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...

Rampant like herpes, but positive? What?

Random/Homecoming/125th Anniversary

Right now it's 4:25 PM. I'm sitting on a bench outside the newly named Van Dyke Campus Center. It's kind of chilly out, probably the mid-high 60's, but it's really sunny and I'm wearing a warm hoodie so I'm ok. On the bench next to me are two old guys talking about when they were at Houghton back in the 60's. There's a lot of visitors here for Houghton's 125th Anniversary, which I'll talk about more later.


This has been a busy but overall good week. Sunday was good because I made it a point to observe the Sabbath for the first time, something that was encouraged at an all-hall Bible study at Roth last week. I basically just went to church, watched some Looney Tunes, and went on a hike in the woods and through the creek. Mid-week, I felt pretty sick for a while, the combination of poor eating habits and even poorer sleeping habits (or vice versa). But, I adjusted, eating less food and getting more sleep, and right now I'm feeling pretty good.


Yesterday was the Homecoming banquet and dance. I decided that I liked the idea of not spending ten bucks to get dressed up and eat fancy food that I didn't like, so I skipped out on the banquet and played Super Smash Bros. Melee, one of my favorite video games, with Brian and Adam, who also shared my line of thinking. After that, I caved and decided to check out the dance. After taking a quick shower and screwing around with a tie for over half an hour, with unhelpful tips from a magazine article AND YouTube, I gave up hope, audibly cursed Windsor, and threw on a polo. 5 minutes after I got there, I got bored. So I went back to Roth, threw on a sweatshirt, a hoodie, shorts, and sandals, and went puddle-jumping with a similarly-dressed Sarah in the rain. We kicked mud at each other and slid across the quad and basically got nice and wet and muddy (I ignored the fact that I was sick). THEN, we went back to the dance, dripping wet, and danced with Mel and Zac for a bit. It was pretty spectacular.


Even more significant than Houghton's homecoming yesterday was the fact that it was Emily's and mine 23rd month anniversary. That's quite a feat for two teenagers who go to different colleges and have always been long-distance. I'm quite proud of it. Next month, Nov. 2 is our big 2 year anniversary, and I am very excited for that. We're going to get together in Williamsville to celebrate, so maybe we'll see some of you guys there. Also, in a couple weeks, we're going to get together in Penfield for a few days, and I'm VERY pumped for that. Yesterday, she sent me an awesome care package filled with two boxes of popcorn, some raspberry lemonade, a cute little book, and...Looney Tunes comics, both the old school ones from the 50's and the awesome ones from the 90's that I collected as a kid. I also got ANOTHER care package earlier this week from my parents, complete with cookies, banana bread, CD's, and more goodies. I definately felt the love this week.


Even more impressive than Emily and I reaching 23 months was the fact that today, Houghton celebrated its 125th anniversary. Classes were cancelled for today, and there was a very cool service at the chapel this morning which went through the history of Houghton's founding, its presidents, its buildings, and stuff like that. On a personal level, I got to see some awesome people that I know! For instance, Mr. Vogan (a Houghton alumnus and my 1st band teacher who taught me how to play trombone in elementary school), and his sons Jon (South graduate and Houghton student, 2 grades ahead of me) and Jake (South student in Megan's grade) played trumpet during the service. Jillian Parsons was part of it as well, and after the service, I found her with her dad, Pastor Mark! It was very nice to see Mr. Vogan, Jake, and Pastor Mark (Jon and Jillian are nothing new-I see them almost every day!) and it made me miss home a bit. Tonight, there's going to be fireworks and a celebration on the quad, and there's more stuff tomorrow that I'll be checking out. But now, I'm gonna get off the computer and get some food.



This is Emily and me dancing in the snack bar at Camp Findley, where we spent homecoming last year. It was a lot of fun, and the best time I ever had at a dance (not surprising, considering the company and the location!).



This is us at my house the morning after my senior prom this past year (Bocadillo is still passed out on the couch at this point.). Note how Emily looks exactly the same in this picture and the Findley one. It's mad creepy.



This is what my laptop sees.




This is what I see.



This is what my laptop sees when Jamie, Mel's roommate, tries to kill me.