Hello from the capital of Procrastination Land aka my room. I know it's not Thursday, but since I didn't have much of a blog last week (because it died a horrible, grisly death) I thought I'd do two blogs this week to catch everyone up on my latest adventures. So here goes:
LONDON! It seems like forever since I've been to London, but I can't wait to go back in March. It's basically the coolest city in the world. What's so cool about it? Well, aside from the fact that it's huge, it's also full of free museums and people who dress like they just stepped off the runway. It's a perfect blend of old, historical architecture and ultra-modern style. They cherish and preserve history, yet at the same time they're always moving toward the future. London is also very international; I heard so many different languages spoken just in our hotel lobby, not to mention the rest of the city. In Trafalgar Square, a couple of Korean kids came up and asked me for help with their London crossword puzzle. After making sure they weren't going to pick my pockets, I helped them and received some sort  of microchip as an unconventional souvenir of my experience in London.
I ate in a crypt, attended an Evensong service in Westminster Abbey, saw DaVinci's "The Last Supper," navigated the tube, had sea bass and chorizo at a pub, and watched (what was left of) the sunset over the Thames. My friends and I were crazy to think we could "do London" in a couple of days; I honestly think it would take a lifetime. I guess that's why Samuel Johnson said, "When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford."
So I know what at least two of you are wondering: did I accomplish the tasks in my London letter(s)? Well, not quite, but I got a few of them done, including eating fish and chips, going to the National Gallery, and eating in a pub. I was at Trafalgar Square, but I didn't climb the lions (yet). I haven't found Tocadero, Harrod's, the Apple Store, or the underground magic shop, but not to worry. I'll be in London at least two more times, and I still have a long list of things to see and do.
Anyway, after leaving London, I went to Hampton Court Palace, which has a fascinating history dealing with Henry VIII, his wives, and his Cardinal, Thomas Wolsey. Turns out Wolsey had the place built, and when he had a falling out with the king, he prolonged his life by a few years at least by giving the palace to Henry. Numerous other kings and queens have lived there, and  parts of Pirates 4, The Young Victoria, and Sherlock Holmes 2 were filmed there as well.
After that exciting weekend, I returned home(still can't believe I live here!) and the next week was pretty normal...Yeah, right! More like, there were clogging sword dancers, singing in the Bistro downstairs, "My Immortal" story time in the lounge, and a historical tour of the manor (my favorite hallway is allegedly haunted). Oh, and guess what? I go to school here, too. I know it doesn't sound like it (ha ha). But I had a meeting with my Honors term paper adviser, Dr. Bujak, who is delightfully British and obsessed with English country houses. He gave me an idea for my paper that I'm actually pretty excited about: English Country Houses and Film. It's going to be about how country houses (like Harlaxton) are used in so many different genres, and how they work with the settings, moods, and plots of different films.
And speaking of films, I visited Stamford on Wednesday, where they filmed the Meryton scenes in the 2005 version of Pride and Prejudice. But that's far from the only thing this town had going for it. It was so adorable, so old-fashioned and quaint. There were tons of shops, including one that sold books, stationery, and chocolate (perfection!). There was also a cheese shop in a cellar, which was amazing. The lady who ran it really knew her cheese, and everyone left with some of her products. We proclaimed her the cheese goddess of Stamford. Another fun fact: bathrooms cost 20 pence to use, so I had to pay to pee.
After we finished adventuring in Stamford, everyone was waiting for the fun double-decker bus to pick us up, and I encountered a group of fellow WKU students discussing what strategies they would use to survive if they were tributes in the Hunger Games. You can imagine my excitement upon stumbling upon that conversation (59 days until the movie, by the way)!
And then I went back to the manor, and then it was Thursday, and I did my laundry, and the internet ate my blog. So that's that. I had some really exciting weekend adventures, but I guess it would be cheating to go any further. So you'll get the rest this Thursday.
-Anna Beth
P.S. Today I heard this really great song called "We're Together." It's written and performed by someone really special and talented. I think you all know who I'm talking about. :)

Hello from my cozy bed, of course, eating homemade cookies and milk in a mug that I got for free this week. 

Trying to find an internship is taking up so much of my time!  Yesterday, I spent three hours on ONE application!  I am not even sure yet that it meets the requirements for my major, and I'm definitely not sure that they would even want me.  God wants people who are willing and available and faithful!  I'm in!  God said, "Who should we send?  Who will go on our behalf" and Isaiah said, "Here I am, Lord.  Send me!"  That's me.  I'm totally willing to go anywhere and do anything, so if God wants me to spend the summer in Haiti, He better open up a door for me! =]
Other than spending all of my days knee deep in internship mania, I have pretty much only had homework and procrastinating my homework.  My stinking gen eds have busy work every day, and I have the books for those classes.  Meanwhile, I'm already behind in my other classes because the books are still not here.  I'm probably going to give up my social life for the next two weeks or so... hopefully not for the whole semester.

Okay, so, I love Monica to death.  She is one of my best Asburian friends, you know.  I know she loves me, but sometimes I think she is really not a good friend to me.  One of the most important things in a friend (to me, at least) is that they really listen and care about what you're saying.  I keep trying to tell Monica about how I've had a rough couple of days (and you know what? I basically never get stressed out, so I feel like people should pay attention when I do!) and that this internship stuff is really hard on me.  She doesn't pay any notice.  She is so depressed this week because Jessca is in the DR, and she won't even appreciate the people she does get to be around this week (like me, for instance).  I just feel like, with the amount of times that I get stressed out, someone would be there for me once in a blue moon when it happens!

We had our first Koinonia of the semester on Tuesday!  It was great!  

My goodness, I just want to go to Haiti for the summer more than anything!

Love,
Shelbs Magee


ALSO:
hello from the study room.  i just wrote a song and then i took a video of me singing it in the study room.  it's brilliant, just so you know!


bloody brilliant =]

_ Hello from my friend Jamie’s room! I often come into her room (sometimes at strange hours of the night) to talk about random things, watch Gilmore Girls, and comment on the constant state of disarray her room is in. I practically consider her pink chair mine now since I monopolize it whenever I visit her :)

This week I feel like my classes have officially started. I have globs of homework to complete this weekend, and this is after I was up really late almost every night this week doing even more homework. Honestly, I’m hoping 19 hours doesn’t crush me into the ground, but I am enjoying my classes a lot. It’s nice to be only in advanced math and CS classes (plus a Physics lab), and I really feel like I am in the right majors. It does make me a little anxious about grad school… I have been planning on earning my Ph.D in math after I graduate, but I think I may be starting to realize I enjoy Computer Science a bit more. Who knows?! I still have time to decide before I have to take the GRE- I’m planning on doing the actual GRE over the summer or early fall and then taking my subject test late fall, right before graduate applications go out.

Last night was a lot of fun! Vanderbilt’s programming board sponsored a Casino Night, where everyone that went was given play money, and you could play blackjack, craps, or other casino games to try and make more money which would be exchanged for raffle tickets to win various prizes. They even had slot machines! Now, normally I’m not a fan of gambling, but as a math major, I naturally had to do well… ;) I actually made quite a bit of money at blackjack, but I eventually lost most of my winnings and broke even just because I had too much fun playing J (I should have realized the general math trend- you may win a lot, but over time, you eventually break even- and stopped while I was ahead lol) Afterwards, I went back to my friend Kelsey’s apartment and watched Tangled with her and Mark. It was Mark and my first time watching the movie, and it was really cute! Too bad I liked Maximus more than Flynn… XD

Today I’m hoping to go and actually find Nashville’s Panda Express! Emily and I are going pet fish shopping, and Panda should be located in the same shopping center. Yayayayay! Then tonight there is a church in Brentwood who is holding a swing dancing event with a live band! Mark has agreed to be dragged away from his MCAT studying for the night, and if Kelsey and Corey agree to go, I will be so excited to do some actual swing dancing =) It’ll be like the jazz band concerts all over again… =)

Until then, I’m off to do some homework. However, I shall leave you with the song that I first heard on the movie trailer for The Vow, a movie coming out on Valentine’s Day. Speaking of which, if you haven’t seen the movie trailer for The Vow, go check it out! If you’re a fan of The Notebook, you will love it…

Joy Williams- "We Are"

_          Hello from the floor of my bedroom. I've spent a large portion of today packing and getting ready to move back to the dorms tomorrow, and sometimes I like to relax by lounging on some pillows on the floor. Although the bed is definitely more comfortable, I'm (like Shelby) on it all the time to do things (Rachael, Anna Beth, and Amy know that my desk at school never gets used except as a storage space) and a little change of scenery is nice sometimes. Besides that, I've also been mentally preparing myself for reentering the academia of college by....spending too much time online, of course :)
            Speaking of the internet, I kinda felt like talking about the sopa/pipa blackout Wednesday. But I'm also not the most informed on the subject (there are way more intellectual articles and videos you can find discussing the matter) and you guys know I tend to stay away from the annoyances of politics. But I've kept somewhat up to date on these bills for the past few months because I do feel pretty strongly that the internet is a place that should be free and the vague wording of the bills when they first came out was very threatening to tons of sites and new media jobs. And the result of the Blackout was just so interesting to me. The way Google and Wikipedia and tons of others took a stand. Big corporations and individuals alike bringing awareness to people and telling congressmen how they felt. You've got the mix of intelligent protest, emotional appeals, and inevitably a little crazy internet thrashing around, lol. But I'll shut up about the subject now and just leave this link to Google’s result of their petition (which I did sign):
 http://sopastrike.com/numbers

         Other than that my week has been pretty uneventful. I've gotten 33 of 36 achievements on Temple Run and I've had fun giving my phone alarms slightly ridiculous titles. Because I don't have the incentive of class to get me out of bed before noon, I usually set multiple alarms so I can be a functioning human being at a reasonable hour. It goes from 'wake up' to 'ok, NOW become conscious' to 'how about now?' to 'ok this is ridiculous, get up!'. Unfortunately, my semi-conscious state tends to ignore these only until it feels is an ok time to wake up.
                I went to the library the other day and picked up a few books. Hopefully I'll finish before college takes away most fun reading time. Oh, and I've come across some awesome places we should visit if we ever go on the road trip we're planning (one involves both Florida and zombies!)
Anna Beth: I look forward to the eventual posting of your London adventures.
Rachael: Awesome hit counter, thanks!
Sara: What did you think of The Fault in Our Stars?
Amy: I feel like I haven't seen you in forever! Not since New Years anyway. See you soon though, new roomie :)
Shelby: I'm sorry to hear about your internship :/ I'm sure you'll find something equally as exciting! Oh, and your History of Israel class sounds really interesting, a least the title does anyway.
Sanaa: I think your vlogs are brilliant and it's kinda intimidating for when I eventually do one
Amber: Yule Ball? I'm jealous....

    So yeah, I don't know why I just kinda felt like replying to you guys in my blog instead of comments, I just kinda did. Tell me if it annoys you or if I should just be normal and talk in comments.

Ok, I guess I've run out of things to say so I'll leave you with my awesome pick of the week: 3D fish painting

*Update* (only about 5 minutes after posting....ugh timing)
I was just on Picnik to update our locations picture and:
bad news: picnik's closing
very cool news: until it closes in April, all premium features are free! fun will be had, by me at least...
just felt like mentioning it, because I like mentioning things....

Hello from...this used to be a really good blog entry, but then I didn't save, and I thought it was auto-saving because it was doing a little twirly whirly thingy, but it turns out it WASN'T saving and then I pressed a button, maybe it was backspace, and then it was gone. All gone. So much gone. And I can toot my own horn about this because you'll never know if it was good or not (because it's GONE!), but this week's entry was actually pretty good. I recapped my entire London excursion, plus Stamford, and clogging sword dancers, and then I hit a button. And then it went down kinda like this:

Hello from a warm, fuzzy sweater! Not a lot of things happened to me this week, but I've been trying to keep myself busy...
First of all, some of you know that the water heater broke last week at my house, and I didn't have any hot, warm, or lukewarm water. I wanted to be clean when some friends and I met up at Cheddar's. So instead of going medieval, and boiling large pots of water to warm my bath, I simply drove to my mother's house and took a shower there. While I was getting clean, my car (named Alanna) was sitting outside in the freezing cold. This detail is kind of important because after I had tossed by stuff in the backseat, the door would NOT close! It simply bounced off instead of clicking and staying closed. So I then tried to lock and unlock the door--it didn't work. The back door was now locked while it was still open. At this point I was getting desperate, so my mom said to pull my car into the garage so the door could unfreeze (which is why we suspected it couldn't close) and to drive her van to meet up with friends. I agreed, mostly because my plan to bring my little brother just so he could hold the door close wasn't going to work...
In the end, everything worked out. I made it to Cheddar's only being 10-ish minutes late and it snowed while we were there! [I also ended up sleeping at my mom's house because she wouldn't let me drive home. I got some delicious tea because I stayed over :)]
And that was all on Thursday! If that isn't enough, I also made brownies the next day! Oh! At 11:30 at night! (I really wanted brownies, what can I say?) I also finished re-watching You're Beautiful (sigh!) and started watching Boys Over Flowers. I also started and finished reading Brent Week's The Black Prism, the same author as the Night Angel Trilogy, and in my opinion, he is an excellent writer! I want to read Perfect Shadow so bad...
Some other medium-sized news...I finally got new contacts/glasses! Yes, after 3 weeks of waiting, my left eye had healed so I could now get the right prescription. (btw for those who don't know, my left eye had become really dry and so it became inflamed. Probably had to do with something in my previous contact that couldn't be cleaned out...) I wanted some new frames for my glasses, so I naturally went to the women's section and picked out a couple of pairs (there was a sale--buy 1 get 1 free). Unfortunately, due to a new system that couldn't be overridden and my face being too small so they couldn't align the lenses exactly right, I had to choose another pair of lenses. But because of my too small face, NONE of the glasses in the women's sections fit properly. Let's just say that there wasn't much variety in the children's section....pink, purple, or brown?
That's about all I got for this week's Creeper Wednesday's blog...oh yeah! Did anyone notice a small change in the website? Try scrolling to the bottom of the homepage... 

Hello from the last week of winter break! At this point, I think I’m about ready to go back to school, despite the scary things that I’ve found on my class syllabi so far… I wanted to go get my textbooks today, actually, but my dad took Betsy again. Also it looks stormy outside, and carrying a bag full of books to your car is bad enough without the added misery of getting soaked in the process. So, it’s been a quiet week. I’ve been hanging out with my family, reading The Fault in Our Stars (!!!!!!!!!!!), and also being extremely lazy in preparation for actually having to do stuff again starting next week. I also got a haircut yesterday. Hopefully my life will be more interesting once the semester starts. So until then, it’s time for Question Tuesday!

Starting with Rachael’s questions:

Interesting night/set your own hours jobs- employ yourself, be an author/artist/some other kind of creative person, work the night shift at Steak ‘n Shake.

I have no idea what I would do with a million dollars. I’d probably just put it in the bank and be less frugal about buying stuff… And donate some of it. Which reminds me of something cool that happened on Sunday! I help with the 8th grade girls’ Sunday school class at church, and we’re sponsoring a compassion child. So we were passing around the jar for her, and one of the girls put in a $100! She apparently found it on the ground at Sam’s, so after she tried to find the owner, she decided to donate it instead of keeping it herself :)

Superpowers:
Shelby- saving the world through general awesomeness
Amy- Genius of China
Sara- human boa constrictor
Rachael- the ability to draw things into existence
Anna Beth- apparition
Jill- water bending
Amber- mind control
Sanaa- insanity (scares away the bad guys)

And on to the plethora of questions posed by Anna Beth:

Happiness: in my opinion, if all that ever happens in your life is happy things, then you can’t really know what happiness is, even if it’s the only thing you’ve ever felt. It takes neutral, and even sad things in between the happiness in order for it to be meaningful. Sort of like the point I made about awesome. This song http://www.youtube.com/user/vlogbrothers#p/search/0/9t7E4amWDqI is kind of about the opposite of too much happiness, but it’s sort of related and pretty much makes my point in contrast. Also, I really like it. So listen and enjoy!

Joy: I sort of feel like the points I’ve already made apply to feelings in general. If it’s all you ever feel, then you can’t appreciate it as much as you otherwise could. Such good things as awesome, happiness, and joy have to be limited in order to be felt as they’re meant to be.

“Too much” questions: Yes, and Anna Beth seems to be trying for this one (this being but the third of her five suggestions). I like to get several of them to answer, but if I get too many to fit into my blog, then I have to pick and choose which ones I want to address. Which would make me sad :(. On a larger scale, I’m sure that with too much of a concentration of these kinds of questions, I would eventually tire of answering them, just like my audience would tire of listening.

Wisdom: wisdom generally comes from life, specifically mistakes and bad things that occur during it. So the wiser one is, the more unfortunate events have happened to that person. That’s why wise guys (haha) in movies are so sad. I think that they would certainly feel like it’s possible to be too wise. Of course, there’s also the example of Solomon to consider. He was granted wisdom instead of having to be miserable to attain it. In that case, I feel like (though this doesn’t apply to Solomon specifically) being too wise would lead to sadness instead of being caused by it (it’s a circular relationship). Having too much understanding of this world would be a great burden on the human mind. So, in summary, wisdom in excess is burdensome and sad, and I don’t think a human could handle it.

Friendship: It’s kind of funny that Anna Beth asked this one, since my answer is that too much friendship, or time spent with one’s friends, leads to a deficiency in family time, which Anna Beth is often vocal about.

So that’s all the questions for this week! Feel free to start asking for next week, whether they’re dealing with “too much” of something or not. ¡Adios!

Hello from a state of pain and confusion.  I hit my head twice in the same day in nearly the same spot. How? First time getting into a van and whamming the roof of my head to the roof of the car, and second time bending over to pick up something only to realize, there is something hard and wooden above. Sorry for the really short post, but I really feeling miserable right now because of my headache and the internet issues that I have been facing today. Believe it or not this is the second time i'm typing this post. The internet was being stupid and cut off during the first post and so the result of that is a mindless bauble. I'll try to make it up to you guys next week, but no promises though. I'm not a commitment short of person ( i inherited that from my mommy).