THE CLOTHES: BACK IN SCHOOL

Being back in school, I'm reminded why I'm doing my clothes experiment. I see girls in my house get up at 6am for their 8am class to blowdry their hair, curl their eyelashes, etc. I wake up at 7am for my 7:30am weight session and am ready in five minutes (to be fair I'm going to workout at the athlete's weight room where no one has expectations for your clothes except that it's Oregon State and/or Nike gear). But then I go to class and all around me there are constructed outfits and perfectly ruffled hair and matching shoes everywhere. and it's not just the girls; even the guys are in on the obvious peacocking.

I wore a pair of non-brand name jeans, a white t-shirt, sneakers, and braided hair today. It took me all of ten minutes to get ready after my shower today. (It would have taken less but I braided my hair and I only did that because I didn't want to braid it before practice this afternoon.) I felt comfortable and like I fit into this room and yet it took waaay less brainpower and time then a lot of the people in that room. And seriously who are you getting dressed up for? We're sitting in a 200 person lecture for 50 minutes. No one is paying you any mind.

MAPS! MAPS! MAPS!

These were on my list of required "books":

- topographic map of the Corvallis, Oregon quadrangle

- map of the Wilamette River water quality from 2008

-steroscopic glasses (see below)

- Atlas Stenograms. A WHOLE book full of 3-D maps! Well they're 2-D until you look at them thru the steroscopic glasses.


I walked out of the bookstore with a very smug look on my face thanks to all my required maps. I think even if they weren't required I would have wanted them. Seriously, once I'm done with this term, they're totally going on my wall!

I LOVE MY MOTHER

My mother sent me a letter that she had written me in August 2008, just near the end of my time at the ranch. It was strange reading it because it was like a puzzle piece of time in my life falling into place. In the letter there were bits and pieces of little things in life that I'd never heard the details about just the end result. Or things I'd never heard a reaction about. It was very heart warming to read. And the same time it made me miss my mother very much.

I SEE PEOPLE

There are so many people on campus!!
It's crazy. I mean, it's not anymore then last year. I'd just forgotten.
Biking is dangerous.

BROTHERLY LOVE

I went to church this morning with GregUr. We then strolled a block over to Becca, Bonnie, and Jenna's house just to chat. They were all just waking up but we had a pleasant conversation about what books Greg does NOT need to buy.
Walking a couple blocks farther we came across Safeway where we purchased frozen pizza, superglue, soap, apples, and various other things.
We then headed back to my house to cook our frozen pizza. While the pizzas were cooking we munched on chocolate covered peanuts, cucumber salad, chips and salsa. All of which we found in the left-over fridge here. Yeah! Free food! We also attempted to glue my phone back together with the superglue I had just purchased but we realized it didn't make it into my bag.
So Greg, being the awesome little brother he is, biked back to Safeway to get it back, while I did the dishes.

We then spent the rest of the afternoon watching my Netflix movie, Stage Beauty (Which we enjoyed. It ended happier then we were expecting), doing laundry and gluing my phone back together. Overall a very pleasant Sunday. And it's only 2:45 in the afternoon.

SLEEPING AT OXFORD

My house, Oxford House, seems nice. It's a little odd because I'm gone all day and here at night which the opposite of the majority of everyone else. They have nothing to do all day (classes don't start until Monday) except bum around the house and then all the activities happen at night when I'm winding down and going to sleep. I'm interested to see how stuff plays out with my study room mates. One seems nice enough, but a little stand offish to meeting people. The second seems a little lonely. She spends a lot of time on her computer and doesn't really think to take it into a public room where she might run into people to talk to. and the third I've seen for all of ten minutes. The sleeping porch seems to be working out well. The bunk beds are fairly new so they don't creak and shake therefore you don't hear/feel everyone moving around all night. And people are good about being quiet.

Crew has also started. Today was day two and I am exhausted. In fact I want to be in bed right now. But I am writing for you folks. Anyways, it's going well. We've had two assessments: a long cardio one (60 min L4 if you know OSU crew lingo) and a weightroom one. The two easiest of the five total assessments. I did really well on both. I hit my goal exactly for the L4 and I did on the high end of good in the weight room (various flexibility tests, pull-ups, sit-ups, push-ups, wall sits, planks). Today they took out two eights full of the people who had achieved their goal for L4 (that leaves about 20 people erging). The water was lovely! and I had total "ah ha!" moment in the boat on a technical part of the stroke I have been working on all last year.

I haven't seen much of GregUr though. We went bowling together on Monday night. That was fun. I've been insanely busy with crew stuff which makes it hard to see him. I hope to rectify this situation soon.

I have made an effort to play my fiddle everyday. I'm actually playing stuff that sounds like a melody! In fact just today I spent a chunk of time figuring out to play a Irish tune called Spootiskeery. I just listened to the song bit by bit and worked it out. It was very satisfying. Ok so I only figured out the first bit but that's something, right?

I also bought $460 worth of books today. Actually the athletic department bought them for me but still that's a lot of books! I was biking home with a bag on each handle bar and I could quite literally feel my bike being dragged downwards. Getting all my books and looking at my syllabuses, I've come to realize I have the work cut out for me. Most people only take four classes a term (about 14-15 credits). I'm taking five (17 credits) and all them are upper division classes. (The only other upper division class I've taken so far is the one class I didn't get an A in. I got an A-. Horrors of Horrors! :) ) Anyways I talked to the Katrina, the athletic academic adviser, and she said to try it out for the first week or so and see how it goes. If it's going to be insane I can drop one. I have room in my schedule to pick it up later.

Ok I think that's a long enough update for now. Sleep time!
Yesterday evening, we had a team get together and filled out little bios that we hang on our lockers. One of the things we had to say was what we liked to do. I said "Sleep"
I thought Dad would get a kick out of that.

THE CLOTHES: LAUNCH

So I've purged my wardrobe. Partly because I just don't have room for it all and partly because I'm doing an experiment this year. I've gotten rid of all printed clothing (except for Oregon State gear because I'm required to wear that at practice) So it's all solid colors. Only the basics.

The fashion world and how much emphasize we as a society put on how we look has been driving me nuts recently. I mean seriously, so I spend $25 on a shirt that I wear to
"look nice" every once in awhile. And when I do end up wearing it, I wear it for all of a couple hours - taking it off waaay before it's dirty. I understand the value of looking groomed and put together; I completely understand that unless I want to totally throw off everything this whole societal institution offers, I have to buy into the looks-market somewhat. But why should what clothing brand I'm wearing have any say in my daily interaction with people? I feel confident enough in my personality to be able to express myself in a whole slew of other ways then the pieces of cloth I have draped around my body.
So my experiment is just to see who I met, who I befriend, etc with understated clothing. What happens when I don't necessarily making any statement with my clothes.

According to the scientific method I need a hypothesis. Crap. I don't have one.

I'm taking this slow though. I basically just sent mom home with a duffel bags of shirts, keeping all my sweatshirts/outer wear. I also have a boat load of hats, scarves, socks, shoes, a few dresses/skirts, and pants to mix things up. Who knows maybe my next step will be get rid of all those accessories.

MAC AND CHEESE

All I wanted was mac and cheese.
I had a box of Safeway brand still in my cupboard. For lunch we didn't have milk or butter so I used soy milk, sour cream, and some cheddar cheese we had. It looked sooo good. Super cheesy and gooey. It tasted like straight sour cream. It went down the disposal.

For dinner we had a box of 15 box of Costco brand mac and cheese. Since lunch I've bought milk and butter so we should be set. The cheese mixture from the box turns out to be florescent neon glowing radioactive orange color. NOT natural. But oh well, mac and cheese is mac and cheese in my book. Hey, I'll even eat Easy Mac. First bite seems ok until I realize my tongue is coated with grainy cheese sauce. Needless to say it did NOT taste better then it looked.

I gave up on my mac and cheese for the day and just made myself a turkey sandwich for dinner.

SICK ROOMMATES

My fiddle lesson was cancelled yesterday. The teacher was sick. This was disappointing.

On a happy note, Jenna and Becca have arrived so I am no longer living by myself.

401KEG

I saw this on someone's facebook and found it amusing. Not that I claim to be following it.

If you had purchased $1000 of shares in Delta Airlines one year ago, you will have $49.00 today. If you had purchased $1000 of shares in AIG one year ago, you will have $33.00 today. If you had purchased $1000 of shares in Lehman Brothers one year ago, you will have $0.00 today.
But, if you had purchased $1000 worth of beer one year ago, drank all the beer, then turned in the aluminum cans for recycling refund, you will have received $214.00. Based on the above, the best current investment plan is to drink heavily & recycle. It's called the 401keg.

FIDDLE ME TO THE MOON

I just bought myself a fiddle and all its accouterments! I spent three hours this morning in a local music story looking over violins, bows, case, etc. The man has been selling/repairing/restoring stringed instruments in Corvallis since the 1970s and was Extremely helpful and informative. And I have my first fiddle lesson next Monday at 11am!

My heart is very happy with the purchase. My bank account on the other hand isn't.

URBAN BLOGS UNITE

One of the blogs I read.

JONAS BB HAZE

Mel and I have made it to Denver!
We left St Louis on Monday morning at 5:00 am and drove drove drove all day across Missouri, Kansas, and East Colorado. We hit Colorado in late afternoon and every hill we crest we expect to see the mountains bam! there in front of us. They never come. In fact, we make it all the way into Denver proper before we even outlines of the mountains. The westerly winds have pushed California wildfires ash etc across half the country and over the Rocky Mountains and Denver is coated in the haze. It's almost like a cross between LA smog and Oregon fog. That with the moon glowing orange last night makes the whole thing slightly discombobulating.

But last night I hung out with my friend Biff. We sat on his front porch eating burgers and shooting BB guns at tin cans lined up on a fence. I'd never shot one of those before I actually had a pretty good shot. We totally shredded a Coke can, it was sliced into three different pieces. Pretty good if I do say so myself.

Denver also seems to be the place where I come across Jonas Brothers. Mel and I were in Walgreens today flipping through the magazine racks and there tucked behind a USWeekly magazine someone had shoved a Rolling Stone's Everything Jonas Brothers special edition including five posters. So naturally we had to buy it. Currently we have the five posters sprawled across Hannah's living room floor (Mel has put first dibs on the Nick Jonas one) and Mel is immersed in the articles and I am telling you all about it. We have both decided we would like to meet them because they seem like funny guys.