What a weekend!

I spent twelve hours camped out at my computer yesterday, working on my paper that got turned in ten minutes before midnight. I am lucky to have such a mean roommate who kept bothering me when I stop typing or start researching things that didn't relate at all to the paper (NBA tattoos, Ipswitch sex worker murders, Navy-Hawaii football scores, etc), if it weren't for her, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have finished the dang paper.

If this looks a little hazy and strange, that's just because my mind melded with the camera for a little while, and my mind was feeling a little hazy and seeing things strangely at the time.

Sometimes, I look at myself and I see my mother.

And that is a scary, scary thing.

Case in point: Today I had planned to spend all day working on my twelve page Public Management paper that is due tomorrow at midnight (You know, one of those assignments you get at the beginning of the semester and don't even begin to think about until two weeks before it is due and even then when you think about it, that thinking only goes so far as to put off planning the session in which you will for realz actually sit down and work on it. yeah. One of those.). I think my dear roommate Dana started washing the dishes or something, and so I pitched in for a bit. And by a bit, I mean I spent two and a half hours scrubbing the cabinets, cleaning the fan, washing screens, sweeping the floor, putting away laundry and straightening my room. After two and a half hours, I realized it was time to go to work, and after getting home from work at 10, there just wasn't any hope for that paper today. Tomorrow is another day, right?

My paper may not be written, but it is so refreshing to be in a nice clean house with screens you can actually see out of and to have a bed that doesn't have piles of laundry on it. Hopefully, tomorrow I will still appreciate those very clean screens as I am about to throw my laptop through one of them out of frustration.

To clarify the title a little bit, my mother is a wonderful, intelligent woman currently working on her PhD in Military Sociology. We have had many, many chats in which we discuss the multiplicity of things we are both not doing that we should be (and how clean our living spaces are!). In the nature vs. nurture argument, I would place almost all the blame completely on nurture for this one. Love you mama!

Here's to hoping tomorrow is a gray, rainy, miserable day.

Da Local Kine Thanksgiving

There had been a few different ideas about what to do for Thanksgiving floating around, including flying out to the Big Island for the weekend, making a lunch at home with friends or joining in on campus activities. In the end, my roommate and I went over to her boyfriend's house to have lunch and hang out for a few hours listening to his family talk story. Of all the things we could have done, I'm glad we ended up with this one. College is fun and all, but it is definitely nice to spend time in a family environment sometimes, even if it isn't your own family. There were kids running around, adults laughing and teenagers sitting apart from everyone, just like there would have been if I'd been home.

We crossed the street and wandered the beach for a little while, before heading back home to not do any of the many papers I have to write. Instead, my roomie and I decided to bake a pie! It ended up being quite the adventure, and I photographically documented the whole thing, but instead of sharing all those, I think I want to leave you all with only one of those photos. It was a completely relevant and very integral part of the pie making process, I promise.

Now, the day is over, and it officially okay to play Christmas music loudly in public areas.

I work so hard!

So, here at BYU-H, as long as you're living in contract housing, which you have to do if you are under 25, your landlord has the right to do cleaning checks however many times a month. We usually have them every other week, but our landlord has been skipping them a lot this semester, so even though it was scheduled for this past Saturday, because we hadn't gotten the paper the night before we assumed (...we all know what assuming does!) that it wouldn't be happening, only to wake up nice and early Saturday morning to find out that it was happening at noon- only a short three and a half hours later! Oh dear! Two of the housemates were gone already, so the three of us that were home hopped to cleaning right away. Among other things, I signed up to sweep and mop the floors, and boy did I sweep! I swept so hard in fact, that I wore the skin right off my thumb!

Luckily, due to my family having a fantastic sense of humor and distributing gifts like gross band-aids, I was able to con my former roommate into taking this gem of a picture for me.

On Sunday, I decided to be a little less gross and just used one of the band-aids with a zipper on it. Still cool, but less likely to elicit gags from those near-by.

Today we had a big regional (Hawaii state) conference for church, and one of the Twelve Apostles of the church, L. Tom Perry, came to speak. I really enjoy speakers who are comfortable expressing their personality along with sharing their messages, and boy, could you tell that he was glad to be in Hawaii and so happy to be sharing his message with us.

At the end of the meeting, all of the congregation stood up and sang Aloha Oe, led by the bearded man at the podium (who happens to be the grandfather of a friend of mine. This community is so small!), and there were more than a few teary eyes in the room.

There is an on going discussion of unity and improving the relationship between the school and the community, and the things said aren't always the most positive, but in situations like this, who is a student and who is community matters a lot less, and that is a very good thing.

These kids are cute.

And I miss them so, so, so much. (Pictures from my trip back this summer.)

Love this kiddo.

She had a pretty intense five and a half hour jaw surgery yesterday. Keeping you in my thoughts and prayers little sister!

Sometimes plans change. Sometimes that is a good thing. Sometimes it is not.

For example, last night when I got home from work at a nice and early 10:15, my plan was to go to bed. Instead, I was up until 1, blogging, looking up random topics including logic puzzles, Aryan Nation parades, news articles on BYUH and trying to create sentences that correctly use the word exonerate.

Not exactly the brightest use of my time, especially considering my 7:30 Public Management class.

Today the plan was to spend the afternoon researching for either one of my two papers that are due in the next couple of weeks. Considering my English class was cancelled due to the professor being at a conference in Philadelphia, it could have been quite the productive afternoon.

Instead, I meandered down to the nearest beach (which just so happens to be a lovely five minute walk away) and brought my lenses out to play. With class and work and spending the weekends trying to catch up on sleep or be social, I have made it to the beach once since the semester started. I've had classmates say that no one should live in Hawaii and not go to the beach everyday. That's when I keep my mouth shut and console myself with the fact that at least I'm doing well in school and won't have skin cancer at age forty.

I was so unbelievably irked when I realized the water line wasn't straight.

Isten, áldd meg a Magyart

There are some pictures that always make me smile. Or that make nostalgia rush through my veins. Sometimes I get both of those reactions in one picture. This is an old shot of the Hungarian Statue of Liberty- Szabadság Szobor. It sits at the top of Gellert Hill and overlooks all of Budapest.

Since it's a little hard to see, it says:

Mindazok emlékére, akik életüket áldozták Magyarország függetlenségéért, szabadságáért és boldogulásáért.

I'll even be nice and translate for those of you who don't happen to speak Hungarian (which is silly, and you should probably considering picking it up, it's quite the handy language!).

"To the memory of all of those who sacrificed their lives for the independence, freedom, and success of Hungary."

There's quite the history behind it, as with most things in Hungary. I only made it up to the top of Gellert's Hill once, with a group of people my age from all over Eastern/Central Europe, as part of a church conference my last week there in the country.

Even after almost two and a half years back in the States, I think about Hungary on a daily basis, and look forward to the day I can go back. Maybe I'll find a way to work it into my post-graduation plans, along with grad school and living in a monastery in Nepal.

For somewhat more recent news... I got an email yesterday saying I will have money from the school to cover most of my tuition for winter semester, which was quite the relief, as I've spent a bit of time stressing about money and school and such lately. That was a handy reminder that my hard work does pay off- my grades are good enough and I've apparently made a pleasant enough impression on my professors to receive a department scholarship. On top of that bit of good news, I got two different papers back with As and was provided another opportunity to look at for while I am still here at school that will help prepare me for grad school and allow me to do research on a topic I choose, along with maybe getting published or sent to an international conference. There's still a lot of work to be done if that's going to happen, but I'm excited at the prospect.

I'm reminded every day of how good life is and how incredibly blessed I am.

It's that time of year!

(Every game we score over 100 we get free ice cream. Nothing excites college kids like free food! If I remember correctly, there were about 48 seconds left on the clock and we were at 98 or 99.)

Basketball season!

Seasiders are number one in NCAA Division II men's basketball pre-season rankings. The team played UH in an exhibition game last week and lost 83-69, but had another two games this weekend in the Asia Pacific Basketball Tournament against the Fiji National Team and the China University of Mining and Technology. I missed the game against Fiji, but watched last night's game against China and spent most of it feeling bad for how terribly we were beating them and in awe of one of the player's gravity defying hair. It was incredible!

Check out the hair on China's number 6!

I'm sitting in my living room listening to the rain POUR down and thinking about how awesome my life is. School is still going well, I really enjoy my job, my friends are great, and I get to spend my entire weekend studying/researching for the seventy some odd pages I have left to write this semester. Exciting, right?

This is actually a shot from my first weekend back when I went on a RIDICULOUSLY long hike up to Laie Falls. It was pretty, but probably not pretty enough for me to devote another six hours to hiking up that beast of a hill again anytime soon.

I haven't been taking too many pictures lately, but I will get the ones I have taken up, and devote some of my copious spare time to going out and playing with my lenses, because I haven't done that since I got back.