Dead pixels!

Imagine my sadness when I went to review the pictures on my camera, and saw that within a time frame of ~4 hours, a number of the pixels in the display had died! If you look at the picture, they're right around one of the space invaders on my shirt.


I had to take it in black and white so that it was easier to see- the camera in my computer isn't really that great- so sorry for that and the low quality. Of course, my camera still takes pictures just as well as ever, but now it's weird taking them/ looking at them because the dead pixels are distracting :(

Such a sad day.

Angry wind advisory

It's really windy today. I mean, it's usually windy on campus, because it somehow manages to act like a wind tunnel. But today, we have a high wind advisory. When I woke up and checked the weather this morning, this is what I saw:


I wasn't very excited. Then I went outside, because I had to get lunch.


And this is how I felt when I got back. All and all, I've left my dorm twice today, both times because I needed to eat. You have no idea how glad I was that I didn't have to walk to class today. Although, maybe the weight of my backpack would have helped me not get blown around so much?

Ashley+ Tim's Wedding :)

Friday
Like most of this weekend, Friday was really busy. Andy and Jon had to go to Appleton to pick up their tuxs for the wedding (they were both ushers), then we had to drive to Madison, then we had wedding practice, and then the rehearsal dinner.


They're strange, but we love them. I think they were reenacting some pac-man thing. Anyway, the rehearsal dinner was at the Monona Terrace/ Sheraton Hotel in downtown Madison, and had a GREAT view of both the capitol building and the terrace.


The capitol building, which should look familiar.


Part of the Monona Terrace, which may not look familiar. Quite lovely, don't you think?

Saturday
The actual wedding took place on Saturday. It didn't start until 3, but Jon and Andy had to be there by 12:30 to get ready, so I ended up being there really early, too. It worked out well, though, because I ended up doing a lot of running around for Ashley and her bridesmaids.


Speaking of, here they are getting ready for their pre-wedding church pictures. The photographer took about a million of Ashley (of course), and then a million more of her with various bridesmaids and the cute little flower girl.


And then Ashley and Tim were married! The ceremony seemed really short to me, but Tim's mom (who was awesome, btw) said it was actually fairly long for a Lutheran wedding. I guess I haven't really been to a wedding in quite awhile, though. They probably seemed a lot longer when I was younger.


This was their guestbook at the reception- it started out as just the tree drawing, and then people stamped their thumbs in green stamping ink and made the leaves.

Sunday
You would think that once the wedding was over, things would have settled down a bit. Somehow, we still ended up being pretty busy. First there was the gift opening Sunday morning, then we had to drive to Appleton to return the boy's tuxs, and then come back to Oshkosh.


I was so tired that after the first gift, I completely forgot to take pictures. I think this one was sheets. I was really tired. I'm sure at some point I fell asleep on the ride to Appleton, and I know I did between Appleton and Oshkosh.


I did wake up for a couple of minutes to try on this ridiculous Smurfette hat at the Spencer's in the Appleton mall. Not the most flattering picture...

Uh-oh!

This weekend, Jon's good friends Ashley and Tim got married. I knew ahead of time that we were going to take a lot of pictures this weekend. So of course I made sure to clear my SD card, since it was all but full. Unfortunately, it didn't occur to me that I hadn't yet transferred my Wednesday and Thursday pictures to my computer. Soooo... there are no pictures from those days. I'll be posting pictures from this weekend later today (after dinner? I have class until 6. yuck.), with some extra pictures to make up for my mistake.

Movies and birthdays and music, oh my!

Hey guys! As mentioned at in my last post, I've been spending a lot of time reading lately, so once again, I'm behind on my updates. First off, here's the picture I forgot to take on Tuesday:


Yes my friends, that is a port-o-potty way up on that scaffolding. I'll just let you decide what to think of that one.

Thursday
Thursdays are good days for me, because the only class I have is geology lab from 8am-10am. That leaves me a lot of free time before USRH assembly at 4:30. Last Thursday, I didn't have a whole lot to do, either. So I spent quite a bit of time youtubing my favorite Disney songs, which I've collected here for you.

From Beauty and the Beast, my favorite Disney movie ever:
-Be Our Guest
-Gaston
-Tale as Old as Time

From the Little Mermaid, which I don't actually like very much:
-Under the Sea
-Kiss the Girl

From Aladdin, a close second to Beauty and the Beast:
-Friend Like Me
-Prince Ali
-A Whole New World

Most of these aren't my favorites just because the music is good (I REALLY don't like the Little Mermaid), but because I still find them to be incredibly visually entertaining. And really, who doesn't love Be Our Guest?

Friday
One of my good friends from high school, Jacey, turned 22 this Friday! To celebrate, we got dinner at Red Robbin, where they sang, gave her a balloon, and brought her a sundae.


You have no idea how excited she was to have a balloon. Then, after dinner, we went to see RED (trailer here), which opened on Friday and was absolutely awesome.

Saturday
Being the first day of the weekend, nobody got any homework done. Mostly I played Magic with the guys. Although I did spend a surprising amount of time watching Red vs. Blue, an internet show based off of Halo. My friend Courtney has the first 5 seasons on DVD, and loaned them to myself and Jonathan.


I'll be the first to admit, this is probably over my usual limit as far as being a geek goes. Especially since I'm all but video game handicapped, and know next to nothing about Halo. However, having given it a chance, I think it's a pretty fun show. It's quite funny, although sometime Jon will start laughing and then have to explain to me that they were making a reference to the game's storyline.

Sunday
Since I didn't do any real work on Saturday, Sunday was pretty busy for me. I really only left the dorm to eat.


This was my proof that I actually ventured outside at all, instead of squirreling away in my room.

Monday
My little pink flower plant is alive! I had to pull off a lot of leaves that were pretty much dead, and now it's actually put out a couple of flowers!


When I last posted about them, it was suggested that this one might be a begonia. If this helps to confirm/deny that theory, I've also noticed that the flowers tend to be open like that during the day, and then kind of clam up on themselves at night.

Today
Care package from home! The most exciting possible thing to get in the mail. Even if I did know it was coming, since Mom had to call to get my address. It had a lot of useful things, like a nail file and a small pack of tissues (which both went immediately into my backpack), and a nice spray hand sanitizer (which went into my purse, since my backpack is already equipped with hand sanitizer), and Flintstones vitamins. It also had some fun stuff, like halloween candy and these guys:


Halloween-themed silly bandz and a glowy, color-changing ghost. Clearly, my mom knows what's important. I'm pretty sure that the ghost and zombie bands even glow in the dark!

Ok, so this turned out to be a really long post. I'm going to try really hard to be more on the ball from now on. Sorry guys :(

So much reading!

Updates are slow again, sorry. Foundations of Literary Criticism require a ton of reading. Who would have guessed? Anyway, here's what's been going on in Oshkosh...

Saturday
At least once a week, I feel like a stereotypical old person. Usually it has something to do with Wheel of Fortune being on right before Glee, so I usually catch the end of it while I'm waiting to get my Gleek on. Last week, however, it happened twice. Why? Check this out:


Oh yes. I was playing bingo. Any idea what a $100 Reeve Union gift card can buy? Textbooks. It was far too enticing an offer to pass up. I had wanted to get an action shot while we were playing, but it's really too dark in the Underground. It was too bad, too, because it seemed like everyone at my table except for me won something. Nothing as epic as the gift card or tv, though.

Sunday
Sunday was a homework day. It's nice because it's also the same day that office hours reset for the week, so I usually have them all covered within the first day. Sadly, since I'm only a committee chair, I don't get my own desk. I usually end up stealing Kristen's, since she never uses hers.


If you noticed the Geico money stack picture above her desk, you might have guessed that Kristen is our much put-upon treasurer. (Seriously. Intercampus mail keeps losing our money.) I'm not sure what I was doing at this point, other than taking a break. Probably working on my Langston Hughes essay. Most of your probably read his short story, Thank You Ma'am, at some point in middle or high school.

Monday
Monday was an awesome day of awesomeness. Why? Because we got our first math test back.


85/100! A solid B! I've struggled with math pretty much for forever, so this was really exciting and encouraging. I actually have the test hanging on my fridge right now, but will probably bring it home and stick it on the fridge there when I go back next weekend.

Tuesday
I saw something crazy and ridiculous but very practical, but I didn't have my camera and forgot to go back later. I'll go back and get a picture of it tomorrow for you, in addition to tomorrow's picture.

Wednesday
I've been burning through the Hunger Games books. I loved the first one, and I could hardly put the second one down to eat, let alone go to class. But it left off on a HUGE cliffhanger, which drove me crazy since I don't have the third. Luckily, my lovely friend Hannah asked me if I wanted to catch up over coffee this afternoon, and sprang this surprise on me:


She's loaning me her copy! Yay! Now if you don't hear from me for a few days, it might not be because of class. It might be because I've curled up in a nice comfy chair with this new friend :) or because having two lit. classes is turning me into a paper writing slave. Either/or.

Changing things up

Jon's usual approach to his hair is to get it all buzzed off, then let it grow out again until he goes back to New York and can see his favorite barber. He decided to let it grow out in August, though. Strangely, he decided it would be a good idea to let it grow until he went back home for Christmas break. At which point he'd pretty much have a fro.


Thankfully, we have a wedding to go to at the end of the month. Jon is part of the wedding party, and the bride is a perfectionist. She politely requested he get a haircut before the wedding. He's glad he did. I guess it makes him feel pretty. At least, that's what I'm judging from his interesting pose here.

Today, I decided I was tired of looking at boring dorm walls, so I started printing some of my favorite geek comics off to tape up. I'd like to get a bulletin board, but I'm not really sure how to attach it to the wall without messing the wall up when I take it down.


This group came from xkcd, the first webcomic I ever read. It's drawn by Randall Munroe, and is described on the homepage as "a webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language." It's updated every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday and is mostly stand-alone comics, but every once in awhile there will be a short story (sometimes all at a time, and sometimes built off of previous comics).


These are from Hark, a vagrant, one of my absolute favorite webcomics. It's drawn by Kate Beaton, who doesn't keep a regular update schedule. Most of the comics are based on historical events (French Revolution jokes ftw!) and literature (nobody reads Ann Bronte's books. The men aren't brooding enough).

Over the next week, I'm going to go through the pictures I've taken in the last year or so and see which ones I'd like to print off to stick on the wall too, so expect more updates once I figure out where I'm going with this.
Also, I finished The Hunger Games AND Catching Fire, the second book in the series. I'm waiting for one of my friends to bring the last installment, Mocking Jay, up to school this weekend so I can find out what happens. The books are really good, even if they're really fast reads (ANYTHING is easy compared to the Tome). I would definitely recommend them :)

Free stuff!

Remember how much I like free stuff? These last few days have been pretty nice: yesterday, I got a free pen.


Pretty boring, right?


Wrong! This sheet pulls out like a tape measure and lists all of the events going on in the student union this semester! Well, except for Homecoming week- they direct you to a website for that, because there's so much going on then. Other than that, though, it's pretty informative. For example, I now know that there's Halloween Carnival on the 28th, and that Dec. 7-8 they're making stuffed animals. Pretty sweet!

Today, I was walking around campus with Jacey, and one of the campus ministries was giving out free plants. That was cool, because I've kind of wanted to get a plant for awhile, since they help brighten up the room and are supposed to make you happier.


I named this guy Philip. We're pretty sure he's a Christmas Cactus, but since neither Jacey nor I know a whole lot about plants, we're probably wrong. (None of the plants had info stick things.) Then, because I could and because no one else seemed to want the plants, I grabbed another one.


We have no idea what this is. It's got little pink flowers, and the leaves are shiny, but that's about all we have to go on. So... back to Whatsit Wednesday! Can anyone name the Whatsit?

Weekend home

Friday
Friday was an absolutely gorgeous fall day. Much like today, actually :) I thought it would be a good day to do an update on the new academic building on campus, since the sky was so blue and pretty and the leaves are all bright yellow.


It was pretty cool- as I was taking the picture, they started moving the crane around. I've never seen them use it for anything before. Usually it just kinda sits there. Apparently it's actually useful. The new building is looking pretty good, too. It's not just a skeleton any more.

Saturday
Fresh cut roses from Dad's rose garden!


I wish I could upload smells for you. They smell really good.

Sunday
More roses, because I really enjoy them.


And a (tiny) bonus picture of me and my sisters, back when we were small and liked each other. jk, we still like each other.

Monday
I forgot to take a picture on Monday. You can hardly blame me, though- my wicked long Foundations of Literary Criticism class spent TWO HOURS discussing Ferdinand De Saussure's Nature of the Linguistic Sign, and it basically melted my brain. You can find an overview here, if you're interested.