My Dad

this is a shout out to my dad. he is one of the greatest people i know. my dad and i have our differences, and we don't always see eye to eye, but in the end, he always loves me no matter what. and i always love him no matter what. my dad is a hard worker. he is a loving husband. (my mom and dad still act like newlyweds, holding hands all over the place and kissing in front of their kids all the time.) he is supportive of my choices, even when i almost went to the rival university. also, he taught me early on in life (generally while shoveling snow) that service is something that doesn't take a long time, but it can mean a lot to other people. whenever we'd shovel snow, we'd do a neighbor's walk way (and sometimes driveway) as well. we always happen to live next door to people either who are young and only have young kids or who are on the older end of things and are empty nesters, so it makes a big difference to them to have the snow taken care of for them. i have some favorite memories of my dad. one christmas when we were little, my dad got us a Nintendo 64. it was the coolest thing ever. we got donkey kong and super smash bros. those are the two main games. for that whole next year he'd come home from work and sit down with us to play nintendo. sometimes he played the story game that is single player and we all watched, but the best times were when we would all play a multi-player game. I didn't get a controller in my hands often because i wasn't as good as my brothers, so they liked to take it from me, but even with my poor skills, i loved playing nintendo with my dad. another memory of my dad: one night, i woke up in the middle of the night after a bad dream. usually i woke my mom up for these kinds of things, but for some reason that i can't recall, i woke up my dad this time. he had me tell him about the dream. then he gave me a big hug and told me not to worry because nothing bad would happen to me while i was in his house. he would protect me no matter what. i slept much better at night after that. i love my dad a lot, and i hope he knows it. he has been an excellent father to me.

When it snows, it snows Llamas

i moved back to my apartment this evening. it was snowing really hard. welcome winter! i thought you'd never come. as i was carrying things inside, i got distracted because there was a llama outside my apartment complex. i don't joke when it comes to llamas and other large furry creatures. it was possibly the most random thing ever. people were taking pictures with it. so it snows, and a llama shows up. stranger things have happened i guess...but not anything i can think of.

Groundhog day

do you ever have the feeling that every day is the same day of the week? ...ok, that was confusing...let me just give you examples.

last week i thought tuesday, wednesday, and thursday were all friday. (friday felt like friday too.)

this week every day has felt like monday. monday was monday with the holiday. tuesday was monday (because of the school schedule). and today also feels like monday.

this causes problems. in the event that it feels like friday, i like to take the evening off after dinner, thus homework doesn't get done. in the event that it feels like monday, i feel like i still have all week to finish things, thus homework doesn't get done. it's a lose-lose situation.

the week is halfway over, and i still feel like monday. lose.

Four Fire Alarms

so, the parents went out of town. something about a business trip, but we all know that on a cruise it is business mixed with pleasure. regardless, it means that i am moved home for the duration of the trip to watch the three younger siblings. today was the first day being back and in charge. we decided for dinner to get a costco take-n-bake pizza. it seemed like a good decision. i put it in the oven, straight onto the rack, just like the instructions said. fifteen minutes later, i reopen the oven and take the pizza out. it smelled a little burnt. i lifted it up a little to look at the bottom, which was clearly blackened, and only moments after that, the fire alarm starts going off. lucky for me, older than me two was over and visiting at the time. we tried a couple things to silence the alarm, but nothing was working (also, we couldn't figure out how to extend the ladder to a high enough height). and then we realized something else. there were three more alarms going off. those alarms were thankfully on ceilings that were standard height rather than the vaulted ceiling in our main room. at this point, our ears felt like they were bleeding, so i went and found earplugs and handed them out. we pressed all the buttons, but nothing was working, so we pulled them off the ceilings. when they unplugged, two out of the three were silenced. we ripped the battery out of the third. and then the highest alarm just turned off on its own as we let the room air out. one day not even fully over, and we set off all the fire alarms. this bodes well for this week.

skipping conclusions

sometimes i don't write conclusions on essays. especially when they're comparative essays--essays that compare two different author's ideas about a particular subject. i figure it's better that way because if i did write a conclusion, it would go something like this:

in conclusion, their ideas are different. they're not only different, they're very different. you might think they're the same, but they're not.

or alternatively, it might go like this:

in conclusion, their ideas are the same. they seem different to people who don't think super deeply about them, but they're really the same. in other words, you may think they're different, but you're wrong.

that is why my essays don't have conclusions.

creepers

also, i just heard this knocking on the window. i look over and there is a ventriloquist dummy head knocking against the window. creepy. i'm glad we had men in the house at the time. doors will be locked extra tight tonight.

Rock. Chocolate.

...I'll get back to the letter story later...

adventures happen. sometimes they happen in the form of a rock, and sometimes they don't. i needed a rock for a school assignment--its a long story--so i picked one up when i was walking home from campus at about 10:45 at night. it was an egg sized rock. I walk into my apartment and my roommate was sitting on the couch talking to a guy in our neighboring complex. he gave me a weird look when i walked in, so i gave him one back. i guess he wasn't paying attention, because he didn't notice my weird look. then he said, "is that a rock in your hand?" i reply "yes, yes it is." my roommate says "you should have called us to come pick you up--you could have been attacked!" he then says, "is that why you have the rock? because that's a good defense tactic..."

sometimes adventures don't happen in the form of a rock. once upon a time, i made a large cup of hot chocolate. The cup had a crack in it, so it was slowly leaking out. I was really confused at first, but eventually i figured it out. so i tried to pour it into a different cup. that didn't work out very well. there was lots of unfortunate waste of hot chocolate because of it dripping down the sides of the cups. and that's all.

p.s. happy valentines day! (if you want to be my valentine, i'm accepting applications)