Things to be excited for…

It’s been a while now, huh?  More than a month, actually, and this is the first post of the new year.  Not much has changed.  I’m back at uni, working on my psych degree and studio art minor.  Classes are going well, professors are mostly stellar, the norm.  I’m taking developmental psych, cognitive psych, ANOVA/experimental statistics, design 1, and logic.  All in all, mostly major/minor specific.

It’s snowy here.  And cold.  But that shouldn’t come as any surprise to you (come on, it’s Kirksville; we wear shorts when it gets above freezing).  My friends and family in Saint Charles recently got a foot of snow, which pretty much makes it the first time that Kirksville had less–even if we’re only talking by a few inches.

But enough about classes and weather and cold!  There are marvellous things in which to be excited for!  New albums coming out this year, the marriages of both of my sisters, the tentative backpacking trip to Chicago, visiting family in Florida, and working at what is quite possible the best place in the world for three months.  It suddenly hit me today just how much is coming up within the next six or seven months.

Both of my older sisters are getting married: Joslyn in April and Jessica in August.  Joslyn’s will just include going home for the weekend, but I will have to get myself to Colorado Springs, CO for Jessica’s.  At first, my dad informed me that I would just fly there, but for the same price, I could give myself a multiple day vacation in Chicago and just take the train.  Sure, that’s an extra two days of travelling, hostel costs, food, et cetera.  But you know what?  I’m totally up for it.  My room mate and I started scouring the internet last night for train prices and hostels in the Chicago area and how to backpack your way across the country.  Now, I just need to present the idea to my mother.  That will be interesting.

Meanwhile, lots of new albums come out this year that I’m pretty darn excited about.  Florence + the Machine (whom I was gushing over a year ago), Kerli Koiv, Coldplay (about damn time), et cetera.  Loreena McKennitt and Robyn both just released new albums that I would love to get my hands on and might save as a special present to me for my birthday (or for getting through the semester, either one).

It’s strange to think that this semester will be done and over with in only three and a half months.  Come 6 May, and I’ll be back home in Saint Charles.  And on the 15th, my lease will start on the house that Jess, Noah, and I have up here in Kirksville.  I won’t be staying there for the summer, which leaves a bit of a waste in the rent that I will still be paying, but it will be fun to come up over weekends and start fixing the place up.  We’re pretty excited to get furniture and paint and mix-matched dishes into there.

Anyway, I hope that this was a sufficient update.  I’ve been working on another blog post for some time, but it really hasn’t been coming along well.  So this is my much more friendly alternate.

Keep it classy.

Missi

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Settled back in.

It’s storming.  One of those off and on rains where thunder rumbles in a lower pitch than normal, far out, warning you that the drizzle could pick back up at any moment and then thrash at your windows, knock you down.  The sky, now dark, was the orange of sunset through storm clouds that makes you wonder if there will be a tornado, but you just want to sleep or stare at it instead.  It’s one of those evenings.

Life has settled back down for me at uni.  Classes have picked up, and I’m facing an exam in every class within one week of each other, and now it’s the mad game of reading every chapter that I had put off.  I joined Ceilidh (pronounced Kayleigh) club, which is Irish dancing, and that’s been enjoyable.  Difficult, of course–muscle memory doesn’t just come on it’s own–but enjoyable none the less.  And I rearranged my furniture yesterday to deloft my bed and get a more comfortable layout (yes, there will eventually be pictures).

Today was one of those big visit days on campus where all of the high school seniors come in to tour campus and think about applying, which means that I spent nearly an hour and a half giving tours to families.  It’s one of my favourite activities on campus, and I want to apply to give full campus tours next year (hey, I’m technically a professional tour-guide because of my work–they’ll have to hire me!).  What’s really cool about Truman is that there will be people at each dorm to give a personalised tour of said dorm with just one family at a time; it’s a major improvement over the schools that will take twenty people in a group to see a couple places.  The tours were so much fun, too.  I had great groups of people, including a group of two best-friends who had forgone bringing their parents along for the visit.  They saw my Skittles machine and freaked out, so I let them put in coins to get candy, and when the tour was going to be over, they asked if it had to be over because they were enjoying the tour so much.  So, I just ended up showing them all kind of other places in MO hall, including the room of some people none of us knew but who invited us to see their awesomely artsy room.  All-in-all, a great day of tours (and some people who now for sure want to live in Missouri Hall.  Booyah).

Not much else to say; I’ll finish up with a musical quote that I like and some dorm photos:

“Hundreds of years in the future,
It could be computers
Looking for life on Earth.”

-Coldplay, Twisted Logic

(PS: IT’S TOTALLY STORMING NOW!)

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Music Taste

My psych class this morning was cancelled, leaving my only class of the day to be my art class at 15.00.  On top of that, I’ve spent the past two hours studying with friends in the lounge (which is here on out called the “living room”) and listening to fantastic music.  Some Beirut, Andrew Bird, John Butler Trio, Explosions in the Sky, Sufjan Stevens.  Good stuff.  Plus, it’s going to rain more this afternoon and possibly storm.  Glorious.

Speaking of good music…  I’ve been wanting to mention a little bit about those songs that I was talking about a few posts ago.  Wow, that was literate.

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