Hello. It's me. Sorry I've sucked at posting lately, but it's the end of the semester and things have been really busy with classes wrapping up, more london meetings, last minute homeworks, papers, exams, packing, saying goodbye to friends...it's all kind of crazy right now.

Let's see, fun stuff that has happened...well, last Saturday, they showed "The Dark Knight" on the big screen in the chapel...that was pretty awesome. It's my second favorite movie ever (number 1 being, of course, "The Empire Strikes Back"), and it was great to see it with my Highlander friends (even if Mel was scared to death of the Joker, lol). Here's a little clip from the movie, right before the interrogation scene (My favorite part of the entire movie, btw).

Such a good movie. I've also completed my next movie. The song I used is "Life in Technicolor," the opening track of Coldplay's new album "Viva La Vida". I'll probably post the movie in a few weeks. I incorporated 4 different versions of the song in the video. I like it a lot, and you'll see it eventually.

Let's see, what else? Oh! Here's something fun. So this past year, Houghton has removed all of their cafteria trays to see if it would save more water to help the environment or whatever, and all of the upperclassmen were upset. The freshmen didn't care because we weren't used to them. Anyways, if you still needed a tray, like if you broke your leg or something, you could still get one. Well, I needed one for a Spanish project (we reinacted the Wizard of Oz, and the Wizard gave the Lion a "relic from Houghton's past"). But the next day, I still had it until dinner, so me, Adam, Joyce, Elisa, Monica, and Zeke went tray-sledding down the ski hill! It was so cool. It got off to a slow start until we went a few times and packed down the snow and made a good path. Then we went flying! We all went a bunch of times. I only recorded myself going down once though. It was really short and crappy because I was holding onto my camera instead of the tray. But the other runs were fantastic!

One of the best parts was when Adam, my awesome roommate, snuck up behind Elisa as she was getting ready and pushed her down the hill. She went farther than anyone else off of that.

Other than that, it's just been the aforementioned school work combined with hanging out with my friends as much as possible before London. Speaking of which, this will most likely be my last post until I'm in London (I might do one over break or on the plane). I will be posting a lot more in London, I promise. I hope to do at least once a week, maybe even a couple times a week. They'll be shorter posts, usually just "Look at these photos of my friends and I doing British things!" or "Aahh, these weekly 5 page papers are killing me!" (we actually have those, btw), but I will be keeping you posted a lot more. So if you think to, and if you happen to see people who currently read, have read, or might possibly like to read this, tell them about it and give them the link (www.houghton26.blogspot.com). I hope you guys have a great Christmas, (I hope I do too, for that matter), and thanks for reading. See you all in 2009!

Dan

Top Ten Best Things to Come Out of England

So, in one month, one week, and one day, I'm leaving for London. To make myself feel better about that terrifying fact, I've come up with my ten favorite things that originated in England, from least to greatest. Here you go.


#10. "Monty Python and the Holy Grail"

One of the best comedies of all time. It's original, random, offensive, witty, and creative, basically everything a comedy should be. It inspired me to buy and shell two coconuts, which turned into a fun Tent Camp tradition of riding gallantly to the snack bar every day.

Honest truth: The last 2 minutes of this movie are frustrating, disappointing, and unfunny.

#9. "Greensleeves"

"What Child Is This" has always been one of my favorite Christmas songs. The tune is taken from an English classical music piece called "Greensleeves" which was written around 1580 in England.

Honest Truth: "Greensleeves" is a love song to a prostitute. Merry Christmas.

#8. Kiera Knightley

So as not to get in trouble with Emily, I'll only mention the fact that Kiera Knightley is in Star Wars Episode I and the Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy. Other than that, I think she's butt ugly and not attractive at all, and I know that thousands of guys agree with me. Really.

Honest Truth: I am deeply saddened by the fact that I will never meet Kiera Knightley. And Pirates of the Caribbean 3 sucked. A lot.

#7. The United States of America

Alright, it's a bit of a stretch, but it is true! Our country started out as British colonies, and we eventually broke free and became America. So there you go.

Honest Truth: I haven’t heard anything from or about Joe Biden since he was announced as Obama’s running mate. What’s that guy doing?

#6. The Beatles

There's really not much to say here. The Beatles are from England. The Beatles are musical gods. The Beatles came to America. The Beatles defined rock and roll. The Beatles are currently 50% dead.

Honest Truth: Paul McCartney is overrated and Ringo Starr is underrated.

#5. James Bond

I love the James Bond movies. They're a bit cheesy and redundant, but you can always expect the same things in each one: awesome music, sweet cars, hot girls, cool gadgets, and freaky villians. I never get tired of them. Every Thanksgiving, Spike TV used to have James Bond marathons, and instead of watching football after dinner, I'd watch 3 or 4 Bond flicks in a row. I'm not sure if I have a favorite Bond actor. Of course Connery made, defined, and perfected the role, giving Moore big shoes to fill, and he actually did a great job. I grew up and was introduced to 007 when he was played Brosnan, so that's naturally who I think of when I hear "James Bond", but Craig did a sweet job reinventing the character in the last two movies, even if "Casino Royale" was the least Bondish movie so far.

Honest Truth: The single greatest thing about the Bond movies isn't the Bond Girls. It's Q.

#4. Coldplay

Every time this band puts out a new album, EP, or song, I like them even more. They're so cool. "Parachutes" sounds like U2, which makes sense because Coldplay used to open for U2, and Chris Martin always cites Bono as one of his greatest influences and heroes. "A Rush of Blood to the Head" still reminds me of U2, but it definately sounds like the band is starting to get more comfortable with themselves as they search for their own "sound". "X &Y" sounds like it's from outer space and showed the band getting more experimental. "Viva la Vida" is by far my favorite album by Coldplay because for the first time, they sound like Coldplay. They've got their own distinctive instrumentation, rythym, and style, and it's incredible.

Honest Truth: "Viva la Vida" (the song) is not as good as everyone makes it out to be. "Viva la Vida" (the album) is Coldplay's best work so far.



#3. The Lord of the Rings Trilogy

To clarify right off the bat, I'm talking about the books, not the movies. But these books plus The Hobbit are some of my favorites. They're kind of hard to read, but that's because Tolkien put his heart and soul into writing them. He didn't just make new creatures and end there. He gave them histories and even invented written and spoken languages for all of them. He didn't just create a new world. He drew elaborate and consistent maps so we could see Middle Earth. He even wrote several other books, such as The Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales that give us the whole history of Middle Earth and all its characters. And yes, the movies are epic as well.

Honest Truth: Saruman taking over the Shire at the end of Return of the King is just stupid.

#2. The Harry Potter series
Yes, I just put Harry above Frodo. Sue me. Like Tolkien, J.K. Rowling created a magical universe from scratch and set it right next to the real world. She wrote a 7 part story of a teenage wizard and made a school that seemed fun. There were a million characters that we loved, and about half of them died, but almost all of the deaths helped Harry grow and the story develop. She made Voldemort who, in my eyes, is right up there with Emperor Palpatine and Sauron. She made us grow attached to the characters even moreso than Tolkien did, and each book had about 2 dozen connections to each of the other 6 books that you don't really understand or appreciate until you've read all of them.


Honest Truth: The epilogue in Deathly Hallows isn't all that bad, and you'd whine if it wasn't there. And Dumbledore is straight.





#1. Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends
That's right. Above Harry Potter and Frodo Baggins, John Lennon and Chris Martin, James Bond and Kiera Knightley, Christmas songs, coconuts, and our entire country is Thomas the Tank Engine. This was the first part of pop culture that I ever got into and obsessed over. I had the diecast trains, the videos, and books. I had Thomas board games, Thomas puzzles, Thomas shirts, Thomas Christmas ornaments, Thomas cookies, and Thomas bedsheets. When my parents potty-trained me, I got Thomas toys as rewards for not crapping my pants. I was Thomas for for my 4th and 5th Halloweens. I had at least 2 nightmares about scary parts of the TV show as a little kid. Thomas was the original reason of why blue is my favorite color. I'm not sure if I loved Thomas because I loved trains, or if I loved trains because I loved Thomas, or both. But they definately went hand-in-hand. Thomas and Friends started out as a children's book series, The Railway series, written by the Rev. W. Awdry from 1945 to 1972. In 2000, my parents gave me Thomas the Tank Engine: Thee Complete Collection, which includes all 26 books written by Awdry. I crack it open every now and then to read about Thomas, Edward, Henry, Gordon, James, Percy, Toby, and the rest of them, and when I have a son, these will be his bedtime stories.

Honest Truth: "Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends" was better than "Sesame Street", "Barney", "Reading Rainbow", and "Mister Roger's Neighborhood" combined. I will physically fight you over this fact of life.

Batman doesn't like chocolate

Things are/have been pretty crazy. For starters, I had an awesome break. I got to see a bunch of awesome people and have Thanksgiving dinner again. It was great to be home for a longer period of time than two days. I got to play Wii, go to a Sabres game with Megan, play trombone, see the new James Bond movie (much better than Casino Royale), spend time with Emily and Jordan, and all sorts of other cool things. Oh, and I finally shaved and cut my hair. I had a goatee for about three days, but it was weird-looking so I got rid of it. My birthday was very nice. I got tuna rice and chesese, and LOONEY TUNES! Thanks to Golden Age Collection Vol. 6 from my parents AND burning a DVD this past week, I am now up to 987 cartoons. When I hit a thousand, you'll all know because I'm planning a big event with people. It'll be fun.

I came back to Houghton on my birthday and had to work on math homework and a history paper due the next day. The history paper was about railroads and the Civil War (guess who got to pick the topic) and I think I did really well on it. Monday, however, was rough. We had an Advanced Composition research paper on Robinson Crusoe due on Tuesday, and naturally all of us waited until Monday to get started. We had to come up with a thesis, find and read 8 articles on the book, and tie them all together in an 8 page paper. It was a really miserable day. Here's how it went down on Monday

-I started work at about 2:30 (spanish class was cancelled)
-I finished Tuesday at 4:00 in the morning (13.5 hours after I started, and 5.5 hours before it was due)
-I read 8 articles as well as much of Robinson Crusoe over again
-My paper was 8 pages and 2,409 words long.
-While reading and writing, I listened to over 30 classical music songs. (some were over 15 minute long!)
-I had two dinners (Tuna Rice and Cheese at 4:45 and Big Al's at 8:30.)
-I only watched 2 Looney Tunes cartoons
-I drank 5 caffinated drinks (1 Cherry Coke, 2 Dr. Peppers, 1 Root Beer, 1 Jones Soda)
-Due to these drinks I went to the bathroom over 2 dozen times
-At about 5:30, I had to put my pillow on my chair and sit on it because my butt was sore

At about 4 AM, I finished. I handed it in on Tuesday and after class and cleaning showers I did...nothing. All day long. It was my day of healing. I lied around Roth and ate food and watched a bunch of my new Looney Tunes. It was great. (Coincidentally, it was also mine and Emily's 25 month 'anniversary'. Go us.)

Another thing I've been doing is making new videos, all using music by Coldplay from their new album and EP. I started one for "Violet Hill", but it was lame so I scrapped it. Right now, I'm working on one for "Life in Technicolor" which includes a bit of the Vitamin String Quartet's version of the song as well as Coldplay's songs "The Escapist" and "Life in Technicolor II". It's coming along pretty awesomely. I'm spending way too much time on it, but it looks great and will be worth it when it's done. I've also got some ideas for "Lovers in Japan" and "Glass of Water", but those probably won't happen for a while.

Yesterday was pretty good. It was the halfway-through-the week point, which was nice. I went to class, vegged a bit more, and watched "Forrest Gump" with Mel and Seth. Great movie.

Today has been a "nothing day" as well. I slept in until 10:00 (Adv. Comp. is cancelled for today and Tuesday), went to an informational London meeting at 11, had lunch with my friends, and came back to Roth and messed around on the comptuer, which leads right up to now. When I finish this, I'm going to clean the showers.

Finals are coming up. I should probably get on that. But Christmas is coming up too. That's a lot cooler than finals.

Here is one of the things I was doing on the internet today. These are spoofs of those motivational posters you see everywhere, with the epic picture of a guy climbing a mountain or something, and the caption says "Victory" or "Teamwork" or something cheesy like that. These ones are better. Some of them are a bit mean, but you're all big boys and girls and the posters are still funny. If you can't read the smaller caption, click on the picture and it should get better. I'll post again later. See ya.

Pre-Thanksgiving

Hello, hello. Let's see...what's happening at Houghton. Well, right now, it is snowing quite heavily outside. The sky is dark and it's pretty cool looking. Fall break is in two days, so things are pretty crazy right now. I got out of Spanish class 20 minutes early, so that was pretty fantasic. Before that, I managed to stay awake in my American History class, AND I got a 93 on a test we took last week, so I was twice as proud of myself there. My morning was a lot less awesome though. I had an exam in Bib Lit that I did alright on, and then Mel, Sarah, and I bombed a Math exam. It was pretty crappy. But, I'm doing well in my other classes, so my GPA shouldn't crash and burn too badly. And I've still got one more exam and a couple more homeworks in Math that can get that grade back up, not to mention a group project that Mel, Sarah, and I worked on, so I'm not too worried. I mean, I did better on the exam than I thought I would. I might even pass, but we'll see. Plus, I've got two papers due on the first two days we get back from break, so I'm going to try really really hard to get some of that done today and tomorrow, but we'll see how that goes.

So that's the school part of college. Other than that, not much has been happening. This past weekend, Mark, Elisa, and Lindsey appeared in the Shakespeare play "Measure for Measure." We all went to see them, and they were fantastic. I've got a video that I'll be posting at some point later, but here are a few pictures of us after the play in the meantime.

Also, two more birthdays- this past Friday was Mom's birthday, and today is Megan's! Happy birthday to both of you! Below is a picture of Mom and me this past summer at Amherst State Park. That's one of my favorite places to go to, and she wanted me to show her around, so I did. It was fun.

This is an awesome picture of me being cute and Megan being Megan. There's really not much else to say.

So that's basically it. I'm coming home tomorrow for Thanksgiving break, and I'm pumped. Although so far, I've had 3 Thanksgiving dinners this month (1 with my dad's side of the family, 1 for all of Houghton College, and 1 with Rothenbuhler Hall that included dodgeball!), so #4 on Thanksgiving Day will be fun. I'm currently planning on seeing Emily, Jordan, Christina, Carrie, Joe Paul, and Alex, and maybe some more people, and I'm very excited about that. And it's my birthday on Sunday, so that's always good.

And finally, because no post would be complete without me imposing my love for Looney Tunes on all of you guys, here's Tweety Bird's first cartoon appearance. It's for Mom and Megan, because their favorite Looney Tunes character is Tweety. And, it just so happens that Tweety and Mom share a birthday! Tweety's first cartoon, "A Tale of Two Kitties" debued on November 21, 1942 (ok, so the year is different). Sylvester isn't in this one, because he wouldn't be created for another 3 years, and Tweety's enemies are two cats who are caricatures of a famous comedy duo (bonus points and a hug for the first person who can tell me who!). Also, since this was made during World War II, there are three WWII references in this cartoon. See if you can find them! They're really hard...

Special Video Post

Hey guys. Sorry it's been so long since the last real post. Part of that has been due to me being lazy, but the main reason is that nothing new has happened here. I mean, I've had a lot of stuff happen at home this past month, but most of you know all that. And the reason for this blog is to keep you guys updated on what's going on at Houghton. But I'll try to be better for the rest of the semester. Although the truth is, the rest of the semester is only like a month, and then I'm in London. You'll get good stuff when I'm in London, trust me. But for now, you have a video at the bottom of this post. Everything except the soccer game was filmed with a video camera I rented from the communications dept. this past weekend. The soccer game was just shot on my digital camera. It's got a few of my friends and Houghton in the winter, and then me, so have fun with that. Talk to you later!

Love and peace,

Dan

Fanboys

The next big movie I need to see...who's going with me?

Birthdays and Babies

Today is a double birthday: Grandma Hahn and Uncle Chris! Happy birthday to both of you, and I love you and miss you a lot.

Also, Jeremy and Lauren Schenk had their baby last night!!! They had a daughter, and her names is Lillian Sarah Schenk. She was born at 10:05 pm PT and is 7 lb 9 oz and 19.5 inches. I've been talking to Carrie today, and she is freaking out. She's really excited about being an aunt, and I know she'll be a great one. We were joking about how little Hayden has a girlfriend now. (just kidding!) But she's seriously really excited, and Caleb is just as excited about being an uncle. So congrats, Lauren and Jeremy! One more girl for Mr. Gillings! ;) I've got a photo of Lillian, but I'm not sure if I'm able to put it up or anything, so just take my word that she's a cutie!

Other than that, not much has been going on this week. I had a paper and a quiz, and they were obnoxious, but I was able to make another LT DVD. Plus, tomorrow my parents and sister are coming down to Houghton for the weekend. It's Family Weekend or Parents Weekend or something like that, and I'm really excited. Today has been a good day too. I got some good homework done, the weather was nice, I found out about Lauren and Jeremy's baby (Jillian Parsons was very excited to find out too!), and I got to spend some good time with my friends. As for the rest of the night, I have a math help session at 7:00 with Mel and Sarah, then I'm going to talk to Em, then we're going to split up at 9 to watch Grey's Anatomy (her) and The Office (me), then I have a 3rd West Bible study at 10, then it's back to Em, then bed! (With a shower and a couple Looney Tunes thrown in here and there) Take it easy!

Midterms and Fall Break

This past week started out being hectic and obnoxious, but ended up being great. I had 5 exams: 3 on Monday (Math, American History, Spanish), 1 on Tuesday (Advanced Comp.), and 1 on Wednesday (Bib Lit).They were stressful, especially the three on Monday, but I overall felt like I did pretty well on all 5. I know that my Math exam grade was an 85, and my History was a 90, and I was very happy with both grade.

Luckily, Wednesday was the last day of classes before break. Most of my friends, including Adam, left that night. I, however, wouldn't be leaving until Thursday afternoon. Wednesday was not productive at all. I did absolutely zero homework and I don't really feel too bad about it. After all, I had just gotten through 5 midterms, it was the first night of break, I could sleep in the next day, and I had the whole room to myself. Basically, I just did nothing. I went for a walk around the campus, which grew emptier and emptier each hour as more students went home. I watched some Looney Tunes. I did some laundry. I talked to Emily. I watched the Sabres game. I watched the most recent James Bond movie, which was better than I remember it being, but it's still not one of my favorite 007 flicks. The next one comes out in November, and it looks pretty good.

Thursday at Houghton was very surreal. It was like a ghost town. For those of you who have read the Harry Potter books, it was exactly like all the chapters where it's Christmas vacation at Hogwarts, and like 90% of the students leave, and there's only like 4 who stay. It felt just like that. Well, there was more than 4, but you get the drift. Actually, now that I mention it, there were only 4 guys on 3rd East other than me, so ha! We broke open a golf ball and it was just a really really long line of rubber band wound into a ball. So we wrapped it all the way around the kitchen area and the bathroom and taped it to the walls. Sadly, it wasn't there when we came back on Sunday.

Thursday afternoon, Emily and Maggie came! It was nice to see Maggie again, and a VERY huge relief to be back with Em, especially after such a harsh week. After some antics and Wendy's (yeah Baconator!) we went back to Maggie's dorm in Rochesterand watched Grey's Anatomy, which is their favorite TV show. I've never seen it before, and it was pretty good. Em looks exactly like one of the characters, and I guess a lot of people say that about her. I also got a crapload of food from the school store because Maggie has this sweet meal plan in which she needs to spend like 1600 bucks by the end of the semester. She said that she would never be able to spend that much on food, so they let me go on a mini shopping spree. I bought: 2 bottles of Cherry Coke, 1 bottle of Powerade, a Crunch bar, a Twix bar, Reese's Pieces, a Chocolate pudding snack pack, 5 bags of popcorn, a big carton of Goldfish, a box of Cheez-Its, a box of Double Stuff Oreos, 2 things of soup, some Nutter Butter cookies, and a can of Pringles. And it cost me nothing, and actually did Maggie a favor. Basically, she became my favorite non-Emily female in about 10 minutes time.

I spend the rest of Thursday and all of Friday and Saturday with my Em. It was very refreshing not only to be with her, but also to be back in civilization. Houghton is a perfect fit for me, but it definately helps me appreciate places like Williamsville and Penfield for being so close to cities like Buffalo and Rochester. Houghton is close to nothing, and that's nice. But I had a lot of fun in Penfield. We went to the mall and had Friendly's for lunch. Both of us bought a video game: she bought a Mario game for Game Boy Advance, and I bought a collection of 9 Sonic the Hedgehog games on one disc for Gamecube, which I'm very pumped about. We also went to Wegmans on several occasions, and it was very good to be reunited with thier BLT subs and bakery dept. I got 3 doughnuts, a crouissant, and a chocolate chip muffin. They tasted great, and made me think of Helping Hands and Dairy.

Other activities included dinner at Chili's with Maggie, trips to Taco Bell (good food, but not Mighty), Target, and Border's, watching the extended version of "The Two Towers" (LOTR=good movies), playing Wii and Garfield Monopoly (I won), and visiting Lollypop Farms, a local animal shelter that had a lot of cute dogs and cats. A long time ago, Emily got one of her cats, Tigger, there, so it had some nostalgic meaning for her. We also watched some Looney Tunes from some of my VHS tapes that I had given her when I went to college. At Houghton, I only brought my cartoons on DVD, so all my cartoons on videocassettes can't be watched. Luckily, I could watch the ones that I had left with Em, so that was good. Due to cold weather, we couldn't go to this one park, and due to confusion over dates, we couldn't go to the corn maze, but we'll definately do both sooner or later. We already did the corn maze with Jordan long before we started going out. That was a good, clean, awkward time.

Sunday morning, we met my mom in Batavia and said goodbye. I went with mom back to Williamsville, where we went to church. THAT was very nice to get back to. We got there a couple of hours before the service started (Mom had worship team rehersal), so I wandered around the church, and then I wandered around the neighborhood, going through the cemetary and visiting Mr. Masteller, going to the elementary school and playground and taking a picture of Will Edward's brick, and going through Jordan's neighborhood, tracing our route from his house to Sunset Park. Then I went to Tim Horton's, got some food, and went to church.

Those of you who read my post(s) about my first visit to Williamsville know what I discovered about home and what it meant. So I can't even tell you how relaxing and enjoyable it felt to be back at Harris Hill with the people there. It felt so right and good. There were some noticeable changes, such as a new nursery attendant (Mrs. Cummings gave up the job so she could attend services) and no Mr. Don Trautman at the door (he died shortly after I went to college), but everyone else was there, nice and unchanged. It was so comforting, just the way I expected my first visit to feel. I sat with my little buddy Shawn for the first part of the service and mom for th second part, and I felt so refreshed by it all. I was very sad to leave, but I'm even more excited to go back in 2 weeks.

After some much-missed Pizza Hut, mom and I went to the Bills game. I usually don't care too much about the Bills, but ironically, since I've left home, I've been missing and following them more. This game was a lot of fun. It was strange though, because when we got there, we found out that the stadium had no power! The vending areas were pitch black, and when we got to our seats, there was no music, no speakers, no scoreboard and no jumbotron. It was funny because the players kept on getting called on delay of game, because they had no way of knowing how much time they had to make a play. The power eventually came back on, then went away again, then came back to stay. Ironically, we were playing the Chargers, so that was weird. We ended up winning 23-14. Then mom brought me back to Houghton, swinging by Burger King on the way. Shortly after she left, Adam came back, and I unpacked a little, showered, read some Robinson Crusoe, and went to bed, ending a very nice and much needed breakThis is the unlit, unpowered scoreboard.

This is when the power came back on!

This is the pitch-black stadium.

Touchdown!

For Megan

This was yesterday. I love it. As good if not better than the Drury brawl. What do you think? (Senators brawl below, Islanders brawl above) I think that if this stuff keeps up, Buffalo might get a nice rep for crazy fights, which would be pretty spectacular. Maybe we already have one, I don't know. Megan, what NHL team is most known for crazy brawls? Is it us now?

I love the Sabres. So much. Not half as much as my sister, but I doubt anyone, including the players' wives, loves the Sabres as much as Megan. Fantastic.

Houghton in the Fall

I should be a lot more stressed out than I am right now. I really should be. I've got 5 midterms next week. 5. In less than 3 days. 3 of them are on Monday alone, then one each on Tuesday and Wednesday. I should study a lot more than I have been; I should be studying now, but the problem is that a-I don't know how to study for some classes, such as math, and b-you know how you get in those moods where you just can't be productive? You try to be, you really do. You try to read, but it's not sticking and you've got to read a paragraph or page 2 or 3 times to actually get anything out of it. That, and I keep on getting distracted on the computer. And furthermore, I have downloaded over 100 Looney Tunes cartoons from YouTube and have made 8 DVDs. Thanks to my wonderful TV, I can watch them, which is nice, but i watch way too many. 1 or 2 a day isn't bad, really. I mean, they're 6 and a half minute cartoons, so they lend themselves easily to short breaks. The problem is, they lend themselves a little too easily. It's not hard for me to watch 4 or 5 or 6 in one day, and there goes 30-45 minutes out of my day. The worst was when I watched 10 in one day, but that was a special occasion and exception to the rule.

Don't get me wrong-I have been getting better with time management. Ask Emily. I've recognized that my two major distractions come from my TV and laptop, so this past week I've been taking my homework, a snack, my Nalgene, and my iPod and I've been doing my hw on the ski hill. It's great because the view is absolutely beautiful, especially with the leaves changing, and it reminds me a lot of the view from the top of the hill at Camp Findley. Pretty much the only difference is that there's more hills in the distance and no lake at the bottom, only a valley. But the weather has been great this week, so it's been easy to go outside. And today I got my camera back from being fixed, and I went out and took a lot of pictures, some of which I'll post below.

But yeah. I'm doing alright with everything. Could I be doing better? Probably. Could I be doing worse? Definately. I'll get through mid-terms, and even do some studying between now and then. Like yesterday, I went through a review sheet for Bib Lit, and I'm going to go to the review session on Monday, so that will help. I made flash cards for Spanish and Adv. Comp. (english), and I've gone through those a couple times today, and I'll do so a lot more in the upcoming days. Math I'm kind of screwed on, but how the heck do you study for math anyways? Whatever, I'll just look through some old hw's or something. Spanish won't be too terrible, it's basically just vocab and verbs. American History is gonna be tough because it's 4 essays that can cover anything from precolonial times to the Antebellum period, so anything goes there, but I'll do what I can with it. So I'll survive. I know I will. And the best part is that Thursday (the day after my last midterm ends), is my last day of classes because next weekend is Fall break. And the best part about THAT is the fact that I'm going to spend it in Penfield with Emily. I am so excited for that, you don't even know. It's the biggest thing that will get me through these midterms. And the Sunday while I'm on break, I'm going to go back to Buffalo and go to church, which will be very nice, and then Mom and I are going to the Bills game. So all I gotta do is get through Wednesday, and I'll be home free, literately. So now you get some pictures that I took today. If you click on them, they should get mad big. I recommend doing it for some of the ones from the hill, because the view is gorgeous and the little pictures don't it justice. Peace.

The field next to Roth.

Path to the bridge to Roth.

The path from Roth to the rest of the campus. (Basically, me just turning 180 degrees from the last picture)


This is Fancher Hall as seen from my window. I literately just sat at my desk and took the picture. It's a great room for a lot of reasons, and this view is one of them.

The front of Rothenbuhler Hall.

The creek right in front of Roth.

What Roth looks like from the creek.

The view from the ski hill. This picture, like most photos, doesn't even begin to do justice to the real thing.

Some trees on top of the hill.

That's the ski lodge in the corner.

Burke Field.



I'm assuming this was left by an ROTC officer and his girlfriend...

At one point, 2 guys and a girl came up, and the guys tried to run up the roof of the ski lodge, which honestly is really hard to do. That is as high as either of them ever made it. It was pretty funny to watch, and I even tried it a couple times, but no one even came close to the top.

Two gloves in a tree. This photo has some pretty good composition, I think. I like it, anyways.

This is me, with a slightly greenish-yellow glow, listening to U2 from the early 80's, not studying, and apparently happy about it. It's a good thing midterms aren't in 3 days, 'cause then I'd be screwed! Wait a minute...