I Admit...

Ok, I'll say it. I gave up a couple weeks ago. I was taking the pictures, I just never had the time to post them! The blog was a secondary goal, so I wouldn't call that as much of a failure, though I do wish I'd stuck with it better. I don't even remember quite when it was I failed... I think it was a weekend when I was just too bosy to stop and pull out my camera. Which really is kind of depressing, but I was never good about taking pictures of my life in the first place, so this was kind of a stretch for me.
I am glad that I made it as long as I did, and I'll give it another try next year. Hopefully if I have time, I can come in and post all the pictures I took but didn't get put up. I'm still looking forward to an exciting year, but I just won't be documenting every second of it. Only the really important ones. :)

So yes, hopefully a catch-up post will follow eventually, so I can at least have 2 1/2 months worth... that's like 1/5 of a year, that's not too bad... Next year I'll do better, hopefully! Thanks for joining me on this attempt at something new. I'm just way too busy to post it all. Please keep reading my regular blog, when i make new posts!

Making up for quite a few days...

Ok, sorry about that. I got super busy, and didn't get a chance to post. but I'm back now! Some of these might be a bit concise, but I'll touch on the important parts, anyway.

January 5

After a fairly uneventful day of classes (week 1 tends to be just that - uneventful), I went to get dinner at West with my friend Colton. While we were eating, i look up and see my friend Ethan Luckens walking across the dining hall, which was odd since he lives on South side. We went to eat with him, and had a really fun time. I had to snap this lovely picture of Ethan eating his miso, because that face was too priceless to pass up.
It turns out Ethan was at West because he was going to a Forestry Club meeting right afterward, and it worked out, since Peavy, the Forestry building, is across the street from West. He invited us to tag along, and, once I had ascertained that these were the forestry types whose favorite tree was a stump, I agreed. When we first got there, I felt a bit odd since there were only like 12 people there, and they all knew we were new. Ethan was a regular, but Colton and I weren't. Once they got to talking, I was reminded so much of home, and I loved it. Carhartts everywhere, and you could see the clips on the knives they had inside their pockets. :)

They were talking about a few trips they were planning to take in the near future, then started talking about the more pressing matter for them, which was logging sports. Yes, like log rolling and the horizontal chop and all the other lumberjack events you see on ESPN2 from time to time. :) I ended up semi-volunteering to help them run Spring Thaw, their big logging sports invitational, since I definitely lack the coordination to do anything requiring balance or dexterity with an ax.

After the meeting, Colton, Ethan and I went back to Sackett to watch Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and ended up watching it with quite a few of the people who were in the lounge at the time. A good time was had by all, and it was a very fun day. :)

January 6

Another uneventful day of classes, we got to do actual stretching exercises in jazz. That night i went to the Academic Success Night hosted by RHA to help people develop and personalize their study habits. it might have been more successful if they'd had people there besides the hall council members who already have a pretty good idea of how they best study. It ended up being a bunch of us talking about our different study methods, as well as filling out Nik's lovely time commitment chart, where you were supposed to see how much time you devote to different things (eating, class, sleeping, homework, friends/family, TV, work, etc.) and see if you had any imbalances. There was also a lot of free pop. So I took a six-pack of Dr. Pepper when it was over.

Once I got back to Sackett, I went to watch movies once again in the lounge. It was then that I met James. :) He's from England. :)

I found out he's from Yorkshire, and he's here on exchange, but just for winter term. He played on a really good ping-pong team at home, though he wasn't much into playing soccer/football.
When Erin came into the lounge, she immediately noticed that there was in fact someone new in the room. I said, "Erin, this is James." To which she replied, "Hi, I'm Erin!" and went to talk to her friend. Then I said, "He's from England." and she was sitting on the ground by his chair in about .325 seconds. She started talking to him, beginning of course with, "Oh my gosh, say something!" Anyone who speaks differently than the locals knows what it's like to be asked this, and they know that in that moment you can't think of a single thing to say.
Erin started talking to James, and then I mentioned something to the group about how they should all go to Winter Formal. Erin then immediately turns to James, whom she has known for all of 5 minutes, and says, "Hey, do you want to go with me?!?"
And he said yes.

I do admire her tenacity, I doubt I would have had the balls to be that outright about it. But then again, Erin is outright about a lot of things. I quite like that about her. She will never hide what she thinks, and has no problem filling you in on the details.

I know the lighting sucks on this picture, but I didn't wanna be all creepy and be like, "Hey, let me get a picture of you guys who have known each other for 10 minutes!" We did all go on a Facebook-adding spree shortly after that, though, which was quite fun. I'm thinking Erin and James will actually have quite a bit of fun at the dance, I know I will. :)

January 7

Today, after yet another un-exciting day of first week classes, which included having to buy Microsoft Office 2010 so I can do my Business 101 homework on my own computer instead of just the school's, and boy was that a mis-adventure in failed customer service, I had a pretty awesome night. Walked to Woodstock's Pizza, which is right by Fred Meyer's, for an AKPsi rush event, which basically entailed eating free pizza and talking to the one potential pledge who showed up. All of my brothers couldn't believe I'd walked all the way there (seriously, it's only like a mile and a half. 20 minute walk, no problem), which made me feel tough (ish). After Woodstock's, which i did get a ride back from due to the fact that it was raining, was the oh-so-wonderful Dixon After Dark. Once a month, Dixon hosts a special event on one of the basketball courts that's just supposed to get underclassmen to go hang out and have fun. There's free pop, popcorn, and snow cones, plus some Rock Band and whatever event they're having on the court. This time, it was Nerf Wars. And as you'll discover at OSU, where there's Nerf, there's nerds. :)

It was pretty much all HvZ-ers (Humans vs. Zombies, the best game EVER played on a college campus) who brought their blasters for a night of fun. There was a shooting range, a game of dodgeball, and just some general HvZ melee. I mainly did the fighting, zommin on some humans, though it was a bit of an unfair advantage to them since they were all mods, or else veterans. Whereas the zoms were pretty much all fellow frosh. However, while I was running about having a jolly good time, I saw my friend Ethan Luckens on his way out of Dixon, and I called him over. We chilled for a while, and hung out with some friends. When I tried to introduce Ethan to my zombie friend Sam, and Sam's friend Tyler who I had just met that night, He already knew them. Not only did he and Sam live on the same floor of Finley, Tyler was his roommate.

As Dixon was winding down, we agreed that we were not done having fun for the night. At 11 on a Friday night, who would be? So Tyler, Ethan, Sam, and I, plus a group of their Finley friends, all went for a walk. We got as far as Monroe before we realized we really had no destination, besides watching all the drunk people stumble around on Monroe, so we went back to Finley and watched the last half of Dodgeball. When the movie got over, it was around 1:30 in the morning, so what did we do? We went to Shari's. Sam, Ethan, Tyler, me, Nicole, Angel, and P. Kness (that would Phil Kness. The K is silent. hence the nickname), and Kent, all crammed into one of the big corner booths. It was totally awesome.

When we got back to Finley we still weren't tired. At least, most of us weren't. About half of us stuck around to watch AVP, which i had not seen before. It wasn't what i expected it to be, though it certainly wasn't any piece of cinematic mastery. It was sooooo late by the time we all crawled off to our respective sleeping locations, but it was totally worth it. One of the nights that college is all about. :)

January 8

I tried to do homework today, I really did. For a little bit, anyway...

The highlight of the day would be going to Finley again. I found out that Sam had never seen Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, so I had to fix that. I brought my dearest darling Emma along for the movies, which took a bit of convincing, but I got her nonetheless. We started Hitchhiker's at like 9, but then when that was over someone got Monty Python out of their room, so of course we had to watch that, too. :) When the movies were over, we got out Ethan's Apples To Apples party box, and spent a very decent chunk of time playing an extremely entertaining game of Apples to Apples. We stopped playing when we had used up all of the red cards, since we didn't bother shuffling them back in. Just when we thought that might have been the end of it, Tyler gets a set of verrry nice poker chips out of his room, and the four guys (Sam, Tyler, Phil, and Kent) played several rounds of Texas Hold 'Em while Emma and I looked on and chatted in the way that girls do (read: the way that confuses boys and entertains girls). Once the guys had all run out of chips, the poker game ended, and we thought we were finally done. Then the random conversations began. We discovered that Phil has several hidden talents, and that we are all totally awesome (though we really did already know that one). We finally wound down for real around 3:30, drawing another totally awesome night to a close. :)

Phil's hidden talent: 

January 9

Another day where I made every attempt to be productive and do homework, but how much homework does one have after one week of school??
I went to chapter, which was as interesting as it could be, and we watched Airplane for the Sackett movie. I really didn't do much interesting today, besides a late-night Skype call with a very dear friend of mine from my FBLA days. :)

January 10

Interesting things today:

 - Worked at the AKPsi booth in Bexell trying to get people interested in the chapter. I got 2 in my hour. :)

 - Added a one-credit pass/fail Spanish conversation class on the suggestion of my 212 teacher. He says it'll be a good supplement, I'm hoping it'll be fun, it should be good.

 - Hall council exec meeting. mainly talking about our plans for the upcoming term.

 - Regular hall council meeting. Fastest meeting EVER. Partly because it was REALLY cold in that room, but also because we all had somewhere else we'd rather be.

Oh, and there was also something on TV... what was it again? Oh yeah. THE BCS CHAMPIONSHIPS.

There was a BIG crowd of us in the A/D lounge to watch the game, and there wasn't a single Duck fan in the group. :) As much as I would have liked a West coast school to win, I just couldn't let it be the Ducks. Their fans are awful enough as it is. Point in case: Jordan Hatfield. Anyway, it was an awesome game, and definitely did contribute to our incredibly short hall council. We tried pushing the meeting back half an hour, to 8:30 instead of 8, in hopes that the game would be over, but no, instead we just had to leave at the end of the 4th. We were done by 9, though, and all got to see the absolutely amazing end to the game. :)

January 11

1/11/11. Yeah, we thought it was pretty cool. Not as cool as it will be in November, but still pretty awesome.

It snowed today. Not a lot, just a little bit.

I also went to help out at an info session for AKPsi, which was our main chance to get people sold on how awesome AKPsi is. We give them the whole spiel, looking awesome in out professional attire, and strongly encourage them to fill out the application. We had three hopefuls show up, which was pretty good by winter term standards. We're hoping for like 6, but we won't be too heartbroken if we get less.

After being all dressed up for AKPsi, I got dressed up in different clothes to hand out tickets to the Winter Formal Fire & Ice Ball. Jordan sang Zoot Suit Riot for Colton and I, which put us in a swing danging mood, which we indulged. :)

January 12

Such a sad day. I usually get up at 8:30 so I won't feel like I wasted my entire morning before my 11 o'clock class, but I took an extra hour this morning, just because I felt like it. When I finally got out of bed at 9:30, I discovered my phone had been flooded with texts that morning. My high school English teacher, Mr. Dowdy, had died of a heart attack that morning. I couldn't even believe it. They said he hadn't been feeling that well, so he went in early to make a lesson plan for his sub, and was found unconscious in the parking lot when the custodian, Mr. Doherty, got there. They took him to the hospital, but it was too late. :(

Mr. Dowdy will be sorely missed, he was an amazing person, a great teacher, and a passionate basketball coach. he had found that perfect balance of letting us do what we wanted and have fun, but not taking any crap from us. As much as we may have disliked some of our assignments, we all loved him. And now I will treasure my life story even more than just because he told us we'd like being able to look back. That book is a tangible reminder of the effect he had on my life, as well as the lives of everyone else who made them for him.

Some memories of Mr. Dowdy, short and long:

- He was an adamant believer in Bigfoot. He knew he saw it, and would tell you all about it.

- He loved baseball. He may have been the basketball coach, but one look at his room and you knew what his first love was.

- After I took my AP test senior year, I had to thank Mr. Dowdy for the advice he'd given me after my first SAT. I had wanted to know how to improve my essay score, and he said I should try and work in a piece of literature I had read if at all possible. Teachers just like, and including, him were reading these, and they wanted to see something that proved you really knew your stuff. i applied this to my SAT essays, and did great. Then I used the same principle when the AP's came along, and was able to relate The Picture of Dorian Gray to one of my essays, and it wasn't even on the list of suggested titles for the subject. I told him about it after the test, and offered him my exam booklet, since I knew he saved them to show to future classes and give them a feel of what the AP's were really like.

  I had to go back in the fall to let Mr. Dowdy know that I had gotten a 5 on the AP. Out of 5.

  And I owe it all to him. 

- When we were working on our videos for his class during my Junior year, Lacie, Cherisse, Erin, and Jodessa were making very animated (and loud) plans for their video, talking about how Julia was going to be Barbara Walters in their very own rendition of The View. It was a work day, so they weren't reeeeally disturbing anyone, but if you know Lacie, you know how she can get. And by that I mean, Lacie was not using her 'inside voice'. (Does Lacie have an 'inside voice'??) After 5-10 minutes of Lacie getting better and better (read: louder and louder) ideas, Mr. Dowdy suddenly stands up from his desk, points at the gaggle of girls and says, "You four. Out in the hallway. Now."
   He walked them all the way down the hallway in total silence. All the way into the library in total silence. Into the back room of the library in total silence. They were terrified that they were in a whole bunch of trouble. Then Mr. Dowdy turns to them and says, holding his hand at mid-shoulder height, "Lawn mower," (moves hand 3 inches higher) "rock concert," (hand 5 inches above that) "you four." Once the girls realized they weren't really in trouble, they relaxed. The lawn mower/rock concert reference went down in infamy, and it was always good for a laugh when we thought about it. Now it can also serve as a reminder of what a truly great teacher Mr. Dowdy was.

"To the well-organized mind, death is but the next great adventure." - Albus Dumbledore

Next adventure for Mr. Dowdy: Kickin' it with Bigfoot.

January 13

Hard to follow up a day like yesterday, huh?

Went to classes like normal, I am really liking my jazz class. the 'jazz walks' are really easy, and the 'skipping with attitude' is how Kelsey and I dance when we're together. :)

Right after jazz, I had an interview to be an INTO Conversant. Basically, I volunteer one hour a week to work with an INTO student to help them improve their English so they can pass their TOEFL and enroll at OSU full-time. For those who don't know what the TOEFL is: it's a test to prove they know enough English to get by in college classes. Put it into perspective: Imagine you have to take a test proving you know enough Chinese to get by in college classes. Now you see why it ain't easy.

After that, I went to a focus group to help OSU build a(nother) new website for students, to make things 'easier'. There was free pizza, so it was pretty alright. Then I went shopping with Laura to get things for the chocolate fountains for Winter Formal. We ended up having to improv a lot of it, since we couldn't find strawberries or chocolate fountain chocolate. So we were seen leaving with 10 jars of hot fudge, 6 bottles of Hershey's syrup, 8 bags of marshmallows, 3 big boxes of Rice Krispie treats, 3 big bags of pretzels, and 6 bunch of bananas. Nope, nothing interesting here, just a couple of college students buying groceries.

Once I got back, I went to the basketball game against UCLA to hang out with my brothers and maybe some pledges. I have no idea if there were pledges, i sure didn't see them. I saw Ray, Brian, and Monica. We were behind by 17 when I got there at halftime, but we managed to pull up to a 57-57 tie with two minutes left. Just as it was looking like we might actually beat them, they managed to get two sets of free throws, and won 62-57. Kind of disappointing, but a good game. It was especially entertaining when the guy behind me started yelling at their (only) white guy about how his tattoos were "trash". And i will admit, it did kind of look like a junior higher had gotten a book of random rub-on tattoos, couldn't decide which one he wanted, and so just made a sleeve out of all of them, but still. He was LOUD...
And of course the band was there, classy as ever. Roll out the barrel, 'cause the band's all here!

After the game, it was back to Sackett, for nothing interesting in particular. Just as i was getting ready to go to bed, I remember my poor neglected blog, and decided to take care of it before it became a daunting mountain of work. An hour and a half later, and ta da! I hope you all enjoy it, and hopefully this will tide you over until I can post again. Winter formal is tomorrow night, so I obviously won't be posting then. I do appear to have some pretty sweet plans for the weekend, so we'll see how things progress. :) Until next time, I bid you adieu.

January 2,3,4

January 2nd - I packed up my things on the second, and headed back to Corvallis for the start of another term at Oregon State. I couldn't wait to get back, and it was so great to be back in the building I hadn't yet realized I missed so much. Kelsey came down with me, and so I was able to show her around my corner of campus where I live and eat. She has agreed that my dining hall food is FAR superior.

My wonderful RA Sophie had added a new set of name tags to our doors, so my door is now pretty freaking awesome. The robots are from last term, the coloring pages (mine is Apples, Stephanie's is Seal) are this term. And the wonderful giant snowflake and holiday card are from my amazing neighbors, Emma and Megs. :)

January 3rd - First day of classes! I don't have class until 11 (yes, I know how lucky I am!), and when I woke up there was some beautiful light shining in through my window. It made me think it might actually be warm outside.

I, of course, was wrong. It was FREEZING out. I looked out my window, and the entire field outside was covered in frost. EVEN WHERE THE SUNW AS SHINING!!!!! I braced myself for the cold, tried not to be outside more than I had to, and made the best of it.
My Spanish teacher seems like he'll be interesting. He's a bit scatterbrained, but pretty cool. Think Flaherty, if you've had the privilege of knowing that fellow. he also talks to the back wall. I've watching him two days now, and I'm sure of it. Unless he's asking a specific person a question, he's always telling the bulletin in the back of the room all about what we'll be doing in class.
My business 101class should be pretty fun, too. My teacher seems really nice. And it's a good thing I can have up to 4 absences before my grade is affected, because I'm already anticipating 2 for AKPsi trips...
AKPsi is going really well. For those who don't know, I'm a brother in Alpha Kappa Psi, a co-ed, unhoused, professionalism fraternity. AKPsi is recognized as the premiere developer of principled business leaders, and I'm proud to be one of them. We had our first chapter meeting of the term, along with a potluck, and it was really fine. I'm starting to really feel like part of the group. A lot of them have known each other for quite a while, and I'm the only freshman, so it's been interesting. They all seem to like me, though, and I know it's only going to get better from here.

January 4th - Second day of classes, and just as much of an adventure. Spanish again, I have it Monday through Thursday. I was a little worried at first about whether or not I'd be able to keep up in the class, or if my conversation skills had been left in the dust in favor of expanded vocabulary. So far, it looks like I'll be alright, and I can always have my friends Alejadro (of Columbia) and Adrian (formerly of Panama) help me practice. :) My Shakespeare class should be pretty great, too. I had the same teacher for the first half of the cycle last term, so I know him already, as well as several other students from 201 who're in 202 with me now. It's a reeeeally full class, but it'll probably thin out a bit, plus they all seem eager enough to be there.

We got out of Shakespeare a little early today, so I had almost a full hour before jazz dance, instead of the usual half hour I'll get. I got changed and headed up to the room to just chill and stretch. I figured if there was a class using it, I could just wait and check my email. Luckily, right as I got there the last person was leaving the room, so I had it all to myself. And it is absolutely GORGEOUS.

The cieling actually sparkles. Not even kidding. Not a lot, just a little bit here and there. There are pictures of dancers in crazy poses and mid-jump taped on all the mirrors, and the lights are old-fashioned and very pretty. I had pretty much an entire half hour to strecth out and enjoy the room. I listened to Regina Spektor to get myself in the mindset of being graceful. I was glad I had the whole half hour, because while it orignially seemed I'd lost a lot of my flex, I just needed to loosen up, and I was back to almost as good as I'd been back in the day. Almost to splits, almost putting my nose on the floor in some of the stretches. Plenty to work on, but still encouraging that I hadn't lost it all. The rest of my classmates finally arrived, and I recognized several of them, plus there were plenty of new faces. I'm reserving judgement on my teacher, because how you talk to a group and how you actually dance are two very different things. As a person, though, i do like her. She's funny and very personable, and I think I'll like working with her. We didn't actually get to dance or do anything today, it was all just going over the syllabus and what she expected of us. I'll have to wait until Thursday for that.

I actually felt really productive today, I got a lot of stuff done, and got pretty well prepared for tomorrow. I hope I manage to keep up with this productivity thing, I really like it...

That's all for now dear reader(s?)! I hope you enjoy it! I know I am!

January 1

Today, after ringing in the New Year with my dear friend Cherisse at my neighbors' house, I enjoyed a lazy day at home packing for school. Around 6 I went over to my friend Cherisse's house for a giant get-together party before we all had to peace out. After a large game of Apples to Apples, we ended up playing a giant game of Twister. It was verrrry interesting.

Project 365

I have decided, afte seeing my friend Jared Reed of New York post about it, to join him and several others in Project 365 during 2011. Project 365 is meant to help you improve as a photographer, and help you capture your year in a unique way. You take a photo of something every day. The photo should represent somethig important that happened in your day, be it a party you went to, someone you met, or something you saw or did. I'll be posting my pictures here, along with little blurbs about what the picture means, and what I did. I'm really looking forward to seeing what I come up with. I know this last year was crazy for me, and I can only imagine what next year will bring.

One of the hardest parts about Project 365 is to not give up! I'll be taking pictures from January 1 to December 31, and it'll be a challenge. But i think it'll be really good for me to stick with something like this for an entire year. I invite all of you to try it, too! And if you jump in partway through, that's ok! The important part is doing it. You'll be able to look back long after the day is done, and remember what exactly you did that day, and how great (or not-so-great) it was.


If you want to learn more about Project 365, go to http://content.photojojo.com/tutorials/project-365-take-a-photo-a-day/ . Good luck to all!