marvelous light

well, i realized this week that i am slacking even more than usual. folks, this is bad. i'm just not really caring about school all that much this semester. classes aren't exactly thrilling...to say the least, i'd much rather talk to people.

so, spring break was a couple of weeks ago. i went to glorieta. it was wonderful. just what i needed spiritually and emotionally. i came back extremely rested. amazingly.

in the past four days i have found out a lot that will dictate the next year of my life. sunday, i found out that i was accepted to the reu at texas a&m. i emailed fermi that night, just to make sure that i did indeed get rejected. not to worry, an email in my inbox the next morning assured me that i did. yesterday, i accepted the position. today, i got an email from the reu at the university of california - santa cruz. they accepted me too. it's a really good thing i already accepted the position at a&m, otherwise i'd probably have accepted the one in cali. for goodness sake, santa cruz is right on the ocean...but, i think that a&m is the best for helping me figure out grad school.

i also got an email from study abroad today. it would seem that i was "accepted" to reading, however, in my degree program, i can only go for a year. that's out of the question, as i do have an agenda of how i want my schooling here to go. i don't want to put off graduation a semester, since i only decided on study abroad because i could still make it out in four. i'm going to go by the study abroad office tomorrow and see what my options are. in all honesty, i wouldn't be heart-broken if i couldn't go abroad. i love norman, i love ou, and i love my friends here. i'm not sure uprooting a semester before i graduate is really a great idea anyway. even though i'll be here for year 5 anyway. my mom tells me that grad school is a lot different and that i'll stop hanging out with my lowely undergrad friends. sad thought.

housing

dear housing,

can i please trade the free cable in my room next year for a telephone in my room. that would be spectacular.

sincerely,
emily

come thou fount

Well, I obviously didn't get around to changing my blog's appearance. I did contemplate changing it to one of the sample ones (the bright pink one actually) just for spite, but decided it would probably be awhile until I changed it again and I didn't want to look at pink for that long.

That's all, but this hymn is absolutely amazing.

Oh, to grace how great a debtor,
Daily I'm constrained to be!
Let Thy goodness, like a fetter,
Bind my wand'ring heart to Thee.
Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it,
Prone to leave the God I love;
Here's my heart, Oh, take and seal it,
Seal it for Thy courts above.
-Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing

p b & j

who wants to give up homework for lent with me?

i had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for dinner tonight. mental note: eat these more often. they are tasty.

reu's are all mailed in and applied to. sweet. texas a&m, university of california - santa cruz, and fermilab. texas, california, or illinois...why do i get the feeling i won't be spending the summer in cali?

went to hillary's pirate birthday party on friday night. as we were walking/running along elm street some dumb person leaned out of his suv window and threw a mcdonald's cup of water at me. i was a bit confused at first, especially since i thought it was a water balloon. i was just thankful that it was water and not beer or soda or something fun like that. odd thing was though, i was the only person not dressed pirate-like. karma perhaps?

agh!

well folks, it looks like i'm well on my way to pulling an all-nighter in honor of going to houston...

i'm procrastinating

surprising, no?

i have a lab report, a matlab assignment, a lab quiz, and part of a project proposal to finish before i leave norman tomorrow. slacker extraordinaire.

a couple comments on valentine's day. this year's was lovely. not that v-day has been bad in the past, but this one seemed especially nice. the weather was absolutely gorgeous for one. it was all-around just a good day, although, i can't really remember what i did for the life of me. aside from dinner with the evans 4 guys +jon and david and talking to katie on the south oval, i can't remember much else that was non-school related.

i do have a complaint about valentine's before i finish, though. can people please stop complaining about or calling attention to the fact that they are single on this fine day? news flash: singleness is not the end of the world. really. i promise.

okay, rant finished.

De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da

so, i've been listening to the police for the past few days. like, a lot. that's pretty cool. i'm gaining an appreciation for 80s music. that's good, since i missed it the first time around.

lab iii is taking over my life. i suppose this is to be expected, but still, it seems its the only class i ever think about or do homework for during the week. that really needs to change. i also really need to start doing stuff for my honors research.

i got profs to write my letters of recommendation for REUs etc. the first one is due next week. neat. and i wrote my essay for study abroad. at least i'm kind of feeling on top of things there.

i was sick for a lot of this week. being sick is no fun. i skipped my one class on monday and spent the majority of the day sleeping. i think that was probably helpful in getting me better sooner.

that's pretty much it. this weekend will be spent doing massive quantities of homework since i will be in houston for the second half of next week. that's right, i will be visiting texas for the first time since being at ou. neat.

:)

*contented sigh* i needed that.

thesis

i checked out my first thesis from the library on tuesday. it appears my life is all downhill from here.

i've been moody...

i've been in a complaining mood lately. shame on me and sorry about that guys. i'll try to work on that. a couple of bad days is not even roughly equal to the the end of the world.

birthday

we celebrated my dad's birthday tonight, meaning family dinner and cake etc.

instead of putting the correct "number" of candles on the cake, we improvised. we used some of the big number candles that we had laying around. 33 +1 lone candle. it works in hex...

see, you really can't blame my weirdness on me. how could i come from a family like this and still be normal?

---

cool thing that happened today: my dad gave me another power adaptor for my laptop since he had a couple just lying around. ah, the benefits of having an ibm employee in-house.

books!

today's reading dilemma:
which "textbook" should i read?
physics of the body or the world is flat

or...maybe both?

in other news: i will not be arriving in norman until monday night

2006

happy new year everyone!

sheesh, 2005 was a long year.

went to see narnia the other day. i liked that they played the dictionary game. although, they got a cool word like gastrovascular out of the deal. the only word i got out of it the last time i played was dejecta. how useful is that in everyday conversation? oh, wait...

i finished the drafts for my reu/lab internship applications today. now i need to proof them and then all that's left is my study abroad application. writing an essay on "why i feel qualified to study abroad". blah, blah, blah.

okay, it's 4:30 in the morning. i'm going to bed now.

5th semester in review

I admit, I wrote this a couple of days ago, I just haven't gotten around to posting until now.

Fifth Semester in Review

• I completed 4 more ECE and 2 more CS classes. I only need 29 more hours to graduate.
• For the first semester that I can remember, I had no mental/emotional breakdowns. I'm going to attribute this largely to that fact that:
• I had my first voluntary, self-selected roommate. this semester taught me that I am not one of those persons designed to live alone.
• Nickel Creek--who Danny unwittingly introduced me to--was my favorite band this semester.
  
• I spent the majority of my semester hanging out with the freshman boys of Evans 4. only mildly strange.
• I spent another large chunk of time programming in S18 in the sub-basement of Carson.
  
• I was mistaken for being home schooled quite frequently. (Naomi felt the need to inform me/clarify that this is not a complement)
• I realized that I am in the perfect major for myself, partially due to the classes that I enjoyed (ECE classes) and the classes that I enjoyed less (CS).
• I built my first robot where I actually felt like I knew what I was doing
• Andrea joined OU Crew (this may seem irrelevant to my semester, but trust me, it wasn't)
• By some miracle, I kept my 4.0
  
• I spent ridiculous amounts of time checking my email, facebook, and reading other people's blogs (i.e. stalking people)
• I decided to study abroad
• I had my first job/internship interview (and got to wear my first suit. ugh.)
• I saw my first opening-night movie. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.
• I started doing the boggle and the jumble in the paper on a regular basis.

This was also the first semester where I had to seriously deal with most of my friends living off-campus. It was an interesting experience. I lost touch with many of them simply because I am bad at staying in touch and it was inconvenient. Knowing people with kitchens did, however, allow me to cook every so often. Each cooking experience was, of course, accompanied by a phone call to Mom for instructions.

This was also the first semester where I largely stopped going to RUF. A lot of this was due to being busy and lacking energy and motivation. The fact that it met at Lloyd Noble made me a lot less inclined to go. I am trying to figure out where my priorities lie so I don't screw up with this again next semester.

Yup, guys, those are the milestones.

This is probably the first semester where I am unable to say of it that it wasn't better than all of the previous ones. It wasn't a bad semester by any means, but for one thing, if Andrea hadn't been my roommate I would most likely have driven myself crazy and had a dozen mental breakdowns and bouts of loneliness. It was a bit hard dealing with not having most of my good friends living near me and having to meet a bunch of new people and finding a new group of people to hang out with. All in all, though, a good semester. I enjoyed it and I'm looking forward to the next.

mail

today was a good mail day. 2 word smart books and my prospectus from Reading. soon my vocabulary will be educated, powerful, and erudite.

christmas

i suppose it's not technically christmas day anymore, but hey, i haven't gone to sleep yet, so it still counts.

christmas was really nice this year. very relaxing.

on christmas eve, our family (all 5 of us) watched kids during the first christmas eve service. (part of the obligatory family bonding time). we then went to the christmas eve service. when we got home, we kind of decided to open gifts. my parents pretty much decided that since the older we get, the more picky we are to shop for and the more frustrating it is...they would just give us a few gifts that we actually wanted and then cash.

so, here's the (as andrea terms it) "loot" that i got for christmas:

• 2 nickel creek cds
• 2 word smart books (still in the mail)
• a few dvds
• an itunes gift card
• a book of su doku puzzles (i'm completely addicted after a day and a half)
• a che shirt from china
• a scarf/shawl thing from china that i will have to figure out how to wear
  
• a jane austin action figurine
• cash

we went over to the delwoods tonight. sat around, ate, talked, played apples to apples. it only took daniel 7.5 hours of intermittent asking in order to get us over to their house. i like the delwoods, they're neat people. i still don't quite understand how we lived in columbia for 13 years before meeting them though...

still attempting to learn vocabulary. considering trying to take the gre at mizzou while home over break. we'll see what happens. also a potential trip to colorado. we'll see what the siblings decided about it.

i was looking back on my christmas post from last year and all the books i got and said i would read. i think i read about 2 out of the 15 or so during the course of the year. failure. again.

coming tomorrow: emily's semester review

stuff

first off: andrea, your comments are worthless, but unfortunately i'm giving in to their powers of persuasion.

i'm home. i've actually been home since saturday. neat. naomi and seth got home today (wednesday)

i love getting mail at home. i got a credit card application and something from the army today. also neat.

i'm trying to figure out where to apply next summer. current top options:

• fermilab in chicago
• reu at texas a&m
• reu at the university of alaska
• reu at university of california, santa cruz

we'll see what happens. i suppose what i end up doing will depend on where i get accepted and whether i want to do more comp sci stuff or ee stuff. gosh, i wish i wasn't so horrible at decisions.

in other news, vocabulary learning hasn't really started yet for the break. i am a complete bum. i am getting a lot of personal satisfaction from redesigning the study abroad website though.

that's all. off to saint louis tomorrow to visit the relatives. should be fun.

andrea and kyle owe me some pictures. i expect those soon.

merry christmas everyone.

finals

4 finals down. 4 teachers i shouldn't have to see again. most likely ever. 2 finals left. apathy is closing in strong.

i've got an operating systems book that's begging to be burned...

loud hour

in the words of andrea:

"They think this is loud hour? They have no idea."

*sigh* sometimes i really miss last year...

balderdash

so, apparently banine is not a word. rubbish.

a certain somebody would probably be really good at balderdash...