Home, rent and Mr. Darcy

so i've been home since saturday night. I was going to call katie but we ended up having dinner with the kersulas and i didn't have time. If you're free tomarrow let me know and i'll call, sounds like school's fun. I found my family's ice skate stash and my mom's fit me and i think my old one's will fit leah and i think we have some other pairs ranging from smaller to size 12 mens so i was hoping we could all go ice skating soon. It costs $10 at grafton ponds and you can rent skates if you want to go but we can't find any skates. let me know if you're interested and when people would like to go.

I saw rent with jess yesterday. It's really good i definitly recommend it even if you've never heard of it before hand (like me) it's worth seeing. the bellows falls opera house looks nice and the seats arn't hideous like ashley said. they have cup holders. we should all go see harry potter like friday (it's playing in bf).

I'm babysitting on new years eve, but hopefully we'll all see each other other times. hope finals go well and see you all when you get home.

producers is coming out christmas!

in other news i only have one more final, tommarrow at two and i'm going home at 5ish. when you college folk get home call me and let me know 'cause i don't know when you're finished. or if you're not to busy studying and would like a little call i'd be happy to talk since it won't be on a calling card.

so until around yesterday things have been pretty crazy. My OED final was three and a half hours long, oral exam. it was the longest three and a half hours of my life. Took french last night and bio yesterday morning. After the test we went to see one of the "stress breaker movies" which was "dazed and confused" a throwback depictin 76 actually really funny. it has ben affleck who plays this overaggressive high school senior and says f**k alot. THe moral of it seemed to be do drugs, smoke pot, drive around while under the influence of both and then make out with the first person you see. but it was still good.

i posted pictures on facebook, pretty much all the good ones i had so check them out.

and in other news i only have a short 2 1/2 week break so we have to make plans to see each other quick! new years eve? etc.

and here's a funny clip proving that
ebert is a jerk.

i think i'm actually going to go to bed before 1 am tonight. it's so weird how a year ago i thought doing homework past 10 meant i'd been procrastinating. owell, we make up for it with nice breaks. i'm really excited about christmas. especially since it'll mean finals are over. my last one is saturday from 2-5pm (next saturday, not this one). Then i get to laze about home. yay! i'm looking foreward to reading some more jane austen, which i now read religiously before i go to bed. Somehow i feel like if i can jsut read a little pride and prejudice before i go to sleep the world can't be that bad of a place after all. it's sort of my bible. speaking of which i've started going to the congregationalist church in town. I wouldn't call myself a regular yet since i've only been twice, but i really liked it. it's UCC like my church at home so most of the people are nice. They have the college kids over for lunch once in a while. i went last sunday to this nice family's house. the woman spins wool, and she taught us a little abou it and fed us hot cider in front of a warm fire. it was very homish. besides in church you get to sing which is fun, and it gets me up on sunday mornings instead of sleeping to insane hours when i groggily dredge out of bed to do homework.

can't wait till we're all home again. happy studying.

-Laurel

Padme Amidala

Which Star Wars character are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

i went and saw my first hockey game today-it was really cool. we won, of course, being the awesome team we are. learned most of the cheers and alot about hockey. thats all for now. buenos noches, or however you say it.

I registered for spring classes this morning, that was a bit of a nightmare but it's all done and i'm in cool classes so that's good. Not much news, just busy with work. one more week till finals so it's crunch time. thanks for the cookies mom. break a leg mary with your play tonight!!.. oh its so exciting she's probably already there getting makeup and costume ready. remember everybody, although its school it's still the holiday season so be excited! i found a pretty cool video clip you should all see, it has will ferrill, i guarantee enjoyement. Happy Holidays!

Le Pen - the next hitler?

I was enlightened in French class today about this party leader in France named Jean-Marie Le Pen. He originally wanted to restore france to a monarchy, but when everyone made fun of him he changed over to attacking immigrants and immigration. His party "Le Front National" is famous for their slogan "France pour les Francais" (france for the french). He's trying to take over power (democratically, ring any bells?) by playing through peoples fears (again. hitler.. duh) of immigrants stating that all of frances problems are caused by them (getting the connection?) anyways, he has this what might seem hilarious, but is actually somewhat terrifying flash videoon the frontnational website which you should all see: he also, as deranged as this might seem, he qualified in the presidential elections in 2002 to go onto the second round of voting, meaning out of all the presidential candidates he was second only to Jacques Chirac. and in the final round of voting recieved 18% of the vote. 18%!!! that's ridiculous considering that this guys political views intend on expelling all immigrants from france. If you want more information wikipedia covers it fairly well.

BEST HARRY POTTER MOVIE EVER!!

I SAW HARRY POTTER FIRST HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!!! we went yesterday at 5:30 pm to sit outside the middlbury movie theatre like hobo's for 6 hours before being let in. thankfully the snow held off until we got inside. we were the second group in line. the line didn't get huge until around 8pm The manager of the theatre had a snape costume that he had sewn himself!! he even had a wig. finally at 12:01 am this morning the movie started. I absolutly loved it, it was so great. like most of the movies they're a lot of parts missing, but unlike most of the other movies this one was really good!!! we didn't get back to the dorm until 3 am so i was pretty tired for classes, but owell. it's friday who cares. and it's so much better to see those movies when you're with a bunch of hard core fans who whistle and cheer at the movie. anyways i won't elaborate too much cause i'm sure you'll all go see it soon. (katie i'll tell you more about if you ask specific questions!)

In doing research on 'hegemony' (for OED of course) i found an interesting web site: why is disney evil? I'm not sure i totally agree but it was interesting anyways. why is disney evil? at least look at the hegemony cartoon if you don't have time to read the whole thing.

see you all v. soon!

Originally a comment on leah's blog.. but since i'm a slacker i'll reuse it

nice to hear you monday was well. My tuesday was pretty good, i was really tired this morning and got up litterally 10 minutes before i had a class in bi hall but i still made it on time! and then i took a 45 minute nap before french class and then a 2 1/2 hour nap this afternoon so lots of rest since i don't have orchestra for a month. I also found out my lab for thursday was cancelled because someone had a severe allergic reaction and had to go to the hospital due to some peanuts that were part of the lab, even though they asked everyone a hundred times if they were allergic to peanuts. But the person's ok and i don't have lab so this is going to be an awesome week. I'll probably post this on my blog too since i bothered to write so much. See you (tuesday?? ) ONE MORE WEEK!!

"Not that I want to be a god or a hero. Just to change into a tree, grow for ages, not hurt anyone." -Czeslaw Milosz

that quote reminded me alot of Jessica and how in 6th grade she wanted to grow up and live in a tree. Which is pretty much what she's doing living in aurora. But it also reminded me of roots, and how humans move so much. trees must have figured out something about how nice it is to just stay in one place. they seem to live much longer, stress free lives. Why is it that humans feel such a need to see everything, go everywhere. In Jane Austen's times we all had to go to london for a while, then it was Europe. Now we better make it to every continent before we die or we havn't lived. Not to mention space travel, poor monkeys.

On another note thanks for all the messages and birthday wishes. I'm working on getting some cool pictures into that frame leah and i use the early birthday present towel everyday when i wash my face. The little whale makes me smile!

I went to see the state championship football game, seeing as it was less than 5 minutes away i had no good excuse. Ashley was there! she tackled me when i wasn't looking, i was so suprised. But then i realized Billy was on the team, so it made sense. She seems to be doing great, enjoying school and all that. My company performance went well. My friends made me cupcakes for my birthday and lured me outside to blow out candles so we wouldn't repeat aiko's birthday incident. I finally watched Napolean Dynamite ("your mom goes to college") My family, including timmy and my grandparents came up to visit on satuday!

Harry potter comes out friday!!

Bet your bottom dollar that tommarow.....

Ok, it's been a loonng while since i posted, but leah was right, the reason has been due to excessive studying. Wednesday I took my second bio midterm and today(/yesterday i guess) i had two humungous papers due (like seriously, no shit, gigormous). But at least i left you with cute monkeys, not crabs like katie (j/k katie, honestly)

I'll send out an email to people soon with more details, but friday (after thanksgiving) around 5 (earlier or later if you want this is just what i'm putting in the email) i thought everybody could come over... you'll get more details in the email.

note- picture not mine, found on google. i only wish i had a pooh bear that big(not really, don't get ideas about sending me a humoungous stuffed animal).

it's too late to write much interesting so i'll go to sleep, but i'll post more stuff tommarow! hope everyone else is having way to much fun for their own good. 8 more school days until break!

12 DAYS!

Excitingness. the weekend will be upon me after french class, but classes are fun so i pretty much consider after finishing thursday homework to be the weekend. We talked about chimpanzees in biology today and i think i definitly want to get an internship working with monkeys in zoos, not labs because that's just depressing.

I think the friday after thanksgiving would be a good time for us to all get together, it sounds like most people are available then. If there's d&d we could go to that too, but other wised everyone should come over and we can have a "finish off the rest of the pies" party. let me know if this works for everybody, any suggestions.

see you later, alligators!

I know i'm kinda late on this front, but i just downloaded Josh Grobin from napster today, and omg, its wonderful. i'm currently trying to type a lab report to it and everytime i get a little overworked about the fact that my experiment sucked, josh makes it all better.

for halloween i wore this sailor dress that we found at a thrift store downtown and was supposidly sailormoon, although i looked more like a 5 year old. you can judge for yourself.

But Aiko, susan and susanna went pretty far out. Aiko was a zebra, susanna and Ewok (like from star wars, i'm sure i spelled it wrong) I MEAN AN EWOK!! that is so cool

We never quite decided what susan was... whatever it was, it was pretty interesting.

We went to a school run halloween party, but as expected it was fairly lame and we left. But we came back to our room and eat food, tryed to hypnotise each other and eventually watched Love Actually.

Today was a typical sunday, trying to get a bunch of work done and enjoy a supposid weekend day. As soon as i finish some of this paper i'll head to bed. i hope everyone's as excited as i am about the upcoming break (17 more school days, oh yay!) Another form of god is in school vacations. The next two weeks look pretty intense, so if i drop off from the face of the earth i'm sorry. i just have a bagillion things to do-but i'll be around anyway because i can't stand not knowing everything that's going on anyway... but i'll probably be slakish on my own post. Muchos lovos

Laurel

I heart U2

Sad news: BF field hockey lost to burr & burton today 2:1, my parents went to watch. grrrr... i wanted to go see the finals!!!! now i'll just be stuck here doing work all weekend.

OED class was dull as expected, but Company rehersal was ok. i definitly need to practice but i think because of the e-mail he knew i was nervous so didn't make any comments other than helpful ones not directed at me:).

oh, and i lied, i think there are now 18 school days till vacation (1 midterm, 1 full lab report, a french test and one more major paper for OED to go!) almost there... and then the really exciting thing is that after vacation i have like two weeks of school, finals and another break! ok, have to go study for a bio quiz, hope you all are being busy little bees. i'll try to make a few calls this weekend so if they're any good times to ring you let me know, other wise i'll have to send you an email b/c my card looses 50 cents each time i try to call but no one answers!! talk to yous soon.

Laurel

OED, and other things that make me fall asleep

18 school days till vacation!!!

i have my oed class tommarow morning, which means snooze time. (did i tell you two people fell asleep in class last week! that's like 15% of the class) the professor, i've come to realize, enjoys listening to himself talk way to much. hence, even though it's a "seminar" in which we should be having "conversations" it's more like we say five words and he takes whatever we said turns it into his own idea and talks about it for 20 minutes, even if he has to repeat himself ten times to fill the time. he also has really strange ideas sometimes. like last week he told us how a few "isolate murders" are "really great" for property values in the area because it takes us off the list of really safe places to live that all the people from new york apparently read, so they don't want to move here. it was strange enough the first time he said it but he decided to reiterate the fact that "a few murders here and there can be good". then tuesday he talked about how the word rape has been changed to sexual harrasment in most legal contexts. this was emphasized by the reminising of how when he was a kid "you raped somebody", and "what is this 'sexual harrasment', it has no emotion behind it!"

he's recruited Erin, of "erin's weird and wonderful word of the day" that we're required to recieve in our email every day, to come to middlebury next tuesday. i believe she's an editor for the oxford english dictionary, which if you're my proffesseur, is a really cool thing. I'm currently finishing my third book about the OED, and have to start the fourth... aggg. after awhile you start to know all these meaningless characters. it's like my little OED family: James Murry, Furnivall, Dr. Jowett and all the others.. i never wanted to know them, they're just the insane family that won't leave.

have to be headed to bed, i didn't get a nap today, although i did manage to fall asleep and drool on one of the couches in the Center for the Arts while trying to read "caught in the web of words", not one of my shining moments.

Nighty night

It's snowing!!

a flutter, a flake, a drip, a drop and then finnaly kerplop! lots of snow. many people very excited, some not as much- stopping by to blame me and my state for the obvious control over the weather which has inflicted the cold.

aiko, susanna and i went out and had a snowball fight and made a very pretty snowman, who died, but was resurected with a slightly smaller head. Some boys in our hall decided to commeserate the event by going streaking in hats and mittens.

it's goin got suck getting to class tommarow, but until then, yay, snow!

numma numma

Go BF!!!

my friend, (from maryland) just burst into my room to exclaim "you mean to tell me people live in this state!" she just got back from a lovely outdoor cross country run, and the poor thing was slightly damp (ok soaked) from the sleet that is falling outdoors. i comforted her with the idea that snow is much more fun than sleet, and that most vermonters i know don't attempt to run outside in this weather.

orchestra was canceled today b/c the director was sick, but this just means i have to be nervous until friday, and now we only have like 4 rehearsals before the show and i can't even play the music, great. i think i'll email him to warn him that i suck.. that might be nice. it would at least alleviate the fear that this would be a suprise. sounds good. yeah, i sent one, but i think he's going to think i'm deranged. owell!

meh

(i know i'm giving sorta a funny look, but it's the only picture of me where you can tell i have green eyes instead of red bunnicula ones!)

hello peoples. good times here, just got back after break and all. lots of work, but all of it enjoyable. tommarow i start rehersals for company and i'm a little freaked out because i don't think i'm good enough do play the music and i'm afraid he'll be like "oh, fuck, she can't actually play" and as there's only one trumpet for the musical that would be kinda a problem... so until then i'll be attempting to supress vomit. but if it goes well it would be really fun to do, so i'm crossing my fingers that either i suprise myself and don't suck, or that other people suck just as much.
we had a lovely fire drill today while i was trying to take a shower.

other than that not much news.. usual-classes going fine, done with mid terms, it's really cold, they'res actually snow on the ground a little south of here. i should go work on stuff

sending big warm hugs to all!!!

Laurel

At Home

to update from wednesday i had my comp sci mid term which i think is the easiest test since ms. weddings' physics class. then bio lecture which was actually interesting because we've stopped talking about all the microlevel doodads and started talking about what most people could consider genetics. most interesting topic was the homunculus, little man believed to reside in body fluids who would be passed to the now impregnated woman and grow into a woman, although this was only a side topic to illustrate the point of how far we've come in genetics i spent the rest of the class imagining a little hunched over man swiming about, quite odd.

french was the last class before break, and then i spent the rest of the day goofing off. we watched and sung along to mulan and i packed up my stuff to go home.

susan (awesome roomate) dropped me off at home on her way to massachusets. she was also driving a few other people including someone she was dropping off at smith so they could visit their sister (just threw that in for leah's interest). they all commented that my road looked very 'vermonty' even though it was 9 at night and you couldn't really see anything.

My mom's in toronto at a concert, but my dad's here and timmy might be coming home for the weekend so so far i'm just chilling. Tommarow i plan to go visit leah. depending on when i leave northampton i'll try to make it to some d&d and other than that i'm just mosying about my house doing tons of laundry.

being home is so weird, i feel like i should go to school. it's just not right to be sitting at home at the end of october without any of you around!! we're definitly all doing somethingover thanksgiving- i have wednesday through sunday off, so friday or saturday (or both!) would be good, let me know when is good for people and we can have a little partay over here, or whatever people want to do.

muchos lovos,
Laurel

Pictures from Midd

Here's the culprit- cake with '18' artistically spelled out with candles- Aiko blowing out her candles, creating smoke that went right up to the next picture

here's the alarm going off, if you look close you can see the little red lights lite up

Aiko eats frosting off exhibit A, birthday candles while we try to enjoy the cake in the hall with siren wailing

napster, fire and noodles

discovered a couple days ago that my school has a napster initiative = free napster. this is deadly. you have unlimited access to way to much music and i now spend all my free time searching for different music, discovering i like alanis morisette and savage garden and generally getting no work done while sidetracking with dolly parton jams. you should all check to see if your school has this, i guess alot do and i had no idea. because though it requires more discipline which i apparently lack, it is awesomness.

my alarm clock has decided to stop working, so the past two days i've had to wake up of my own accord, discovered my body clock is set to 7:35, which isn't too great b/c i have to be at class at 8, and i tend to take little naps before i actually get up, like today when i got up at 7:55 in order to sprint to OED class. today somebody's word was callipygous, which means nice butt- leading to similiar words including the word for hairy butt and large butt. was altogether quite amusing as our teacher insisted on making sure we understood the prefix and suffixes as well as the pronunciation- so you see studying the oxford english dictionary and lexicography can be quite amusing.

ooh.. i just remember i forgot to tell all of the events of this weekend. Aiko, a friend who i believe i introduced to leah when she visited, had a birthday on sunday, so i spent all week gathering required bits to make a cake (pan, bowl, eggs which i had to bike to town to find in torrential rains, etc) and then i and a friend (susanna) suprised her with lit candles and singing happy birthday at her door. she posed for a few pictures for susanna, i'll try to get some up here later, and then blew out the candles- right below the smoke detector- now of course, being freshmen we kinda forgot the whole 'not supposed to have candles in dorms thing' and set off the fire alarm with the smoke. this was at around 1:30 am sunday, but thankfully only the alarm in aiko's room went off, and though it was sorta loud and could be heard throughout the hall, everyone was out underage drinking so we didn't wake anyone up.

we called public safety who sent over an officer, who at first seemed very distressed by our actions against the fire code. but she turned out to be very nice, and we gave her some cake, she took down our names and told us she wouldn't give us a citation if she didn't have too, but since she had to call other people to get them to shut off the alarm she might have to- that would just mean paying a $25 fine. But there were bonuses- everybody saw the fire alarm light blinking in the lobby which shows the room number and came to see who was smoking pot in their room, only to discover cake which we shared with all, and everyone wished aiko a happy birthday. We actually had good laughs and tried to abstain from laughing at the irony of it all while public safety was presant. also became very friendly with public safety person. susan (roommate) thinks it's pretty funny that everyone was out getting smashed while we attempted to throw a small innocent birthday party and got citations.

then yesterday someone burned Ramon noodles in the microwave and we had our first full dorm evacuation, though some people were watching a game on tv and decided to be hard core and continue watching it while the alarms were going off full blast, but they got fined, so don't try this.

interesting link, expecially liked the euphamism section: Wikipedia : Fuck
and of course along with that goes the Flash Video: usage of fuck