Two more weeks!

It's hard to believe, but school is starting up in two weeks!

I've ordered most or all of my books, and they are slowly piling up at the college. One of the funnest days at college is gathering my packages from the mailroom and opening them all. I suspect I am going to have close to 17 different boxes at least.

I have a number of things to do before going back. I just bought 4 yards of a dark navy, almost black, wool suiting that I will use to make a dress. I figure it's about tine I went and made a Little Black Dress, a la Audrey Hepburn. Right now it's drying in the middle of the living room. Today I'll go start work on the pattern. I might have to draft one, or I might use the Jackie pattern from this book: http://www.amazon.com/Famous-Frocks-Instructions-Recreating-Dresses--10/dp/0811877914/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1376498175&sr=8-1&keywords=famous+frocks
Here is a picture of the pattern: http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7129/7052935533_7de9831064_b.jpg
I'd like to rotate the top darts to point more at the shoulder, and make the top have more of a bateau neckline, but we will see what I can do.

I'll be in the Student Apartments with three girls this year, which will be very interesting! I'm looking forward to the various things that come with running our own house.

Classes are going to be really fun, and I'm toying with the idea of setting up a independent study for creative writing. I'll have to figure that out.

Bloglovin', and the Death of Google Reader

<a href="http://www.bloglovin.com/blog/9599947/?claim=acdrrxs78by">Follow my blog with Bloglovin</a>

I'm in the process of moving over to Bloglovin' because Google has discontinued my beloved Google Reader.

Things haven't been terribly busy since my May Term ended. I've come back home and been working. I can't believe it's July already! only two months before I go back! So much to do until then.

More details to be filled in soon.

Semester's End

The Spring Semester is done, and commencement is today at 3. I will be going down and cheering for all of my friends who are walking. So many of them are leaving, but I'm going to have to get used to that. Two more years and that will be me.
It looks like the May Term that I wanted is actually going to happen! I didn't find that out until I had bought the books for both that class and the backup class. Why did I buy both sets of texts? Because the campus bookstore is closing for the first week of may term, and won't reopen until the very last day that I can return the books.
I'm staying about a mile from campus at a house with some friends. It looks like I will be walking to campus. Turns out, I am going to get into shape this summer after all.
Only have three of my six classes have the grades in, and they are the three I am the least concerned about.
I discovered a new favorite video game called Artemis. It's really simple, but more fun than any multiplayer game I've played before. While it's not actually a Star Trec game, it lends itself well to the canon for its spaceship bridge simulation. Each person plays at least one different part of manning the ship, and there's a captain to tell everyone what to do. If there are enough people, he doesn't even touch a computer, but looks at the main screen that we set up in the center. I will be introducing it to my family this summer.

Thoughts on the Past Few Days

Why, when I had 10 extra days to work on a paper, did I leave a very rough draft to be completed the night before it was due?

I do not like staying up until 2am.

I don't know how I feel about this, but I think I broke Godwin's law while writing said paper.

Founder's music video night was fun, but I will never make a fool of myself on camera ever again, thank goodness we didn't win.

I still have no idea whether my May Term is going to happen.

I am totally ready for this semester to be done.

I might have a summer job. This job may have me using Facebook professionally.

Faculty Quotation of the Day:
"You ladies are strange and wonderful."-Dr. Morris

Briefly

This may be something close to hell week for me, but perhaps it's just purgatory.

That's a cheery opening.  Lets start over.

Today's chapel was really good. It was a powerful testimony of an alum who came to my college thinking he was a Christian, but living a destructive lifestyle. After he graduated, things only went down hill, to the point where he was considering suicide. God saved him, and he has been sober for over a year. His talk struck me in two ways, one that he was saved at about the same time I was, in the fall/winter of '11, two that his testimony was full of the power of God. You knew, listening to him, that he was holding tight to, and ready to glorify, a huge God.

So, that was wonderful.

Now I'm just procrastinating rather hard on the paper due tomorrow. I found this interesting poem by Robert Frost called "The Lovely Shall Be Choosers". It's strange and ambiguous, and it only just dawned on me, having had it picked out for a week or more, that a feminist reading might make an interesting interpretation. I don't tend to like feminist interpretations, unless done quite tastefully, for they seem to turn quickly into a big hate fest on men. While a few men have earned my wrath or scorn, on a whole, I rather like them, so I won't do it.

I have a book review due on Friday, and my gracious prof. from another class granted me a much needed extension, which, unfortunately, is also due on Friday. I did talk to him about it today, and he added some helpful comments.

Back to the grind stone.

Note: This was supposed to be published last night. I am still working on the paper. I don't have a thesis yet, but it's almost done.

Fun with Exams

I just took an Intro to Philosophy exam mostly dealing with the problem of evil, and managed to quote Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and John Milton's Paradise Lost in the same essay.

Spring Break pt.3 Final Notes

As with past breaks, I have done a minor portion of the things I could have done. I am going to be positive, and think about what I did do, however.
I partied with friends, and took a few walks outside.
I read Paradise Lost:

And Frankenstein:

I also read an excerpt by Alexis de Tocqueville from Democracy in America and T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land and Burnt Norton:

I baked and cooked a lot, including a really yummy Chicken Pot Pie:
Bread

Bread

 And Pie

I found daffodils while wandering around barefoot behind the college!

I pulled out my inner Tesla and created a simple mechanism for flicking the light switch without getting out of bed:

I saw a lovely bird out of the window:

A Yellow Flicker, I think.

I left out a couple of things to keep from boring anyone.
And, and the time of this writing, I have not been stung by this wasp!

Happy studies!

Fresh Bread

I baked a second loaf today, and tried really really hard to not cut into it until it was cool. I forced myself to finish Book 6 of Paradise Lost before I cut into it, and then the battle was over. No pun intended.*

The salt to flour ratio was better this time, the last one was a bit blah. Maybe measuring things would be a good idea.

Also, I tweaked the blog around a bit, which you might have noticed. It's the general look that I wanted, though I want to change some of the colors around a bit.

*Book 6 contains the recounting of the battle between the rebelling angels and God.

Spring Break pt.2

Monday being a friend's day off work, we decided to have lunch together down the mountain, and then spend the afternoon wandering around the town. Lunch was Five Guys. They certainly know how to make a hamburger. 

 We went over the walking bridge, and stopped to take in the view. The other Chris doesn't like his picture taken.

 Down in Coolidge Park we jumped on to the statues/gargoyles by the carousel. I was on a lion as well.

 Sam likes turtles. 

 The Hunter Museum from across the river. I still think the addition looks like a wart on the original stately mansion.

 I think they should start a boy band if they are going to stand around like that.

 We found this interesting mural across the river. Chris thinks Tesla is the coolest, and wanted his picture with him. Better planning on my part would have been to take a picture with the whole series.

There it is in its entirety. It's basically the history of the Mac or any iGadget. I think it might have been intended to be the history of the computer, but there is an obvious bias toward Apple, no? Notice the almost iconic* halo around Steve Jobs. Chris was explaining information entropy in the picture, in which Claude Shannon had done ground breaking work.

To make up for the lightly awkward picture of Chris, I leave you with this nicer one. We are on our way back across a different bridge.

Before going back, we decided to stop at All Books, a used bookstore that sells a lot more than books. The proprietress is Miss Polly, an old lady who spins and knits at the store. There are a lot of knitted and crocheted hats and things for sale, and the entire space is crammed full of yarn and fabric and wool and books. It has a lot of atmosphere, but not a lot of room.
We wandered around for a bit more, and then traveled back up the mountain.

* A representation of some sacred personage, in painting, bas-relief, or mosaic, itself regarded as sacred, and honoured with a relative worship or adoration.-OED

Frankenstein, String, and Laziness

What do you do when you want to read on a top bunk, but don't want to have to clamber down to turn the night off? I don't know about you, but I made an INVENTION! Cue thunder and lighting. It don't help that I am reading Frankenstein.

I attached some string and sticky tack to the light switch. The sticky tack keeps the string in place, otherwise, 

it would slide off before the switch was done turning.

Then, I ran the string down to a pushpin in the carpet on the wall. Yes, I have carpet on the wall. I'm not sure

why, but the makers apparently thought that a dorm room is just not the same without a lot of carpet.

The string ended at a magnet stuck to the heater right by my bed. 

All I have to do is pull, and the light is out!

Necessity, and a little dose of laziness, is the mother of invention!

Spring Break pt. 1

After a push through the last four days of midterms, I made it to Spring Break! 

Saturday morning, the sun broke over the mountains the mountains. It's hard to grasp the grandeur of a scene like that with a camera.

 The best part was opening the window and seeing the blanket of snow. I had no idea it had happened.

The snow stays on the grass a lot longer than the paths because the ground hasn't frozen yet.

 This tree needs a few ornaments.

 I went for an excursion, and found this little sitting area I had never seen before.

I also found a hollow tree, which is pretty cool.

After running to get groceries, I decided in a fit of passion to make a sourdough starter. It turned out pretty well, I think.

It smells good too. I hope it didn't sour too much. I let it sit over night, and all day. The bowl wouldn't fit in the refrigerator, but I had a ready solution. I haven't turned the heat on yet in the room all break, so I just popped the window a crack and left it to chill in my room while I went to church.

Whee! Midterms!

Taking a slight break (or any excuse to procrastinate)  from studying for midterms to write. This week is going to be rather abysmal. I have a French Midterm, a PE midterm project, a chapters worth of French homework to do, and a paper due at midnight tonight. Gah! And they are all, except for the test, things I could have accomplished a long time ago, but I'm dreadfully short-sighted when it comes to planning.                      

I did manage to have a minor breakthrough for this paper on Descartes concerning the moral failing that happens in errors of judgement. I'm going to frame the paper around Eve's decision to eat the fruit in the garden, and bring in Milton's wonderful quotation from Book 3.99 of Paradise Lost, concerning man's capacity for free will: "Sufficient to have stood though free to fall." Over break I will be reading PL and Hamlet, and writing a paper on them, so PL is fresh in my mind.

Things I consider necessary for studying: ear plugs, (they make life so much easier) an apple, and water. 

Books help too. Is it clear I love Post-its?

The picture in the binder is left over from last years Doctrine I, and is the faculty of Old Princeton the year Geerhardus Vos was installed as faculty in 1894.

Surprise package

A couple of weeks ago was SewGreteful Week, a very fun time on the internet, where a host of sewing blogs posted about what they were thankful for, things they wanted to share about sewing, projects, and of course giveaways. Sarah over at the Pattern Vault hosted a neat giveaway of Vogue 8875, which I was blessed enough to win!
I will now taunt you with several pictures. Getting packages is so much fun!

I'm really looking forward to sewing this up! I have no idea when I will have time this semester, but I do have a summer coming up faster than I would like. The redingote (the overcoat) might be something really handy to sew for those not quite spring, not quite winter days we get down here in Georgia.

Sunday Excursion

Sunday was delightful. After lunch I took a long walk behind the college. The air was just that right temperature of nippy-ness which keeps you cool despite steep hills and a brisk pace. Looking back at the pictures, I noticed how gray everything is. 

The moss covered path behind the college. I don't have any pictures, but they redid a couple of trails. They are nice and broad, but lack character.

The view over Jackson Pond. We can't swim there anymore, but that doesn't bother me one jot. The water was green.

When taking pictures of the landscape, pondscape? I saw someone in the water taking pictures too. We took a picture of each other.

 It always amuses me when I see the moon and the sun in the same sky, and reminds me of Lewis Carroll  "The moon was shining sulkily, 

because she though the sun 

had no business to be there 

after the day was done."

-The Walrus and the Carpenter, Lewis Carroll

 I found a cool waterfall, but it won't last long. Georgia is not kind to ice.

I think this is a piece of down from an owl. 

Don't jump!