go all out decoration-wise. I had to laugh though because one of the houses I pass every time I go out is the one that built that huge wooden snowman last year that I love. I drove by a week ago & saw them working on said snowman, thought nothing of it until the drive home. They were actually turning said snowman into a ghost by putting a big sheet over him! hahahaha LOVEIT!! You can still see the huge ice cubes!


I also bought & carved my pumpkin!
I would like to dedicate this photo to AJ because all I could think about was how he'd be saying "BRAINS!" EWITWASGROSSKTHX


Carving in a dorm room is an art. Not as easy as doing it in the kitchen, I swear. Here is the finished product, though. Brand new!


Oh, & campus sort of became infested with ladybugs. Hopefully you can kinda see it in this photo, it was the best I could do. every little speck is a ladybug. There were SWARMS, like it was raining ladybugs. blew my mind.


Then, we went to Hook Mountain.
Here is the big owl on a stick that they use to get the hawks to swoop down for the owl & thus get a photo. It amuses me greatly.


Eric (my prof) looking at some hawks. He's so tall it's impossible to get a pic of the sky without him in it haha


Awh, my boys are being good students! I'm like a proud mama with them! haha James, Max, & John



Eric blowing on a caterpillar to demonstrate that they freeze up in the presence of CO2. I didn't get a good picture of the millipedes, but there were SO MANY of them up on top of that mountain. omg. i was too scarred for life to photograph them.


More of the view (the Hudson River)


Prickly pear cacti!! hahaha, we pass a bunch of places full of them, so I decided to show you. The fruit wasn't especially good this year. not as sweet as last year, but still ok.


So I had my first program today. It was a laundry party (laundry-themed, not doing actual laundry) because we knew we could get a TON of free detergent to give out. which we did.
It was a huge success & my residents are still raving about how much fun it was. which is cool cause they're ADORABLE & I love them.
Damian was being a drama queen & Debbie Downer the entire time & it was SO unprofessional & rude & I need to tell Kamisha. We couldn't get over how bad he was. BUT OTHER THAN THAT, it was a huge success =]

Here are some of my residents putting on clothes during the relay race in said program =]



Now I'm off to sleep. Hopefully gonna get my box from yous tomorrow! =D
& I'll be home on Friday after my midterm, so pretty late. Brit & Steve are currently arguing about where I should go first. good times.

Good night!

Posting this from my crackberry while lying in bed. How I adore technology!
The melatonin is kicking in and my eyelids are starting to droop, but I think I'll make it! I need to, since today and tomorrow are my busy days.

So hmm, the Phils won! And I watched it in my room, alone, and it made me as homesick as I've ever been. I NEED to find a phils fan up here. Easier said than done?
Tomorrow's game is during my class, so I'll be bringing my laptop and will be using mallory's subscription to mlb.com postseason to watch it during class until I can run back to my room and finish. Hopefully it'll be a win!

Our trip to hook mountain that was scheduled for tomorrow was cancelled, naturally, since it's sposed to be 36 degrees and raining... AND POSSIBLY SNOW TOMORROW NIGHT!!! Omg the prospect is just so exciting. So happy the weather's finally becoming tolerable! =D

Hmm, what else. So I skipped Ramashows on monday because I had more important things to do, like watch the phils, but after the meeting I got a text from nicole saying andrew (the president who sucks at life) is leaving next semester and she wanted to let me know I could now be president! Haha. And he literally just decided he was leaving and announced it at the meeting, not even warning the e-board beforehand. TYPICAL. Ugh. But I dunno if that's something I'll even have time to take on. To be continued I suppose.
Speaking of doing a million things, Kamisha told me to apply for the Who's Who award. But I don't have enough credits yet, so maybe next year. She's grooming me to be a Graduate Residence Director.
And uhhhh, roommate issue on my floor. Again. She's too light a sleeper anf is thus getting no sleep with her roommate. We're trying to orchestrate this grand swap. Also to be continued I suppose haha.

Uhhh, we've had 2 power outages on campus. Both yesterday. Both for a few seconds, just enough to be an inconvenience. The latest one happened and latenight and krysta SCREAMED. It was so priceless.

Spent my free time today planning my schedule for next semester. I get priority registration now, as an active member of RASA (a new perk) so it's AMAZING to just choose classes and KNOW I'll get into them since I'm registering first.
They're gonna be fab classes, and potentially only on tues and thurs... Which is just how it worked out, but I'm not complaining.

K, the melatonin's doing its thing and I need to go sleeeeep. I'll call tomorrow perhaps, if not friday.
G'night!

I NEED SOME LOTTERY DEJA VU!

Today without my blackberry was the hardest thing everrrrr. I felt like I was going through withdrawal! haha

But now it works.
Story:
So, if you don't know, I get REALLY intense deja vu pretty often. My theory is that it's because I never remember my dreams- I think I have some psychic tendencies in my dreams, but I don't consciously remember them until prompted. it happens a lot, where I'll know exactly what someone's gonna say or what's gonna happen.
So tonight we went to the diner. While Ilinka & Ivania were at the counter paying, I had deja vu. In the vision, I knew my phone wasn't working (I think I vaguely remember this dream, actually, becuase I think I woke up all anxious), but knew that in the dream, when I returned, my phone was working. I just shrugged it off, like I always do. But then I got to thinking. I wanted to test it.
So I told the girls that I had deja vu & walked them through exactly what I remembered from the dream. They laughed & we didn't take any of it seriously. But in the back of my mind I felt like when I got back my phone would work.
Long story short, when I got to my room, I tried my phone again & it worked.

Seriously, i have NO idea what happened. Nothing changed over those few hours. Thanks, universe!
So now I restored & it's all back to normal. YAY!!!!



OH, & IN OMG-I-CANT-BELIEVE-I-FORGOT-TO-TELL-YOU-THIS NEWS:
The RAs involved in that debacle got EPRs, which means that they're most likely gonna be fired, unless they bend the rules for them... to be continued!

CRACKBERRY HAS CRACKED

UGH TODAY.

it all started at about 2 in the morning. i decided to update my blackberry's OS from 4.5.0.081 to 4.5.0.171, not a big change, but still better.

it was all going fine until the last step when i got a "fatal error" & then saw that my blackberry had the white screen of death, with the 507 error. This is the error you get when there is no OS on your phone. So I was like okay, i'll just go back in & re-install the old OS that I had before i tried to upgrade. no big deal.

... it would have been no big deal, if my blackberry would be recognized by my Device Manager. Not gonna go into more detail, but essentially there's NOTHING i can do. This did not prevent me from staying up until 6am trying to fix it, however. Even after that, when I try to sleep I got maybe like, 3 hours, & it wasn't even good sleep. I look like death right now haha, you wouldn't even believe it if you saw it. I look how I feel! haha

I called T-Mobile this morning (after Mom called me... since I have no alarm without my phone!). I was on with her for like an hour. I explained what happened & gave her all my info, & she was trying to troubleshoot & I just straight-up told her that if it could be trouble-shot it would have been last night. She relented & said we'd have to do the exchange. THEN she says "you have the 8900, right?"

UHM, NO. I have the 8320. I told her if she would like to give me an 8900 I would be PERFECTLY happy with that though haha. She said I'm in her system as having an 8900. So she took down my info & changed it.

NOW HERE'S THE KICKER: THE EXCHANGE PROCESS CAN'T EVEN BEGIN UNTIL MY INFO'S RIGHT (AT LEAST 24 HOURS). So at this point I was ready to just start sobbing again. She said they could send it out quickly to me when I call back tomorrow, but I said that won't work because I'm not paying 20+ bucks for shipping. Basically, I'm jedi master hustler because I got her to waive the shipping fee =]

So, I shall have it overnighted to me for free. Just gotta call tomorrow.

Until then, I feel SO detached from the world. Tonight's the FYS social I co-planned, & I can't even really talk to amanda (the other peer facilitator who planned it with me) about the details.

I can't call any of you because you're out of the area allowed by our room phones. So basically, email is the only option. It's awfulllllll. I feel so unorganized & ridiculous.

Speaking of technology not working, the RA computer in our office has a virus & is completely spazzing out & not working. & I had laptop issues earleir this morning as well.

I'm convinced the universe is sending me a message. Tomorrow's 10/10 day, which has this whole environmental connotation (basically, if we don't cut our emissions by 10% by the end of 2010, there is no hope to reverse climate change), so the 10:10 campaign is focused on that, which I'm a part of. So my thought is that the universe is telling me to focus more on my 10:10 pledge by eliminating a lot of my distractions! haha. I hear you, universe, just give me my blackberry!

FEED 100

WHEW, I've survived my hell days for this week (Wed & Thurs) =D

Just got out of my Theories of Personality class, 1.5 hours early =]
The beginning of that class was spent watching the Phils on my laptop. Mallory has a subscription to MLB postseason Live & she gave me her username & password so I could watch the game =]
Before that, I was in my other 3-hr class without a laptop, & Mallory texted me summaries of what was going on haha.
She did this during the game yesterday as well. LOVE HER!

I need to show off my fab new bag that Krysta bought for me because she knows I'm a tree hugger.
It's called a Feed 100 bag because with each bag purchased 100 meals go to school children in Rwanda.
But basically, Krysta gives me this little burlap pouch with "100" on it & I was like "oh cute, it's a clutch purse!" because I saw the zipper. So I unzip it & whatdoyaknow, it turns out to be the base of this AWESOME cloth bag! There's pockets inside (which none of my bags have & I LOVE). I've carried nothing but that since I got it! haha.
Admire:


& it's made from recycled burlap & organic cotton. The burlap smell always makes me think of the huge slide in wildwood where you go down in those sacks. mm love that smell.
So ANYWAY, there's my great bag.

Uhm, what else... I gave AJ 200 new songs yesterday, so that's cool. With me not being there to harass him to like my good music, he's getting into it on his own & convincing himself it was his idea. Which works for me, as long as he likes it haha. So yeah, I supplied him with some entire discographies.

Gotta run now, though. I'm off to Late Night with Jill! I rarely see her now becuase we're both SO busy & our business rarely overlaps, so tonight we're both free & it's exciting! haha

Office hours early tomorrow morning (11-3), then class (3:45-5:15), then WEEKEND! yay!!

As soon as I sat down to write this I heard 2 fire trucks blazing up the road beside me. Glad the fire alarm wasn't here! haha

Anyway, I got back up here last night. I basically just lounged around & hung out with some people until around 8:30 when I went down to chill with Lyuben on duty.
I wasn't tired at all last night, like usual, so I ended up staying up until like 3:30am, knowingly. What I didn't know until I looked at my phone, however, was that I had to wake up at 7:30 today for the Open House =[ Okay, so maybe I knew before... but it didn't even enter my mind after like, midnight haha. I probably would have tried to go to sleep sooner. So now I'm pretty tired, but oh well.

So, woke up, got ready, headed to the McBride house for some coffee.
I've never been awake this early, so it was kind of cool to see the fog rising over the ridge:


not cool enough to make me want to make waking up an everyday thing, but still awesome. plus, it was cold & I LOVEDDDDDDDD ITTTTTTT!! Now it's hot again =[ gross.

After my coffee I went over to the arena to help with check-in. Apparently we had 1500 people there... which I entirely believe. the arena was FULL.
When it was time for tours, I knew it was gonna be interesting. The tour groups were HUGE. GINORMOUS. You know how loud I am, & I think the people in the back still couldn't hear me. I felt bad. It was like unmanageably big. I did the best I could though, so I think it went well.

Now I'm gonna shower & do some homework until Ilinka & Cat come back & then we're doing something. dunno what.
I would be out right now, shopping, looking for a straightener, etc, but everything except grocery stores are closed on Sundays, so that's unfortunate.

In other news, that bulb has heated up Jesse's water =] He's swimming really fast like it's too hot... but it's not... but I've been ocassionally turning it off anyway. I'm thinking maybe just the change is getting to him since he's used to the colder water now. We shall see.

In other other news, the houses around here are always so cute with their decorations. This is one of the coolest things ever. It's like one of those boxes that the house near us puts those moving elves in, but it's painted to look like gothic & it's being dragged by a bunch of skeletons that are chained to it. yay!
this isn't the best picture because the sun was shining through, but you get the drift.