t-shirt

our "i'd rather be surfing" shirts just made their debut at the huff. i wish you guys could have been there to see it. they were topped only by the girl wearing very large teal dangling disk earings.

melancholy mix

an update for all my adoring fans.

week 1 is over. whew, it was long. i am taking 17 hours or strictly cs and ece classes. w00t...or not.

andrea and i have not killed each other yet. that is good. nor do i think we will be desiring that at any point in the near future. we definitely went "walmarting" friday on the bus. just a little taste of china all over again. it took three hours. i think norman needs better public transportation. perhaps buses that run more frequently than once every hour.

we had a meeting for engineers without borders. it was good. i'm feeling a lot better about it. especially since there are deadlines involved. deadlines work well for me usually.

i was looking at my degree sheet for my major the other day and i came to the brilliant conclusion that i need only 29 more hours to graduation. that's 2 semesters folks. but i don't think it'll happen that soon because of a little thing called study abroad. i went by their office friday and picked up a flier for ireland. w00t! i could be here next fall. that would be amazing.

i got back from the RUF shindig and asked andrea "do you know what i really feel like doing right now?" to which she replied "walkies?" only we didn't actually do much walking. but that's okay, we had a good tete a tete even though it didn't involved walmart or fountains.

went to the huff this afternoon with -a and we did the rowing machines. about midway through some guy starts trying to use the rowing machine next to us and is asking us about it and generally making small talk while we were rowing. he started rowing and when andrea and i left she asked me if i knew him and i answered in the negative. she had been pretty certain he was a friend of mine, but he wasn't. yay for friendly guys at the huff.

incidentally, andrea and i are going to be completely buff by the end of the semester. everyone prepare to be amazed.

so, andrea just informed me that her professor was quoted in her religion and foreign policy book. i think it'd be pretty cool if one of my professors was quoted in her religion and foreign policy book. i think i'm going to make it one of my lifetime goals to get quoted in a book completely unrelated to my field of study. i'm already making a great start. i got quoted in the oudaily (see last paragraph) saying that i was a football fan. oh, the irony. what has college done to my values...

in case you haven't noticed, andrea was mentioned in this post a lot. that's because we spend a lot of time together and i expect this will be the case for quite awhile. i hope you can deal with that.

at this point i'm majorly procrastinating doing my homework for electronics lab that's due tomorrow. i don't understand diodes and i've completely forgotten everything from last semester. grrr.

on that note, hope everyone had a better first week than i did. peace.

keep on the sunny side of life

i had six classes today starting at 9:30 and ending at 6:50. i am not a huge fan of this schedule. it left me exhausted and grumpy, so if i was unpleasant to any of you today (or more so than usual...), i apologise. today was not great. today left me slightly wary of the rest of the semester. i kind of feel like there are a whole lot of unknowns material-wise this semester. it's not really the classes i'm scared of. i'm more scared of all the programming languages etc i'm supposed to learn. so far they include oracle, sql, c, a review of java, matlab, labview and one other one for my ee lab that i can't remember. then my teacher in micro p (2nd to last class) decided to give us a talk on how important your upper division classes are and how some people do badly on them even after doing well on there general engr class. prof: this is not helpful.

i'm considering dropping my discrete class. kind of strange because of all my classes this semester, this was the one i was really looking forward to. i like the material, the prof is supposed to be really great. but when i got into class this morning, all of a sudden, i had no desire to go through this material again. very strange. so i am going to go to operating systems tomorrow and see if i can get in to that even though i'm taking one of the prerequisites right now. then i'll have to check if it will work as a professional elective. we'll see. i'd probably take it even if it didn't count because i think it'd be interesting.

yeah...

met some guys on the fourth floor tonight. old habits die hard i suppose. someone also referred to me as the "social butterfly of the honors dorm". never really thought of it that way. the strange thing is, i'm only this way around the dorms. i'm fairly anti-social at home. weird.

ok, i'm exhausted and it's time for sleep.

free stuff week 2005

alex is my free stuff guru. no one else even comes close.

my count is at 2 free shirts (one from the andrea) and two ethernet cords. i don't really aspire too high...

and alex played guitar tonight. it was sweet. i have missed his playing in the hall.

going to bed, have to be rested for more free stuff tomorrow.

i'm back

okay. very quick update because i am absolutely exhausted. i got into norman circa 11:30 tonight and promtly drug all of my stuff upstairs, unscrewed the shelf from the wall, made sure everything was vaguely together, and said goodbye to my dad. i then talked to heather for probably an hour and then half unpacked my room.

this wasn't exactly the plan, but as i've said quite a bit recently, it seems almost a moot point to even plan how i will return to norman, especially when it involves my brother and sister.

the reason my dad brought me down to norman instead of naomi and seth is that my sister was in a car wreck this morning as she was driving to church. our mini van was totalled. the damage was pretty bad, including a wheel in the back, which completely fell off. there was very little physical damage done to the actual people in the wreck, thankfully. because of that, my parents thought it best to have my sister stick around columbia to talk to the police and to make sure no medical problems arise later. probably a good idea since she's flying back to china on wednesday.
our time with three vans was quite shortlived. it's kind of freaky that we have never actually sold a mini van; our past three mini vans have been totalled in accidents. hopefully our new one will be an exception.

so yeah, i'm back in honors again. there's been a few, shall we say updates to the dorm. heather's room is now the size of two, since they connected her room and office. everything has been painted white, including the hallways.

here's to evans 4 and the star hallway, you will be missed:



that's all. contact me if you're bored, because i most likely will be.

phone: 487-2618

oh wait, one more thing. please get on facebook and join the "housing was dropped on its head as a child group". support a good cause.

housing was dropped on its head as a child

i got an email from andrea yesterday with the subject line seen above. apparently andrea, who according to a letter sent out in may was my roommate, is not technically my roommate. my mom told me that i had gotten a letter from housing with no roommate listed and had asked me if i was sure andrea was coming back next year. i was pretty sure that she was or at least that she would have informed of information of that magnitude, so i didn't bother to check, especially since the andrea was in europe and i had very limited email access while on vacation. however, apparently andrea is rooming with someone else in honors. what weird is that i'm currently assigned to her old room, instead of her. i really didn't expect housing to screw up our housing assignments after having them correct only a few months previous, but you know, housing has many unseen talents.

i called housing about five or six times in the past two days to figure out if i could move in early. after talking to about five or six people, it was decided that i do indeed have permission to move in early. this is a very good thing considering my other option was to store my crap in heather's room and bum places to stay off of my friends until upperclassmen move in on wednesday. i will be arriving sunday night (hopefully before 11 so we can get snowcones) and will be moving in on monday morning. i will then procede to be bored out of my mind for the next few days until the rest of the student population moves into the dorms or my friends take pity on me and rescue me from the dorms. good news though folks, i have a phone in my dorm room ;).

i thought i would be able to take less stuff with me to college this year. i am a failure. not having a couch or second computer though will help a lot. it appears as though it is my lot in life to transfer copious amounts of crap between columbia and norman for the next couple years.

that's all. back to packing.

i am certain now that i am vindicated

so, apparently it is time to update.

i got back on tuesday afternoon from my week-long family vacation. stops included national parks and monuments mostly, including: the petrified forest, bryce canyon, zion national park, the grand canyon, mese verde, and the four corners monument. we camped. our tent isn't entirely waterproof apparently, so on most nights at least one person was sleeping in our van. this non-waterproofed-ness was especially convenient considering that we apparently hit the area at approximately monsoon season, which basically means it rains every afternoon. that also made it kind of cold. we were all wearing pants and jackets. kind of different from the sweltering weather of oklahoma and missouri, and well received from my end, not so much from everyone else.

it was a pretty good trip. the scenery out there is fantastic. it was a bit hard going from no family time to all the time is family time. overall it was fun thought. we went to mesa verde in 1991 and camped, so that part was a bit for nostalgia's sake. since i was 5 at the time though, i have virtually no memories of the place. it's pretty cool. indian ruins built up on the cliffs. almost a thousand years old. it was also kind of weird to compare what was happening with the indians here at the time to what was happening in china at the time (give me a break, i just spent four weeks reading about it) and the difference in "sophistication" is pretty big. the situations were so different though.

so as not to have to relate the whole trip to you, i now present highlights:

• white water rafting on the last day and naomi falling out after our guide told us to turn completely around in the boat.
• driving around to different hotels in an attempt to find wi-fi/email access that wasn't password protected (at least i had a good excuse for having my laptop with me).
• the family pow-wow to discuss seth's future and not actually deciding anything
• the free hot showers at the last campground we stayed at
• all the foreigners with rented RVs at the national parks we were at
• playing "guess the nationality" of the aforementioned foreigners
• arriving at four corners at 1 am and sleeping by the side of the road until it opened in the morning.
• seeing my mom get freaked out by heights and refusing to move anywhere near the edge of a cliff.
• knowing that there was a 20-minute orientation video waiting for us at every national park and knowing that we were going to watch it.

that's all i can think of right now. may not sound too interesting, but family vacations always are.

on our way back, we picked up our new van in kansas city. so we now have three vans and no cars. pretty great.

most of the rest of my time at home has been spent being a bum. i'm trying to motivate myself to pack, but it's not working too well. i think i'm heading back to school sunday afternoon. we'll see. my plans don't seem to follow through very well these days. the plan at this point is: naomi is driving me back to school and we're picking up seth in lawrence on the way so naomi doesn't have to drive back by herself. i'm not sure why naomi seemed to want to drive me back, but i think snowcones may have been the deciding factor. if anyone would really like to meet them during the day they're in norman, let me know and we could arrange a showing.

my bottom retainer broke a couple of weeks ago, so i had to get a mold made for a new one when i went to the dentist today. i forgot how much that process calls up the gag reflex. having not the best nose in the world due to my being allergic to anything i can breathe in, it's kind of freaky to not have the option of breathing through your mouth.

i think that's about it. i'm terribly excited about getting back to norman. and i called heather's room tonight to find out something about moving in to the dorms and she answered the phone...meaning that heather is once again my RA after my one-year technical sabbatical. w00t-ness. so long to my 4 semesters/5 RAs.

adios folks. i'm exhausted.

introversion

quote for the week:
"remember, someone you know, respect, and interact with every day is an introvert, and you are probably driving this person nuts."
-jonathan rauch, caring for your introvert

i'm leaving norman in about an hour. it's been a fun month and i am now 6 credits richer (or poorer, depending on your perspective). to everyone who gave me rides and put up with the fact that i have no phone and still wanted to hang out with me: thanks, you guys are the best.

i'm off to colorado with the fam. see you in a few weeks.

i'm the only one to blame

first and foremost, i would like to say that brownies should not be made in 8 by 8 pans, they should always be made in 9 by 13 pans. so for those of you who think that you can get away with a square baking pan, don't do it. it's just not right.

okay, moving on.

today was pretty much perfect. the weather was absolutely beautiful. i was actually kind of chilly on the way to class, which is a first. i skipped the second half of stats class and my china class was cancelled after he returned our tests (i did a lot better than i was expecting). studying some, and then went to see the perfect man at the dollar theatre. i'm sorry, there weren't a whole lot of choices, and heather and nicole didn't want to see hitchhiker's guide. it was really corny at times, but when you're tired, anything can seem funny. i laughed a lot.

the only thing today was missing was some frisbee throwing on the south oval. i was conveniently missing a frisbee and person #2. bum deal.

that's about all. hopefully i will get many pages of my china paper written tonight so i can study my butt off tomorrow for the final. i asked yesterday if the final was cumulative. dr. atkinson's response: "heck, no. who gives comprehensive finals anymore?" w00t. i like that answer.

p.s. if anyone in norman wants some brownies, stop by and i'll hook you up. otherwise i'll end up eating the entire pan before i leave on monday. that can't be good...

*edit*
one last thing. i ate lunch in the courtyard at the honors dorm today, and they sure are doing a bit of remodeling in the lounges. they're pretty much gutting the kitchen, so the nook-table is gone. it'll be interesting to see what they're doing...

allegro

so, i should be writing my paper right now...i have 1.33333 (repeating) pages written and it has to be 8 to 10 pages. i haven't written a paper that long in my life. and i'm not kidding.

i was talking to my mom online tonight (lame, huh? i really need a phone) and apparently we are getting a new car. we sold our '88 beauty last month, but that still left us with 2 cars for the two people normally living at home. i'm not sure why we need a third one but aparently we do. i've learned not to question my dad. it doesn't usually get me answers. anyhow, my mom told me they were going to get a honda element (aka, world's ugliest car). they're actually getting yet another dodge minivan (this is the fourth one since i was born) although, seth told me that yesterday it was the element. scary.

i made an interesting discovery "baking" today. you know the biscuits that come in the pressurized containers? yeah, there's a reason they come pressurized. i wanted some biscuits last night, but not all of them. so instead of cooking them all at once, brilliant me decided that i would put some of them back in the fridge so i could have them fresh the next day. yeah, so apparently the baking soda requires that you bake immediately or else they won't be quite so fluffy anymore. but i am now much wiser than before at least.

have any of you guys noticed the buildings they're demolishing on campus? right over by price hall or whatever the new business building is called. apparently we're getting a student academic service center or something. yippee! i can't wait. plus, i can't deny it, i loooove construction on campus....

i bet you didn't know that tea is second only to water in world beverages. i bet you also didn't know that all tea is green. black tea, white tea, etc. are merely caused by the processing. cool huh? not.

i think that's all i'm going to make you read tonight. peace.

Journey Church

It's a good thing I have this thing for myself and not for my friends, otherwise the lack of response would be kind of depressing...

That having been said, I am actually going to make a serious post before this blog goes to rot.

I went to Journey Church on Sunday with my roommate. The following is my account of what happened and my reaction to it. I'm not trying to offend anyone, I'm just trying to figure out my thoughts.

It was overwhelming when I walked in, I had to shake the hands of four greeter-people on my way in. The church meets in an old supermarket, so when you walk in it's just this large open space with concrete floors and high ceilings, not surprisingly, much like a supermarket. Dozens of people are meandering around and there's an amazing amount of food sitting out, waiting to be eaten as well as big tubs of ice with soda and water in them, much like you might find on the Walker-Adams Mall the first couple of days after move-in. I'm not usually a fan of big groups, especially when I don't really know anyone. Strike one for Journey church. We went into the sanctuary and were immediately assaulted by loud music while we found seats. There were a lot of families there, more than I was expecting. Since most of the students are gone for the summer, it wasn't nearly as packed as it normally would have been. I enjoyed the worship mostly, but the lights swirling around and flashing in my face really didn't make it easy to concentrate. And the sermon being punctuated often by the phrase "the sweet spot of success" and being "in the zone" in reference to God didn't exactly resonate with me too well. All in all, I felt myself judging a lot. The pastor essentially talked about being successful in God and among other things, said that God wants to bless us financially and implied that if that's not the case then we might not be where we should be. I guess I never really associate financial "success" as something that I am promised as a Christian. There was a lot of stuff that I found myself really cringing at. Some of that I think was justified in disagreeing with, but I know that some of it was not. I tend to be a prideful and a judgmental person, coupled with some stubbornness. I like to think that I'm am right, and that being the case, I have the right to look down on other people who disagree with me. That's not true, and I shouldn't be doing it. In addition, there is not always a strictly "right" or "wrong" answer with some issues in Christianity. Being an engineer and used to working with empirical data, that's what I like to rely on. Problem is, that's rarely available when you're talking about faith. That frustrates me a lot sometimes, because evaluating subjective information and making decisions based on that information is not my strong point. As a result, I tend to just pick a side that seems right and stake that out as my viewpoint without always searching the scriptures for truth. It's easier to read a book and have someone tell me what they think is right that to try to determine it for myself. It's one of the things that frusterates me most about myself.

So, I find myself wondering, "why did I react so badly to Journey?" Part of me reacted against the fact that it was not an intellectual church, as I've become accustomed to over the past three and a half years. Another similar problem I had with it was in its seeming desire to make church exciting and attractive. I'm not saying we should try to make church boring on purpose, but I also think that we have more mental capacity than a 20 minute, 3 point, fill-in-the-blank sermon with flashing lights in the background. I honestly think a lot of this is just my pride, my "holier than thou" attitude if you will, but there were some things that were said that I wasn't sure how scriptural they were. I don't know.

All that being said, I almost want to go back. Sometimes I think that we should all be going to churches that we would never expect to go to and never thought we would fit in at, just to challenge our beliefs and make us think. I'd like to go back to Journey simply for the fact that it raised questions in my mind. I couldn't just sit back and agree with what was being said. I reacted against it, but it made me think. My mind said, "no, that's wrong." It made me want to search the scriptures to find the truth. Anything that can do that for me is a good thing.

land of my sojourn

i'm quite happy to say i survived my midterms. they weren't actually as bad as i was expecting although i do remember thinking as i took my stats one, "i didn't think you could make statistics questions this hard." still wasn't too bad.

i took like three naps today. it was wonderful. i fell asleep in my statistics class for about the first twenty minutes. che told me i was snoring. said he thought it was funny, but the prof didn't seem to appreciate it. good thing engineering classes aren't graded subjectively...i went home after the break in the middle of class. i was tired and wasn't paying attention anyway, so i took a nap when i got home. took another one after dinner because i didn't think i'd be able to concentrate on reading if i didn't. couldn't really concentrate on reading for class anyway, but hey, i got another nap out of the deal.

i wish they could take statistics on people's productivity over the past weekend, because it seems like the entire country has been reading harry potter. and now that the first wave of people has read it, they've passed it on to the second group who wants to read it, thereby increasing the unproductiveness. it's wonderful. at least people are reading and not watching tv, or drinking, or smoking or something. at least this unproductiveness involves thinking.

highlights of my week so far: being done with my midterms; my mom telling me i should get a cell phone one night and then telling me my dad says i don't need one the next day; geoff and alex being gangsta while we played streef ball; kyle reading me the vacuum cleaner user's manual; wow, this week has been great, i could go on and on and on.........

i'm going to go back to my reading now, then sleep, so i don't snooze in stats tomorrow.

currently reading: harry potter and the half-blood prince
currently listening: land of my sojourn, rich mullins

soon shall pass thy pilgrim days

so tired right now. i need to go to sleep early tonight.

did laundry last night. all my clothes smell good.

i want to play frisbee. anyone in norman want to play frisbee too? if the answer is "yes", then we should. this weekend. please get me out of my house. please.

i have two midterms on monday and a paper that needs to be started soon. this weekend is going to be fun. especially since people aren't going to be around to distract me. i may be chillin' at bizzell a lot. or nielson (please everyone note the "i" before "e", it applies here too). for some reason nielson is my new favorite study place. find a massive classroom (our physics one, perhaps) dump out all your books and get to work.

grrrrr....

guess who was in my traditional china class today and on friday? shades! guess who asked questions like he knew what he was talking about? shades! guess who is not actually enrolled in the class but is trying it out to see if he wants to in the fall? you guessed it, shades! grrr... on one hand, it's frusterating that he's just sitting in on the class, but on the other hand, there is hope. maybe he'll stop coming soon. it's so frusterating to spend half of class cringing.

for those of you who are unacquainted with this fellow, there really is no adequate description, so i'm not even going to try.

blah, blah, blah...

in other news, we got our research paper assignments in class today and i went straight to the library after class (after a small detour to nielson hall to see if any of my aquaintances were around. i didn't see any, but fyi there's a huge pendulum in the atrium there now) and checked out books for my paper. i, emily weisbrook, actually went to the library to check out books for a paper. that's pretty much the first time. i didn't even do that for perspectives. in a few weeks time, there will be an 8 to 10 page paper about...........tea. how fun is that...

more blah, blah, blah

my lawn needs to get mowed, my statistics class needs to die, and i need to go run at the huff.


*edit*
i just mowed my lawn. it's been years since i've used a lawnmower. my father would be proud.

email

ok, china email of doom is written. very glad that is over and done with. good riddance.

if you are reading this and you didn't get the email, i'm sorry, you must be a stalker, because i think i sent this to every one my known readers. if you want a copy, let me know, but you'll be divulging your anonymity. sweet.

going to bed. i have class tomorrow...that is...today.

made in the U.S. of A.

ha, i discovered that i own a piece of clothing that proudly displays "Made in U.S.A." on its tag. nike gym shorts. i was pretty surprised. especially that it was nike. i thought only new balance still made stuff here...

mental exercises

please to picture this. ^^ please note the attached shower head. now imaging trying to take a shower while straddling seen squatty potty.

ok, mental exercises are done for the day.

random quote: radio

quote from the radio today: "if you don't get drunk at some point this weekend, then the terrorists have already won."

i hope you all did your best to fight terrorism this weekend.

styles

i changed the style of my blog again. paris just wasn't working for me. but i know it'll work for andrea...

oh yeah, happy independence day to all my chums in the uk, i'm sure you're not going to hear that over there. i imagine they're not big fans of the holiday.

norman

ha, i'm updating. shocker.

just so you all know, i have arrived back in norman. by plane no less. much better than the driving or bus ideas. it was really weird coming back on I-35 at night (like it always is when i return) but realizing that i hadn't driven the other 500 miles to get to that point.

like i said, i wasn't exactly planning on flying back to school. but my sister got a flight into st. louis yesterday at 1:30 so i decided to just fly back now instead of taking the bus on sunday since it was about the same price anyway. when seth and i got to the airport i parked in the 5 minute parking and seth went in to find naomi. well, the car wouldn't start and i started freaking out (for future reference, i am completely incapable of dealing with cars that don't work if i'm in any sort of traffic situation. it's just not a good thing) so after a while of freaking out, i just decided to let seth deal with it.he's much calmer in those kind of situations. actually, he's calmerin pretty much all situations.

so, i'm back in norman. due to poor communication, i'm not in my house yet. hopefully that will happen soon, but we'll see what happens. in the meantime, i'm at geoff's place. look for me there...

hmm...just realized i failed to transition into the "i'm back in the states" phase. seth and i got back last saturday. and i spent the majority of the time between then and now just bumming around the house. for my china summary: china was good. i liked it. i had fun. the mythical "china email" has actually been started (i didn't have anything better to do when my plane was delayed an hour) and should hopefully be finished and sent before classes start.