It's a rather nice day out. Windy as always, but otherwise warm. There are only a few patches of snow left around campus, namely the shrunken remains of an igloo on the Mall.
Jazz Fest has been going on since yesterday evening, so as I sit on my bed and type, I hear snatches of saxophone or trumpet or trombone shriek from the direction of the Student Center. I'll be volunteering at tonight's portion of Jazz Fest, and a bunch of us will be wearing "Thank you Bob and Susan" buttons in honor of U of MN president Bob Bruininks, who is also attending tonight. He's retiring this year after having served the University well for a long time.
I also found out today that I got reelected as a Campus Assembly Representative for UMM's student government.
What's really amazing, though, is that the team who won the presidential/vice presidential race only beat the other team by 4 VOTES. Can you believe it? 804 people voted (out of the 1700 students at UMM, which is actually a really high percentage), and it was that close. It's also funny to think that there's a random person walking around campus right now who didn't vote, but if he would have voted, would have voted for the team that ended up losing. That person is 1/4 of the reason why that team lost. Well, sort of. This is me trying to do statistic stuff. Please don't laugh.
I guess my point is that the next time I hear someone say "What's the point of voting? My vote doesn't make a difference!" I'll get right up in their face and laugh. And then I'll tell them the story I just told you.
In other news, I won the Read-a-Thon this year. I think I've explained it in the past, but basically one of my friends and I record all the books we read in one year, and then get together and see who read the most. We also have sub-categories: number of classics read (we debate this), pages read, average length of books read, books read that haven't been read previously, etc.
Here are my stats for April 1st 2010-April 1st 2011:
88 Books (which was exactly my goal)
27,183 pages
308.8 pages per book average
36 new books (I know-this could be higher. I love rereading my old favorites, though)
16 classics (Dracula, A Passage to India, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Fahrenheit 451, Jane Eyre, This Side of Paradise, Memoirs of a Sleep Walker, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, Utopia, Rip Van Winkle, Atonement, King Lear, The Hidden Hand, The House of Seven Gables, Franny and Zooey, The Bell Jar)
What's more is that I do so much reading every day for classes that doesn't get recorded anywhere; I'm constantly reading articles, short stories, poems, passages, essays, etc.
Well I think that's all I have. Sorry if this post has been a little sporadic, but it's been such a busy week that I didn't have the energy to do anything fancy or cohesive.
Tschüss!
Showing posts with label Spring. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Spring. Show all posts
Friday, April 8, 2011
Friday, March 19, 2010
Cheer Up, Sleepy Jean
Daydream Believer is my ballad of the day. Actually, I suppose it's the ballad of my life, in a way. The only thing that could possibly make that song better would be if Paul McCartney did a rendition of it...
Anyway, what have I been doing all day? Oh, reading mostly. Still engrossed in Dracula. How wonderful it is to really be able to submerge in a book without the constant nudge of schoolwork against my brain. Well, scratch that. I actually have a paper for Anthropology that I should be working on right now, but I've proven once again that I'm rather a successful procrastinator. Cape and tights always, always optional (depends on the weather).
Despite the vampire scare last night (see previous post), I think I fell asleep the minute I turned out my lamp; I didn't even wake up when the dog started barking madly at 6 a.m. because the smoke alarm was chirping. And I'm a light sleeper.
The point of this post, I've decided, besides updating you about the goings-on in my life, is to cheer you up a bit. The glorious few weeks of spring we had seem to have been eclipsed by today's cold, gloomy weather, and I'm afraid that everyone around here has been down about it. Don't worry, dear readers. Now that spring has tainted the air and reduced the ice to dirty slush, it cannot be surpressed for long.
Keep your chin up.
Anyway, what have I been doing all day? Oh, reading mostly. Still engrossed in Dracula. How wonderful it is to really be able to submerge in a book without the constant nudge of schoolwork against my brain. Well, scratch that. I actually have a paper for Anthropology that I should be working on right now, but I've proven once again that I'm rather a successful procrastinator. Cape and tights always, always optional (depends on the weather).
Despite the vampire scare last night (see previous post), I think I fell asleep the minute I turned out my lamp; I didn't even wake up when the dog started barking madly at 6 a.m. because the smoke alarm was chirping. And I'm a light sleeper.
The point of this post, I've decided, besides updating you about the goings-on in my life, is to cheer you up a bit. The glorious few weeks of spring we had seem to have been eclipsed by today's cold, gloomy weather, and I'm afraid that everyone around here has been down about it. Don't worry, dear readers. Now that spring has tainted the air and reduced the ice to dirty slush, it cannot be surpressed for long.
Keep your chin up.
Sunday, March 14, 2010
It Might As Well Be Spring
To be completely honest, I've been opposing Spring ever since it dared to show its green head at the end of February. It's not that I'm against the idea of new life, or blooming flowers, or warm weather. It's just that for me, spring has always meant the end of something. The end of school, to be specific.
Yes, you have me. I'm the kid who just about cries on the last day of school, who dreads May beginning in September, and who feels like an era has come and gone with the closing of each school year.
And folks, I'm not ready for my freshman year to be over. It's been really wonderful; perhaps one of the best years of my life. I've been exposed to so many things, I've met so many people, and I've learned so much about myself that I'm loathe to let this beautiful time end.
I realize that I'm still young, and that I still have most of college in front of me, but I have a gut feeling that things won't be the same next year, and that there will be a different quality in the air. You can never, ever go back to the way things were, I suppose.
Anyway, my original point was not to slather on a layer of melancholy, but to inform you that I've warmed up to (if you'll excuse the pun) spring. When it's 60 degrees and you're outside shooting baskets with your dad and the dog is muddy running this way and that way, orange ball rolling against red tongue, you know that spring cannot be all bad.
Here's a bit of an E.E. Cummings poem to make up for it all:
in Just-
spring when the world is mud-
luscious the little lame baloonman
whistles far and wee
and eddyandbill come
running from marbles and
piracies and it's
spring
when the world is puddle-wonderful
Yes, you have me. I'm the kid who just about cries on the last day of school, who dreads May beginning in September, and who feels like an era has come and gone with the closing of each school year.
And folks, I'm not ready for my freshman year to be over. It's been really wonderful; perhaps one of the best years of my life. I've been exposed to so many things, I've met so many people, and I've learned so much about myself that I'm loathe to let this beautiful time end.
I realize that I'm still young, and that I still have most of college in front of me, but I have a gut feeling that things won't be the same next year, and that there will be a different quality in the air. You can never, ever go back to the way things were, I suppose.
Anyway, my original point was not to slather on a layer of melancholy, but to inform you that I've warmed up to (if you'll excuse the pun) spring. When it's 60 degrees and you're outside shooting baskets with your dad and the dog is muddy running this way and that way, orange ball rolling against red tongue, you know that spring cannot be all bad.
Here's a bit of an E.E. Cummings poem to make up for it all:
in Just-
spring when the world is mud-
luscious the little lame baloonman
whistles far and wee
and eddyandbill come
running from marbles and
piracies and it's
spring
when the world is puddle-wonderful
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