maybe i'm not tall enough to be a supermodel...

but i'll never have trouble fitting into a seat on an airplane. :]

yes. it's always interesting to notice how cramped in people can be on airplanes. but lucky for me, i'm short enough to not have that problem.

on the flight to denver, both the people next to me (i prefer the window seat) were complaining because the people in front of us all reclined their seats.
then, i flew home on the same flight as my parents, and my dad kept asking me if i wanted to put my purse above instead of under my seat so that i had room for my feet. i guess it was hard for him to understand the possibility of having enough room since he's so tall.

anyway. i'm still pretty tired and recovering, but the weekend was amazing. i don't want to be home, except to see james.
well i have some pictures to post, but i'm not feeling up to it right now. i just wanted to check in and say that i hope everyone had a fabulous holiday!

reunion.

tis the season for reunions, right?





well tonight, i went to have sushi with kal and kade. how fun!
when james and i got there, brian was there as well. he has a class with james this semester, and another boy from their class came to dinner too, so james had a good time too. then mark ended up coming as well. it was nice to see some of the boys i haven't seen for so long. :]

now. does anyone have a suggestion about how to make myself become more interested in doing the laundry i need to do in order to pack!?

weekend review.

i kept meaning to blog this weekend, but it didn't happen.

anyway. it was a good weekend. lots of excitement.
[which was needed after getting the terrible test score.]

friday night, james and i went to see american gangster with yenh and joey. it was seriously so so good. i'm generally really bad at watching movies with violence, but this one was so good, it made up for it.



saturday was thanksgiving for my club. i had it at my house last year, so i ended up having it here again. that means i had to clean things saturday morning. plus, our turkey maker from the past several years graduated last year. that left me to bake the turkey! it was my first time ever making a turkey, and i did it all by myself. i'm not going to lie... i was pretty proud. and everyone said it was really good, so i was super happy about that. :] we had a small group, but it was really fun. lots of yummy thanksgiving food.

saturday night was a bit of a girls' night. deepa wanted to see august rush, but it was sold out when we got to the theater. so we ended up seeing the bee movie. it was cute, but not fabulous.

i was just going to stay home once i got done with the movie, but then erin called me to tell my portugal. the man was playing a show here. so i decided to go. i ended up seeing andrew there. so random. we talked for a little bit, but then he had to leave. ah well. it was nice to see him since the phone number i had for him is no longer his phone number.

sunday was a rough day at work. things kept going wrong with the computer, so that just made it a little harder than it should have been. james came for lunch though, so that was really nice.

we also had my favorite pizza for dinner... from jj's pie company. i had the wings, which made me a happy girl. plus i stole some of james' crust to dip in the honey. mmm. :]

well. i think it's time to go shopping now. i still need to find something to wear to my cousin's wedding reception while i am in denver. has anyone seen anything super cute lately? i'm having a hard time finding something i like.

p.s. alyssa, i realized i have lab meeting on wednesday, so i won't be done until around 4pm, so i probably won't make it out until closer to 5pm. will that work for you?

bad day.

yep. i had a met reg exam today, and i have never felt so bad leaving an exam.
it's just plain frustrating.
especially after getting and A on the first exam, then preparing in the same manner, and then having to turn in the exam with a 14 point question left blank.
blah. i don't even know what to do about it. i'm just at a loss.

i'm trying to stay motivated with school, but it's so hard. first of all, i feel like i can't keep up, but then there are just too many other things i'd rather be doing with my time.

i made it to the last round of last scrapper standing, but i'm not going to do the challenge.
it seems sort of ashame not to do it, but i'm just not feeling inspired. :/

ah well.
i guess i just needed to vent.

blind date.

last night i guess i set up a little blind date for liz and zachary. ha.

well first, james, radhika, liz, and i went to dinner at the summit and tried to do a little shopping, but we only had 30 minutes. so it wasn't very successful.

then radhika, liz, and i went to divine, but there was no one there so we went to seven. radhika and i played liar's dice and we all just talked for a while. there was a creeper who came and sat at our table, but luckily zachary came to meet us and the creeper left.

i don't know how good of a match maker i am, but i think it went pretty well. they seemed to get along. :]

liz wanted a grilled cheese, so we tried to go to silver peak, but it was busy and stuff, so we went to awful awful instead. ha. that always makes for a random time. radhika and i agreed that we haven't laughed that hard in a really long time. liz is a good story teller. :] she just kept coming up with more stories that were strangely hilarious. like flying over her bike handlebars on the way to the hilton or trying to get rid of hiccups in paris.


on the walk back to the car, liz and zachary decided to make the alley look "more like an alley" by scattering the newspaper that had been dropped. i decided it did look more like an alley, so i took this photo. ha.

some other random things happened too.

i saw sydney at seven, and then a bit later... the roommate that moved in to replace her came to seven too. how random.

then when we were leaving seven to go to silver peak, i saw blake cooper. even more ranodm.

and right when i walked in to silver peak, i saw owen mackedon. hello random.

it was a fun night though. :] now it's time to read and study. i have an exam in metabolic regulation on wednesday, and i have to have a book read for core humanities on wednesday as well. eek. all i want to do is work on fun scrapbook stuff, but i just can't. grr. :/

yeo.bo.sae.ohh.

well. you can't really spell korean words in english, but i make attempts. it's the only way i can remember. i think that is hello.

last night, we went to dinner at carol's boyfriend's restraunt, so i asked carol and her sister if i was saying it right, and they tried to help me spell it in english so i can remember. ha. :] it will probably still take a while before i will say it to james' parents or anything like that.

i think i managed to get most of the photos i wanted up in that last post. that was a serious pain. everytime i tried to do more than one photo, i would wait forever then get an error. so i had to upload them one at a time, which means i trimmed down the amount i was going to post. ah well. that's a pretty good selection i think.

i *finally* went to the gym tonight. luckily james was there when i got there and he was just finishing up, so he came upstairs [where the girlie machines are] when he was done and helped me out. there are so many machines that i have no clue how to use. so he told me what i should do and helped me learn how to do the lifts properly. really helped. then i went for a really short run until i got lightheaded and dizzy. [what's the deal with that lately!?]

tonight we had a random little get-together at mike's house. it was a lot of biochemers. both the grad students from my lab were there too. so everyone was playing guitar hero. but i refused. and i will contiue to refuse. i really don't need another addiction. and everyone else was smoking the hookah. i stayed away though... smoke gives me such a bad headache. they were in the garage though, and i still had my gym clothes on... so it was too cold for me to be out there, which left me with a good excuse to stay away. :]

so here's the highlight... i'd eaten a salad before i went to the gym, so i was pretty hungry and james and liz and radhika were too. so we went to dairy queen. liz is a vegetarian, so she wanted a grilled cheese. so radhika asked if they had grilled cheese. the drive-thru guy said no. so we were all thinking what the heck... are they serious. and i pointed out that they have toast... so really... it seemed a little strange to us. so liz goes, "will you ask him if i can have two pieces of toast with cheese melted in the middle?" ha. so radhika actually did ask, and the guy goes, "umm. well. i guess i can do that. i'll just put it in the microwave or something." it was seriously hilarious to us. but liz got her grilled cheese, so all was well.

anyway. i'm so super tired. and so super sick of school. and so super wanting to just scrapbook. ah well. goodnight.

the rest of san antonio.

ok. well i didn't have time to give another update from san antonio. and i've been super tired and catching up on sleep and everything, but i just finally uploaded my photos to my computer. so it's time for a post. [i might be here all evening trying to get the photos to upload. it's not working very well. grr.]




so first there are a couple photos from friday night. when we met for dinner, we went into the room and there was the little tool thing on rollers, you know what i mean... well they dubbed it our "horse" because we would be able to let it carry everything for us. and in the spirit of fiskars and texas, we all got an orange cowboy hat with our fiskateer number on it. it was so funny to meet people that you know from online in person. it's just strange to feel like you "know" them and then actually meet them for the first time.

that night we had a couple little warm up sessions. one of them was called the dna of a scrapper or something like that. naturally, i was very excited about that. so of course, there was no way it could have lived up to my expectations. haha. it was ok though. we were just supposed to make a little book about what who we *were*, who we *are*, and who we *want to be*... so i did like a past/present/future thing. but i didn't finish it. then we were supposed to make a layout using the letters of our name to describe ourselves. yeah. i didn't finish that one either. ha.

saturday was better. i slept so well friday night and really didn't want to wake up, but managed somehow. we had some little breakout sessions... three classes with the lead fiskateers. i didn't finish any of those projects. [do you see a theme here? well. i wasn't the only one. in fact, i got a lot further than some people.] we also had a session with the brains on fire people. i'm still not 100% sure what part they were playing in this, but i know they organized it mostly, and i think they are sort of like the public relations firm that fiskars is using to build their company.



anyway. we went to a nice little lunch at this cute little buffet style place. i think that was my favorite meal of the trip. [i'm not a huge fan of mexican food, but of course, that was the focus for most of the food.] on the walk to lunch, we were waiting for the group to catch up and somehow i happened to be standing next to two other amys. sort of random that out of 50, three of us were named amy. but they were really cool. so we sat together at lunch with one more lady named sharon, but we made her an honorary amy. ha.





then we walked around the alamo for a while. i hung out with one of the amys and we just sort of wandered around taking cool photos and went to the gift shop. :]

what else...

oh we had a class with nancy, one of the designers for cloud 9. it was a cd calendar thing, and i finished the cover, january, and half of february. ha.




then we went on this cool boat tour. the whole area was just so pretty. i sat with the two amys. :] i was amazed at how long the boat tour was. i thought it would be a silly little thing... but it was actually really long and nice. we saw 4 or 5 weddings on the way. kind of funny.


then we got dropped off for a mexican food dinner and walked back to the hotel. i got some neat photos on the walk back. i also got really dizzy so that i almost fell over while i was walking. it was a little scary. and i was so nervous since you can just fall right off the edge into the water with nothing to stop you! i still don't believe that onle 3 people fall in per year. i think people just don't report it or something.

after that, we had a class with heidi grace. it was amazing. definiely a highlight of the trip. she is just adorable. she's pregnant right now with a girl who they plan to name ireland. she is seriously the best story teller. she made us tear up and then immediately laugh hysterically. yeah. that was great. and i actually almost finished her project! i could have finished, but i had been trying to get a photo with her, but since everyone else was too... i kept just going back and sitting down. so eventually, she came over and asked me if i was ok. by this point, i had been thinking about my thesis and was a little mad at myself for not spending more time on the rough draft. even though everyone said it didn't matter and not to worry about it... i still was. big time. so this was really on my mind, and when she asked if i was ok... bam. i started getting all teary. and i couldn't really explain it to anyone. it was so embarrassing. i wanted to go clean myself up a little bit, so i left early and didn't finish my project. ah well. :]

that night, we had some cropping time. so i talked to a few people. one lady told me her husband works for genentech, so if i want a summer internship or something to just send her an email. ha. how cool. then angela, amy, and i talked for a while about everything that's been going on lately with the scrapbooking industry. it all makes me so sad. i wish we could all be supportive of each other instead of being jealous. grr. anyway. it was a good talk that we had. good bonding time. :]

angela and i stayed up until like 4am packing all of our stuff and talking. ha. good call. not! the morning came way too soon. we had a nice breakfast. it was probably my second favorite meal of the trip... there was bacon, so i was a happy girl. then we had a little graduation ceremony and we each got a little necklace with a scissors charm. cute.




after that, it was pretty much over. some of us who didn't have to leave yet went to lunch on the riverwalk. mexican food of course. luckily i was able to get a hamburger. [for $13, but whatever. haha.] then we took a bunch of random silly photos on the walk back to the hotel.

everyone was so worried about their bags being overweight. angela and i didn't depart until 5:00pm, but we took the 2:30 shuttle because we just figured we could hang out with people at the airport. we also had extra time to make sure our bags were ok... angela was close with one of her's... about 45 pounds. but both of mine were only like 25-35 pounds. i think most people had one big bag and one little bag, but i had two medium bags. i also packed a ton of stuff in my carry-ons. they were so stinking heavy! but we made it without any problems. the lady next to me on the flight to reno had two little puppies with her. i had no idea you could take them as a carry-on, but they didn't make a sound the whole flight. most people didn't even know they were there until she was getting off the plane.

yep. so it was an amazing trip. a bit of a blur. and i'm a little mad at myself for putting school stuff on the back burner, but it all works out, right? sad to have it over, but happy to be home. :]

san antonio day 1.

i'm here in san antonio.
i didn't get to go to sleep before i had to catch my flight, so that was a bad start to things.
now i just want to be home.
i'm having a hard time getting into this whole thing... i feel bad complaining about it because it should be an amazing experience. but yeah. i'm just not feeling it today.

it doesn't help that i feel like i turned in something that was far from my best work for my thesis rough draft. i wanted to have a good rough draft, but i got to stressed out and behind on getting ready for this trip that i ended up not having enough time to do my best work. :/

i'm also just really anxious and stressed because i have a met reg quiz on monday that i would like to do well on, but i won't have time to study for it. why? because i have to read odd women for core humanities and get my ethics notebook ready to turn in on monday.

so yeah. right now i wish i was at home. i just would be feeling so much less stressed about school. plus it's deepa's birthday and i just called james and *everyone* is out at dinner. all the biochem friends, and all of james' and howie's friends... it sounded like they were having so much fun, which just made it even harder to be missing out.

ok. well i'm tired. i haven't slept in 2 days now and this whole week i've been getting minimal sleep because of so many other assignments and presentations. so yeah. goodnight. hopefully tomorrow i will wake up with a new/better attitude.

p.s. i forgot my camera cord, so i won't be able to share any photos until i get home.